I just finished watching the movie Julie & Julia, a truth-inspired tale as Julie Powell decides to cook all 524 recipes outlined in Julia Child’s culinary classic “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. Cooking and being creative in the kitchen is something that I enjoy myself, and I loved the movie. It made me think about my views on cooking and reconsider some of those views, especially about preparing dinner for my family from a box dinner. I am usually opposed to cooking dinner from a box, opting instead for home cooking, cooking from scratch. I’m not saying that I never cook from a box, but I try to give my family something that everyone will enjoy. I feel like I have shorted my family in some way if I give them dinner from a box, instead of something I’ve slaved over for at least an hour. After watching the movie, and preparing last night’s dinner, I thought — who cares if dinner came from a box, the whole point is that it tastes good and everyone enjoyed the meal.

One of the the items I purchase at Aldi to speed things along for dinner, and make things simple is their Reggano Stroganoff Skillet Dinner. The dinner by itself tastes fine, we’ve had it several times in the past, but last night I went above and beyond the ingredients that are called for. I sauteed onions and garlic in olive oil, and then added ground turkey along with a little salt and pepper. After the meat, onions, and garlic were done I then continued to follow the directions on the box to finish the meal. Traditional stroganoff calls for sour cream so I tossed a spoon of that into the mixture as well. What I didn’t think about until later is that I could have thrown mushrooms, and other herbs into the mix as well. I was impressed with the results of the stroganoff, and more importantly, so was my family.

As I’ve written before, we drink skim milk on a daily basis, so I keep Half & Half on hand for mixing with our skim milk to provide something close to whole milk. In the case of this dinner I put a little more Half & Half than milk in the mix because I know that it creates a thicker cream when it’s cooked down, and the Half & Half did not fail on it’s end. I have prepared the recipe with skim milk in the past, and the cream sauce works fine with the skim milk, but if you want a thicker texture to the sauce, use something more than skim in the recipe.

Don’t just think of the box as the meal, think of it as the base for a great meal. Add your favorite herbs, spices, and vegetables to the mix to create something your family will ask for again. My favorite part is that I don’t feel guilty about serving stroganoff from a box to my family after preparing last night’s dinner, and getting a new insight on cooking from watching the Julie & Julia movie. Thank heavens for movies!

In our quest to come up with new and exciting things to offer our family to eat, my husband had the brilliant idea of making crepes for dinner one evening after watching Giada De Laurentiis. I was a little hesitant because I’ve seen them made several times on The Food Network, and it looks difficult. My husband actually took on the task of making the crepes and I was impressed with his skill of turning out great looking crepes. I’ve given him the official title of “Crepe Maker” until I am brave enough to try the process myself.

The crepes are a simple recipe requiring only five ingredients: eggs, flour, milk, sugar, and salt. The ingredients are pantry staples and lend themselves to an inexpensive meal. The recipe calls for whole milk, we only drink skim, but I keep half and half in the refrigerator for cooking purposes so we mixed some skim and half and half to get the milk fat to the right proportion. Once you have the crepe batter prepared and ready for filling, the possibilities are endless. We made savory crepes since we were eating dinner, but I can’t wait to try these for dessert as well.

Our filling for our dinner crepes was a combination of chicken, peas, garlic, onions, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. We sauteed the chicken, garlic, and onions in olive oil along with the salt and pepper, and tossed in some frozen peas for color and flavor. Once the crepe was cooked on one side, we flipped it over to continue cooking the other side. While it was still cooking, we placed the filling in the middle of the crepe and topped with parmesan cheese so that the cheese would begin to melt. Once the second side is finished cooking (less than a minute), roll the crepe and place it on your plate. Enjoy!

As a side note: I want to mention that mixing the half and half and skim milk isn’t an exact science for me. I am not attempting to be perfect to get the correct ratio of half and half and skim milk; I just eyeball it. Since I know that half and half has a high milk fat content (10-18%) and skim milk has less than one percent milk fat, I know that mixing the half and half and the skim milk will get me somewhere close to whole milk which has a milk fat content of around 3.25%. I’ll let you have fun and figure out what ratios work for you.

