Moved

I thought I had posted on this site that I had moved to my own web address, but apparently I forgot to! You can read the rest of this blog (as well as current updates) at http://www.feedingasixpack.com

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Moroccan Tagine with Spring Vegetables

Another wonderful recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. Seriously, go get this book! lol

It's a delicious stew full of spices, vegetables and lentils. I actually used more of the vegetables than called for in the recipe, but that's just how I roll. ;) This was really hit and miss with my kids. Some loved it. Some took a bite and decided they'd rather not eat dinner. My husband and I both liked it so much that we had the leftovers for lunch today. (We're really not a leftovers kind of family. Food usually gets eaten or thrown away. I need to figure out how to make leftovers not seem so...leftoverish.) I really need to remember to take pictures of the food I cook!

Total for the meal that fed everyone (or would have if they had eaten it) and left enough for lunch for two adults: $29.82

Sloppy Lentils

Many thanks to my friend, Amanda, over at The Screaming Penny for this recipe. The only thing I changed in her recipe was to adjust the amounts to feed my family and added the worcestershire sauce. We ate this on organic whole wheat buns and had broccoli on the side. (I really must get my kids to start eating vegetables other than broccoli!)

2 T Olive Oil
2 green bell pepper -diced
2 medium onion- diced
8 cloves of garlic- minced (adjust to taste)
6 T chili powder
3 C dried lentils, rinsed and picked through
6 C water

28 iz crushed tomatoes (can use diced w/ juice instead)
1 small can tomato paste
4 T soy sauce or tamari
2 T mustard
4 T brown sugar
2 T worcestershire sauce (not organic)
salt and pepper to taste

Saute peppers, onion and garlic in oil. Add chili powder and cook one more minute, stirring frequently. Transfer to slow cooker and lentils and water. Cook on low for 7 hours. Add other ingredients and cook on high 1 hr. Serve on buns like Sloppy Joes or over rice/quinoa,etc.

Now, I don't have a completely accurate cost analysis on this meal because I don't remember how much my lentils cost. The next time I'm at Whole Foods I will price them and update this post. For now, I'm going to assume $1 for 1 cup of lentils.

Total price for sloppy lentils on buns: $22.38
With side of brocolli: $28.36

Firecracker Shrimp

I must give credit to The Pioneer Woman for this recipe. Honestly, not a whole lot about this meal was organic, but it was delicious, so I'll share it anyways. lol

Recipe has been adjusted from the original to feed our family.

3 lbs shrimp, shelled and deveined (I found it on sale for $5.99/pound! :D )
6 T. Sriracha hot chili sauce
6 T Olive oil (organic)
3/4 t salt
2 T sugar (organic)
15 cloves garlic, pressed (organic)

Combine all ingredients in a large Ziploc bag, then add shrimp and marinate for 20 minutes to 2 hours. Skewer shrimp and grill until opaque and brown, with black bits.

Most of the kids absolutely loved this! I have one who hates shrimp, so she refused to eat it and just had broccoli for dinner. The rest of the kids gobbled it up. The baby (she's 2) ate one, cried, drank some milk, ate another, cried, drank some milk, ate another...and on and on. They were VERY spicy, but she liked them so much that she was willing to put up with the spice to eat them all! lol

Total for firecracker shrimp: $22.45
Total with broccoli: $28.43

Mushroom and Sun-dried Tomato Risotto

YUM! I can't stand mushrooms, and still...YUM! Yet another wonderful recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance : Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock.

Cremini mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, rice, and...wait for it...black truffle oil! I have never had truffle oil before because it is so dang expensive. ($16 for a small bottle at Whole Foods) I decided to splurge this time and go for it and I'm REALLY glad I did. Now, I'm not saying that this made the meal because, honestly, I'm not sure if I tasted it or not because I didn't have any without the oil, but I got some on my finger, licked it off and it was YUMMY! Now I just need to find other recipes to use it in. I don't want a $16 bottle of oil to just sit on my shelf and never get used again!

Mushrooms aren't cheap. So this meal wasn't terribly affordable even though the risotto was the only thing on our plate tonight. (I didn't realize just how long the risotto was going to take to make, so by the time I actually finished making dinner, the kids were so hungry that they didn't want to wait for me to make a side dish)

Most of the kids LOVED it. My four year old wouldn't touch it, though. She likes mushrooms even less than I do.

