sarah's blog

Here’s some randomness for ya. I’ve probably been asked 5 or 6 times over the past few months how to make something that I’ve had success with: a fruit fly trap. Gosh my life is glamourous.

But seriously I once had a fruit fly problem, the first time I had dealt with this, and I researched solutions online. I perfected one that worked for me so when we moved into our new place and found that they show up pretty easily (it’s true living downtown we’ve noticed more flies of all kinds because of the close living situation and the dirtier streets) I attacked the problem with my technique and am able to keep it under control.

So because you asked, and begged and pleaded, for my secret, I’ll go ahead and reveal it here. For only three payments of $99.99 I’ll send you two traps handmade by Sarah herself. Think about it.

First I get a small glass bowl (like very small or else you’ll have to use too much vinegar and that’s a waste), clear is best for attracting flies and viewing your catch. Pour in about two or three tablespoons of white wine vinegar. You’re welcome to try other kinds but I’ve tried balsamic and plain white and never saw near the results. Fruit flies are classy.

Add a couple drops of dish soap in the center. I’ve used lavender, orange and other scents, it doesn’t seem to matter.

Finally I pour tap water directly onto the soap so it creates a lot of bubbles. Turn the water up pretty strong to make this happen quickly so you only add enough water to approximately double the amount of liquid in the bowl.

Some people tell you to cover it with plastic wrap and poke holes in it. Don’t bother. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to figure out of the holes are the right size or if the plastic wrap is keeping the bugs away. The soap bubbles are specifically to coat their wings and keep them in the bowl, you won’t have a problem with that.

Now set your trap near a problem area, usually near where you kept some fruit out or the sink where it’s moist and warm. Moist. Yuck. Make sure though, that it’s also not going to be disturbed so the flies stick around. I’d show you a picture of all the flies I caught but then you’d know how many flies were in my kitchen and I just realized that’s what this post implies and I’m kind of regretting it.

Plus Marlow just took a bite out of a business card.

On Monday I just had yogurt and coffee because we were going for dim sum at 10:30 with J’s coworkers. So for what amounts to Chinese brunch we had an assortment of items like Chinese donuts in rice noodles, steamed buns, chicken feet (just J on that one) and other delicious treats. There was even some leftovers for us to bring home. Score.

For supper I got really creative and using frozen chicken breasts, a can of Rotel, panko Japanese-style bread crumbs and tex-mex shredded cheese I made a delicious chicken bake. The pictures don’t really do it justice because it’s not the most beautiful dish but it was warm, spicy and filling. I added the rest of our leftover potatoes as a side and dug in.

On Tuesday I had the Quaker Hearty Medley cereal and coffee, J had his bran and coffee. I was never a breakfast creature of habit before, in fact you’ll recall I barely liked eating breakfast at all. But getting up at 6am every day now requires that I fuel up and microwave oatmeal is quick and healthy. If I didn’t care about that second part it would be Poptarts believe me.

For lunch J took the rest of the dim sum and I had the soup we scored at our friends’ house on Sunday. Yum.

For supper I made the M&M Meats slow-cooked pot roast (which is amazing and easy and makes tons of gravy) with rice and a chickpea salad. This used up a roast, a lemon, a can of chickpeas, and an onion.

Yesterday we did the usual for breakfast, more leftovers for lunches and then out to #1 Beef Noodle for supper. Yes that is its name. I also broke some rules and bought some egg tarts, a pork bun for J and a butter cream bun for me at the Chinese bakery that puts things on sale before the mall closes. You might remember that place from our date night awhile back.

