A Week Of New Recipes

Every so often when planning weekly meals, which I've been a little slack on but I need to get back into it while trying to waste less food, I end up with a week of new recipes.  Last week was one of those weeks. 

It started when I went to a local bookstore that was having a moving sale and they had all their books buy 2 get 1 free.  Who can pass that up?  Especially when they have a lot of cookbooks.  It just so happened I was needing a little more inspiration than I was getting from my current cookbooks. 

For the most part the new recipes have been a success.  We tried a new sweet and sour chicken* recipe (which needed more "sour"), a ham and cheese omelet bake (we substituted bacon for ham and it was Delicious), pork chops with potato and mushrooms (it was basically pork chops baked on top of scalloped potatoes), alfredo chicken pasta* (the variation was adding veggies to the noodles, including shredded carrots.  Good as left overs), a lasagna skillet dish* (which was too watery due to using less meat but was very good and has been deemed a "regular recipe"), and a sundried tomato-chicken-rice dish.  The last was the least favourite of the week, which was too bad because the recipe made a lot.  Thankfully I was able to come up with a back up plan for it.  I froze it in smaller containers to be used as a side dish in later meals.  I am really enjoying using my freezer more.  Typically it would have sat in the fridge until I needed the dish again, which means a week later I would have been angry and tossed it. 

Instead, by freezing it in small portions has saved us easily $8, which is almost as much as we wasted in January alone!

The most interesting thing I made this week were sugar and dairy free muffins.  When I made the sweet and sour chicken it called for a cup of crushed pineapple but I could only find a large can, which left me with an extra cup.  Instead of keeping it in the fridge until next garbage day and tossing it I decided to use it.  I was itching to make some apple muffins so I looked up recipes for apple pineapple muffins and found a recipe that caught my eye.  

Morning Glory Muffins (makes 18)

2 1/4 cup of flour

1 tbsp cinnamon

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup raisin

2 cups grated carrots (2 medium carrots)

1 cup grated apple (2 apples)

1 cup drained crushed pineapple

1/2 cup pecan (I omitted since we didn't have any)

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla

1. Mix dry ingredients together

2. Mix fruit and nut together.  Add to flour.

3. Add oil and vanilla

4. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes

I felt like there was something missing, maybe the pecans.  I think next time I'll add something with a bit of a sweeter side to it, like coconut.

The nice thing about them is because there is no sugar in them I feel better about giving them to the kids to snack on, even though Lynden's not a huge fan of them (maybe once I add coconut, which he loves, he'll like it more).  

* Recipes are from The Savvy Shopper.  The link is for the online book, which is no different than the actual book.  I'm quite happy with it as it gives tips on how to save money while shopping and all the recipes are really simple, although it hardly uses any spices, so I have to remember to add them.