The One Pot Christmas

So, it's Christmas Eve!  I know that a lot of people have great holiday traditions.  In my husband's house growing up, they were elaborate.  Put up the tree on the 23rd (little Christmas Eve) and decorate.  Eat Aebleskiver.  Christmas dinner was actually on the 24th and included roast pork, cooked red cabbage, two kinds of potatoes, and a lot of other delicious vegetable side dishes.  There is dancing and singing around the Christmas tree.  Rice pudding.  A marzipan pig.  Lots of fun.

In my family as years went on, our holiday tradition became just eating snacks on Christmas eve - cheese and crackers, venison bologna (as long as someone got a deer that year), veggies and dip, etc.  The big meal was Christmas day - sometimes ham, sometimes turkey.

When we moved to California and stopped traveling home, we adopted our own traditions.  For years we cooked on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve and had our friends over.  Then we had kids and every single holiday, one of the family was traveling.  (When you are on the school schedule, that's when you travel!)  Well this year, as luck would have it, both my husband and the wife of the other family have to work.  So, we are having them and their 2 kids over tonight for dinner.

But my husband is working.  Normally, we would do some kind of roast (turkey, beef, pork, ham) and my husband's famous mashed potatoes (with butter, sour cream, and cream cheese).  That was originally the plan for today, but we didn't get the potatoes done last night (I went to bed at 8:30 and slept till 7:30.  I feel a little guilty at skipping the gym.  But I'll take the kiddos for a walk today.  That will be good enough, right?)

So I surfed the land of google and found a couple of roast recipes.  This one and this one.  Our roast beef tonight was cooked on a bed of vegetables - potatoes, onions, mushrooms, garlic, and carrots.  A simple one pot meal with crescent rolls on the side (our friend is bringing green beans).  I didn't make any dessert but I had some cookies.

The problem with this plan is that the boys wanted dessert.  The roast was probably perfect when it came out of the oven.  Then the boys left to get dessert.  I put it back in the warm and off oven...and, it overcooked.  About 75% of the time, we overcook our roasts.  Ah well, it will make decent roast beef sandwiches.  The veggies were delicious. 

I leave you with a photo of the tree...

Thanksgiving Budgeting

I don't particularly budget for holidays like Thanksgiving.  Usually we just cook a big dinner and eat a lot of leftovers.

Last year we took a vacation instead of eating at home.  Our budget this year was much lower.

Last year's approximate budget:
3 nights in a hotel in Carlsbad (The Hilton Oceanfront Resort and Spa)
2 days at LEGOLAND
Associated food (lunches and a couple of dinners).  Gas.

This three day trip cost about $1000.

This year's approximate budget:
Pre-cooked meal from Fresh and Easy: $60 (about $30 more than it would cost if we cooked it ourselves).
Bagel breakfast this morning: $10
Possible burger lunch tomorrow - it's Sunday Sabbath: $30.

This year's fun: $70 more than a standard year.

The "fun" things we did this weekend (since we were not on vacation):
Thursday beach walk with a former coworker (free!)
Sleepover for my son (friend was here)
Lunch and walk with a friend (here): free!  (leftovers)

It was definitely more relaxing than traveling.  The tree is up, the leftovers are delicious.  I've spent quite a bit of time working on Christmas projects/ gifts.  Our family calendar came - I make one on Shutterfly.com, order 10, and give them as gifts.  This year, I copied last year's so I could keep the birthdates on there and not retype them.  At the last minute, I realized that I hadn't changed "2013" to "2014" on the cover.  So I caught that.

Apparently, what I DIDN'T catch was my son's birthdays - the calendar says they will be 7 and 1 next year.  Whoops.  Going to fix those manually.

Thanksgiving Week Menu

Well, I'm gonna be honest.  There's been a lot of frozen chicken nuggets, frozen pizza, and one-pot pasta in the last couple of weeks.  Spouse has had two trips in two weeks and I caught a second cold. The second trip was an "oh shit" on Monday when he realized his telecom on Wednesday was not a telecom.  It was, in fact, an in person review on the East Coast. So in addition to all that, the baby has been teething...he finally got #15 and #16 is taking WAY too long to come out.  I'm going to get a break after this right?  Please say yes.  After all, there are only 20.