So that’s about it up to today. Below are a couple little homemade recipes and the list of items I was able to use up. I’m not claiming any of these recipes as gourmet, I just offer them as perhaps inspiration to make up your own dishes because all of them start from an idea I find online and then build depending on what I have in the kitchen. They won’t win any awards and would probably offend some chefs for their randomness but I feel a sense of accomplishment when I can make something out of nothing so boo to them. [sticking out tongue]

Quick & Random Chickpea Salad
Can of chickpeas, drained
Small onion, whatever kind you have
Lemon or lemon juice
Cilantro
Olive oil
White wine vinegar
Dried dill
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper

Pour drained can of chickpeas into medium mixing bowl. Chop onion into very small pieces and add as much as you would like (I didn’t use the whole onion because I wanted a higher chickpea to onion ratio. Could I BE more nerdy when I say that?). Drizzle with olive oil and add a splash of white wine vinegar. Shake on a good amount of dill, salt and pepper and finely chopped fresh cilantro. Toss and taste, then add more of whatever you think it needs. Keep covered in the fridge (the onions will smell) and enjoy as a side or as a lunch on its own because chickpeas are great for you!

Spicy Chicken Bake
2 Frozen boneless chicken breasts, thawed
Can of Rotel (if you can’t find this in Canada – we have ours brought up from Texas – grab a jar of salsa)
Panko Japanese-style bread crumbs (buy a box and use it to bread all kinds of things. They are crunchy and hold up well in the oven)
Olive oil
Sea salt and fresh ground pepper
Fresh cilantro
Kraft tex-mex shredded cheese (or just cheddar if that’s what you’ve got)

Heat oven to 350F. Place chicken in baking dish (cut them in half to make four pieces total if you don’t want to worry about them being cooked evenly). Pour Rotel or salsa over chicken. In small bowl mix bread crumbs with salt, pepper and cilantro. Drizzle with olive oil and mix well. Sprinkle heavily over chicken and salsa. Put in oven until chicken is done (cut one open and check that it’s white all the way through), about 20 minutes or so. Take out of the oven and sprinkle with as much cheese as you want and put back into the oven just until melted and bubbly. Remove and enjoy with rice or veggies.

Things I used up…

Chickpeas
Onion
Lemon
Can of Rotel
Box of Panko bread crumbs
Box of hearty medley breakfast cereal

As I mentioned last post we’re cleaning out the food that’s just hanging around our kitchen from my pre-babies stockpiling. Here’s how we’re doing so far.

Yesterday I had a Quaker Hearty Medley hot cereal. I do not recommend them over my usual oatmeal. Also had a bowl of yogurt and a cup of coffee, of course.

J had bran cereal and coffee. So nothing random used up for breakfast yet.

For lunch we ate leftover pasta from Anton’s.

For supper I cooked up our last two M&M frozen salmon filets, all the brussel sprouts and a bag of assorted new potatoes. If you’ve never tried them they even have blue potatoes, though I actually don’t like the blue ones that much. I find them drier like a russet/baking potato and prefer the flesh of the red or yellow ones.

For breakfast today it was yogurt and coffee for me and cereal and coffee for J. Lunch was at a friend’s place (where sidenote: So & Lo were super cranky and challenged our ability to enjoy ourselves and not feel bad for our hosts) and we ended up coming home with a container of homemade soup. Score.

Supper was a bit outside the rules… we got McDonalds. I’ll confess, we have a weakness for it, me especially, so on nights when we don’t want to cook we look through our coupon box for our Mickey D’s coupons and that’s how we justify it. Heck, we don’t need to justify it, it was delicious and that’s all you need to know.

So I haven’t gotten very far in using up stuff, though we did kill the salmon fillets, brussel sprouts and potatoes. However tomorrow I’m going to make up a package of vanilla pudding and I’ve got a simple chickpea salad I’m going to try, probably with a good amount of substitutions for all the things I don’t have.

We’re off to a slow start. I’m accepting recipe ideas for the list of items in my previous post if you’ve got anything that helps me use them without breaking the e.d.t.f. rules.

In case you’re curious, here’s how I cooked the sprouts. If you think you don’t like them but have only had them boiled, give this a try. They went from something I never cooked to arguably our favorite veggie side.

