Camping

I am a little late to post (sorry!). We went camping last weekend with Kathryn and Brandon and had a blast. We cooked over the camp stove for breakfast, ate no-cook food for lunch, and cooked over the fire for dinner. Here is a picture of us all from the last night (Kathryn, Brandon, Me, and Jason):

Don't mind our sticky look...Jason and I showered that day with a bucket by the water fountain (in our swim suits, of course) because there were no showers. It was kind of fun, acutally. We hiked for an hour and a half and got pretty sweaty after that. Needless to say, I don't think any of us were sporting our "smile for the camera" look.

The first night we ran into a minor problem that was fixed by some quick thinking. I was grilling turkey burgers and two veggie burgers on our tripod over the grill. I was lowering or raising the grate when all of a sudden a hook slipped loose and the entire grate fell down into the fire. Luckily it fell in the direction it was hanging and we were able to salvage 5 of the 7 turkey burgers. Sadly, the veggie burgers did not make it :( I settled for pasta salad and a delicious baked potato (which we made both nights by stabbing a potato with a fork, wrapping it in tin foil, and throwing it in the fire pit around the outside of the flames...45 minutes later you have a perfect baked potato).

The second night we went for an easier option - foil dinners. Kathryn and I assembled them while the boys made fire (what is it about boys and fire?). These are simple meals that can be pretty much prepped before camping. I cut the veggies ahead of time and stored them in individual containers in the cooler. Usually we put potatoes in them, but opted for baked potatoes again (since they were so good) and stick with chicken and veggies in the foil dinner. I didn't wear a watch all weekend so I have no idea how long they took - I am guessing 30 minutes.

Ingredients:
- Chicken, cubed
- Carrots cut into matchsticks
- Zucchini, quartered and sliced
- Onions, diced
- Green Peppers, chopped
- Mrs. Dash
- Garlic powder
- Salt
- Pepper

Directions:
1. Cut a piece of HEAVY DUTY (not the normal flimsy stuff) tin foil about the size of a piece of paper. place the chicken in the center and top with the desired veggies. Season liberally with the above mentioned seasonings.
2. Fold the edges up to make a box opening. Roll the edges down like a brown-bag lunch. Place in the fire or on a tripod (we placed them on the tripod). If you place them in the fire, keep them in an area where you would be comfortable reaching in to grab them with metal tongs.

**Most recipes call for a splash of water. We did this and it made the dinner soupy. I omitted the water because the raw chicken, onions, and zucchini will all let off enough water to steam the dinner. If you are putting potatoes in and/or precooked meat, add a little water.

Potato-Greens Torta

This is Torta I made months ago and just got around to blogging about. Jason and I are very cheap and often shop at Aldi. One week a 10 pound bag of potatoes were on sale for $0.70. No, I didn't put the decimal in the wrong spot - 70 cents for 10 pounds of potatoes! We couldn't pass that deal up, so when I got home I got to cooking. I made over a gallon of potato soup (I will try to find the recipe and blog about it soon), some Pot Pie with potato added, and this recipe. I had never cooked lettuce before (the whole idea seemed odd but then I guess it is similar to cooking spinach), but I trusted that Cooking Light knew what they were talking about when they put together this recipe and I went for it. It turned out to be very good...even better with fresh Parmesan cheese on top :)

Potato and Green Totrta
Slightly modified from Cooking Light Magazine

Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 pound potatoes, washed and cubed, but not peeled
- 3 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 TBSP canola oil
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 4 cups torn romaine
- 3 cups frozen spinach, thawed and drained
- 1 cup green onion, diced
- 1/2 cup skim milk
- 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
- 2 large eggs
- 3 TBSP bread crumbs
- cooking spray

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375F and coat a 9" square pan with cooking spray.
2. Cook potatoes over the stove using a steamer. Mash into a bowl.
3. Heat oil in a large skillet. Add garlic and onion. Cook for 2 minutes. Add greens and cook until wilted.
4. Add cooked greens, milk, cheese, eggs, and salt to potatoes. Stir well. Press mixture into the greased pan and top with bread crumbs.
5. Bake at 375F for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.
Ingredients

For two years I have been trying to find a recipe for veggie burgers that doesn't fall apart. I had tried tofu, beans, sprouts, you name it, and every time the burger would crumble to pieces in the frying pan. The moment I put these burgers together I knew they would not only hold up to the frying pan, but would hold up to the grill. Hayley at Buff Chickpea knew what she was talking about when she said this was the only veggie burger a cook would need. While I didn't follow the recipe to a T, it is basically the same recipe.

Beans are so cheap - at less than $1 a bag, these burgers cost pennies to make.

These were so good that not only did Jason have two for lunch (working out is making him eat like he is back in college doing two-a-days for football) but asked about making more for his lunches in the coming weeks. When I made the recipe I made enough for 10 veggie burgers. These could be cooked first and then frozen for an easy reheat or frozen first, thawed out and then cooked for a fresh burger. It is really up to what you'd like to do - save time now and cook them later or cook them now and save time later. I made them at 8pm on a Sunday night before having to get up at 4:15 to the run the next morning, so I opted for the later.

Ingredients
- 1 pound bag of chickpeas soaked, boiled, and drained (make sure they are cooled completely before using if you do this all in the same day)
- 1 pound bag of great northern beans, soaked, boiled, and drained
- 1 jar roasted red peppers, drained
- 1 bunch of green onions
- 1 TBSP diced garlic
- 1 TBSP chopped fresh basil
- 4 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cup ground flax seed
- 3/4 cup ground whole wheat bread crumbs
- salt and pepper as desired
*I am terrible at following recipes, so I recommend using your judgement with these. I believe I recall how much of each item I used, but I could be wrong. If the burgers are too wet, at more grains. If they are too dry, add some olive oil or an extra egg.

