Jessica

Basic Kitchen Tools Every Home Cook Needs

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Now that we have run down the list of cooking terms that are important for understanding recipes and cooking , I thought it would be good to give an overview of the tools necessary for a basic kitchen.

There is a lot of variance in this list because not everyone cooks the same or has the same environmental outlook. For example where I would use a spoon as a juicer you might really love a hand juicer. How you set up your kitchen is totally and completely up to you, but this list in my opinion covers the basics.

Small tools & Utensils: Wooden Spoons, Metal Spatula, Ladle, Slotted spoon, Tongs, Whisk, Rubber Spatula, Basic Knife Set(all you really need is a chefs knife, a paring knife, and some kitchen scissors to get by), Mandoline Slicer (you could probably do without one, but they are awesome), Can Opener, Vegetable Peeler, Simple Grater, Measuring Spoons & Cups Set, Colander, Fine Mesh Strainer, Cutting Board Set (you’ll need more than one)

Cook & Bake ware: Sauce Pan Set, Dutch Oven, a Skillet (2 set, I like cast iron, but stainless is cool too), Rolling Pin (only if you like to bake but a wine bottle works in a pinch), Baking Sheets(at least 2), Mixing Bowls, Cooling Rack, Baking Dishes, Round baking pan (even if you don’t bake, they are good for fritatas, gratans and the like), Muffin Pan

Appliances: Toaster, microwave (if that’s your thing, I know not everyone needs a microwave, I am one of those people), blender, Coffee machine (again if that’s your thing, I don’t use one), electric mixer (if you like to bake this makes all the difference), Food processor (though I did without one for years, I love it now)

Obviously eating utensils, plates, bowls and cups are also necessary, but that’s not really the focus of this post or series. We are all about setting up a proper kitchen to cook with. Obviously this is a pretty big list of stuff, but it’s pretty easy to find just about everything on this list for cheap at garage sales, good wills and even dollar stores. Start with some good pans and some utensils and work your way up, sometimes whipping the cream yourself instead of using the electric mixer can feel good.

The Co$t of the Slow Carb Diet

By Jessica

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Many times healthy diets can be pretty costly, and I’m always looking to save as much as possible while not compromising my diet. I was pleasantly surprised after adding up the totals for January and realizing just how much money we saved while we were doing the Geek to Freak Challenge.

We spent a total of $198.04 for the entire month of January on groceries. That is the least we have spent on groceries since summer. I also want to point out that we ate out at least once on our cheat days, and I fed a multitude of guests throughout the month. I like to entertain, but I don’t separate the cost of those meals from our regular grocery budget. I also don’t use coupons (don’t hate).

The most obvious money savings came from drinks. I typically only drink water, tea and wine, with an occasional glass of juice or milk, but those are very rare for me. Chuck on the other hand goes through a gallon of both milk and juice weekly. Since we can’t have fruit or dairy on this diet we abstained from buying those items, along with yogurt, and cheese. In total these items added somewhere around $15 to our weekly grocery bill which computes to $60 a month. Since my friends and family know I love wine and tea it is often gifted to me, so I haven’t had to buy tea in over a year, similarly for wine I was able to drink mostly the wine that was gifted to me for Christmas. It pays have simple pleasures people!

Bread items were hands down the second largest savings area. A loaf of sourdough for my favorite stuffing, cheese garlic bread on Friday nights, and pasta all add up and cost more per pound than dried beans and lentils, which have some cost savings all their own.

Switching to dried beans was another great place for savings. Since we were eating so many more beans I thought it would be worth it to try to cook my own from dry stock, and let me tell you, it totally was. A single 1 lb bag of beans costs about $1.39 near me, while a can costs $0.79. Each bag contains 4 to 5 cans, meaning that $1.77 to $2.56 is saved by cooking with dried beans. Once cooked the beans can be used throughout the week, canned, or frozen. If you aren’t eating beans or lentils daily this might not be worth it for you, but this is one place of savings that Chuck and I are going to continue going forward. I estimate that over the course of the month we saved over $6 on black beans alone so in a year that will look like almost $75 on just black beans.

