You might guess by now that I am not a huge fan of all the preservatives in store-bought products when better results could be had by making it homemade, for fractions of the cost, no health risks, and very little time.

I’ve been making our own butter spread now for a while with this basic recipe:

1 part room temperature unsalted butter
1 part oil

I’ve used olive, canola, walnut, and flax.  Olive oil will have a distinct olive oil taste unless you use a lighter colored olive oil.  Flax I generally only use by adding a tablespoon or so in with another flavor nuetral oil.

Today, however, I decided to experiment a bit more by adding in some yogurt:

1 part unsalted butter
1/2 part oil (I used canola and walnut oil)
1/2 part yogurt

Mix the ingredients together until smooth.  Add salt if desired or even dried herbs.  Put mixture in a small butter crock or tupperware container.  Store in the refrigerator.  Mixture will be easy to spread, jut like store bought spreads, and delicious.

Experiment away with this one!

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I admit I am one of those people who get frustrated at “environmentally” friendly detergents; I find that they often don’t clean my dishes as well, I need to pre-rinse too much for my liking, or they leave a weird film on my dishes, particularly my glasses. 

Through some trial and error, I’ve discovered a dish detergent formula that is better for the environment and doesn’t require excessive pre-rinsing or follow-up washing.  This is not a totally environmentally friendly household recipe, but it does cut down on the amount of harmful materials being used in your home and as a bonus ends up being a lot cheaper.  As always, it goes back to some old-fashioned household cleaners that our grandmother’s used, baking soda and borax.  Baking soda has no real harmful effects on anything.  And borax is nowhere near as toxic as the detergent you currently have under your cupboard, not that I would want my son eating a spoonful, either!

1 1/2 - 2 parts baking soda

1 part borax

1 part powdered dish detergent of choice.

Stir the ingredients together.  And store in a large ziploc bag, waterproof storage container, or large mason jar.  Use as you would regular dish detergent.  I don’t have a great dishwasher and have found that I still can use less than I would think and get my dishes as clean as I want.

My next experiment will be trying to create a clothes detergent that is better too!

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Submit a recipe with a short introduction or related story here, and I will feature the best in a related blog post.  Recipes for pantry staples, homemade mixes, easy and quick dinners, kid-friendly and healthy dishes, and yummy treats are all especially welcome!

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Want to share your menu plans with others?  Want to get some menu planning ideas?  Share as a comment below!

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Inspired by a cookbook novel written in the mid-1880’s by Catherine Owen featuring a housewife who shares her menus, grocery lists, and monthly budgets, I thought I would share my own menu and grocery bill for this week.  Based on this week’s sales, I spent $109.22 and saved $41.31 and used one coupon that entitled me to one free package of frozen fruit for $4.29.  I was able to stock up on some meat, including whole chickens at .97 per pound.  I decided to cook the following for this week:

1. Slow Cooker Baked Beans with Keilbasa and Carrots with Veggie Cornbread (plus some leftover to freeze)
2. Roast Chicken with vegetables
3. Roast Pork Loin with braised red cabbage, sweet onions, and apples
4. Middle Eastern Kibbeh (sort of like a spiced meatball) with cucumber salad and pita (this is a new recipe I’m trying or else I would double it, freezing the rest for a quick weeknight meal)
5. Three Sisters (corn, beans, tomatoes) burritos
6. Raspberry and Strawberry Custard Pie (technically not a meal, but I have planned on having neighbors over, so I needed a nice dessert to prepare)

This menu follows my “rules” for weekly menu planning and grocery shopping.  Every week, I try to pick menu items that keep my grocery list basically the same with the addition of a few specialty or seasonal ingredients.  Now I can’t eat the same things every week, and as you can tell by my menu, I like to have a fairly varied menu, a little comfort food, some Middle Eastern, a little Southwestern/ Mexican to prevent that food fatigue.  I also like to plan on using the slow cooker at least once during the week, choosing at least one or two nights for a vegetarian or bean dish, and doubling recipes where I can.  I try to choose menu items along food genre and cooking method lines:

1. Ground Meat: meatloaf, meatballs, ziti, bolognese sauce, chili, tacos, taco salad, shepherd’s pie
2. Roast Meat: roasted chicken, pork loin, beef with veggies (ultimate one-pot dinner)
3. White Sauce: mac ‘n’ cheese, primavera, alfredo, carbonara, shepherd’s pie (if milk is on sale or if you have some leftover, make a batch of classic white sauce and freeze in 1 - 1 1/2 cup portions)
4. Sandwiches: sausage and peppers, brats, portobello burgers, meat burgers (beef, turkey, bison, fish)
5. Vegetarian: succotash, ratatoille, roasted vegetable medley, three sisters
6. Stew/Braise: Mexican pork/chicken stew, coq au vin, beef bourginon, beef and barley
7. Bean: pea soup, lentil and tomato soup, minestrone, Italian bean and sausage soup, dahl

Hope this gives you some ideas!   Add your own suggestions to help others in the comments box.

And taking a leaf from Julia Child’s book to make sure her PBS audience could relate to her, she always allowed mistakes to be left in the show; in that same spirit, in my haste to get dinner prepped for the slow cooker, I grabbed what I thought was worschestire sauce and gave it a good shake before realizing I had dumped about 3/4 cup of steak sauce into the pot.  So I rinsed the veggies off and started over, more slowly and double checking my labels!

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Menu-planning seems like a lot of work, and if you are not used to doing it, it does take a bit to get used to.  But I guarantee that once you start, you will feel so much more at ease both when you go food shopping and when you’re cooking.  Now, I have to hand it to the folks who do the whole oamc thing, (once-a-month-cooking), but the prospect of going on marathon shopping and cooking sprees is too much for me, even if it appeals to my “extra time upfront to save time later” mentality.

Instead, I aim to shop no more than once a week, and I make it my goal to push food shopping to a day or two past when I went grocery shopping last, though not at the cost of going out to eat.  The goal here with menu planning is that you have all the ingredients that you need for a week’s worth of food for you and your family and you know up front what you will be cooking for the week.

You, of course, still need to decide what you want to eat during any given week.  You can do what many families do:  Monday is spaghetti and meatballs, Tuesday is tacos, and so on.  Personally, I get way too bored with food for this idea to appeal to me.  But oamc and the set menu plan methods do offer some important corner cutting ideas:

1. Arrange menu and shopping around types of foods, ground meat, soups, and so forth.
2. Shop from sales flyers and buy in season.  Most are available online, and some even allow you to create shopping lists right from the flyer (score!).
3. Build options in the menu and in your shopping to make extra to freeze.
4. Stock up on staples when they go on sale.
5. If you want, set price points and savings goals.  For instance, you may aim to  spend nevermore than $2 per pound on meat, not buy certain convenience products unless they are on sale, or to save at least 15% of your total through sales, coupons, and manager specials.

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