frugalandthriving.com.au » cooking

how to get your five serves of vegetables

Melissa — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:54 +0000

We all know the guidelines recommend we eat five serves of vegies per day. But do you ever feel that eating your five serves is, well, a little hard?

And what are five serves anyway?

According to the guidelines, 1 serve is equal to 1/2 cup of cooked vegetables, 1 cup of salad, 1 medium potato or 1/2 cup of cooked legumes.

Which sounds simple enough, but how does that translate into everyday practice? How do you know whether at the end of the day, you’ve managed your vegie quota? After all, I don’t usually cook by measuring out a cup of vegetables.

When researching what ‘five serves’ actually are, I came across this great article at Limes and Lycopene by Kathryn Elliott, a Sydney based nutritionist. The article includes photographs of just what five serves looks like – and it doesn’t seem very much at all! Seeing what five serves actually equates to in the real world makes the guidelines more concrete – something we can actually work with. I recommend checking out the rest of her blog – lots of healthy recipes and ideas for healthy eating.

Below are some ideas on how to increase your vegetable intake by eating them at any meal throughout the day, not just dinner. These meal ideas are ones we use ourselves on a daily basis.

Breakfast

We eat eggs on toast most days with mushrooms and tomato. It’s a great way to start the day, leaves you feeling fuller for longer and only takes a few extra minutes to cook up.

Eggs on toast with any of the following: mushrooms, tomato, spinach, herbs, avocado
Vegetable omelette (use leftover veg from the night before to make this quick or have cut up veg in the fridge ready for the morning)
Mushrooms on toast
Avocado and tomato on toast (with fresh cracked pepper – yum)
Fresh vegetable juice
Bubble and Squeak
Beans on toast

Snacks

Vegetable sticks
Homemade vegetable dips: salsa, hummus, beetroot, carrot, broad bean, vege pate
Vegetable muffins
Zucchini bread

Lunch

Salad
Salad sandwich
homemade pizzas
Vegetable fritters – very quick and easy to prepare, we eat these quite often. Prep ahead and take cold fritters for lunch with some homemade salsa for dipping.
Mini quiches or frittata
Vegetable soup
Filled jacket potato
Quesadillas

Dinner

Most dinner meals usually include vegetables but here are some ideas where you can add extra veg:

Casseroles, stews, curries
Stir Fry
Mornay
Meat and veg
Vegetable risotto
Vegetable soups
Hidden vegetables as in fish rissoles, mince rissoles, or spaghetti bolognaise
and, of course, vegetarian dishes.

By making vegetables the main focus of a meal (with meat as the accompaniment) and including vegetables in more than one meal a day, you are certain to be eating your five serves of vegetables – plus some, without ever having to measure a cup of veg or count your lettuce leaves.

What are your tips for increasing your vegetable intake during the day?

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top 10 most popular frugal and thriving recipes for 2011

Melissa — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:00:30 +0000

I thought I would share with you the most popular recipes on Frugal and Thriving for 2011. These recipes were the most viewed and the most searched on the website and all of the recipes appear in the top 100 pages viewed on the site.

And like all of the recipes on the site, they are ones we cook and eat at home.

Of all of these recipes, my favourite would have to be pea and ham soup, although we probably eat the tuna rissoles the most (about once a fortnight), with the savoury pumpkin pie coming in second for most frequently cooked meal. The recipes appear in descending order of popularity. Click the picture to go to the recipe.

10. Pea and ham soup

9. Savoury muffins

8. Rock cakes

7. Portuguese chicken drumsticks

6. Honey and balsamic salad dressing

5. Tuna rissoles

4. Roast pumpkin and feta salad

3. Best ever rissoles

2. Chicken schnitzel

1. Savoury pumpkin pie

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tip tuesday–frugal toasted sandwich press

Melissa — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 14:00:31 +0000

I read this tip in an old magazine a few months ago.

