It’s been years since I’ve bought a box of instant jell-o.
It has also been years since I’ve made jell-o.
I did buy a box of gelatin once, but it sat in my cupboard literally for a couple of years, for two main reasons:
I was a little scared of working with gelatin, thinking it might be kind of tricky, not easy at all.
I was put off by the instructions for jell-o on the box that called for an entire box of gelatin and half a carton of juice, not to mention the extra sugar. Hello, $3 for a dessert that isn’t even all that healthy?!
In short, it didn’t seem worth the effort and cost for a dessert that wasn’t even anywhere near my top 10. So I never made jell-o.
Then, I found this super easy 4-ingredient recipe for berry jell-o at Wholesome Cook. Cute beyond words! I pinned it (on Pinterest) immediately and purposed to make it at the earliest opportunity.
My first attempt was a total failure, but that was probably because my gelatin was old. I replenished my gelatin supply, and attempt #2 was very much a success! Not only that, but I followed her instructions for “stripey” jell-o and turned it into the perfect Fourth of July dessert for kids and adults alike.
Bring to a boil the raspberries, 1 cup of water and 1 TBSP sugar. As raspberries soften, mash them gently with a spoon as you stir. Lower the heat and allow the mixture to simmer for a few minutes. Pour 1 cup of water into a separate bowl, and sprinkle 1 packet of gelatin over it. Allow to sit for a minute while raspberries finish simmering. Strain the raspberry water and add to the gelatin water, stirring carefully to dissolve all the gelatin. Allow to set until it is room temperature.
Repeat the process with blueberries.
Heat milk, 2 TBSP sugar, and vanilla until milk is scalded (bubbling around edges). In a separate bowl, sprinkle a packet of gelatin over a cup of cold water. Let it sit for a minute, then add the hot milk mixture and stir until gelatin is dissolved.
Pour the raspberry jello into the bottom of glass cups or ice cream dishes, filling them about 1/3 of the way. Place in refrigerator to set; keep remaining jell-o flavors on the counter at room temperature.
When raspberry jell-o is semi-solid, carefully pour the milk jell-o over it, filling each dish about 2/3 full. Return to refrigerator and allow to set.
When the milk jell-o is semi-solid, add the blueberry jell-o, filling to near the top of the dish. Return to refrigerator and allow to set completely.
This recipe will make 4-6 large (approximately 8 oz) servings, or 8-10 small servings, all depending on the size of dishes you use.
The fact that these are red white and blue treats, deliciously cold and perfect for summer weather, might be enough; but I will admit the flavor is a little lacking. They’re good, but don’t expect a burst of berry flavor anywhere. Next time, I will try making it without straining out the berries and see if that makes a difference. If all else fails, I will just use juice. It’s still better than the box!
Homemade jell-o is really very QUICK actually. It might take a little longer to set, but I don’t think the actual mixing process is any more lengthy than the kind in the box.
It was so EASY it makes me wonder why anybody ever felt the need to make a box mix for jell-o in the first place. Really, it wasn’t any more difficult than using a mix, and it certainly doesn’t require all those artificial colors, flavors, preservatives and sugar!
One thing for sure: it’s not as CHEAP as using a box. This is one thing that homemade ends up being more expensive. Each store-bought box is available for around $1, store brands sometimes less. For each flavor of jell-o I made (which is technically 1 batch), I spent around $1.50, even with the going in-season rate for berries. I think that minimal cost difference is definitely worth it when you consider the health savings!
This is so much HEALTHY-er than the box it’s practically not even in the same realm. Made with actual fruit instead of artificial flavors and colors, and only 1 TBSP of sugar! It’s not even an indulgence, really. Now, I just have to test it with my Certain Little Someone to make sure the gelatin doesn’t cause his beef allergy to react. Then I’ll be thrilled to have a new QECH treat to make for him!
Bad camera + bad photographer = terrible pictures.
*sigh*
I took 64 pictures of these stupid gingersnaps in the mid-afternoon when the lighting was perfect, and this is all I got.
*sigh*
I wish I had a better camera and some lighting equipment. But as my mother would say, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” I don’t know exactly what that means, except that we don’t always get what we wish for. Oh, and another appropriate favorite saying of hers, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Yup, definitely applicable.
So, even if they don’t look all that great in the pics, take my word for it that these gingersnaps are just as good as any you’ll buy at the grocery store. And I should know – we love gingersnaps around here, ginger being a favorite flavor of every member of the family, so we’ve tried a few. I can highly recommend Trader Joe’s Triple Ginger Snaps, which also have candied ginger in them… mmmmm! I’d have added candied ginger to these, but I don’t have any on hand. Next time!
