Anyone who’s been around Chez Recessionista for any period of time knows that Sunday-night cookouts are a mainstay around here.  Even in the dead of winter or the heat of summer, I can’t resist firing up the grill or the smoker and making a little backyard magic.  But tonight, with the temperatures mellowing out and the humidity absent from the air, there was simply no better place to be than outside on our brick patio, sipping a Port City Brewery specialty beer and smelling the food sizzling over the charcoal.

This week’s shipment from Great Country Farms included squash and corn, both of which were in perfect form for tonight’s dinner!  I sliced two yellow squash (squashes? I never know) into coins and put them atop a sheet of aluminum foil, topping them with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil  and adding salt, pepper, and garlic powder before wrapping the foil up into a neat little packet.

Then it was on to the corn: I removed the husks and put each on in its own foil packet, spraying the cobs with cooking spray and rolling them in some Tony Chacherie Cajun seasoning.  (We love our Tony Chacherie around here!)  Both the corn and the squash cooked on the grill for about half an hour.

In the last 15 minutes of cook time, I threw four Tofurky beer brats onto the grill as well and let them cook through thoroughly.  When they were ready, I followed this recipe from Tablespoon for a new sort of hot dog I’d never heard of before: Anchorage dogs!  I grilled two hot dog buns and then opened them up, added some spicy brown mustard and horseradish, placed the brats in the bread, and topped the whole thing with potato salad.  (We skipped the hard-boiled eggs that the recipe calls for; that seemed a bit over-the-top, even for us!)

And of course the corn and the squash – two tried-and-true side dishes in our household – turned out A-OK.  You just can’t beat fresh veggies!

So, in short, another great Sunday-night cookout!  It’s one of my favorite traditions.  (And spoiler alert – the smoker will be making its first appearance of the season in the next couple of weeks!)

Have a great week, y’all!

:)

This is one of those recipes that sprung up out of the pantry one day – I just happened to have penne, veggie “sausage,” canned mushrooms, jarred pasta sauce, and mozzarella shreds on hand, and decided to whip this up sight unseen.  Over time it’s become a go-to for us, and a great leftover-producer at that; one pan of this lasts for several meals for both LeeLee and me!

I set some pasta water on to boil, and while that’s working away I get my lasagna pan out and ready to roll.  Once the pasta is cooked fully, I drain it and plunk it right into the lasagna pan.  Then I add the sausage, which I’ve cut into coins (I like to use Lightlife Italian sausage, but anything goes, as usual), the pasta sauce, and any spices I feel the dish could use (depending on your jarred sauce, you may need lots of garlic/onion powder/basil/oregano/salt/pepper, or none at all – take a taste and see).  After stirring to combine everything thoroughly, I top the dish with shredded mozzarella cheese (Daiya would work great for the vegans among us!) and stick the pan in the oven to bake, uncovered, at 350 for 25 minutes or so.  At the 25-minute mark, I take a peek to ensure everything is nicely melted and/or browned, and if it is, I take it on out.  If not, let it go another 5-10 minutes and check again.

This meal is frugal in so many ways – the initial ingredients are reasonably priced, and the recipe makes enough to last for days.  It’s easy and tasty, too – a perfect combination after a long day at work!

The ingredients:

1 package vegetarian sausage links

1 jar pasta sauce

1 can sliced mushrooms

1 box penne pasta

1 bag mozzarella cheese

1 onion if you’re feeling fancy (I wasn’t tonight!)

:)

Gooooooo, Seminoles!

Tonight, my beloved Florida State University kicks off its football season against Pitt in what I hope is a rough welcome to the ACC for our friends up north.  (I mean no disrespect to any of you Pitt fans, of course, and hope you will still be my friend after today, no matter who wins. :))

The first game of the season has a hallowed place in our lives here at Chez Recessionista.  The date is circled on the calendar months ahead of time, and the process of planning a menu for the festivities is the stuff of legend.  Tonight’s meal, for instance, has been dithered about and debated, discussed at length with family and friends alike.  And, finally, after a month (no joke) of deliberating, we’ll have on the docket:

This devilled egg recipe is one I’ve been tweaking since last football season, and I think I’m finally happy with it.  Give it a try and tell me how you like it (and how I can improve upon it!).  We’re all friends here, no matter your football team of choice. :)

Here goes:

DEVILLED EGGS

Serves 24 (or 12 … or six … or two.)