One place that might be difficult for some to save money is on vegetables. This diet is vegetable heavy, and lucky for us we already eat a lot of vegetables, so the only thing that was really added was an extra bag of spinach a week. If you don’t eat that many vegetables before making the switch to this type of diet then this would probably increase your budget quite a bit.

I think it’s also pretty important to point out that we ate most of our meat from the freezer, which is something that happens pretty much all year round. Considering all of Chuck’s hunting permits/licenses, ammo etc. we figured the venison provided costs about $3.33 per lb. Once this cost is added in our total grocery budget comes to something like $230 which is more comparable to the average family of 2. While I think it’s important to be transparent about this stuff I’m apprehensive to add in the cost of the venison for my own records because while it does provide us with a lot of high quality food pretty inexpensively, hunting is Chuck’s hobby, prepping and preparing the catch is one our favorite things to do together. I don’t like to consider the cost of a hobby in our food cost, because if we didn’t hunt that same money would be spent on another hobby (skiing for example costs 3x what hunting cost’s us) since we are not sedentary people.

I also think it’s important to point out that this is January in the Northeast, so my gardens are not producing right now (I didn’t get myself together enough to have a winter garden this year), otherwise we would get a lot more produce for a fraction of the cost of the stuff we buy in the grocery store.

I’m guessing in the summer we could maintain this diet for something like $100 a month, and that’s with fresh, locally grown food. My guess is that my monthly average year round will be something like $200 dollars a month for food. I’m going to do my best to keep track of it and let you guys know how the math works out at the end of the year. To keep me accountable I will put the monthly totals in each months recently posts. January’s post has already been updated.

20 Awesome Slow Carb Recipes

How We Meal Plan

How to Reduce the Temptation of Take Out

A Romantic Dinner for Two

By Jessica

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Valentines day is coming up, and while most people make reservations at expensive restaurants I really love to cook a romantic meal at home.

It’s a little more casual, and relaxed. The food is always good and it’s always less expensive. I also firmly believe that if something goes wrong take-out by candle light can be just as romantic.

Romantic Menus of the Past

Quick and Easy Valentine’s Day Dinner

5 Awesome Valentine’s Day Menus to Prepare at Home

Fall Date Night on a Budget

Obviously I’ve come up with a number of romantic menus before, but this year I’m going for something a little more casual, a little more fun, and hopefully more memorable. Some of our favorite recipes and simple treats (I’m looking at you Mr. Sundae) will make a perfect Valentines Day Meal.

The Menu

Appetizer – Pear Brie & Balsamic Toasts

Salad – Green Salad with Honey Lime Vinaigrette

Main Course – Penne con Fionchietto

Desert – Hot Fudge Sundaes

Crispy Maple Chipotle Baked Wings

By Jessica

This post may contain affiliate links. I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

This is a simple recipe for Crispy Maple Chipotle Baked Wings.

With the Superbowl right around the corner I figured it was my food blogger duty to post something football-y. Not that I know the first thing about foot ball (I can however talk about car, and fishing all day long), but you know it’s my duty.

I actually really like to make these wings in the summer, since cooking wings on the grill is easy and it adds a little delicious smokiness to them that you don’t get in the oven, but in February we like to use the oven right?

What I like best about making wings at home is the array of sauces that I can use on them so that each wing can be its own flavor. Maybe that should be a party theme, sauce your own wing night? Though, that could get a little messy.

I’m rambling, I know. Let’s get back to the wings.

My favorite wing sauces right now are this one (obviously), Sweet Chili, Garlic Parmesan (coming soon), Curry, Garlic & Herb, Asian glazed, and standard barbecue.

