Foodmomiac

Successful New Dish: Lentil Potato Salad

On Saturday night, we decided to stay in and cook dinner. Dylan was at a sleepover, so it was just me and the two guys. We had some prime ribeye steaks from Costco, so we knew that would be the focus, but it was up to me to come up with a side dish. My first instinct was some sort of potato dish. Unfortunately, when I checked our potato supplies, I realized that we only had one pound of potatoes which wouldn't be enough. It was time to get creative.

When Michael and I went to Paris last month, I spent an hour in G. Detou, one of the world's most amazing grocery stores. One of the treats I came home with was a tin of French de Puy lentils: 

 

Lentil de Puy are a great treat if you've never tried them (and you don't need to buy them in Paris - they are available at many specialty grocery stores in the U.S. - I have even purchased them at Whole Foods). They keep their shape and texture when cooked. Typical lentils get soft and mushy, which is great when you are making a soup and stew, but not ideal when you want the lentils for a salad. 

So, back to my story. I had one pound of potatoes and I had the lovely tin of lentils. I decided to combine a couple of recipes from The New York Times Cookbook; a Mediterranean lentil salad and a French potato salad. French potato salads are served slightly warm or at room temperature and are made with olive oil instead of mayonnaise. They are much more suited to cold weather than the standard mayo-based varieties.

The salad was easy to prepare and delicious. I hope you love it as much as we did!

Lentil Potato Salad

1/2 cup de Puy lentils
1 pound new (red) potatoes, scrubbed and cut into a 1/4 inch dice
1 Tb onion, finely minced
Vinaigrette of your choice (I used this one) 
2 carrots, finely diced
2 stalks celery, finely diced
salt and pepper to taste 

Combine lentils with three cups of water in a pot. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 - 20 minutes (you want them tender but not mushy). Drain and set aside.

Cover potatoes with cold water in a pot and bring to a boil. Cook until tender. Drain and place in a large bowl. Toss with the minced onion and a few splashes of vinaigrette. Allow the vinaigrette to soak in a bit. Taste. If there is no flavor, add some more (the potatoes soak up quite a bit - by dressing them while they are warm, you insure great flavor). 

Add the carrots and celery and lentils. Toss with more vinaigrette and the salt and pepper, tasting as you go. This is a very flexible recipe - you will want to play around with it until it is seasoned to your tastes.

Enjoy!

Foodmomiac's Guide to Chicken Stock

I got this email yesterday from my old friend Kate:

Hi Danielle,

I've got a chicken carcass in my freezer waiting to be made into stock.  And I want to use some of that stock to make chicken soup.  Trouble is I've never done either.  I figure you can do this in your sleep - got any great resources to guide me through the process?  I figure I will get a rotisserie chicken for the dinner tomorrow and use the left over meat for the soup, giving me a second carcass for the stock so I can make a good amount of it and stash some away in the freezer.  If you have any words of advice I'd appreciate it!

-kate

So... I don't really have a set recipe I follow. I kind of just do my thing and it usually works out. I take the carcass(es) and put them in a giant soup pot. Then, I cover them with filtered water. I add a couple of onions cut in quarters, some carrots, some celery (including leaves is GREAT), and some parsnips (this is optional, but makes the resulting stock taste like soup from a Jewish deli). I put the heat on medium, bring it up to a low simmer, turn down the heat to low, and let it all cook for a while. If the water gets low, you can add more. If there is scum on the surface, you can skim it.

When the stock seems "stock-y," I strain it, reserving all of the chunks in a colander. I then start sorting. I discard the onion and celery as they are tapped out, but I slice the carrots and parsnips into coins to be used in my soup. I also take on the ultra messy job of sorting through the carcasses. I pull off all of the good meat and shred it up into bite size pieces. This is also for the soup.

We actually prefer more of a stew with our stock, so I add back in the carrots, parsnips and chicken and then make spaetzle dumplings right into the pot. If this is too fancy for you, you can just dump in some egg noodles (or better yet, get the Hungarian dumplings from a gourmet market). The more noodles you add, the stew-ier the soup with be. You can also not add ANYTHING back into the stock and just use it for cooking.

Hope this helps!

Thoughts on budgets

A couple of weeks ago, Michael and I finally sat down and worked on our budget. I've used Quicken before, but I just hate it. I think it's the mild OCD that I get from my dad. If you approach Quicken from an OCD perspective, it's a nightmare. You can literally sit in front of the screen for hours on end, itemizing every little thing. It's not maintainable for me. So, when we did the budget a couple of weeks ago, I used a simple budget spreadsheet template that I found in our Numbers program on our Mac. There is one section for monthly income, one section for monthly expenses, one section for planned expenses (like vacations, etc.) and one section that tracks savings each month based on the above.

