Easy, Cheap, Nutritious - And Delicious!

Outa time? Outa money? Wanta eat healthy?

Try this:

2 large onions
1 head cabbage
1/4 cup butter (or half & half butter and olive oil)
2-3 cups cooked  whole wheat pasta (I used the colorful vegetable pasta.)

skirt steak
marinade (purchased, or oil & vinegar, or salad dressing, or stewed tomatoes, or whatever you like!)

Melt the butter in a large skillet. Cut up the onions and cabbage and saute together on medium-low heat.

While the cabbage is cooking prepare the pasta. Cook it "al dente" so it doesn't fall apart in the final dish.

While the cabbage is still firm, add the pasta. Salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat way down and keep it warm until the steak is done.

Cook the steak on a grill or in a pan and serve with the cabbage mixture. And that's dinner; how simple!

Cabbage is cheap, onions are cheap, pasta is cheap and can be used to stretch the meal for a crowd, or limited if you want to lesson the carbs and calories. Or leave it out altogether and add a few carrots instead. It goes without saying that every cook is going to add the spices they prefer. Myself, I like to use a lot of pepper!

Skirt steak is cheap, often on sale and quick to cook. You should always marinate it, though. And I know it isn't the prettiest cut of meat but it's very tasty!

By the way, the cabbage dish is not my recipe. Caroline got it from a co-worker when she was a young teacher just starting out and on a tight budget. Caroline's co-worker advised making the cabbage dish with Italian sausage. Hey, you could also use hamburger, hot dogs, ham, whatever you like!

I gotta tell you, I so wish washing dishes was even a tenth as much fun as cooking!

Help! I Need a Plan!

So, there I was at 10:00 this morning, watching Dr. Who and cutting out quilt pieces.

I'm hopeless - but not helpless. In the living room are 2 baskets of laundry that needs to be folded, and in the kitchen is a sink full of dirty dishes. And in my heart a lot of guilt.

But my quilt is coming along very well....!

Since I hate to cut out squares, I sew in strips as much as I can. In this case, I stitched a 2" strip of yellow along one side of the blue, and a 2" strip of pink on the other. The blue strip is 4" wide. Then I cut the joined piece into 2" strips. Here are some of the assembled blocks laid out on the kitchen table:

I think it'll be 6 blocks by 8 blocks, with a double boarder.

By the way, did you notice Faith in the first picture. She's just a bundle of energy, isn't she?

And, Odie, I think he's crying about the neglected the housework.

Here's an idea on how to discipline myself regarding the kitchen: I'm thinking of storing some of the dishes way up high so that it'll be easier to wash a dirty plate than get another one out of the cupboard. That way we'll never have 8 dinner plates in the sink, at least.

Sometimes, my kitchen does look nice!

By the way, I tiled the back splash myself, and painted and put new hardware on the cupboard doors. I'll tell you more about that later.

Hope you're having a wonderful day. I love your comments - lots of comments!

Still Life, With Potatoes

....because they were on sale, buy one bag get another one free....

BOGO gets me every time!

So - what to do with all these potatoes. In some households, not a big deal, but there's just two of us here, and one of us much prefers rice as a "staple."

OK - we had pot roast the other night, which included potatoes and was delicious, and I have another piece of that meat (it was buy one get one free also).

And, I splurged on fresh parsley, the curly kind. Now, for flavor, they say to use the flat parsley, but that stuff costs three times as much as curly. I'll settle for curly and make parsley potatoes with .... something....

And here's something Caroline taught me. She's very good at quick meals, as opposed to my sometimes over planned, over prepared and over cooked (she says) way of doing things.

Grate a raw potato, skin and all (wash it first), or chop it finely in a chopper or food processor. I use our handy cheese grater, which is metal and has four sides, each with a different kind of grating surface.

Now, squeeze out the excess moisture, using your hands or a dish towel, whatever. Make a patty out of the raw potato and toss it  into a frying pan on a little bit of oil (even if it's no-stick) and, voila, you have restaurant style hash browns with your morning eggs! Or Sunday night omelet. Or, whatever!

Thanks to recipematcher.com for this picture. I haven't used the site before, but it seems to have a lot of simple recipes, presented in an organized format. I intend to check it out more thoroughly in the future.


By the way, if you're someone who limits your egg consumption because of cholesterol, here's my take on that:

• eggs are cheap and easy to cook, high in protein, iron, and certain vitamins
• there are lots of high fat foods which have little nutritional value and raise people's cholesterol levels. I do limit them somewhat, like baked goods, etc.
• our bodies make cholesterol anyway, and how much they make is affected in large part by genetics
• God gave us scientists who have created these wonderful little anti-cholesterol pills, and
• life's too short. I'll be damned if I'm going to make it miserable too by worrying about every little thing that goes into my mouth.

So relax and have eggs and hash browns once in awhile! Love ya!