I don’t know why, but despite our love for all things ginger, I have never once attempted to make gingersnaps until recently. I’ve made gingerbread bears for Christmas many years in a row, and I’ve even made soft ginger cookies, but never gingersnaps. I guess I figured they were easier to buy, so we only ate them on a rare occasion.
Once I tried it, though, we were hooked. I’ve made 2 batches in as many weeks, and we’ve eaten them like they’re going out of style. It might seem strange to talk about gingersnaps – a Christmas-y kind of treat – at Easter time, but perhaps you’ll change your mind when I tell you that they go oh-so-fabulously with my Coconut Lime Mousse. In fact, that is how I’m going to serve the mousse: in a teacup with a little gingersnap for decoration.
Won’t that just be so cute?!
There’s a lot to love about these little babies – their taste, the fact that they’re so easy to make, and their cute little size – but one of my favorite things is that they are naturally dairy-free and egg-free, and are easily made gluten-free. That means a delicious little snack my entire family can enjoy, which is a huge victory around here!
1 cup + 2 TBSP whole wheat flour (OR 1 cup brown rice flour + 2 TBSP tapioca starch)
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ginger
dash ground cloves
Ginger Sugar (optional):
-1/3 cup raw sugar
-1/2 tsp ginger
Bring the molasses just to the boiling point in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in the shortening until it melts. Add remaining ingredients and stir until well blended. Use a melon baller to scoop out the dough, and form it in a ball with the palms of your hands. In a small bowl, mix together the sugar and ginger. If desired, roll each ball in the sugar until it is covered. Place on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 350F for about 8 minutes. Immediately remove cookies from pan to cool on a wire rack.
From start to finish, the entire batch takes half an hour or less, so I’d say it’s a pretty QUICK cookie recipe.
And all in one pot: can we say EASY?!
No eggs, no dairy not only means allergy-friendly, but CHEAP! Granted, the good shortening is very expensive, but this recipe uses less than a 1/4 cup.
I love that it uses little to no sugar, which makes it a HEALTHY-er cookie option. Molasses is still a sweetener and so should still be used sparingly, but it does offer nutrients, like iron, which you cannot find in even the best kind of cane sugar. I also love that whole grains – like brown rice, and whole wheat flour – go so well in this recipe. And you can totally omit the sugar, if you prefer – I just think it looks pretty – they taste just fine without it. Mind you, it’s essential to use organic palm oil shortening – none of that yucky vegetable Crisco stuff.
Yummy, huh?! Well, it does taste pretty good, but as you can see, it’s hardly good for you. If you’re anything like me, it’s probably one of those things you never even thought of attempting to recreate at home, thinking it way too complicated and messy and totally not worth it.
Think again!
My friend posted this recipe on her blog almost a year ago, and the minute I saw it, I wanted to try it. For some reason, it’s taken me this long to actually get around to it, but it was worth the wait. These yummy little bites, or “blobs” as she calls them, really don’t take that long to make and are far from complicated. And the best part is, they provide some great competition for the contents of that box in the freezer. (Oh, and side note: you can freeze them yourself and save them for later!)
This recipe’s traveled a bit around the blogosphere, and as far as I can tell, it started more or less here. Everyone who’s tried it makes it a little differently based on their needs and preferences, so you can feel free to do the same and tweak it to meet your own desires.
It starts with a bread dough like pizza dough. My friend used ready-made pizza dough from Trader Joe’s, which is a great idea. You can also quickly make your own batch of pizza dough in no time at all (The good thing about many pizza dough recipes is that they don’t require much, if any, rise time.). I used my Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day bread dough because it was easy! It was a slightly different texture than a pizza dough would be, but it worked well.
If you’re curious to try it for yourself, here’s how I did it:
Pizza Rolls
2 batches pizza dough
8 oz mozzarella cheese, sliced into bite-size pieces
1 pkg pepperoni
Fresh basil leaves – sliced to fit
Butter
Garlic salt
Parmesan
Roll the pizza dough out into a rectangle. Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into individual squares. You’ll want the squares to be large enough that the pieces of pepperoni can fit squarely in the middle with a generous 1/2″ margin (Not all of mine managed to be this way as you will see… maybe you can learn from my mistakes!).
Place a slice of pepperoni, a slice of mozzarella, and a piece of basil on each square. (If you have small basil leaves, a whole one will fit. I chopped mine up because I only had a limited amount of large basil leaves on hand.)
Fold up the corners of the square around the filling.
