Category: cooking/baking

Cold. Blustery. Day. It was pretty unpleasant most of yesterday. Wind was gusting hard enough to blow the truck around while driving on the expressway. There was a beautiful sunset though. You take your joy where you find it.

And I didn’t find any joy in plumbing. Pickups took longer than I hoped, and I decided to shop instead of lay on my belly doing plumbing. Sometimes, I make the bad choice. I’ll be paying for that today, I’m sure.

Dinner worked out though. I made brisket in the crockpot. After reviewing several recipes, I put 4 pounds in the ‘pot, liberally dosed it with Atkins (black pepper, salt, garlic) and a Texas rub (same plus paprika and some other stuff), thin sliced 3 sweet onions as a topper, 2 cups water, and more of both seasonings, and let it cook for 8 hours. It was like an extra beefy pot roast in onion soup. REALLY good. Served with instant mashed potatoes (also surprisingly good with added butter), and the shelf stable sourdough bread loaf. Just the sort of hearty stuff to fill your belly after manning a GS cookie booth for several hours on a blustery day. In other words, everyone licked their plates. Oh yeah, I finished it in the oven at 420F for 15 minutes while the bread warmed up. Nice brown crust…

Now I’ve got another crock pot dinner in the repertoire. Still learning!

Not counting last night’s dinner, I’ve put more than 35 pounds of brisket in the freezer this month. It’s the cheapest beef in the store right now, and only 50c/lb more than cheap pork. No clue why it’s on sale but I’ll stack it while I can.

I’ll be doing yesterday’s work today, if I can. Kids are home Monday too, so that pushes any normal Sunday domestic bliss down the road a day. Lots of laundry sitting on the floor by the machines waiting to be done… and plenty of time for me to do stuff around the house. If I get off my @rse to do it.

At least the food experiment was a success. Try new things and build off your successes. And stack the good results.

nick

Cool and clear. Warming later. Nice day in other words. Like yesterday despite the chilly start.

I started the day doing some auction stuff, then messing around on the internet with my friends. Decided to make the carnitas in the slow cooker, but forgot to start that process going. Worked on fixing some things, but after spending 2 hours on it, failed.

Then I checked my texts and saw that I’d missed a call from my auctioneer. They wanted me to bring some more stuff by! They’d used up all the bins I had there already, and needed more stuff. Well. I’m your man! The boss had previously waved me off for this week because they were full up, but I guess they got that taken care of. So I scrambled to get the bins I had ready at the house, and to swing by a couple of storage units and grab a couple of bins worth of items…

D1 didn’t want to ride with me, so she got her own ride home from practice, and I did my drop off. That was the only way the timing would work. Eh, it all worked out and I got a few more things into this week’s auction. And I learned that D1 CAN get herself home, if she’s motivated. Funny how that worked.

I did get the carnitas in the cooker before starting all that mess and it was ready for dinnertime, and it was delicious.

I’ve got 4 solid crockpot meals that I can do with minimal prep and no extra shopping. If I can get a couple more, I’ll be even happier. The crockpot saves a bunch of effort and produces tasty meals, and it will do it for less expensive cuts. If it’s been a while since you used one, take another look. There are plenty of sauces and prepared seasonings to help you succeed.

Today I’ll do a couple of pickups, and kid chauffeur duties. I’ll try to knock a few things off the list in between.

Keep stacking.

nick

(title means “advancing” or “moving forward” (literally “forward-ing”) or so I’m told. It’s also the title of a pretty good album.)

Cold, hopefully clear. It was clear during the day but started to get a bit cloudy with dusk, so it could continue cloudy today. High yesterday might have been in the 60s. A little bit warmer would be nice.

After my pickup, I stopped in at costco. I try to avoid the place on a Saturday, as it’s usually insanely busy. That worked to my advantage yesterday as all the lanes had cashiers and it went very smoothly. Some things were finally on sale. Charmin. Kleenex. Still none of the frozen cheeseburgers I like though. Oddly, australian lamb was CHEAPER by a buck or two. That HAS to be a currency thing.

