I go to check on my little brother and what do I find? A zucchini!

I did enjoy leftovers all week. And I have been sitting here wondering if the $38 was worth it, given how long I ate the leftovers. So here's a rough calculation. I made the first meal on Friday, so one meal, and then had about 2 meals per day from either of the two dishes from Saturday to Saturday. So that means I ate a total of 15 meals from the two dishes. 38/15=2.53. So that means I spent about $2.53 on each meal that I ate this week. Huh. Feeling pretty good about myself right about now.

I did buy some fruit this week. Cherries were on sale for $1.47/lb. And I bought a 5 lb box of blueberries for $6. Amazing price. And they taste so good.

I know, I thought it too, five pounds is totally ridiculous. But I froze about 3 lbs, or 3.5 lbs. So they will be fantastic for muffins and smoothies for a really long time. Yay.

And a week is not complete or satisfying without at least one cooking battle to share.

A coworker brought the abundance from her garden to work on Thursday. All zucchini and cucumbers. So of course I grabbed some. And decided to make zucchini bread.

It was an absolute disaster.

And of course I want to say, "I even followed the recipe!" But I actually didn't. I guess part of what I am discovering here is that I am really bad at following directions. Really, really bad.

So I followed the recipe (except I omitted the sugar) up until it said mix dry ingredients with wet until combined. Well, that produced yuckiness. Half of the bowl was still dry ingredients while the other half was a barely combined attempt at dough. So naturally I just started adding water. I know what kind of consistency I am going for here, so I just kept adding water (and some almond milk, you know, for a more creamy consistency) until it looked like the right consistency.

Then I baked a batch. I prefer muffins to bread loaves, so I just scooped it out into my muffin tins. They came out, and immediately fell, and are these super dense half-size muffins. Weird.

Of course I am open to suggestions on what I did wrong, and I'd love a good zucchini bread recipe if you have one. Even if it has gluten, I'm working on the whole modifying thing.

You're cleaning so hard I'm afraid you're going to stick the dog in the dishwasher.

I spent the weekend cooking. I finished both of the recipes. Here is what my kitchen looked like after.



Both recipes were very good, so I am going to enjoy the leftovers all week.

I also baked bread this weekend. Last weekend, I make bread with a mix, and realized afterward how much sugar was in it. Bummer. So I tried a recipe from scratch. It called for 1/4 cup of sugar, but I just put in a tablespoon of honey. It turned out really well.

But today we're going to learn an entirely new recipe with lima beans.

I agreed to do an interesting task. The writer of one of the food blogs I read is publishing a new cookbook. So she has asked for people to test the recipes. I volunteered and was assigned two recipes to test. I can't tell you anything about the recipes, but I can tell you that I went shopping for the ingredients today. It required me to go to 3 different stores, and cost $38.09.

All I can say right now is I hope these are divine, and that there are a LOT of leftovers.

As a bonus though, I went to a new part of town, and found a nice and close super Walmart. I know, it's evil, but cheap food and better selection than Aldi. And right across the street is a fancy Whole Foods-type store. And best of all they have a pancake and waffle mix that didn't have any sugar in it.

We'll just wrap you in tinfoil and you can go as a leftover.

Well, I finished the week with leftovers. Leftovers both from Heather's visit (pasta salad, eggs and sausage) and leftovers from lunch with my friend (salad, and stir fry). I made one run to the grocery store and got $10.27 of produce (banana, peaches, plums, broccoli, and seaweed).

I also went to the farmer's market. I spent $5 on peaches, $1.25 on squash, and $1 on cucumbers. Then I splurged. I went to a craft fair and there was a stand selling sugar-free jam, so I bought a jar ($7) of strawberry rhubarb.

And then, in true "If you give a mouse a cookie" fashion, because I bought jam, I had to bake bread. So I did.

And in the morning, I'm makin' waffles!

I should be working on something productive for work. But you can only grade for so many hours of the day. Seriously.

So I'll update you on my food life. My sister came to visit (a fabulous part of my real life). So I stocked up on all kinds of treats, snacks, and really good food. And we discovered that we (both of us together) are just like our mom. We prepare and pack way too much food. And then we decide to buy ice cream from the stand. And it was good.

We ate picnics, ate out, had pancakes, went to a barbecue. Oh, that was a good lesson learned. I will never buy the Arrowhead Mills brand of pancake mix again. I prepared them according to the package directions, and they were awful! Fortunately it made a very small batch, so I threw them away. Then I made another batch with some serious modifications (good thing I've been making so many muffins, I've learned some of the modifications that work). The second batch was much better, but I still won't buy that mix again.