Pinch the open edges to seal them. Seal them as tightly as you can.
Place seam-side down in a well-greased round pan or pie plate.
Bake in a 400F oven for about 15 minutes. Brush with butter and sprinkle with parmesan cheese and garlic salt (optional). Serve hot with pizza sauce.
It’s not as QUICK as warming up that box full of junk, certainly. But perhaps it doesn’t take as long as you thought it might: mine were done in less than an hour, start to finish.
It’s pretty EASY, too. Yeah, you have to roll out the dough and cut it and all that, so I suppose it’s more complicated than other recipes. But it’s still not that difficult.
It’s probably not any CHEAPer than the boxed variety to be honest. The dough is cheap, but mozzarella and pepperoni are not. However, both of those items I bought on sale with coupons, so I actually ended up paying very little for them. This time around, anyway. I probably won’t make these again unless I find myself in the same situation.
These are one HEALTHY step above the frozen box. Pepperoni is far from the healthiest food available, but you can certainly find healthier versions (for a price). Of course, you can make these without the pepperoni. Either just make them cheese pizza bites, or replace the pepperoni with any other meat of your choice. Other than that, they’re a HUGE improvement over the list of ingredients at the top of this post.
I was seriously going to make a cake today and frost it with my favorite non-powdered sugar frosting, but then I looked in my sugar canister and realized… oops, no way I had enough sugar to manage that! But no matter, here’s something I’ve been wanting to blog about for a while now anyway…. homemade mac ‘n’ cheese!
I may possibly have tried every mac n cheese recipe on the planet in my attempts to find one that fits all my requirements. What exactly were my requirements?
-Stove-top, no oven required
-Healthy ingredients
-Quick
-Easy
Unfortunately, the easiest recipes, the ones that did not require a Bechamel/Mornay sauce, were unreliable and not always tasty, also a necessary requirement. I particularly loved one recipe that used yogurt in the sauce, and I still occasionally make that one, but it needs some tweaking before I can share it with you.
The recipe that I settled on is a stove-top recipe, but it does require a sauce. Don’t let that stop you, though, this sauce takes me about 10 minutes, start to finish (which would probably horrify a professional chef who would typically cook the sauce for 15 minutes or so – but I’m not a professional chef, so I don’t care!).
Homemade mac n cheese is really so simple, no one needs to resort to the box, which incidentally, has very little cheese. If any. It does, however, have preservatives, artificial flavors, and artificial colors. And it’s kind of slimy. Did you ever notice that? Homemade mac n cheese is never slimy, I promise.
Homemade StoveTop Mac n Cheese
1/2 lb small sturdy pasta (such as macaroni, rotini or the like)
2 TBSP butter
2 TBSP flour
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup chicken broth
1 TBSP honey mustard
freshly ground black pepper
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
Prepare pasta according to package directions. While it’s boiling, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.
Sprinkle the flour over the butter, and stir and cook until it’s well blended:
Cook the butter and flour, still stirring, about a minute or so, to make sure the flour is thoroughly cooked and there’s no raw flour taste in the final product.
Combine the milk, cream and broth in a liquid measuring cup, and slowly pour into the flour mixture, stirring all the while to combine it thoroughly. Continue stirring mixture until it is smooth and well blended.
Continue stirring until it’s bubbly, and then continue stirring and cooking for 4-5 more minutes (or up to about 15 minutes) until the sauce is slightly thickened. Stir in the black pepper and mustard.
Remove from heat and stir in the shredded cheese:
Keep stirring until the cheese is thoroughly melted, and you have a deliciously, creamy, golden sauce like this:
Add the noodles and stir them into the sauce until thoroughly coated. Cover with the lid of the saucepan and allow it to sit for a few minutes while you prep the rest of your dinner.
Serve and enjoy!
Homemade StoveTop Mac n Cheese
1/2 lb small sturdy pasta (such as macaroni, rotini or the like)
2 TBSP butter
2 TBSP flour
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup chicken broth
1 TBSP honey mustard
freshly ground black pepper
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
Prepare pasta according to package directions. While it’s boiling, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Sprinkle the flour over the butter, and stir and cook until it’s well blended. Cook the butter and flour, still stirring, about a minute or so, to make sure the flour is thoroughly cooked and there’s no raw flour taste in the final product. Combine the milk, cream and broth in a liquid measuring cup, and slowly pour into the flour mixture, stirring all the while to combine it thoroughly. Continue stirring mixture until it is smooth and well blended. Continue stirring until it’s bubbly, and then continue stirring and cooking for 4-5 more minutes (or up to about 15 minutes) until the sauce is slightly thickened. Stir in the black pepper and mustard. Remove from heat and stir in the shredded cheese. Keep stirring until the cheese is thoroughly melted, and you have a deliciously, creamy, golden sauce. Add the noodles and stir them into the sauce until thoroughly coated. Cover with the lid of the saucepan and allow it to sit for a few minutes while you prep the rest of your dinner.