What you’ll need:

12 eggs

½ cup mayonnaise

1 tsp. dry mustard

1 tsp. pepper

1 tsp. Cajun seasoning, plus enough to sprinkle on top of the eggs

Hard-boil the eggs and let them cool, then peel them and cut them in half lengthwise.  Scoop out the yolks and place them in a bowl along with the mayonnaise, mustard, pepper, and Cajun seasoning.  Combine the mixture until it forms a smooth paste, then spoon back into the hulled-out egg whites.

GO NOLES!

:)

Pizza, Sides 1 and 2!

The first time I ever grilled pizza was over at my best friend Marilyn’s house.  I’d wanted to try pizza on the grill for years – seriously! – but had never summoned up the nerve until she bravely led the way, and now I’m a convert and rarely bake pizza in a conventional oven.  Initially, I was afraid that the dough would seep through the grill grate and land on the coals, rendering my food inedible and forcing a call to Domino’s (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  But amazingly, everything tends to hold its form as it should!  So trust me – give this recipe a try once and you’ll be hooked on the excitement of your own fire-kissed pizza straight from the grill!

First, you’ll want to allow enough time to make the dough, let it rise for an hour, and, ideally, let it cool in the refrigerator for another hour or so minimum.  (Cooling the dough makes it more pliable when the time comes to shape your pizza crusts.)  So, backing up, allow at least two and a half hours – up to 24 hours if you want! – to get your dough together.  Today, I made the dough around 3 p.m. for a 6:30 p.m. dinnertime.

To make the dough, add 1 cup of warm water to a large bowl (or stand mixer bowl) and sprinkle the yeast in, mixing gently with a wooden spoon.  Next, add one cup of flour and all of the olive oil and seasonings.  (And by all means, substitute out seasonings as you see fit!  This is an easy mix-in recipe and you’ll hone your personal favorite dough over time, believe me.)

Blend your mixture with the spoon or a stand mixer’s dough hook and continue adding the flour, half a cup at a time, until the dough pulls away from the side of the bowl and forms a cohesive ball. 

If you’re using a stand mixer, hooray for you – just let the dough hook do its job and knead your dough in the mixer bowl until the dough is no longer sticky.  Next, drop down past the next paragraph and join up with me there.

If you’re doing this by hand, turn out the dough onto a floured work surface and flour your hands well.  Then put a little elbow grease into the job and knead your dough until it’s no longer sticky – this usually takes me about five minutes, with the occasional distraction.

(Stand mixer users, please join me again here!  And by-handers, stick with me too.)  Spray a bowl – I usually use the one I’ve just been mixing in, and let me be honest, I don’t even clean the leftover flour and dough out – with cooking spray and place the balled-up dough in, sealing up with plastic wrap.  Let rise for an hour; your dough will nearly double in size.

Next, spray a zip-top bag with cooking spray (on the inside, people!) and put the dough in, sealing it up nice and tight and doing your best to remove any leftover air.  Place your bag in the fridge for at least an hour, up to 24, and let cool.  If you’re going to be longer than 24 hours, just put it in the freezer and place it in the refrigerator the morning you’re planning on using it.

Once your dough is ready, fire up the grill!  You want your grill nice and hot for this one.

Bring all of your supplies outside to your backyard table (or what-have-you) and clean your hands up well.  You might want to keep a clean dishtowel nearby because this can get a little bit messy.

Next, grab a hunk (that’s the scientific term) of dough, enough to fit in a fist, and begin to shape it into a small, personal-pizza-sized disc.  Experiment with the thickness to determine what style you like best.  Once it’s ready, just throw it onto the grill – and by all means please do not try to shape it and/or push it around once it’s on the grates!  Your dough will fall through the cracks and it’ll make a big mess.  Plus, you’ll burn yourself, which is hardly the way to kick off an evening al fresco.

After about five minutes on a super-hot grill, start checking your dough for doneness (on the bottom, at least – the top will still be pretty soft).  Once it’s browned (or blackened, as are some of our creations) to your liking, use a spatula to scoop it off the grill and bring it over to a plate or work surface.  Decorate it however you see fit – with any of the ingredients above, or with some of your own, we won’t judge you! – and place it soft-side down back on the grill for another five to seven minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the bottom is browned.

Next, scoop it up again, place it on a cookie sheet (we actually use a pizza pan), slice it up with a pizza cutter, and voila!  Personal pizzas for all, cut up into sizes suitable for sharing.