Roasted Brussels
Fresh brussel sprouts, washed with ends cut off and sliced in halves
Olive oil
Sea salt
Fresh ground pepper

Set oven to 350 F. Put brussel sprout halves in medium bowl, drizzle on a good amount of olive oil. Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. Toss to coat sprouts completely.

Dump out on baking sheet (I use a large stoneware one) and spread out. You don’t have to but I turn each sprout half so the outsides are facing up and they lay flat on the cut side. Because I am OCD. If there are loose leaves get them on the pan too, they are the best part!

Put pan in oven and cook until the sprouts are easily pierced with a fork (I’d say about 10 to 15 minutes) and the outside leaves are getting a bit black and crispy on the edges. Leave them a bit longer to crisp more or turn the oven to broil for a couple minutes. BUT watch carefully, this will crisp the leaves quickly.

Scoop off pan into serving dish. So simple but so addictive.

I made The Pioneer Woman‘s chocolate chip cookie sweet rolls the other day. So sweet, so yummy, so so bad.

Tips for making them from my experience: warm and soften the cream cheese in the icing before blending it with the other ingredients so it doesn’t get lumpy, listen to the recipe when it says to let the buns cool a bit before pouring on the icing and don’t be afraid to let them get good and brown on top. I hate overcooking anything so I took mine out just a bit too early.

The dough process was different than any I’d made before but was totally worth it, and I plan to try making her other sweet rolls too.

Before we left for our trip I did a mini Eat Down The Fridge but never finished saying how it went. It’s been too long for me to remember what we ate meal by meal, so I won’t do that this time.

We only had a few days in which to do it and really the main idea was not to buy perishables before being gone for a week so I wouldn’t say there is too much to report other than one good recipe and one good idea.

Good recipe:

As mentioned in my food list, I had four oranges to use up. And I wanted to bake. Thus, SunKist Orange Honey Muffins.

SunKist Orange Muffins (with personal modifications like not referring to them as SunKist oranges every single time)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/3 cup honey
1 orange -grated peel
½ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
½ cup milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 oranges , peeled, sectioned, and drained (optional)
1 Tbsp. sugar

1. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl combine the egg, honey, grated orange peel, orange juice, milk, and oil; add to dry ingredients all at once.
2. Stir quickly until dry ingredients are just moistened but have a lumpy appearance. Spoon batter into 16 paper-lined 2-1/2 X 1-1/4-inch muffin cups, filling about two-thirds full.
3. This step is optional and I would only recommend it if you like cooked fruit. I think I would skip it next time. Place one orange section on top of each muffin and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 400F for 20 to 25 minutes, watching carefully that they do not become too brown.

We loved these muffins, the grated orange peel gave it a nice flavor without being too sweet. They were easy to make and used two of my four oranges.

Good idea:

I was looking for a way to use/preserve my bag of yellow onions when I came across this idea (I cannot for the life of me find the blog, when I do I will link it up and give credit) to pre-cut and freeze them. So I grabbed all but one onion and proceeded to cry my way through chopping half of them and slicing the other half. Then I spread the onions out on baking trays, covered them with plastic wrap (which still does nothing to stop your whole freezer and fridge from smelling like onion for the rest of the day) until slightly frozen.

The onions were then broken up and scraped into plastic baggies, double bagged and labeled as chopped or sliced with the date. I now have a convenient way to add onions to my cooking, and because the pieces were frozen individually first, there won’t be a big chunk of onion to mess with, I just shake out how much I need. Best of all, no food waste.

All in all a good week of EDTF. I even made eggs benedict one day with homemade hollandaise sauce (the recipe was so-so) which I did not realize used SO MANY EGGS. In one breakfast I pretty much wiped out our dozen eggs. For future reference eggs benedict with hollandaise sauce is pretty much eggs with a topping of butter eggs.

We’re having friends over for supper on Monday and I’m planning to make Pork Tenderloin with Sticky Lime Glaze. Stay tuned.