This is just a bare-bones recipe. You can dress it up however you want with whatever you have on hand. A few ideas:
-Use different cheese, such as mozzarella.
-Combine cheeses.
-Add a little Parmesan
-Add some herbs, like parsley
-Add a meat, such as bacon, ham or shredded chicken
-Add vegetables (My DH draws the line at this. One doesn’t mess with his mac n cheese.)
-Use Worcestershire sauce instead of the mustard
-Use a small amount of dry mustard instead of prepared mustard.
-Use spicy brown mustard, or regular
See how much fun you can have?
This is definitely a QUICK alternative to the box method. Even if you have to shred the cheese (I always buy my cheese in blocks because it’s cheaper and has fewer – or no – preservatives), a food processor makes short work of that. There’s no excuse to resort to the box, which has absolutely no nutritional value.
EASY, too. A basic white sauce with cheese, and some boiled noodles. What could be easier? The box? Not really. You still have to boil the noodles and make the sauce from the cheese packet.
CHEAP, yes. I have seen the boxed variety for ridiculously low prices that homemade can’t compete against, but this is still a cheap main dish. Also, this recipe makes more than one box, AND the ingredients are healthier… and tastier!
So much more HEALTHY than the box!You may balk at using real cream – if it helps, you can use evaporated milk. It would be even healthier with some veggies thrown in there, but like I said, one doesn’t mess with DH’s mac n cheese. And be sure to use a healthy variety of pasta. I like to use Barilla Plus because it has whole grains, but it doesn’t have a different taste or texture. It also has more protein than regular pasta, so it makes a more suitable main dish.
These flowers have nothing to do with Moist Chocolate Cake, but I thought they were pretty and I wanted to share them with you. Aren’t they pretty?
Here’s the cake:
I have to admit something here. I never make a cake from a mix, but not because I am a great cake baker. Far from it, in fact. Cakes I bake tend to be dry and crumbly, undercooked or overcooked, or just plain not very good. However, I persevere because I find the ingredients in a box mix to be, in a word, scary. Hydrogenated oil (i.e. trans fats) is something I avoid like the plague mostly because it is kind of like the plague. Then there are those un-pronounceables that always make me wonder if it’s food or a chemical reaction.
When I decided to make a cake for my sister-in-law’s birthday the other day, and knowing my propensity for dry and crumbly cakes, I specifically looked for a recipe described as moist. I found one at AllRecipes, and tweaked it based on the reviews (which, by the way, is one thing I LOVE about AllRecipes!). Can you believe I only adjusted the sugar by a quarter cup?! Sometimes I think my dry cakes are the result of attempting to remove too much sugar; besides, I have a chart that shows you the minimum amount of sugar you can use in a recipe, and 1 1/2 cups was pretty much it for this cake. I made some other minor changes, notably to use real butter instead of margarine (trans fats again!) and an easier measurement for the cocoa powder.
Most cake recipes are probably not as quick, easy or fail-safe as the boxed mix variety, but I have stumbled across some great tips along the way that certainly help.
1. Always bring butter and eggs to room temperature.
A quick and easy way to bring butter to room temp is to slice it into tablespoons. It will take 5 minutes or less to bring it to room temp this way. Eggs can be placed in a bowl of warm water, but this is not necessarily completely effective.
2. Beat the butter before adding sugar.
Most recipes say to beat butter and sugar together, but it actually improves the cake’s texture if the butter is beaten first. Place room temp butter in the mixer and beginning on low speed, gradually increase the speed until you’re at about med-high. Once butter is smooth, beat in the sugar, then proceed with the rest of the recipe.
3. Measure flour carefully using the scoop-and-scrape method.
And if a recipe calls for sifting, be sure to follow through, because that will most definitely affect the final product.
4. Cool cakes on a wire rack.
This allows the cake to cool evenly. Also, if it’s left in the pan on the stove-top (as I have been known to do), it may continue to cook a little too much, resulting in heavy dry cake.