Directions
1. Place half the beans in a blender for food processor. Add half of the red peppers, onions, garlic, and basil. Add 2 eggs and blend on medium until a semi-smooth consistency.
2. Remove from blender and set into a big bowl. Add half the flax seed and bread crumbs. Mix well and let sit.
3. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.
4. Once blended, add to the bowl and add the remaining flax seeds and bread crumbs. Mix well and let stand for 5 minutes.
5. Spray wax paper with cooking spray. Form burgers with your hands and place onto the wax paper. Repeat until all of the mixture is used up.
6. If freezing, set in the freezer like this and let harden over night. In the morning, remove from wax paper and place in a freezer bag. When you decide to cook them, let them thaw out first to prevent from over cooking the outside.
7. If cooking immediately, heat oil in a skillet or heat a grill. If grilling, spray the grill grate with cooking spray for grilling to prevent sticking (we forgot to do this and lost some on the grate). Cook for about 5 minutes on each side, or until the center is 165F (this has eggs in it, so make sure it is cooked all the way).

They may be a little dry if you freeze them and then cook them, but I just added some Olive Oil Mayo and a slice of Sharp Cheddar made with 2% milk. Eat them with a delicious homemade hamburger bun and you'll wonder why you didn't think of this sooner.

Frugal Food

I cannot believe how long it has been since I have consistently posted on this site. It feels like just yesterday I was trying to figure out what direction I wanted to go with with this blog and now it makes me a little sad to think that four months could go by that quickly. Regardless, I hope to be back to being consistent within the next few weeks. My internship will be over in two weeks and after that I am going to feel like I have all the time in the world! The drive alone was about 13 hours per week - together that is 53 hours of (unpaid) time I cannot be cooking or blogging. However, such is life and it needed to be done so that I can become a registered dietitian...this is the last I will mention it :)

Over the past two months I have spent little time cooking. The internship provides lunch, which is a help with the budget, and we have been spending a lot of time away from the apartment on the weekends. This allowed me to get by with only making about two real meals a week. I have been looking for ways to save money since right now we only have one part-time income coming in and we could use any extra quarter we can get. In trying to research ways to cut back I looking up blogs that talk about being frugal or financially savvy and realized we already do most of the things they were talking about.

I decided to post on what we do to save money. At first I thought this didn't fit with the blog but then I realized it is all part of the name...nutrition information (i.e. recipes, random facts), health (from the nutrition information) and life (all things related, included saving money). Right now we are doing a cash challenge for the month where we will pay for everything with cash (except gas - that uses the debt card because it is just easier than going inside) and are recording every item we buy - not just $54.26 from Aldis, but every item and its price. We are hoping to get a better idea of what we are actually spending and where.

When we first were married and started grocery shopping I was amazed at how much we spent. I didn't know what a good price was for lunch meat or ground turkey because I never bought that food on my own (I could tell you what a good price for lettuce or carrots was, however). To aid in the process I made a Grocery Costs excel sheet. It has each item and what its ounce price is. After a month I was pretty familiar with the prices and could go to one of three grocery stores and tell you if I was going to wait to buy it until I went to Jewel or if it was okay to buy at Walmart. I also started pricing out meals to see if some things we were eating were costing us too much, but I lost interest and didn't pursue that any further.

Together, these two tasks have really helped us see how to find the best deal on groceries and have allowed us to determine where our money is really going. Here are some other things that I find useful for saving money:

1. Always look at the ounce price. The bigger or bulk item is not always cheaper. For instance, the large size of natural peanut butter at Walmart is actually more expensive per ounce than the small size. Instead of buying one large jar I just buy two small jars now.

2. Make a list before you go and organize it by area/type. This will make the trip faster and more efficient. Before I really knew my grocery stores I would make one trip down the store and realize I missed ten things before and would have to snake back through.

3. Be flexible with fruits and vegetables. For these I usually denote on my list how many fruits and vegetables I want to buy but not the exact kinds. This goes a little against number two, but it allows me to decide there when I see what is on sale. In season is usually cheaper, but now always (apples will always be cheaper than blackberries).

4. Buy frozen and canned foods when you can. I despise canned vegetables, but don't mind frozen vegetables, so we often stock up on frozen veggies once a month. For fruit, we usually buy some frozen and some canned. If you are buying canned fruit choose the kind packed in its own juice or in light syrup. Pineapple, for instance, tastes just fine out of the can and is extremely cheaper than buying a whole pineapple. If we live in Hawaii I would just buy it fresh, but "fresh" in IL is not quite the same ;)

5. Plan out meals and snacks. Every week I make a menu for the week. This allows me to see how much I really need and of what. I usually look at what we have first to try to use that up first. For snacks, I just started a rotating snack menu. I wrote out four weeks with four snacks each(i.e veggies and dip, nuts, crackers, pudding) and will reuse this list each month. Before I would just buy the same thing every week and sometimes food wouldn't get eaten as quickly as I would have liked, or we would get sick of the same snack. I think this new way will help us eat a variety of foods, save money, and not get bored. I should add that when I say snacks, I don't mean store bought chips and cookies. I try to always make the snacks if I can, so if cookies are the snack they will be homemade not Chips Ahoy. Not only does homemade taste better but it is better for your and saves money.

I could probably go one for hours about this, so I think I will call it quits for now. I'll be back soon!