I did finally get healthy enough to get my flu shot yesterday, so yay me!  The pharmacist at the drug store suggested I aim for August or September next time.  I tried for October this year but had bronchitis.

Anyway, on to Thanksgiving week!

Over the weekend I used 5 weeks worth of CSA carrots to make a big pot of ginger carrot soup.  It's about 3-4 nights worth of soup (half done).  I roasted a bunch of eggplant and zucchini as a side dish.  I made my favorite Mediterranean chickpeas and rice, but in the rice cooker instead of the pressure cooker.  I have a problem with burning this stuff in the pressure cooker.  I made caponata (wait, that may have been last weekend).

So this week is chickpeas and rice, carrot soup, lots of salad with salami and cheese. 

Thursday's menu:
Roast turkey breast
Sausage and cornbread stuffing
Brussels sprouts with bacon
Butternut squash risotto
Pumpkin pie
Mashed potato casserole (aka, heart attack on a plate)
Chocolate peanut butter pie

Now, you're probably thinking "what a great list of homemade deliciousness!"  And in a normal year, you'd be right.  Except for the occasional trip east to visit family (or last year's impromptu trip to LEGOLAND), we cook dinner every Thanksgiving.  In the past, this has included huge numbers of people (up to 14 in student housing, with our one-butt kitchen).

But this year, we are ordering dinner from Fresh and Easy.  But we are making the potato casserole and chocolate peanut butter pie ourselves, so that's something.  We just didn't have the energy for a huge to-do this year.

I'll leave you with a couple of photos from our Sunday Sabbath.

Easter Family Fun on a Budget

We aren't really big Easter people.  Some years, my MIL will send a basket.  Some years, my husband will make a basket.  This year, we did neither.

Yesterday we went to the Easter egg hunt at the park up the hill.  Parking is $5 and many of our friends went.  They divide it up by age group.  Because we live 0.5 miles away, we walked, so we saved the parking fee.  We only spent $1 on some cotton candy.  Our son found 10 eggs.

Easter egg hunts are very popular at the 5+ age group.  Two years ago, we were camping in Joshua Tree with the neighbors.  My husband hid plastic eggs Easter morning and the 3 kids had a BLAST searching for them.  We hid and found them 15 times that morning.  Of course, sometimes they were hidden in pokey bushes and it was hard to retrieve them.  We followed this up by hiding them at home a bunch of times too.  So it's an Easter tradition to hide eggs.  (On a side note?  Right now my 7 year old is standing behind me reading my post!)

The 8.5 month old likes chasing them around too.

This was a budget year for Easter.  I did buy a little bit of candy, but not too much.

We dyed easter eggs:
18 eggs: $2.69
1 Paas dye kit: $1.99
Total: $4.68

We also hid plastic eggs (we are using the same eggs we've had for 4 years, plus the ones he found yesterday at the egg hunt).  I think we have 20.  We hid 19.
Plastic eggs: $0
Money to put in the eggs: $2.50 ($1 for the golden egg, plus 6 quarters)
Candy for the rest of the eggs (12 pieces): $2.50
Total: $5 (only because I bought a whole bag of candy.  Probably could have bought it in bulk for cheaper).

 

 

My friend Sarah uses the plastic eggs to make a treasure hunt that leads them to their baskets.  That's a pretty cool idea too.

Merry Christmas...enjoying the season

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas!  I sit here on Christmas morning enjoying my family.  Boy how times have changed.  Before we had kids (and even for a  year after), we would always be flying to the northeast to spend holidays with family.  This was a mixed blessing, because traveling over the holidays really sucks, someone is usually sick (or gets sick), and the weather is the big unknown.  But family is awesome.

Most of the time these days, we stick to our little corner of So. Cal. for Christmas.  We had many years of inviting friends over for the holiday dinner.  But now our kids are in school, and all of our vacations are on the school schedule, so our friends tend to be traveling.  And that's okay.  Now with the two kiddos, I have to say that it's nice to just chill out.  Especially today when the baby has a cold...sounds like a barking seal ... poor guy.  He's still sleeping and his big brother is working on the first of many Star Wars Legos.

