The Poverty Cookbook Volume 1 FREE 01/03/2013

For my birthday (01/30/2013) I've decided to run my 3-in-1 cookbook for a free day.

Announcement

For my birthday on Wednesday the 30th of January, I've decided to run a free promotion on my collection cookbook: The Poverty Cookbook Volume 1. This does not include the print version. I will post a link the night before and you can also simply search for it on Amazon.

Birthday At My Parents House!

My birthday is jan. 30th but since my oldest sister has a birthday on jan. 20th and my closest-to-my-age brother has a birthday on feb. 1st we decided to have cake Saturday the 26th since we'd be up with my parents. We always had a tradition on birthdays of having whatever dinner the birthday person wanted. Since as long as I can remember I've asked for shells and cheese with corn and apple sauce on the side. Mind you thats the good velveeta shells and cheese. However this year we made it from scratch.

We bought the noodles of course but the sauce is home made.

Heres my plate. I know what you're thinking, boring colors. But ever since I was little I loved these. And yes, that's creamed corn this year to shake things up. We also had the rolls (a first) which are the best rolls ever made. (in my opinion)

Heres the empty bag. We only have these on occasions because their store bought but they are so good!

Now for the 'cake' since our birthdays are so close together I started to have pudding instead of actual cake when we were kids so everyone wasn't sick of cake by my brothers birthday. One year I had mostly frozen oreo pudding on a crushed oreo crust and we used whipped cream for the 'frosting. Another we baked a cake, dug out the middle, and poured the pudding in. We chilled it then 'frosted' it with whipped cream. Another we baked a cake, crumbled it into bits, and poured it together with the pudding, spread it out in 13X9 and let it chill, then topped it with whipped cream. The cake absorbed most of the moisture from the pudding and turned solid again but it was still super creamy.

This year mom made a gram cracker crust, made homemade vanilla pudding and added peanut butter. She spread out the gram cracker crust in a 13X9 then poured over the peanut butter pudding and chilled it. Then we topped it with whipped cream.

Another tradition we have is that my mom collected numerous cake decorations from caked she bought when we were real young and every year we get to rummage through the plastic crate she keeps them in and decorate our own cake with those little plastic figurines. Theres trees, ballerinas, balloons, snow flakes, clowns, and so much more.

Here I am with my shirtless son decorating my 'cake' with some trees, snow flakes, and colored sprinkled.

And here he is licking the cake... Halfway through decorating he simply bent over and started licking the whipped cream. He didn't ever try to use hands.

And here I am while my family sings happy birthday, holding my son back from licking the cake. Don't worry, we gave him that corner. 

And in case you're wondering, his shirt is off because he was going to be eating cake... and helping decorate it. We just didn't want him to get pudding or whipped cream all over his shirt.

So that was it. The food was yummy, the cake was yummy, and we all had a good day.

Roux/Bechamel/Mac-N-Cheese

I had a nasty review of one of my cookbooks that, among other things, told me that it's not a roux, it's a white sauce. I replied saying that I know that and that it's actually called a bechamel.

Heres the difference: To make a roux you mix together melted butter and flour. If you add milk it becomes a bechamel. I don't know why there's such a fancy difference but thats how it is in cooking. I kind of feel like making the roux is the most important part of making a 'bechamel' and that's why in my cookbooks I wrote to 'make a roux'. Not 'make a bechamel'. I do have the actual roux/bechamel recipe in the methods/basic/essential chapter depending on which cookbook you look at. I keep meaning to go through and make them one name or another but time has other demands.

To somewhat fix this error I went through and changed the words to say 'bechamel'.

Now that the fancy culinary stuff is out of the way, heres how to make one, whatever you want to call it.

Melt butter.

Add flour and whisk. It should become a paste. You can add more or less flour depending on how thick or thin you want the sauce to be. I like to use equal amounts of butter and flour.

This is where you stop if you're just making a roux. I sometimes make one for spaghetti to make the pasta sauce (always homemade) thicker and stick to the noodles better. But other than that I always use a roux for my 'bechamel'.

Whisk in milk. Seriously, whisk the entire time you're pouring in the milk and don't stop until it's good and mixed.

Pour in the seasonings. Here I have salt, pepper,, onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne. Then whisk it in.

Keep whisking frequently until it gets thick. How do you know? Well it'll be harder to run the whisk through. But other tells are that it'll bubble a but, and when you do run the whisk through it the lines will stay for a few seconds. Not long enough to capture on camera, but a little while.

So thats a bechamel. I'm sure there's another fancy name for this next addition, and honestly I've heard bechamel used for cheese sauce too so I really don't know. But if you just want the sauce, stop here.

Remove from heat and dump in the cheese. Here I'm using regular sharp cheddar. Normally I'd use the finely shredded but this was on sale and the finely shredded wasn't.

I whisk it in and it's still cheese, mixed into sauce. But I don't fret. Just leave it there for a minute or two while you do something else, like drain the noodles like I did.

