The kitchen aid and a new cooking/cook book I recently bought- Ratio: The simple codes behind the craft of everyday cooking are my best kitchen pals right now. and not in a depressing way. although we need to make friends to feed all this food to ;) 

It’s a $27 book but I got it for free because Luke got a METRIC TON of gift cards to a local bookstore as part of his compensation form the last job.

very sweet.

I adore this book.

It is about 2 or 3 ish weeks old and is already earmarked, dusty with flour and referred to like 4 or more times a day.

I’ve made biscuits form scratch- big woop you say, no no, I mean FROM SCRATCH, rolling them out 3 different times between letting them rest in the fridge an hour at a time, flaky yummy biscuits. weeee

pie crusts- for pot pie then for apple pie (ok so that didn’t go as well….but that was my bad and I was able to fix the second set of crusts…)

today I am making bread from scratch using just my handy dandy kitchen aid and the book and my hands. no cheating with the breadmaker which was starting to annoy me anyway because you can’t fix it on the run and sometimes its too wet or dry blah blah blah.

the book gives you all these handy ratios so you can adjust your baking/cooking by rules, which doesn’t sound exciting maybe, but the basic dough reciepe, after you learn the flour to water ratio and figure out  how much salt and yeast per cup of flour…oh my then adjust as you wish endlessly…pizza dough, baguette, boule etc. fun fun fun.

I mean I already used my kitchenaid a bit but now its used everyday nearly. I bought 15lbs of flour for the month so I can make as much as possible from scratch.

This week’s objectives:

1, make a white/wheat basic bread for the kiddos pb and J from scratch

-rising as we speak

2. make the basic cookie dough recipe and then use half the batch to make some sort of yummyness and the first half just for the basic cookie which he says should be baked and eaten so you understand the essence of cookies.

I feel the need to oblige

3. make lasagna noodles (green ones no less) from scratch (friday) using regular flour. and a knife. and a ruler becasue seriously I stink at estimating 1/4-1/2 inch thickness of dough and “cut noodles one inch in width” is so not happening by eye…YET

anyway besides breads and cookies and all that jazz there is a section on stocks (learning to make those tastier) and my goal is to not buy pre-made stocks/boullions/better than boullion more than like twice a year. tricky but we’ll see (he argues a basic stock is easy enough it is not beyond the reach of anyone whol wants to make it and that the store stuff is dreadful but in a nice and funny way, its not a snotty book at all).sections on pastries and cakes and apparently sausages- sorry haven’t gotten that far, there is too much bread to be made!

I love this book. no seriously I love it. It may not seem ground breaing to say, my father in law who bakes bread all the time or my sister in law steph who just cooks all the time, but its like getting a book of secrets that makes everything taste better and  your grocery budget shrink and your life spicier…(because good lovin starts in the kitchen…oh wait sorry)

ahem.

anyway, this is all part of my plan to squeeze more out of my budget which decreased when we almost doubled our rent and to use as few processed foods as possible in our household.

I also bought dry beans to use in my rice and beans etc because they are cheaper than canned (and less sodium) but that backfired a little when I forgot that last night opps.

I love trader joes for this as well. I am surprised by the prices there, usually for the better. I missed you trader joes I missed you.

other things I am trying to see if I can do:

1. purchase the “dirty dozen” produce items organic (again thank you trader joes) these are the produce items most likely to still have pesticides in/on them that will you know cause you to have 8 heads and get klingon flu and whatever else.

2. I now am trying to implement a monthly menu planning system that is seasonal. in other words I have the week separated into 7  “themes” (i.e tex-mex night, soup/crockpot night…um misc night HA HA). then I put 3-5 recipes under each theme. Then I pick which ones I want for the weeks. I am also supposed to be compiling a master list of all the ingredients in this list so I can shop smarter and not be so forgetful ( super big problem right now). seriously I hate dragging three littles thru the grocery store 4 times a week because I forgot something necessary to a meal. so far I haven’t completed that project and its already a bummer because I forgot things. grrr You do this seasonally so that you have good fall items then winter ones etc.

it totally makes menu planning easier and has improved my efficency in the grocery stores drastically. I also have more will power because I have a plan, and at least 2 weeks of meals picked out so I know what I have to do. I forget which blogs I read I got that off of.

I only went over my budget by $9 last month. I kid you not when I say being that close to on budget happens once a year. I am constantly screwing up my grocery budget. I was thrilled.

And lastly, we just didn’t go shopping when we started running out of things. we were really low on apple juice the last half a week and I just got the kids on board with having it less often, deciding when they really wanted it, and subbing with loads of peach tea w/ honey, until we ran out of that.

we were low on nearly everything. but we persevered.  ha ha. its not like we have it bad compared to anyone living at poverty level, it just meant better planning. I was proud of us. I mean seriously we ran out of eggs, milk everything. but we ate every night and because I had planned out the menu we had just about everything. Only had to borrow 2 eggs from the nieghbor

so that is a kitchen update. mostly because I am having so much fun figuring this out right now. I still need to be better planned out (after all those biscuits are easy but they need 3 hours in between roll outs- not exactly a last minute idea ;). My math is improving from working with ratios.

And I am SERIOUSLY jonesing for a kitchen scale for my birthday to really have awesome fun with the book.

I have a place for right near the near-constant flour patch on my kitchen counter!