Today I polished off the leftover pasta salad. Since it is named after Heather, I made it for her. We like to take that on our picnics.

A website

Ooh, and a fun new website. Good Bite.

No soup for you

I haven't been grocery shopping this week. Plenty of food in the house, and apparently I only feel a burning need to go grocery shopping when I don't have any fruit. This week I have had an absolute abundance, and have been enjoying watermelon, peaches, strawberries, and even blended some up into smoothies.

So, what have I been eating?

Well, I finished off Heather's pasta salad over two meals. I ate the last herbed tuna in tomato, and for another meal polished off the bit of tuna mixture that was left over. I discovered that the tuna mixture was actually pretty good just spread on crackers. So maybe the downfall of that dish was that I used store bought tomatoes, and since they were the vehicle, the whole thing was just underwhelming. I made a(nother) big pot of chicken and veggie soup on Friday, so I have been enjoying that. And I had a lovely green salad yesterday.

I have to admit, I am really impressed with the soup. To explain: 16 days ago I went to the doctor with a terrible case of poison ivy. Really really bad. I got a shot and some really high powered meds. The doctor warned me that the meds would upset my stomach, and since even advil upsets my stomach, I decided I better be proactive about helping my stomach with gentle foods.

So I went to the grocery store, bought a box of chicken stock and a whole heap of veggies (potatoes, onions, carrots, celery, zucchini, mushrooms) and made a huge pot of soup. It was fantastic. And of course, I left the grocery store having spent $30. That pot lasted about 5 days, only half the course of the meds. So I made another pot. This time I tossed in some frozen chicken that I had in the freezer (for probably way too long, so the best use for it was soup). That pot lasted another 5 days.

Unfortunately, the 10 day course of meds didn't take care of the poison ivy, and so I had to get another round. So on Friday, when I got the new bottle, I made pot of soup #3. I did have to buy another box of chicken stock, but the veggies are the same from that first shopping trip. Super cheap, super easy, super long-lasting, and nice to my stomach. What more could you want?

The poison ivy trial also explains the muffin kick I have been on. It is helpful to have something a little substantial in my belly when taking high powered meds, and bread is substantial. For gluten-free baking, I believe that muffins are the best. They are small enough to bake easily and evenly. They are small enough to not be too dense in your mouth. And they are easily frozen and stored for use over a period of time.

The reason I have been experimenting so much with muffins is that muffins usually have a lot of sugar. I have been reading about sugar substitutes, and tried a new muffin recipe last night.

Explanations first I guess. I like banana bread. So I always buy a bunch of bananas. Unfortunately, I like to eat my bananas brown. When they are at the point that most people think they are useless for anything other than banana bread, they are finally at the point that I want to eat them. Fortunately this week I have had such an abundance of fruit that I held off, and decided that I absolutely would make banana bread with these bananas.

I decided banana bread muffins would be perfect for a sugar-free recipe because bananas are sweet, and they add moisture, perfect for gluten-free baking. As I was reading about sugar substitutes, I read that raisins are also a good sugar substitute. The banana bread recipe that I found actually added raisins and nuts, so I decided combining the bananas and the raisins would be a good shot here.

To use the raisins I ground them up in my blender. I didn't really want raisins in my banana bread. I just wanted to experiment. This made a little bit of a mess, but I added the raisin paste to the muffin batter and just beat it in hard and fast, and it broke up pretty well.

The result: Really good muffins. Now, these are not muffins for the faint of heart. They are not light, fluffy, silly muffins. These are rich, decadent, solid, hardy muffins. And they taste good.

Banana Bread Muffins
This is adapted from the back of the Bob's Red Mill package
1/3 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cup gluten-free flour mix (I used 1 cup of Bob's Red Mill All-purpose GF mix, and 3/4 cup of the Life Tastes Good Again GF mix. Bob's is a combo of bean flours, which makes this a little more hardy, and the LTGA is completely white. The real reason for the blend: I ran out of Bob's)
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp xantham gum
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cup mashed ripe bananas (This took 3 bananas for me)
1/2 cup finely chopped raisins (I blended mine in a blender)

Blend the wet ingredients. Add the bananas and the raisins. Add the dry ingredients and mix. Fill muffin tin and bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Yield about 15