Back in the day when I was single, ‘cashed up’ and debt free, I used to subscribe to a few cooking magazines. Several years of monthly mag subscriptions add up (to over 100), so I’ve been slowly going through them one by one, tearing a few of the recipes out and either recycling or donating the rest of the mag (depending on how many recipes I kept).

Ah, the cupboard space I’ve gained!

It’s been fun. Reading through those recipes again, being inspired to cook new ones. And I’ve shrunk shelves full of recipes to two folders worth.

Anyway, here’s the tip I read: recreate a sandwich press by toasting your sandwich in a fry pan and place a plate on top, weighed down with a tin of tomatoes or what not.

Similar result without another electrical appliance cluttering the benches (although I admit that the toaster we were give gets almost daily use).

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tip tuesday – recycled mini cookie cutter

Melissa — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:00:35 +0000

I can’t take credit for this one. We were cutting out shapes from the play dough when the little fella ran to the cupboard and returned with a milk bottle lid (we collect these for play).

And so the idea was born: a (clean) milk lid cookie cutter.

I altered the design a little by ~~hacking~~ cutting a hole in the top of the lid with a knife. There were two reasons for this: the first is to push the dough off the cookie cutter after the shape has been cut; the second is to stop air ‘resistance’ when pressing the milk lid into the dough. Here are a few pictures of the cookie cutter in action:

And these were the end product: chocolate freckle cookies.

The recipe, by the way, comes out of the Woman’s Weekly BAKE cookbook, which I love. So many good recipes, it gets good use.

The little fella refused point blank to taste the dough – I guess all the nagging of ‘don’t eat dirt’ and ‘don’t eat play dough’ has worked.

More for mum.

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tip tuesday–the most important cook book you will ever own

Melissa — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:00:48 +0000

The most important cook book you will ever own is the one that you write yourself.

Your cookbook will include family favourite recipes, recipes you’ve created and adjusted yourself, recipes passed down from parents and grandparents, recipes you will pass down to your children and grandchildren.

It will be the recipe book that you refer to over and over, unlike all the unread and unused cookbooks gathering dust on the shelf (or is that just me?).

I wanted to share with you a couple of photos of my own cook book and my father’s cookbooks, that I claimed as my own.

They are just simple notebooks, but much treasured and much used. My cookbook is a little ‘girly’, because I started it when I was about 15 years old.

You can keep ‘official’ recipes and write your own notes on how you changed the recipe, how long it takes to cook in your oven, what pan you use etc.

You can impress people at dinner parties with your culinary knowledge (and pronunciation) .

But it doesn’t need to be impressive, nor do the recipes.

You can organise it how you like, make it as decorated as you like, or leave it plain. Do it on the computer or write it with old fashioned pen and paper. (It’s hard to tell in the picture, but the stains are testament to a much used book).

But at the end of the day, it is a record of the home food that you love to cook and eat.

P.S. You can click the pictures for a larger view, if you want to read the recipes.

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tip tuesday–making peanut butter and honey more efficient

Melissa — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:00:31 +0000

I read this tip on the Tammy’s Recipes blog. Her tip is to mix together the peanut butter and honey in a bowl to make spreading it easier.

I have to admit, I’m not a fan of the combination, but if you eat this often, I would go one step further and make a jar of it to store in the pantry, ready to go, without having to mix it at spreading time.

The great thing about peanut butter is that it is a healthy and cheap protein that everyone seems to love (except me).

Actually that’s not true, I thought I hated peanut butter for years until I started buying the freshly ground stuff from the health food store. No salt. No vegetable oil. No sugar. Just peanuts. And it tastes sooo much better than what you get in the supermarket. Turns out I do like peanuts, just not adulterated peanuts. The downside is that natural peanut butter is a little drier than the brands that include oil.

Here’s a different version of peanut butter and honey on toast that I ate by the truck load when I was pregnant:

Spread a piece of buttered toast with mashed banana. Drizzle with honey and sprinkle with chopped peanuts and sesame seeds. Yum.