They had a couple of beef cuts I haven’t seen there before and there were a couple that were “economical” like “beef stew” and eye round roasts at $4.xx per pound. I don’t usually buy that cut, because it’s super lean and can be tough. Thought I’d give it a try with the same sort of cooking I used on the prime rib. Worked ok, was done the way I wanted, had a great beef roast taste, but yeah, much tougher than the ribeye cut. Hamburger was $4.19 for 82/18 (lean vs fat) which I can’t even get at HEB anymore. So I bought a package. Already repacked as 1 1/2 pound freezer vac packs. Had to increase my single meal size from 1 pound to 1 1/3 pound and now to 1 1/2 pound as the kids have grown.

Looks like I’m going to have to figure out how to cook beef brisket as it was the cheapest beef in the cooler… and my Texas man card might be revoked if they realize I don’t know how 😉 It was less than $3/pound. Grind it and mix with hamburger??

Menu planning might have to get ‘creative’ if things keep getting weird. Like duck for $3.69/ pound. Granted you’re buying the bones too, but still, pretty cheap for a change of pace. That said a single frozen duck was still $21. Is that where we are? Dinner for a family of four at home, $30-40? That USED to be a nice meal at a sit down casual restaurant.

My current weekly meal “plan” is to have some cheap nights and some that are nicer but still inexpensive because I got the main meat on sale. (Plan is in “quotes” because I rarely have an actual plan.)(and I know talking about the economics of food can be divisive because of peoples’ differing situations and expectations. For a baseline, I use the Joy of Cooking, pre-1980s edition, for an idea about what dinner in America should look like with a bit of effort, and a middle class income.) My goal is to expose the kids to a variety of things, eat what I like and what they like, and do it as economically as possible while maintaining quality and quantity. That said, I’ve already altered my buying and cooking habits in the last couple of years or a bit longer. Doesn’t seem that long, and I had to revise the sentence to make the period longer, once I considered it.

Stocking up on sale items and just not buying stuff that isn’t on sale has been my main money saving strategy. That is kinda the heart of prepping too, buy now to save later…

I appreciate those of you who are sharing your dinner and menu choices too, and your local shopping reports. Information is power. And a burden shared is a load lightened.

Stack it if the price is right.

nick

Cold and windy, supposed to be clear for a couple of days. It got pretty chilly last night, but not cold enough to freeze. I don’t think we ever got out of the low 60s Christmas Day.

Spent yesterday eating, cooking, eating, opening presents, playing with presents, and snuck in a little domestic bliss as well. While I was waiting for food to cook, I changed the LED downlights in the kitchen. That has been on the list for a while… I also did a couple loads of laundry and cleaned up about 80% of the present opening mess. I’m a multi-tasker! A nice relaxing day.

Today I’ve got one pickup scheduled. I’ve also got one errand that has to get done this week- I’ve got to drop a check off but it’s not urgent. The pickup is for a desk/table to set up for the kids’ 3d printers. It’s not the perfect solution but it should work until I find something better, and it was cheap. It doesn’t have the storage or any doors underneath that I would prefer, to hide supplies when not in use, and it’s a plain, industrial looking design, but it’s a flat surface and should be reasonably sturdy. I’m looking forward to a test print.

I took a quick first pass at the manual for my new DMR handie talkie. Yeah, I’m gonna need a “getting started with DMR” guide. Operating the radio and programming it doesn’t look any harder than any other cheap chinese radio, but I’m a total noob wrt to digital ham radio. I don’t know WHAT to put in it… We do have DMR systems in Houston, and I think the club I joined at the BOL operates one DMR repeater too, so maybe I can get some help from them one of these trips.

Learning new things is good.

Oh, and D2 superglued herself while assembling her ‘book nook’ gift. Fortunately, I’m a prepper, and decided long ago that if I was going to have super glue in the house I’d better have the solvent too. I even know where the bottle is, so that didn’t take long to fix. Mom says “wow, good thing daddy had the solvent.” AHEM, not “good thing” like it was random chance, it was the result of planning and foresight… No matter how many rabbits I pull out, I’m still Rodney Dangerfield.

I’m glad I had it, and D2 went right back to work, which is all that really matters.

Ya never know when you’ll need your stacks!

nick