Now, I've never made actual risotto. I've thrown some spaghetti sauce into my rice cooker with my rice and some water and called what came out of it risotto, but I've never spent 30 minutes standing at the stove stirring anything! It's not terribly labor intensive, so much as time consuming. With six kids, I'm not a big fan of being forced to stand at the stove or risk ruining my dinner. I get called away from the kitchen quite often during the dinner making process to solve one crisis or another, so any food that takes that kind of commitment doesn't usually end up on our dinner table. However, it's also nice to have an eleven year old who you can tell, "Here, stand here and stir this," while attending to the needs of other children. She got that quite a few times tonight.

I don't know what risotto is supposed to taste like, but this was absolutely delicious and perfect, if I do say so myself. ;)

Total price of the meal, with just enough leftover to send to work with the husband for lunch tomorrow: $36.10

The most expensive aspects of this meal were the vegetable broth (I am planning on switching to bullion with my next shopping trip because 1/3 of the price of this meal was broth alone!), dried shiitake mushrooms (oddly enough, I think fresh might just be cheaper) and the rice, which I don't have a cheaper solution for, since they don't sell arborio rice in bulk at my Whole Foods. Perhaps I could use a different rice?

Individual buffalo meatloaves

Last night we had individual sized buffalo meatloaves. All of my kids LOVED this, except for Sera. She isn't a huge fan of red meat, so she really didn't like it.

Individual Buffalo Meatloves

3 lbs. all natural buffalo meat
1 lb. crumbled feta cheese
4 T fresh Oregano
2 small onions
1 C Italian style panko
3 eggs
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350*

Mix all of the ingredients until well combined.
Divide into 8 equal portions.
Form each portion into a "loaf" shape.
Arrange on cooking pan so sides are not touching.
Bake for 30 minutes.

For sides, we had spinach cooked in a little bit of butter and fingerling potatoes that had been brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with some salt and pepper and roasted at 425* for 45 minutes.

The kids dipped everything except the spinach in ketchup.

This meal was rather expensive. Buffalo is pretty expensive in California at $6.99/lb. I bought a cube of feta cheese instead of the precrumbled stuff, which saved quite a bit of money. Feta is SUPER easy to crumble, so it's really pointless to buy the dry, precrumbled stuff if you can get the good, whole stuff. The feta wasn't labeled organic, but was labeled RBST free, which is one of the most important things to me when it comes to dairy.

The kids wasted a lot of this meal, even though they loved it. It was just too much meat for them. I could have easily gotten away with 2 lbs of buffalo instead of the 3, which would have cut all of the ingredients by 1/3, which would have saved about $10.

Total for meatloaves: $29.05
Total for spinach and butter: $6.29
Total for potatoes: $9.10
Total for ketchup to dip everything in: $0.44
Total for meal: $44.98

Not a huge hit

So, tonight I made Millet and Spinach Polenta with Sundried Tomato Pesto. None of my kids wanted to eat it. :( Some of them did just because I promised them chocolate hemp milk for dessert if they ate it all. For some, that wasn't even incentive enough.

I, on the other hand, LOVED it. I thought it was absolutely delicious, as did my husband. I guess it's just not a terribly kid friendly meal. Definitely something to keep in mind as it's not the quickest meal to make, so it's not really worth it if my kids aren't going to eat it.

Unfortunately, I can't share the recipe because it's from a cookbook. However, like the previous entry, I HIGHLY recommend you go out and buy this cookbook. Quick...like a bunny. I'll wait for you.

I suppose the name of the cookbook would help, no? It is Vegan with a Vengeance : Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock. Can you tell I'm a huge fan of Isa's work? Look at me, pretending I'm all cool and on a first name basis with someone I've never even conversed with.

On the side, we had some frozen broccoli. (Well, I did cook it, so it wasn't frozen when they ate it!) I just steamed it. My kids like it plain. Weirdos.

Thankfully, the meal was VERY affordable, so it wasn't so terrible that so much of it went to waste. (The two year old had GREAT fun playing in it. I'm just happy she didn't throw her plate...note to self: invest in plastic plates.)

The total for the entree: $15.49
The total for the broccoli: $6.00
Total for the meal: $21.49

Not bad for feeding six kids and two adults! The only ingredient in the meal that wasn't organic were the almonds that were used in the pesto.