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cooking in a small kitchen–and an announcement

Melissa — Tue, 31 May 2011 14:00:01 +0000

First, I’m excited to announce that the eBook I’ve been working on for so long will be available from the 27th June. The title of the eBook is Plan, Cook, Save: a busy person’s guide to eating healthy on a budget. During the week prior to the 27th, I will be sharing some of the content from the eBook on the blog. I hope that you find it useful and interesting!

Back to the topic for today: cooking in a small kitchen. This is our kitchen:

It’s certainly not the smallest kitchen ever, tiny apartments have even tinier kitchens than I do, but it’s the smallest kitchen I’ve ever had to cook in. There is a lot of cupboard space, that’s our kitchen’s plus feature, but bench space is minimal. Little bench space makes doing large batches of cooking difficult. It’s doable, but difficult.

Having a tiny kitchen doesn’t mean you can’t cook great food from scratch. It does mean you have to be a little creative with your storage solutions, work space, food preparation, cooking and cleaning and maybe scale back on the bulk cooking to fit the space you have.

Multitask your work space with large chopping boards

If you’re short on bench space, get a chopping board or a large board that will fit over your sink or stovetop so that you can maximise this space, then stow the board away to cook and clean. I often use the stove top as an extra bench – large trays (as below) or plates fit over the hobs.

Clean as you go

It is so much easier to cook no matter how big or small your kitchen is, if you clean as you go (ahem, I don’t always take my own advice – the pictures are testament to that). There’s less work to do after the meal has been eaten and you can use the same utensils over again. Have a little hot soapy water in the sink to clean your utensils and tools as you prepare and cook food.

Less is more with gadgets

If kitchen real estate is small, you don’t want your kitchen being cluttered up with unnecessary gadgets. Use the grill instead of a toaster, use a sharp knife instead of a food processor, the oven and stove instead of an electric oven / slow cooker / rice cooker. If you love your gadgets, find a home for them rather than having them permanently on the bench taking up precious space.

On the other hand, electrical appliances can be good if you’re happy to use them in other rooms of your house. When I lived in college, some of the overseas students had rice cookers that they used and stored under their desks. And they cooked all sorts of meals in those cookers besides just plain old rice. If kitchen space is really tiny, use an electric cooker to cook meals in the lounge or bedroom.

Cook one pot dishes

Do you watch Masterchef? I admit that I’m a bit of a fan. I wonder however, who washes all those dishes once the food is cooked? I mean, it would be lovely to sit down to some of those creations, but what a lot of fuss and mess.

If kitchen space is limited, avoid the fuss and mess, and opt for one pot dishes. Actually, even if you have a huge kitchen, one pot dishes still cut down on the fuss and the mess.

Prep less often

If your preparation space is limited, do all your chopping and cutting for the week all at once and store your prepared food in the fridge and freezer. This will make cooking time easier and you will need less space to cook each meal and there will be less washing up.

Use a kitchen cart

If you have a spare space but no bench or storage space, a kitchen cart may be the answer. You can even keep this outside the kitchen and wheel it in for cooking and preparation.

Or use your dining table

Alternatively, your dining or coffee table can double as a preparation area, a temporary storage area, or a spare bench to put stuff.

If you’re eating alone, you could cut down on washing up by eating directly from the pot (I do this. It’s not considered ‘polite dining’ but a vessel is a vessel to cook in or to eat from – my husband was aghast when he read this). Or if you’re eating with company, serve food in the cooking pots and trays Jamie Oliver style.

Store stuff in the oven

Make the most of your oven while it’s not in use and store your pots, pans and baking trays inside. Just remember to take them out before you turn the oven on.

Hang stuff from the ceiling

Or the walls, or under cupboards, or on rails. If you’re a renter and can’t add hooks but you have high cupboards, balance a broomstick across the corner of you cupboards and hang pots and pans from that.

Hanging your utensils saves cupboard space and bench space.