The ingredients:

1 cup water

1 packet of yeast

3-3 ½ cups flour

¼ cup olive oil

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. pepper

½ tsp. garlic powder

½ tsp. onion powder

½ tsp. dried basil

½ tsp. cumin seed, optional

1 jar pizza sauce

1 container sliced white mushrooms

1 bell pepper

1 can sliced olives

1 jar capers

2 veggie burgers, heated and sliced up into bite-sized squares

1 ball mozzarella cheese (or vegan cheese that melts, like Daiya)

As I write this, the cabinets above our refrigerator are stuffed to the gills with fresh-out-of-the-ground potatoes, picked just this Saturday during our annual Pancakes and Potatoes pilgrimage out to Great Country Farms.  After a day or so of drying out atop newspapers strewn across our dining area (table, chairs, floor – no space was safe!), we put them in several paper shopping bags and have stowed them away in their own special cabinets.  If past years are any indication, we’ll have enough potatoes to last us to the new year!  And at a fraction of the price of store-bought – and much better tasting, too.  (Did you know most grocery-store potatoes are last year’s crop?  I didn’t, either, until we started venturing out to Great Country Farms every year.)

The picking process can be laborious if not for the tractor that rips out row after row for us to feast upon.  The first year we went to Great Country for the event, LeeLee and I brought our own shovels – and by “shovel” I mean “trowel” – to try our hand at unearthing our food the old-fashioned way.  Less than 10 minutes later, we found ourselves balefully eyeing the bright yellow tractor that was cheerfully ripping trails in the soil, exposing hundreds upon hundreds of potatoes in its wake.  We dropped our trowels immediately and followed along like water skiers, picking up dozens of pounds of spuds with ease.  In the years since, we’ve not even bothered bringing our own trowels along.  It’s much more fun to follow the farmers at a safe distance and glean from their hard work!

Over the years, we’ve experimented with how best to store our produce and have come up with some findings as we’ve progressed.  The first year, we stored our potatoes amid paper bags in cabinets under the kitchen counter.  This preserved them very well, but we lost a very important cabinet for the season in the process.  For the last two years, we’ve stored them in the basement in a retrofitted “root cellar” (which is in fact a portion of our laundry room).  The first year of basement storage, we used paper bags again, and the potatoes turned out just fine.  The second year, we used cardboard boxes, on the advice of The Internets, and our potatoes degraded much faster than usual – rotting before we could use them all.  Whether this was a result of the boxes or just the batch of potatoes (Did I dry them well enough?  Were there any rotten ones I missed?) is still undetermined, but I’m not about to risk a repeat performance!

So back to the kitchen, and back to paper bags, they go this year.  This time I’ve cleared out a little-used cabinet that is sure to be a perfect home for our fair spudly friends.  I’ll report back on their preservation process – and, of course, on the meals we make with them, too!  I’m thinking hash browns will be on the menu next weekend … but we’ll see.  Film at 11!

:)

I admit it – I’m a national parks geek.  Have been since I was a little girl.  I love the natural component as much as their history, love how each park is a piece of this crazy puzzle that is America.  From the big, well-known ones like Shenandoah to the little tiny ones like Fort Washington, whenever we’re near one, I try to visit.

And did I mention I’m a compulsive “Passport to Your National Parks” stamp collector?  Yeah.  Geek.  :)

So anyway, a couple of weekends ago, LeeLee and I ventured not too far from home to visit Oxon Cove Park and Oxon Hill Farm, a national park just across the Potomac River from our fair city.  We had a lovely afternoon walking the grounds, admiring the farm animals (the park is still a working farm!), and futilely trying to gain admission to the house-turned-museum that was, sadly, closed (we presumed because of the sequester, though I suppose the real reason could be anything).  We also discovered some cool hiking trails that will be perfect when autumn rolls around (we had neither the footwear nor the inclination to begin our hike in mid-90s temperatures when we happened upon them!).  And, much to my excitement, we noticed at least a dozen picnic tables, some near the parking area and some further in the park – if there’s one thing I love, it’s a picnic, so we’ll be making good use of the amenities in short order!

But this blog post isn’t really focused just on Oxon Cove (though, really, if you live in the DC area, you should go; it’s great).  Rather, I simply wanted to take a minute to point out that our national parks really are ours; we pay for them in taxes, and sometimes in the form of a small entry fee, but they are ours, and we should make good use of them.  They’re an incredibly frugal way to spend a day, learn something new, and have a lot of fun in the process.  And if you find that you visit many over the course of a year, the $80 annual parks pass is a steal.  A few trips to the bigger-ticket parks, like Shenandoah or Yellowstone, and you’ve more than paid for your pass.  But be sure to calculate what’s the best deal for you before you buy!  If you don’t visit $80 worth of parks a year, then this is not a good deal.  For us, it is, because again: Geek.