Crispy Maple Chipotle Baked Wings

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 50 mins

Total time: 1 hour

Serves: Serves 6

Ingredients

2 lbs chicken wings
2 teaspoons salt + ½ teaspoon more
2 teaspoons pepper
1 teaspoon chipotle powder
¼ cup pure maple syrup
1 tablespoon tomato paste
½ teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 chipotle chilies in adobo sauce, minced
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
½ teaspoon fresh cracked pepper

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Set a wire rack inside of a large rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and chipotle powder over chicken and place on the rack.
Place in the oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until they are cooked through and the skin has become crisp.
Meanwhile combine the maple syrup, tomato paste, remaining salt, onion, garlic, brown sugar, chilis, apple cider vinegar, and pepper in a small sauce pan over medium high heat.
Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes or until the sauce thickens. If the sauce is too thick add water by the tablespoon until desired thickness is reached. Set aside.
Remove the wings from the rack and toss with sauce.
Serve immediately.

The Tim Ferris Geek to Freak Challenge

By Jessica

This post may contain affiliate links. I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post.

Chuck and I spent the last 28 days attempting to follow the Tim Ferris Geek to Freak Challenge and the results have been pretty good despite intense cheese cravings (for me).

If you’ve been around here for a while you have heard me wine about my lack of motivation to stay fit as well as my constant battle with eating healthier. I really want to make some lasting changes so like everyone else does I decided to make a big change in January of 2016.

I decided to try this challenge because I need a jump start; a new way to think about food, and a new routine to work out with. I like Tim’s idea of using the Minimum Effective Dose (MED), which requires that workouts are done starting at twice weekly and further reduced as you get stronger. I am one who suffers from anxiety over my schedule, so trying to spend an hour in the gym daily just isn’t going to work for me, this on the other hand is something that I can do. The basic work out portion of the challenge is to workout 2x weekly using the one-set-to-failure principal and do no more than 4-7 multi-joint exercises (I used some combination of squat, dead lift, pull ups, bent row, bench, lunges, and over head press. These included a 5 minute warm up, stretch and cool down of 2-4 abdominal exercises.) Also complete each exercise with a 5/5 cadence.

For those interested in just losing weight, sticking to the Slow Carb Diet alone can do that, even without exercise, check out How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise or better yet read The 4 Hour Body.

The main focus of this diet is vegetables and lean meats, the main carbs consumed come from beans, or lentils not grains, this is something that I can definitely improve on. I’m not going to tell you that grains are killing you, but let’s be serious, as delicious as my French Onion Gnocchi recipe is, eating just that for a few meals is not providing my body with the protein or vitamins that it really needs. The hardest part I knew would be dairy, not that I’m a milk drinker or anything, I just love me some cheese. Another tough thing for both me and Chuck was cutting out fruit since we both ate fruit multiple times a day.

If you are looking to really test your resolve on a new diet try starting it while you are sick and only want chicken noodle soup. The first 2 days were hard, I was already sick of beans and lentils, but day three came on and I kind of stopped caring. I was full without feeling over-full, sick, or bloated, a miracle in the midst of the cold that I was nursing at the time. I felt good and was ready to keep going, until the day before cheat day. Being a food blogger can have it’s downfalls, for example researching new recipes when you can’t eat a lot of things. Needless to say Chuck and I both went a little overboard on our cheat days. So much so that it actually felt good to back on the diet on Sunday. That same pattern continued throughout the challenge, cravings are easy to deal with knowing there’s a cheat day right around the corner. Chuck had the easiest time of all. Eating the same meals all the time is easy for him, and he was happy to stick to the diet for the majority of the time.

This is what our diet looked like:

**Keep in mind that I am also a part time vegetarian so my protein sources before dinner during this diet were usually nuts, beans or eggs where as someone else could go with meat instead.

***I chose venison as the main lean meat for this diet (including my homemade sausages), because we have a lot of that around here, but grass fed-organic beef, lamb, or pork are also ok on the diet.