Make the most of the room you have

This is our freezer. We have a tiny box freezer above our fridge. Actually, it’s not as packed as it usually is, and it could do with a rearrange. I’ve been lazy lately, shoving things in willy-nilly. (And there is way too much head room in the container holding the pizza sauce, I should have put it in a smaller container.) What’s in there? Meat, flat breads, pastry, homemade stock, a leftover or two, applesauce (in the ice cube tray ready to be put into a bag), tomato sauce, frozen vegetables, our cheat meal (frozen fish).

The reason I’m showing you my freezer is to make this point: when space is small, you have to make every millimetre count. Make the space work for you. Organise it well (um, better than I have in the picture), pack things in tight but in a way you can get to what you need without a lot of fuss. I know that it doesn’t look like it, but there is some order to that chaos. Maximise your space by using door cadies, hangers, hooks, extra shelving inserts like those tiered shelves for the pantry.

Even if you have a small kitchen, you can cook and eat great food from scratch. You just need to be extra creative with how you use your space.

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tip tuesday– essential cookbooks

Melissa — Mon, 09 May 2011 14:00:41 +0000

I have many, many cookbooks but there are a few that I refer to again and again and that are invaluable to the home cook. These include:

- A food dictionary

- A common sense guide

- A herb and spice dictionary

With these books, you can cook just about anything, without a specific recipe.

A food dictionary tells you all about an ingredient: season, preparation, cooking, what to pair it with. There are many good food dictionaries on the market, but I have Stephanie Alexander’s The Cooks Companion.

A good common sense guide covers cooking techniques, methodologies and foundational recipes. The common sense guides that I consult a lot are Carol Clement’s The Cook’s Companion, which I don’t think it’s still in print, but I’m sure there are similar books and Cooking: A Commonsense guide. Carol’s book has step by step instructions with photos on how to prepare different foods like vegetables and make many basic recipes.

A herb and spice dictionary is on my wish list, because I love spices and would like to become more familiar with using them. Apparently Jill Norman’s book is good, but I haven’t read it – yet.

What are your essential cookbooks?

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cooking for one on a budget

Melissa — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:00:09 +0000

I have to admit that there are times when I miss the fun of my single days, including the fun of cooking for myself. They were the days of subscriptions to Gourmet Traveller, experimenting with verjuice, Jerusalem artichokes and the finest quality Dutch cocoa, and leisurely whiling away the evenings with a strong blue cheese coupled with a bold Shiraz.

Cooking for one is the ultimate gastronomic indulgence. There are no fussy, unappreciative eaters and no one nagging you to hurry up because they are starving.

And yet solo cooking is often perceived as difficult. I read this comment on the net recently: “social and work commitments have also taken a toll on my efforts to eat at home… my plans change unexpectedly. I’ve gone to dinner with friends or a significant other at the last minute…after a hard day at work, cooking can feel like a hassle.” Gosh darn it, life is hard when you have all those pesky social engagements interrupting your time in the kitchen (was that a little bit of jealously I let slip?)

Maybe cooking for one is something you don’t fully appreciate until your partner insists he doesn’t eat mushrooms ever, the kids are spitting out your lovingly prepared meal and the money to afford rib eye steak (and the time to prepare it) is a distant memory.

Here is the upside. When you’re cooking solo, you spend less money on food. It is much cheaper to feed one mouth than it is to feed two, three, four or more. This gives you more money to spend on little luxuries and splurges. Take a good piece of steak, for example. Purchasing a single piece of steak for a special meal might set you back $8 or so. The same steak for a family of four is over $30.

You can also eat what you want, when you want. Like to eat late? You have no one bugging you because they’re hungry. Like to eat chicken livers with peanut butter? Who’s there to complain about your taste in food?

I concede that it can be difficult getting the motivation to cook a meal and then clean up when you aren’t accountable to anyone else. And when you don’t cook the food you have purchased, it can go to waste, meaning your hard earned cash ends up in the trash.