Better-than-the-Box Moist Chocolate Cake
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups turbinado sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
Whisk the dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. In a mixer, beat butter until smooth; add sugar. Continue beating and add eggs one at a time until well blended. On low speed, add dry ingredients, alternating with the milk and water (mixed together), just until blended. Pour batter into greased and floured (or use cocoa powder) round cake pans or a 9×13 pan. Bake at 350F for about 40-45 minutes, until top is springy and toothpick comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire rack for about 5 minutes; loosen from pan and release to cool completely on wire rack before frosting.
As for the frosting, I’m going to be working on a series of posts featuring powdered-sugar-free frostings, so stay tuned for those!
This may not be as QUICK as a boxed mix, but it really doesn’t take too much more time. If you slice up the butter and set the eggs in warm water while you mix the dry ingredients, they should be ready to go in the mixer by the time you’re done. Prep the pans and preheat the oven before you ever start to save time at the end.
This is, however, one of the EASY-er cakes I have made, and seems sturdy enough of a recipe to handle minor adjustments. It was a cinch to bake and remove from the pans, and the layers were nice and high, and moist as the name promised. Not every cake recipe is so obliging!
It’s CHEAP, too, using only basic baking ingredients most people have on hand at any given time. To be honest, I haven’t priced cake mixes in a long time, so I don’t even know how it would compare, but I do know this: one box of cake mix makes only one cake, but packages of flour, sugar, eggs and butter can make multiple cakes. In the long run, it seems more cost-effective to bake cakes from staple ingredients you already own than to purchase a separate box just for that purpose.
One could hardly describe this cake as HEALTHY, not by a long shot. However, it is free of trans fats and the dreaded “unpronounceables”, artificial flavors and colors. It also uses the minimum amount of sugar, so in comparison, it is healthier than a cake mix. But not healthy enough to eat on a regular basis, so I think I will save it for birthdays and the like!
I admit that Thanksgiving Day can be hectic with all the food preparations, and it’s nice to have shortcuts here and there to save time, energy and stress. However, I don’t think that taste and nutrition have to take a back seat in order to accomplish this feat.
As far as taste goes, give me a homemade stuffing any day! Growing up, I really don’t remember having stuffing at Thanksgiving at all (not that we didn’t, just that I really don’t remember it). As we grew older, though, my sister took it upon herself to make the stuffing and I remember one Thanksgiving in particular, she took great pride in making it from scratch. As I recall, that was some pretty delicious stuffing!
Regarding nutrition, I looked up the ingredients in Kraft’s Stovetop Stuffing: along with the bread and seasonings are high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated soybean oil and MSG. Hmmm. Not exactly the best guests at Thanksgiving Dinner!
But, you say, I don’t have TIME to make real stuffing on Thanksgiving! Well, I say, Yes, you do! Trust me, it will be totally worth it. The recipe below is so easy and it’s pretty tasty, too. You can adjust it to fit your family’s tastes because it’s also flexible.
Super Easy Squash Stuffing
1 loaf bread, cubed
2 cups chicken broth
1 acorn squash, cooked (either cubed or mashed, doesn’t matter)
3 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 tsp sage
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Distribute the cubed bread evenly on a rimmed cookie sheet, and place in a 325F oven for about 30 minutes, until nice and toasted. Cool. In a large bowl, mix bread with remaining ingredients until thoroughly combined. Place in a greased casserole dish and cook, covered, in 325F oven for about 20 minutes. Remove cover and cook for an additional 20-25 minutes.
Was that QUICKer than you expected? It’s super quick if you just plan ahead and/or use the right ingredients. For one thing, the bread can be toasted the day before and stored in an air-tight container until you’re ready to make the stuffing. Around this time of year, I almost always have cooked squash on hand because it’s so abundant, but if you don’t, use a package of frozen cooked squash instead. Along the same lines, any time I use a package of bacon, I cook the entire contents and store them in the freezer. When I need it, I just pull out a few slices.
It was definitely EASY, right? Now, you can make it as complicated as you want, to be sure. You could add some more vegetables, like celery and onion, and saute them with cubed squash before mixing it in with the bread. You could play around with the seasonings too and adjust them to your desires. But if you’re looking for easy, this is easy.
Depending on what ingredients you use, it can be very CHEAP. I used a loaf of homemade bread, a squash I had on hand, and chicken broth I bought for practically nothing on sale. (Usually I have homemade broth on hand, but I did not this time. That would be even cheaper.) Only 3 slices of bacon won’t break your bank, but it certainly will add a lot of flavor!
The lack of MSG, HFCS and hydrogenated oils makes this a much HEALTHY-er option than the boxed variety. Use whole wheat bread and homemade broth and it will be even healthier.
Did I mention it was delicious? The perfect accompaniment to your Thanksgiving turkey.