I love my little spreadsheet, and I added a second page to track our actual expenses which I can then compare back against our plans. The problem is that Michael is now hellbent on complicating matters. First, he subscribed to the online version of Quicken and imported all of our bank accounts and credit cards (this literally gives me an anxiety attack). Then, he downloaded an expense program on his iPhone, which he wants me to reconcile against our budget. It's taking all of my energy to not get sucked into this morass of complication, but he's relentless, so we'll see what happens.

The awesome little budget that I made on the spreadsheet, though, seems to be quite effective. We put in monthly amounts for restaurants, groceries, entertainment and allowance, and are already seeing a difference in our day-to-day behaviors. Lunch comes out of our allowance, so we have both been bringing lunch from home (using the weekly grocery budget instead of our own money). I learned last week that poor menu planning will eat up our restaurant budget in a jiffy, so today I made a really firm dinner plan for the week. I also made an effort to include dinners that are good as a bag lunch the following day (see above). Tomorrow night's Asian chicken will be a microwaved lunch on Tuesday, and Tuesday night's meatloaf will be a sandwich on Wednesday.

I know that budgets are the new little black dress. How are you guys all doing it?

Finding a meal planning system that works

I love the concept of meal planning. As I mentioned in my budgeting post a few weeks ago, I know for sure that meal planning helps us save money. The problem is that I have a hard time sitting down and actually doing it. Though I'm always bookmarking great recipes to my del.icio.us account, I can never recall them when it's time to plan the meals.

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but a few months ago I started writing for Cool Mom Picks (THE best mom shopping site out there, if I do say so myself). Mir, one of my fellow writers, wrote about the Relish! meal planning system a few weeks ago, and I promptly signed up for an account. I love this system, and, surprisingly, it's actually working for us. (I am surprised because I am never consistent with anything.)

Every Thursday, I get a link to the following week's dinner options. What I love about the site is that there is a lot of flexibility. I can choose any five meals I want from a list of 15, and they are very varied. Once my meals are selected, I choose the number of people eating each meal (I do six servings to cover the au pair and leftovers), and then a shopping list and recipes are generated as a PDF for easy printing.

Shopping is a BREEZE with this system. Everything is broken down by aisle, so I can easily write in any extra items I need (like Max's beloved apple juice or our never-ending supply of milk). I think it's really important to note that I don't follow the system exactly. Sometimes I use it just as a jumping off point. Like, last week I printed out a Mexican recipe, but because it was election week, and my emotions were making me tired (seriously), I kept it simple, and we did plain 'ol tacos instead of the Relish! option. All main dish recipes include a side dish recipe as well, but sometimes I'll adjust to make things easier on myself. For example, I'll use those organic Alexa French fries instead of making rice.

All of the recipes are coded with symbols that indicate the type of meal. For example, some are KF for kid-friendly, or C for crockpot. I have been choosing one crockpot meal each week, and for next week's menu, I made sure to also select one labeled with an M for morning prep.

We've only had one dud recipe (chicken in a crockpot with butternut squash), and I've been really impressed with the variety. I am making things that I would never usually make, and finding new favorites for the family. I also love the use of fresh herbs and nuts (an underused ingredient in dinner planning).

Next week our menu looks like this:

- Buttermilk unfried chicken, broccoli with herb butter (I'm guessing my family will want me to add potatoes as well, and I might swap out the broccoli since it's featured in another recipe as well)
- Apricot lemon chicken in the crockpot, butternut squash, couscous
- Bleu cheese burgers with sauteed onions, spicy french fries (kids will have regular cheese burgers, I'm sure)
- Creamy pasta with lemon and prosciutto, boston lettuce witih shaved parmesan
- Peanut rotini with broccoli, Asian spinach salad

Are you guys using systems that aren't your own? I know that Lauren played around with Six O' Clock Scramble for a while.

More on Being Frugal

Today marks the commencement of week four with no house boy. And, we are doing well! My big fear was that with David gone, all of his duties would fall to me. But, Michael has stepped up to the plate and is doing laundry and straightening. Very nice.

I'm very happy that we were able to save that money each month, but with the economic news getting worse and worse, I've been thinking about other things we can do to watch our budget. Here's the list I came up with:

• Make lunches for the adults every day.
  
  • Potential savings = $70/week, $3,640/year
• No more Starbucks in the morning. We have an espresso machine at home, so this is a no-brainer.
  • Potential savings = $25/week, $1300/year
• Meal planning to avoid last-minute take out or restaurant visits
  • Potential savings = $60/week, $3,120/year
• Occasionally choose BYOB restaurants on Saturday nights
  • Potential savings = If we do this twice a month, it could save us probably $100/month, so $1,200/year

What changes are you guys looking to make?