Breakfast:

I ate basically the same thing every day for breakfast every day 2 eggs, spinach, and black beans occasionally with salsa. Chuck’s typical breakfast was similar with a lot more salsa and venison sausage crumbles.

Lunch:

Lunches only varied a little from my usual salads and sandwiches. I ate a lot more taco salads, and when I wanted something different I made a few quick veggie lentil soups, occasionally I had leftovers as well, but those are really Chuck’s Jam.

Dinner: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4

As per usual we didn’t vary very far from the meal plans that I provide here on the blog, except the occasional busy day when tuna salad lettuce boats were used instead (tuna’s always my last minute go to).

Snacks: celery & peanut butter, veggies & hummus, nuts, toasted chickpeas, or hard boiled eggs (sorry I rarely took pictures of these)

Restaurants that work well with the diet: Ruby Tuesdays, Chilis, Burrito Places (Moes, Hot Harry’s ect.), Local Diners (they have lots of options)

My Results:

Left Jan. 3rd, Right Jan 30th

January 3rd

Mid Bicep 11″

Upper Chest 36″

Waist 31″

Hips 40″

Mid-Thigh 23″

Weight 152 lbs

Left Jan. 3rd, Right Jan 30th

January 30th

Mid Bicep 10 3/4″

Upper Chest 36″

Waist 29 1/2″

Hips 39 1/2″

Mid-Thigh 22 1/2″

Weight 145 lbs

Not pictured are Chuck’s results, while he didn’t do the work out portion he lost roughly 10 lbs and lots of inches using just the slow carb diet. It’s a shame but he’s just not into sharing his life on the internet like I am.

I think these results after only 28 days are pretty darn good. I dropped almost 5% of my body weight (mostly fat) and already feel stronger. I also feel a lot more confident and my jeans fit again. I think the results for us both are pretty awesome for only 4 weeks time. I am a little disappointed that I lost size in places like my arms, where I was kind of hoping to gain some muscle, but perhaps I need another month of working out. There are many people that follow this diet year round and have great success with it. Chuck even want’s to continue doing it. And I say thanks but no thanks, I liked the challenge, I would do it again, and probably will a few times a year, but I personally need more variety in my life, and potatoes (I like potatoes). As for the work out portion I could have definitely done better, being sick the first week (notice my reindeer nose in the pictures) I did not start working out until the second week. I liked the idea of only working out twice a week or less, and will probably continue this going forward.

Reading The 4 Hour Body. and then falling down the subsequent diet and health rabbit hole that I’ve been in for a month has done quite a bit to change and reinforce much of my food philosophy. Before this challenge I thought I was doing well at eating a mostly plant diet. I had already increased the variety and number of vegetables I ate in a day by at least double just from switching to Part Time Vegetarianism. I was eating less meat and less processed foods than ever before. This challenge however showed me just how much I had been lying to myself. Yes we ate vegetables often, much more than the average American, but we still “filled up” on starches, potatoes, rice, pasta. Those things were in each and every meal I made, for the last 30 days (aside from cheat days) I did not indulge in them. In those 30 days I was able to both lose weight, and save money while actually eating a plant based diet. This is something that I want to continue to do. I also want to open myself up to more variety. Our ancestors ate something like 3,000 different food items in a week, now you can barely find 300 different items in our grocery stores. I want to cook more slow food, using those often overlooked cuts of meat to slow roast, and braise getting all the good nutrients out of them. Opening up my vegetable options by picking things I don’t often eat, and shopping more often at the farmers market. I want to grow as much of my own food as possible, and forage more for what it locally available to me. I’m hoping that this will help me stay healthy and keep the weight off, while also promoting a more sustainable lifestyle. I also want to note that I saved so much money while on this challenge, but that’s a whole other post.

Now I have to think of a new challenge to start in March (because I’m obsessed), maybe I’ll do the air squats before and after eating challenge, or a pull up challenge, or something? Got any ideas?

Jessica

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