Some people have mistakenly thought that I cook a lot from scratch because I consider myself a great cook or want to show off my amazing skills, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I am under no illusions as to my abilities in the cooking department! I cook from scratch, not because I’m good at it, but because it’s CHEAP and it’s HEALTHY. For me, it’s worth a (little) extra time and a (little) extra effort.
But the truth is that it doesn’t take that much extra time and effort to make cheap and healthy foods from scratch. I don’t have anymore time in my day than any other stay-at-home-mom. Even a working mom can prepare healthy food for her family with some short-cuts and forethought.
My point is: it’s not hard. I will demonstrate that with flour tortillas. As I mentioned in my flatbread post, I spent a good portion of my childhood making tortillas. My mom had received an authentic tortilla recipe from a Mexican friend, and it was her favorite go-to recipe for feeding large crowds. We fed large crowds a lot, or at least it seems like it, because I remember spending what seemed like hours rolling out those stinkin’ tortillas.
It wasn’t really hours I spent, though, I have realized! It took me less than an hour today to whip up a batch, so I think my memory was exaggerating things a little. So if you have about 45 minutes or less, you can make your own batch of tortillas, too. Better yet, make a double batch and freeze some for later to save even more time.
This recipe is actually half of my mom’s recipe, because, like all my mom’s recipes, it makes enough for approximately a jillion servings.
Not-Quite-A-Jillion Flour Tortillas
1 1/2 cups regular unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup butter, coconut oil, or non-hydrogenated shortening
1/2 cup or so hot water
Begin by mixing the dry ingredients together. I’ve found that 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour is really the most I can use and still have the texture I’m looking for, but more would certainly be healthier. Add whatever fat you are using (I usually use butter, but today I tried coconut oil and it worked very well! I think it has a texture more like shortening, so it makes it a little softer), and mix it with a fork until crumbly:
Begin adding the hot water, a little at a time, until you’ve achieved the right texture (pliable but not too soft). I have found that I can only determine how much more water I need if I mix with my hands. However, I don’t want the dough to be tough, so I wait until I think it might be enough water, then I gently mix with my hands to find out for sure. Usually at that point, I have to add just a little more water for the perfect texture:
Turn the dough out onto a flat surface and knead approximately 15 times. I don’t remember my mom doing this, at least not in this exact way, but I think it helps:
You should have a nice soft, yet firm ball of dough:
A tip I read recently was to let the dough rest for a few minutes before rolling out, which is very helpful. Cover the dough with a warm wet towel and let it sit for a few minutes. Then separate the ball of dough into two equal portions:
Divide those portions in half:
and then in half again. This is the easiest way to make sure you have evenly sized tortillas:
For each tortilla, form a nice round circle in your hand and then pat it flat:
Place it on a lightly floured surface, and dust the top with a little flour. Without flipping it over, roll the dough into a circle, as round as you can. (It helps to move the rolling pin in a clock wise motion, for example, imagine you’re rolling out to touch the one and then two and then three o’clock.) Growing up, we used to joke about the “amoeba” shapes we would make. It doesn’t really matter what shape it is, as long as it tastes good!
Fry the tortilla in a dry pan (no oil) over low heat until you see bubbles on the top:
Flip it and cook very briefly on the other side. The second side doesn’t take long at all, a few seconds really.
Your finished tortilla should look like this:
Perhaps not as QUICK as grabbing a package from the grocery store, but maybe not as time-consuming as you would have thought?
Once you get the hang of it, it’s EASY. I mean, I made these when I was ten years old, so I think you can do it!
No question: much CHEAPer than the packaged version at the store. You can’t get anymore basic than these ingredients.
It’s definitely HEALTHY when compared to the store-bought variety, which often has high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils. Homemade tortillas also have more flavor and are not as tough or chewy as the store-bought kind.
I’ll show you what I did with my tortillas today. I was inspired by this recipe, which I actually followed more or less. I cooked the steak in the crockpot (what a great idea – it was nice and moist, even though it was a cheap cut of beef) with seasoned salt, freshly ground black pepper, and some broth to keep it moist. I let it cook on High for 4 hours, but it was ready a little sooner than that. You can use spicier seasonings, but I chose not to because my DH is sensitive to spicy things.
I sliced the steak into thin strips and then into pieces, grated some cheddar cheese, and crumbled some goat cheese. I also made a quick “guacamole” by mixing up some avocado, olive oil, black pepper and cilantro. I put all those ingredients close at hand so I could prep the quesadillas quickly, because they don’t take much time at all to fry up in the pan.