After over a month of feeling sick just entering our kitchen and a complete inability to cook anything, I am feeling 1000% better. Not a typo, literally 1000.

I mean, I want to cook, I want to eat (okay I wanted to eat the whole time, like 10 times a day) and I don’t lose my lunch over the smell of the refrigerator! My eagerness to enjoy this new-found normalcy has produced some meals I’m proud of, and I have cooked up some recipes that I would recommend to you guys. Since I have not posted about food in awhile (would you really want to hear my “recipe” for canned tomato soup, buttered noodles or plain popcorn?) I am excited to talk about all the delicious flavors and smells I am loving again.

First up: on Friday we had our friends Landon and Lisa over for supper and I made individual chicken pot pies. (more…)

I find it strange that I am way more chilled out as far as my schedule goes than I was the first time I did Eat Down the Fridge (e.d.t.f as I am calling it, probably a move I should have made on, say, the second day) and yet I seemed to have a harder time with it. I found less recipes to make and had a generally lower attitude of creativity.

I did follow the rules though, so I guess that’s what’s important. And we saved money on groceries. I would say the only thing that was borderline were two bags of dumplings we bought at Crystal Mall and were eaten alone but I’m going to excuse it because we didn’t eat them until last night, after e.d.t.f was technically over. See how I just did that.

So what did we eat the last 3 days of e.d.t.f.? Let me tell you. (more…)

We’ve made it back to Saturday. A whole week of attempting to eat the things that fill our kitchen and save money by not buying more food. I discovered some new recipes I’ll make again, I got really tired of ground beef and I said goodbye to some canned and frozen ingredients that have overstayed their welcome.

To celebrate making it through the week I went grocery shopping today and filled up our fridge with yummy fruits, veggies and even fresh salmon for supper. Here’s what we ate today:

Breakfast: Pancakes with vanilla soy milk instead of milk. Cup of coffee.

Lunch: Leftover lentil carrot soup, cornbread and a brownie. John had a hamburger. We finished up the jello jigglers for a snack.

After lunch I went shopping so supper was a whole new world. But it seemed the eat down the fridge bug has bit me because I still managed to get in a couple old things from the cupboards.

Supper: Maple glazed grilled salmon (recipe below), canned beet and goat cheese salad (recipe below) and sweet sticky rice.

I said I would let you know how much we spent on groceries this week. I only went to the store once and spent a total of $12.43 on some deli meat, eggs and quick oats. When I went to the store today I spent $88.00 on everything from vanilla soy milk to red peppers to fresh salmon to coffee beans. Given that some of those things last over a week it would be safe to estimate we saved about $40-$50 by not shopping last week. Not to mention the creativity and ingenuity I had to use! I’ve never had to substitute in so many recipes.

I won’t try doing another whole week like this for awhile but I am thinking of featuring a forgotten item or two each week that I have worked into my meal plan. Thanks for coming on the journey with us this week, I’ll leave you with the receipes from our delicious supper tonight, both of which I found online and then modified alot to fit what we had!

Maple Anise Glazed Salmon
1 lb fresh salmon fillet (boneless, skinless)
1/4 cup maple syrup*
2 tbsp soy sauce (I uses dark)*
1 clove garlic, minced (don’t bother cutting, use a press)*
1/4 tsp sea salt*
1.4 tsp fresh ground pepper*
3 of 4 star anise pods*

Mix everything but the salmon in a small bowl (break up the anise pods so that the seeds separate). Place salmon flat  in shallow glass baking dish and pour on sauce. Coat evenly and refigerate for 30 minutes, turning salmon once. Grill for 4-5 minutes on each side, depending on how cooked you like your salmon (leave anise seeds pieces in the marinating dish, do not eat).

Beet Goat Cheese Salad
1 can whole baby beets*
2 tbsp olive oil*
1 tbsp vinegar*
fresh ground pepper*
crumbled goat cheese

Drain beets well, do not rinse (take care with the juice, it stains easily). Put beats in small serving dish, slice each in half with sharp knife. Coat with oil, vinegar and pepper. Toss to coat fully, sprinkle with goat cheese crumbles right before eating.