To avoid waste, save money on the groceries and save time, the same principles apply regardless of whether you are cooking for one, two or feeding many.

Tips for saving money when cooking for one

Buy in bulk, portion and freeze. Bulk trays of meat can often be cheaper than smaller quantities. Simply divide the meat into single portions and freeze. You will have enough for many meals over and (depending on what it is) meat can be kept frozen for a couple of months and up to a year. Bread can also be stored in the freezer to prevent it from going mouldy. Just defrost the slices you need each day. If you don’t like defrosted bread (no, neither do I) toasting it will make it taste like brand new.

Non-perishable items like frozen vegetables, canned goods and dry goods can also be bought in bulk, increasing your savings.

Create an ultra-flexible menu plan. Menu planning still works when you’re single and busy although a shorter term plan (weekly) will still save you time shopping, ensure you have food at hand on the nights you are home but without perishables going to waste by sitting around in the crisper for weeks because sudden plans arise.

If you regularly eat out with friends, say, three times a week, there is no point menu planning for all seven days. Menu plan for the other four days, and have the ingredients on hand for these days. Have a few frozen back up meals (see below) for extra nights you’re at home.

Cooking single serve portions. You don’t need to be a maths wiz to translate recipes into single serves. Steak and veg for example, is simply a matter of frying up a single steak and steaming enough vegetables for yourself. A stir fry is the same: a single portion of meat and vegetables and a drizzle of sauce to coat. Roast chicken can be as easy as a couple of drumsticks, rather than an entire bird.

When it comes to cooking more complicated recipes, you don’t need to be exact in measuring ingredients, add only enough to make one meal. For example, for homemade spaghetti bolognaise, cook enough mince for a single serve (say around 100g). To this you add a little onion and garlic (proportionately less than the mince) a little flavourings to taste, and enough tinned tomato to make it saucy. Serve this with a handful of pasta.

If you only use half a jar of simmer sauce, or half a tin of tomatoes, then divide into portions and freeze for next time. A $4 jar of simmer sauce that serves four will mean you spend $1 per meal on the sauce and there is plenty in the freezer for another time.

When translating a recipe (except when baking) it’s generally not the measurements that are important but the proportions of ingredients to each other. So if the recipe calls for 500g of mince and 1 tin of tomatoes, you will only need around a quarter of a tin for 100g of mince, give or take. Tasting what you cook as you cook it and adjusting it to how you like it is far more important than getting the measurements in a recipe perfect.

Cook for four and freeze the leftovers. If you cook a family-sized meal every night for one week and freeze the leftover in single portions, you will have enough food to last you a month, or more if you interchange freezer leftovers with single portion meals (steak and veg) and eating out. The benefit of cooking large meals and freezing leftovers is that when you don’t feel motivated to cook, there are homemade, healthy, inexpensive, ready-made meals just waiting for you to reheat.

Can you save money on the groceries when cooking solo? The answer is definitely yes. In fact, the principles are the same regardless of the number of diners at the table, except for two exceptions: you can splurge more and eat whatever food that floats your boat when you’re cooking for yourself.

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tip tuesday – tricks with onions

Melissa — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 14:00:51 +0000

I hate chopping onions. Within the first few cuts, my eyes are stinging and watering, I’m sneezing, my nose is an itchy, runny mess – me and onions aren’t best of friends. I’ve tried all the tricks and have found that refrigerating onions prior to chopping really helps.

Dicing onions is a handy skill to have. Below is a great video that shows how to dice an onion quickly and easily. The only thing I don’t do is cut out the tip and the root like the Jean Pierre does in the video, I just cut the tip off, leaving the root end to hold onto while I’m cutting.

I like to get the job over and done with, so I dice a couple of onions at a time and store the diced onion in a container in the fridge. The pre-diced onion (along with my new super garlic crusher that I got for my birthday this month) means two less jobs to do at meal time.

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