For each quesadilla, I buttered one side of the tortilla, and then spread some guacamole on one half of the other side. On top of the guac, I placed a spoonful of steak, cheddar cheese, and goat cheese. I sprinkled the black pepper and cilantro on and then folded the other half on top of the fillings. I placed it in the pan to heat through and melt the cheese:
I cut each quesadilla into half so it was easier to eat. You can get super creative with the fillings. Some other ideas:
*chicken
*ground beef
*sliced/chopped peppers
*tomatoes (remove the juicy/seedy part first so the moisture doesn’t soak through the tortilla)
*shredded zucchini (my DH swears I put that in everything)
*just cheese
*garlic, onion
You can serve them with different kinds of salsa, or black beans, guacamole and plain yogurt or sour cream.
I like what Kristin at Cuizoo says: “We’ve all been hoodwinked.” We’ve been hoodwinked by the successful marketing campaigns of food manufacturers who insist that we are not capable of, or do not have enough time to, cook real food.
Take mashed potatoes, for example. If you have ever bought one of those boxes of dehydrated potato flakes, or even worse, one of those frozen packages of mashed potatoes, you have been hoodwinked into thinking that making mashed potatoes is either too difficult or too time-consuming. And consequently, you have spent far too much money, and have fed your family food that is considerably lacking in the nutrients God intended it to have.
Ouch. I didn’t mean to say it so harshly, but there it is. And perhaps you will forgive me if I put it this way: you CAN make mashed potatoes. It’s not hard, and it doesn’t take that much time. You are an intelligent person who knows your way around the kitchen (whether or not you think you do), and you want to feed your family the food that is best for them. And you can!
There. Was that better? And if you already DO make mashed potatoes from scratch, you know I am proud of you for making that extra little bit of effort to cook foods that are healthy for you and your family.
The thing about mashed potatoes is that they are so personal. There really is no wrong way to make them, because as far as I can tell, there are as many methods to making mashed potatoes as there are people who make them. And some people are very adamant that their way is the right way, but don’t listen to them, because somebody else says the same thing about their way. So add your own variety to the mix and share your own version of mashed potatoes with the world! Or at least with your family. They’ll love it, I promise.
Here’s my own version of mashed potatoes. Make it my way, or make it your own.
My Own Special Kind of Mashed Potatoes
First I start with about 6 medium or medium-large potatoes. I’m not super particular about the kind of potato I use, although many people swear by starchy potatoes. I just use whatever I have on hand (which usually happen to be starchy). I peel the potatoes, because my DH can’t have too much fiber in his diet and the potato skins have a lot of fiber, but leaving them unpeeled would save time and make them even healthier.
Next, I cut the potatoes into chunks and boil them until they can be easily pierced with a fork. I drain them, and then use a pastry blender to mash them up a little.
Now at this point, most people add milk. Not me! I have a special secret ingredient (can you guess what it is?):
Nope, not sour cream. Plain yogurt! It serves the same purpose, but it is healthier because of the live cultures. I use a couple heaping spoonfuls of plain yogurt, and then I pour in a couple tablespoons or so of milk and a couple tablespoons of butter. I also like to add salt, freshly ground black pepper, garlic, chives and parsley:
Leaving it all in the same pot, I use my hand-held mixer and beat them until they are fluffy and creamy.
That’s all there is to it. These have a lot of flavor, so you can serve them plain with a dab of butter. If I’m going to serve them with gravy, I’ll leave out some of the chives and garlic.
Now wasn’t that QUICK? The longest part is probably the boiling, but you can let them boil while you fix the rest of your dinner.
And admit it; it’s EASY! There’s no special trick to it. OK, so there’s a little labor involved in peeling and chopping the potatoes, but you’re not afraid of a little work, are you? Didn’t think so.
And it’s CHEAPer than the store-bought options. I am often able to buy 5 lbs of potatoes for $3 or less, and I use about half of them or less to make the mashed potatoes. Since I only use small amounts of butter and yogurt, the cost for those is minimal, and the cost for the other seasonings is negligible.
If it’s going to take a little more of your time and energy, it had better be HEALTH-ier, right? Well, it is! Even if you buy a box of potatoes that boasts it is made of 100% potato, making them at home is still healthier. That’s because, by virtue of the dehydration process, a box of potato flakes has more fat (the bad kind!) than a plain old potato. It also has more sugar and less fiber. Besides which, during the dehydration process, vitamins and nutrients are lost, so then they have to be added back in. And of course, the synthetic vitamins that are added back in are not as easily absorbed or used by your body. And let’s not even talk about the boxed mashed potatoes that have additional (and less desirable) ingredients, especially the flavored ones: trans fats, artificial flavorings, preservatives, artificial colors, BHT, the list goes on and on. Stick to the real thing and you don’t have to worry about what’s in it.