* Ingredients from our kitchen pre-grocery shopping.

Today was a great for cooking from what we’ve got. Not only did I make a couple of new things but I was able to use up some ingredients as well.

Breakfast: John ate the last of the millet cereal and we both had coffee.

Lunch: I made a lentil carrot soup that was a big hit and incredibly yummy paired with the cornbread I made last night. I also found a recipe online for carob balls (I had a bag of carob powder from a time when I thought I would be able to enjoy it in place of my beloved chocolate) that turned out way better than expected. I only made a half batch because I had my doubts but when I brought them over to my sister-in-law’s house they got rave reviews. Recipe below.

Supper: We ate at John’s sister and husband’s house so once again no money spent but also no groceries used up.

So what did I use up today? Cashews, honey, green onions. Oh ya.

Recipe…

Carob Balls
1/2 cup ground almonds
1/2 cup crushed cashews
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup carob powder
coconut flakes for coating

Combine everything but the coconut and stir until mixed well. Roll into bite-sized balls and roll in coconut flakes. Refrigerate so they firm up.

Yesterday I was already getting sick of all the ground beef so by today I just couldn’t eat it again. I was temporarily discouraged but rallied and decided to do some baking. Here’s what we’ve been able to make from our kitchen in the past two days…

Breakfast yesterday: Took some leftover millet cereal to work. Cup of coffee.

Lunch yesterday: Leftover peas, leftover rice and red beans. Grapes for a snack and then leftover pasta salad. (I’m trying to eat at lunch and then again around 3pm because I was finding I got tired in the afternoons and too hungry by the time I got home)

Supper yesterday: John got creative with the ground beef and also used up the rest of the frozen mixed vegetables to create a spicy beef and veggies on rice dish. Brownies for dessert.

Today was another unusual food day but I guess even if I don’t use stuff from my own kitchen, if I get free food elsewhere it helps the bottom line.

Breakfast: Cup of coffee and a donut courtesy of Tracy.

Lunch: Went out to Moxie’s because it was Tracy’s last day. Would have had leftover yam fries and battered fish from the lunch but I left them in Tracy’s car for the second half of the work day and we voted it wasn’t worth the risk. I made a batch of granola, recipe courtesy of Adrianne, to take to work for Tracy’s goodbye party in the afternoon. There were lots of snacks so I filled up on spinach dip and real fruit popsicles and there will still be plenty of granola left to munch on next week.

Supper: As I said before I just couldn’t bear to eat the last of the ground beef with John so he made a hamburger for himself and I split the last of the baby bok choy with him.

After supper I rummaged again and discovered I had cornmeal. So naturally I whipped up some cornbread muffins. I used a recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook but there were plenty of good ones online too.

I have also found during this process (and even before) that if there’s something you want to make and it always seems to be made with one ingredient you don’t have, googling “____ recipe without ____” can bring up all kinds of recipes that fit the bill. For example, tonight I looked up a recipe for lentil carrot soup because, well, I happen to have both those things and we like soup. I kept finding recipes with onion (which I do not have and from now on will stock up on before I do something like this) in them so I did my googling trick and got advice someone had given to a person trying to make lentil carrot soup for a guest with an onion allergy. Problem solved.

Another trick I use all the time is to google a substitute for whatever I don’t have for a recipe. For example, don’t have buttermilk, a search for “buttermilk substitute” will give you all kinds of replacements you’re guaranteed to have. Just make sure you pay attention to what kind of recipe you are using it for because a good substitute for an egg in a meatball recipe will not be the same in a brownie recipe.

Two more days and we will have made it a week buying only the items I listed in my previous post. I don’t think the coffee cream will make it and I know for a fact John is out of bran cereal but I am already so proud of how much we were able to make by just getting creative with what’s there.