Most of the time we eat pretty simple meals around our house, and yesterday was no exception. I had the ingredients on hand for potato soup which is one of my family’s favorites. I never plan on potato soup; it’s just one of those meals where I need to use something before it goes bad and potato soup is one of the easiest and fastest things to make. It does require a little preparation time since it requires cutting all of the vegetables, but it is well worth it end the end.

Potatoes are a staple at our house because they provide an inexpensive side dish, are easy to store, and can stretch a meal if you need a filler. We almost always have carrots, celery, and onions on hand which are the base of any good soup. I actually can’t stand the taste of celery, but will tolerate it in soup since it practically melts aways after I dice it into tiny pieces. Since the main star of the soup is potatoes, I dice all of the other vegetables up into small pieces as well. Our young son is not a fan of many of the meals we make, but I was able to get him to eat the soup last night after I removed most of the carrots from his bowl of soup; oh the joys of motherhood.

The soup is pretty basic, and starts out just like I would be making a spaghetti or ragu sauce. I toss all of the chopped celery, onions, and carrots into a stock pot with butter to sweat the vegetables before I add the liquid and the potatoes. After just a few minutes, it’s time to add the liquid and the potatoes. The liquid can be whatever you have on hand. My potato soup is never the same twice since I don’t do a lot of measuring, and don’t really follow a recipe. Yesterday I used chicken broth, water, and a can of evaporated milk for the liquid, but I’ve used heavy whipping cream or half and half, and even 2% milk in place of the evaporated milk.

After many attempts at trying to make my potato soup thicker, I actually discovered by accident that leaving the lid off of the pot while cooking reduces the soup and causes it to become slightly thicker after I’ve added the milk. I am not the best cook in the world, but I love when I figure out how to do something, quite by accident.

Sometimes we like to keep it simple at our house for dinner by fixing something that we all enjoy eating; breakfast. My favorite part about eating breakfast for dinner is the economical sense it makes. We fixed biscuits, gravy, and eggs with cheese for dinner which all came to less than $5.00. There were even leftovers. We could have even had bacon or potatoes with our breakfast and still kept it under the $5.00 mark. The combination of eggs, biscuits, and gravy are so filling that you wouldn’t need the bacon, but man, you just can’t go wrong with bacon. I forgot about the bacon until the last minute, otherwise we would have had that as well.

I know that bacon is on the expensive side most of the time, but I wait for it to go on sale, and then stock up hopefully with enough to keep until the next sale. Eggs are usually around $1.50 or less for a dozen, and about a half dozen eggs will feed the five of us. I keep my gravy costs down by using bacon grease (instead of butter), which I store in the refrigerator so that it doesn’t go rancid. The possibilities are really kind of endless with breakfast, and it certainly makes things easier on the budget knowing that a good nutritious meal can be prepared for less than $5.00. If you forget to make breakfast for dinner like I do sometimes, plan out a thirty day menu, or even a weekly menu and include breakfast on your menu a couple of times for the month, or more if it’s something your family enjoys. Of course if you want to bake something for breakfast instead, my favorite is cinnamon rolls. I found Amy’s (The Finer Things In Life) cinnamon roll recipe and haven’t looked back!

Menu planning worked out well this week, except for one minor mishap. The plan was for a menu with the following main courses:

• Roast (ended up being pork roast)
• Meatloaf
• Quiche Lorraine
• Beans
• Enchiladas

The first three days went great, except for the almost no dinner incident on Monday. Dinner was roast and mashed potatoes, but the slower cooker wasn’t cooking very fast. I don’t have a lot of experience using it, so I switched dinner to the oven to finish cooking the roast. It turned out great! The Meatloaf and Quiche went as planed with no mishaps. I even found a new recipe for my crust that I like better than what I’ve been using.