My #1 goal in this blog is to prove to anyone who doesn’t believe me that cooking healthy foods from scratch is neither difficult nor time-consuming. Too many people think that cooking is either a great mystery they could never solve, or so time-consuming they would always be stuck in the kitchen. Instead, they rely on boxes (or bags or jars, or packages, you get the idea) that are quick and easy, but expensive and chock-full of unnecessary and unhealthy ingredients.
There’s a better way!
You don’t have to be a gourmet and spend hours over your creations in order to serve healthy delicious meals to your family. So throw away the box and make something from scratch for a change. If I can do it, you can do it!
For example, chocolate pudding. For a long time, I never even ate pudding because I didn’t want to use the mix found in a box, but I thought that home-made pudding was too time-consuming and difficult. Then my diet was forcibly changed because of my son’s allergies: there were so many foods I couldn’t eat, that I began to think outside the box (literally!) for foods that I could eat. I thought I had kissed chocolate good-bye for a while, until I found an allergen-free recipe for chocolate pudding. And I realized that it was so quick and easy, I could make it any time I needed a chocolate fix.
Once I discovered that, I branched out and made all kinds of pudding: butterscotch, vanilla, coconut, etc. I used them to make trifles and parfaits for desserts to serve to guests. And the best part was, it was every bit as easy as using a box!
But not as QUICK, you say. Almost as quick, I say. It took me approximately 10 minutes, start to finish. Anybody can find 10 minutes in their day to fix themselves a chocolate treat!
I thought home-made pudding was hard, but it’s actually quite EASY. What makes it difficult is using an egg, because the egg(s) has to be tempered, or gradually heated so that it doesn’t cook before it’s thoroughly mixed in. That problem is easily avoided by not using an egg! You’ll find most pudding recipes require an egg, but as I discovered, vegans and food-allergic folks know that pudding without an egg is every bit as good. An egg adds richness to pudding. So if you want your pudding a little richer, go ahead and fuss with the egg. But if you just want some pudding, forget the egg. You won’t miss it!
It’s CHEAPer than buying the box. I bet you don’t believe me because those boxes are pretty cheap. Aside from the milk (which is not included in the box anyway), the ingredients in this chocolate pudding cost less than $0.40, even if you don’t buy them on sale.
It may not be HEALTHY, but it’s certainly healthier than what’s in that box. Have you ever looked at the ingredients? Sugar, modified food starch, cocoa, disodium phosphate, natural & artificial flavors, tetrasodium pyrophosphate, monoglyceride, diglycerides, Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1, Artificial Colors, citric acid, BHA. Yum. I don’t even know why they need all those food colorings, because, as Matthew McConaughey says in “The Wedding Planner”, “Chocolate’s already brown.”
Have I convinced you yet?
Already Brown Chocolate Pudding
1/3 cup raw sugar
2 TBSP cornstarch
2 TBSP cocoa powder
1/8 tsp salt
2 cups milk
1 oz baking chocolate
1 tsp vanilla
In a saucepan, whisk together the dry ingredients:
Slowly whisk in the milk (this keeps the corn starch from clumping):
Stir constantly over medium heat until boiling. Continue to stir for another minute or so, until it begins to thicken. This is actually the trickiest part. If you take it off the heat too soon, it won’t gel at all, and you’ll be left with a sort of semi-solid milkshake instead. And if you leave it on the heat for too long, it will be a little too solid, and you’ll need to eat it with a fork! What you want is something in the middle. Just keep in mind that as it cools, it will continue to solidify.
Once it’s reached the right consistency, remove from the heat and add the 100% chocolate bar and vanilla. At this point, you can get creative and try adding different things. For example, chocolate chips instead of the chocolate bar. Or different flavorings instead of vanilla. I have also used a mixture of coffee and milk to make a mocha pudding. Mmmm, that was yummy.
Pour the pudding into serving dishes and place in refrigerator to cool. If you plan on serving to guests, you may want to consider placing some plastic wrap tightly on the surface of the pudding while it cools to prevent a skin from forming. I don’t bother when it’s just for myself, or if I’m going to stir it up and use it in something else. Garnish as desired:
* QUICK - because who has time for anything more?
* EASY - because I'm no gourmet.
* CHEAP - because who has money for anything more?
* HEALTHY - because you are what you eat.