After a few minutes when you whisk it again heres what you get. A perfectly smooth cheese sauce.

At this point I combine it with my elbow noodles and, in this case, a can of chicken.

You can leave it like that if you want and just serve it out of the pan. But if you have the time I highly suggest baking it. And if you do then I suggest a topping. Just mix together oil, preferably crushed crackers but in this case bread crumbs, and paprika.

Then toast it in a skillet. How do you know it's done? You'll smell toast!

This is about what it'll look like once it's out of the oven. Note: It's easier to spread the topping evenly when it's crackers. You can see here I didn't do a very good job with he bread crumbs.

How do you know when it's really done? Trust the bubbles.

I hope this has been helpful. If it seems intimidating trust me, it isn't hard. Melt butter, add flour, whisk in milk, add seasonings, thicken, add cheese, wait, stir, and it's done. 

The Poverty Cookbook Volume 1 PRINT

I finally got the print version ready and posted. Right now you can order it straight from createspace. It wont be available on amazon until the end of the week.

Heres pics of the proof copy they sent me.

Dentist and Rice/Beans

On the 12th I had a bottom wisdom tooth pulled with not much swelling and not much pain after the first few hours. Yesterday I had a top wisdom tooth pulled on the other side. Maybe it was because of how much numbing stuff they gave me but it was numb for over 12 hours. They were doing a couple fillings on that side so the dentist gave me shots on the top and bottom. But the drilling still hurt so he gave me more. Then just before pulling the tooth (after the fillings were done) he gave me more around the tooth itself. The tooth came out extremely easy with just the usual pulling and pushing feeling then a spike of pain as the tooth broke free completely and came out.

The pain didn't ease to much from the lortab he prescribed. So when it came time to take my third dose I switched to ibuprofen hoping to battle the swelling because by then I swear it looked and felt like I had had a mini breast implant in my cheek. I read online that in top wisdom teeth that swelling is normal up to 4 days so I wasn't worried. It also said to use cold the first day and heat from then on.

I used a gel cold pack yesterday but I hate heating those things up so I decided not to use it. The site suggested using a wet wash cloth heated in the microwave but I decided that would loose heat to quickly, although I did hole one to my cheek while in the shower this morning and kept having to hold it in the shower spray over and over as the cloth went from hot to warm to cold.

So we're finally tot he rice and beans part. Obviously most of you know but there are some who don't so heres the info.

If you fill a cloth (I use socks) with dry rice or beans and heat it in the microwave for a minute or so it'll keep it's heat for a long time and you can use that. It's flexible because of the many grains or beans so you can use it anywhere. It's in a cloth so it shouldn't burn the skin, but if you think it's to hot wrap a thin cloth around it once or twice until it's hot but not burning, then just take off layers as it cools. You can reheat it as many times or as often as you need. To close the open end you can tie a knot if you plan to leave the sock like that or if you just want it on occasion just use a safety pin, just be sure not to microwave the pin.

Back to the tooth, it was interesting making dinner because the lortab made me feel like vomiting so I could only stand for a short time before my gag reflex started triggering. If I laid down the feeling would easy and after a few minutes I could stand up again and do more.

My husband had requested spaghetti because he knew I wouldn't feel like making something that took time or energy, and since I wasn't planning on eating solids I was happy to let him decide. So something that should take 15 minutes ended up taking an hour, but I figured it would so I started with plenty time and finished just after he came in the door.

Like I said I wouldn't be eating solids because I didn't want to mess with the wound getting food particles in it or anything, but also my jaw hurt(s) to much to open it wide enough for a spoonful. So I drank apple juice for snack and chicken broth for dinner.

The Poverty Cookbook Volume 1

My plan is to combine my three cookbooks into one and put it up on createspace as a print book. So when I organized them all together in one file I thought to myself 'why not put this on kindle?'

So here it is!

Dinner At Moms House

So for dinner yesterday my mom made tuna casserole. I didn't think to take a picture but the funny thing about it is that she realized that she was out of egg noodles. Being that it's 8 miles to civilization obviously we had to think of something. So my first thought was use rice because I do that often just because I like it better than noodles sometimes. But mom had a different idea. She got a couple boxes of hamburger helper and took the noodles from them deciding that when the time came she would replace them with egg noodles.

On the subject of dinner with mom I never got around to posting about last week so here it is.

We decided on spaghetti and garlic bread. So mom thought she'd try making the french bread from scratch.

The only picture I thought to take was after we had cut the first loaf. Thats the two ends set together next to the other untouched loaf. They sit in a 13X9 here.

Here is the bread out of the oven. Mom sliced it, buttered it, then sprinkled it with garlic powder and salt.

For the spaghetti mom heated the canned venison then added the sauce. Then she broke the noodles in 4 and cooked them in the sauce.

I've heard of doing that but I've always been to worried that the noodles wouldn't cook right. But they came out great!

And here is the finished plate. Mom also heated some canned corn and made jello salad. Note the christmas table cloth. Mom is always festive with those.