What are your favorite national parks?  Sound off in the comments; I’m always looking for more places to visit!

:)

As I write this, I’ve got seven jars of vanilla soy yogurt fermenting in my handy-dandy yogurt maker.  It’s a habit that I keep intending to continue week after week, only to be thwarted a month or so in by Life, at which point I fall off the wagon for days/weeks/months before I start anew.  This time, though, as berries hit their peak and the fall fruits come into season, I’m committed.  Yogurt every week!  Yogurt for all!

I confess I didn’t know just how good homemade yogurt could be until my dear friend Robyn brought a couple of jars over to Chez Recessionista a couple of years ago as part of a barter for some of my homemade jams.  Even then, as happy as I was to partake in her handiwork, it took me a couple of years to take the plunge myself.  For some reason, the thought of making my own yogurt out of milk and a starter seemed so very difficult, so I kept putting it off and putting it off, opting instead to make pickles, preserves, salsas, pasta sauces, and bread.  All of which, it turns out, is much more complicated and time-consuming than making yogurt.

A year ago, LeeLee surprised me with my very own yogurt maker for our anniversary (looking back, I see that Year Eight is bronze – I have no idea how we determined that a yogurt maker fit into the theme, but who cares, it was a great gift), and I plunged in to make my own batches right away.   I was shocked at how easy it is to make – mix a 6-ounce container of plain (or vanilla) yogurt with seven cups of soymilk, let the yogurt maker work for 10 hours, and voila, you’ve got yogurt!  And, too, I was shocked with how good it tasted.  Admittedly, homemade yogurt can be an acquired taste for some; the real deal lacks the high sugar content of the store-bought versions, and that can be difficult for some people’s taste buds.  My palate must have been primed, though, because there was never a time when I turned my nose up at homemade!  Add a little honey and/or fruit on top, and you’ve got a breakfast fit for a champion.

But as usual, the question arises: Is it frugal?

Well, consider this.  A single-serve container of store-bought yogurt costs $1.39.  A container of soymilk – and, as a general rule, it takes one container of soymilk to produce seven jars of yogurt – costs $2.89.  So for that overhead, you get the aforementioned seven jars for $0.62 apiece.  A steal!

These days, I find it hard to go back to store-bought yogurt.  All the more reason to keep up the habit of making it myself!  So I’m going to work hard to make a batch each week this autumn.  I’ll try not to fall off the yogurt wagon yet again!

:)

I ask you: What is more celebratory than a festive pasta dish?  And what better to lend an air of elegance to such an important occasion as college-football kickoff than a steaming plate of tasty fettuccine with a rich cream sauce?

Admittedly, this meal is more decadent than most of the weekday dinners served at Chez Recessionista.  But on a night like this, when a long-awaited season of football begins, a little decadence is par for the course.

I’ve made this meal before – it’s one of my favorites from The Pioneer Woman.  And it will always do in a celebratory pinch.  In fact, the last time I made it, we were in the heart of winter and carb-loading before we went down to the National Mall the next morning for the presidential inauguration.  It’s a rich, hearty meal that is just as good the next day (or two days later!) as leftovers.  And it just plain looks impressive, which is always a plus.

As usual, once this dinner gets cooking, things happen in a fairly orderly manner.  The slow cook time for the sauce helps give me time to prepare the pasta and drain it with time to spare.  The only thing I always have to force myself to remember is to reserve some of the pasta water once the fettuccine is done cooking; sometimes, I’ve had to recreate “pasta water” by just heating up a cup or so of tapwater.  These things happen.  It could be worse.  :)

This recipe is straightforward, yet it tastes complicated, which is always sort of fun.  It’s guest-worthy, but also good for a night at home for two (or, in tonight’s case, for one, with one coming in on the night shift, as LeeLee had a meeting that ran late).  And the taste!  Rich and creamy without being overly heavy; steeped in tomatoes without being too acidic (we have the sugar and, yes, the cup of cream to thank for that).  It’s mild, yet flavorful; and, frankly, it could be pretty addictive if I let it.

And above all?  It’s the perfect way to celebrate the unofficial start of autumn, with all the rivalries, weekly heartbreaks, and peaks of elation that comes with a new football season.  Let the games begin!

:)