The advantage to keeping it small is that I can decide which day to do the big dinner (or to do none at all).  This year, the big dinner (ham this year) is today on Christmas day.  We often do it on Christmas eve.  Last night, we kept it simple with leftover crockpot lasagna, roasted butternut squash, and crackers with spinach and artichoke dip.

Santa was good to me this year.  Aside from time with my wonderful family, I got great kitchen items... a salad dressing bottle (with recipes), a new nonstick skillet (mine seem to wear out every 6 months), a new cast iron skillet, and a new rice cooker.  I also got a magazine subscription and four new shirts/sweaters (the pre pregnancy shirts do not fit over the nursing-mother and post pregnancy body).

For my family, I sewed a bag for my husband's tablet computer (from the bottoms of my son's holey-jeans-turned-shorts), and I sewed a Star Wars blanket and pillowcase for my son.  For the baby we wrapped some hand me down toys. :)  I feel very blessed.  I have friends who are out of work and have to scrounge and sell items in order to buy gifts for their kids.

I'm sure the day is going to be full of building the pile of Star Wars legos that my older son got. I've already started on the Zicam and Vitamin C (babies...they cough and sneeze ALL OVER YOU).

Thanksgiving

For the first time ever, we had a small Thanksgiving. Just the three of us. And it was nice. We pulled out the fine china and crystal. Cooked a small meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, salad, and homemade rolls. Hung around the house, went to the park, and cleaned out the master bedroom closet. Here comes freecycle!

First, a gorgeous salad with beets, blue cheese, toasted walnuts, avocado, pomegranate seeds, and a delicious raspberry balsamic vinegar I got from the winery.

Next, the turkey and homemade rolls.


The table:

We also made coconut lime snowballs, from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I won't post the recipe here (you'll have to buy the book, or if you are an online member, the recipe is here). The recipe is also here (without a reference to the original, but who knows how she got it, maybe it was written on a 3x5 passed down by a relative):

I could have saved some money by buying butter in bulk and flour on sale, but I try to stick to unbleached flour, and couldn't find that on sale.


Coconut lime snowballs:
2.5 c. flour: $0.51
3/4 c. sugar: 0.20
2 sticks butter: 1.75 (yeah, I know, not exactly "healthy", but better than storebought anyway)
salt
2 tsp vanilla: 0.30
1 c. shredded coconut
juice of 2 limes: 0.38
3 Tbsp cream cheese: 0.23
1 c. powdered sugar: 0.50
Total: $4.37

This makes about 38 cookies. Or $0.12 per cookie.

Thanksgiving on a budget

If you are here to find out how to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people for 20 bucks, look no further.

No really, look no further. I can't help ya. You might want to check out The Complete Tightwad Gazette. Or the Economides family's newsletter. Or a number of frugal blogs out there, that show you how to hunt down the $2, $5, $8, or $0.29/lb turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas and describe how to store them in your deep freezer to eat them all year.

You see, this year, I took the leap. Last year, we didn't even make a turkey (we had a few not-so-successful turkeys in a row). This year the leap was made to local, organic, free range turkey, based on the recommendations of TWO friends. (Michelle and Kelly, you know who you are.)

The local farm was Healthy Family Farms, and their turkey is a pretty reasonable $4 a pound. Reasonable for local and free-range, that is. It also means that even a small 13+ lb turkey is $56.

Does it matter that the 10-lb bag of potatoes was only $1? Green beans for $0.69/lb? No, not organic this year, but you have to pick your poison, as it were. With a $56 turkey, there wasn't a whole lot of room for the sides.

There have been quite the sales this week on canned vegetables and fruit also. Now, while I tend to be a bit of a vegetable "snob" (living in So Cal with daily access to farmer's markets and farm stands can do that), I am also a working mom. So the occasional can of green beans in the pantry is very useful for those days when you are out of the fresh stuff and can't stomach a trip to the store.

On the menu:
Turkey (brined and cooked in a bag)
red leaf salad with beets, pomegranates, radish, walnuts, blue cheese
garlic and buttermilk mashed potatoes
homemade rolls, if we get around to making them.