Yesterday the plan was for beans in the slow cooker. Hadn’t I already tried this earlier in the week? Apparently my slow cooker is the slowest one in the world because they weren’t ready for dinner that evening, but it wasn’t a complete failure. We had leftovers from the roast and mashed potatoes. Tonight we’ll have beans, and the enchiladas will be moved to Saturday or Sunday. It really turned out to be a good thing that I had the two bad experiences with the slow cooker. I now know that if I’m planning to use it to cook a meal, it will need to be started the evening before on low all night. All in all, it was a good plan; I’ll just give my slower cooker a little more time to do the job.

Our week is going to be extremely busy, and while I don’t usually plan our menu for the week, I thought it may help keep me on track for the week.

The Menu:

• Meatloaf, Couscous, and Broccoli
• Roast, Potatoes, Carrots, and Onions
• Quiche Lorraine
• Beans and Cornbread
• Enchiladas, Beans, and Rice

Steps For Preparation:

• I’ve started thawing some of the meat we’ll be using in the refrigerator. I recently read an article in Cook’s Illustrated that stated thawing in the refrigerator is the safest way to defrost frozen meats. Thawing in cold water and in the microwave are acceptable as well, but require more attention to detail. I decided that my attention to detail won’t be as sharp this week, so will stick with the refrigerator.
• I’ve made a menu. I based the menu off of the meat we had in the freezer, and the ingredients we have on hand in our pantry and refrigerator so that we don’t have any additional grocery trips.

While I don’t usually plan a menu for the week, and don’t plan a menu while grocery shopping, we never seem to be out of the key ingredients we need to plan a weeks worth of menus. We accomplish this by purchasing the staples to keep a well-stocked pantry, as well as the meats that we enjoy cooking with, and of course eating. I purchase the meat for our freezer based on what is on sale that week, or what I find marked down in the meat department. Our freezer almost always has chicken breast (flash frozen in the bag), ground turkey (Honeysuckle White Turkey), and some kind of pork like pork chops or pork tenderloin.

Making a menu is one of the best ways to get you started in the right direction. It gives direction, and while it can certainly be changed, it provides a definite plan. I planned a main course of beans earlier in the week than the Enchiladas because my plan is to use the beans from the main meal as a side dish with the Enchiladas.

Cook items that you are familiar with. I’ve made these dishes dozens of times and don’t have to question myself on what the next step is. I am always up for trying new things, but I know it’s not a good idea when I’m short on time.

I think that the economy and the housing market taking a turn for the worse last year really opened peoples eyes about the changes that could be made in their lives financially, without making significant sacrifices. Now that the economy and housing market are finally on the right track again, a slow one at least, families can finally resume life as it was before the financial crisis. But, why would anyone want to resume life as normal.

Being frugal, and thrifty aren’t new concepts, but they seem to be the current trend. This is something that our grandparents did everyday, and it wasn’t trendy or in style; it was life. I like that we live frugal lives. I think it helps us as a family stay on track with what life should really be about, and not see how fast we can live life. Living slower paced lives helps us to spend more time together as a family. We don’t have family game night, but we do sit and eat dinner together as a family every evening.

I have found that a lot of our frugal activities revolve around the kitchen. Food is something that everyone in our family enjoys, and it is an easy area to see the immediate financial results of living frugal. My daughters are learning their way around the kitchen, making cookies and being my kitchen assistants. While cooking they are usually called upon to assist in some task in the kitchen, whether it is standing over the stove stirring a pot, prepping vegetables, or even using a knife. That last one is still a little frightening for me.

As they are involved in the process of preparing, cooking, and serving the food, I feel good knowing that what we are teaching them about frugal cooking will be with them for their lifetime. I find myself explaining to them the steps I take in cooking to not only help save money, but how to add flavor to the food economically, while still having great tasting food.

They have watched my husband and I many times chopping vegetables to store in the freezer because of a great sale we’ve come across. They’ve even learned that mom insists on chopping up that half of  an onion that always seems to be around, instead of throwing it in the refrigerator, or worse, in the trash. They would still rather spend their time doing teenager things, but they know that the money we save in the kitchen helps us to do all the other things that make life fun.