Saving the chicken!

You might remember a few weeks ago, when I was prepping my meat for the freezer, I decided to be industrious and freeze a few packs with some marinade. I used a Balsamic Vinegar and Honey marinade, which I had made before and was delicious on pork. I had a bit extra and added it to one of the packs of chicken.

When I made the first pack of pork, the taste was awful - balsamic vinegar and nothing else. The vinegary taste was so potent and really awful.  Thank goodness I had paired the meal with some potatoes, which made it a little more palatable.

The second time, same thing. Simply awful. I tried to add some bits of marinade I had in the fridge, but it didn't help.

I was so disheartened - what had I done wrong. The marinade had been so nice last time, and I have made it more than once with no problem.

So I did a Google search and came up with the reason: apparently you shouldn't marinade meats in vinegar based marinades for too long. It basically starts to pickle the meat.

So now I had a problem: I still had a pack of chicken in a balsamic vinegar marinade in the freezer.

So here is how I saved it and made a meal so tasty that impressed the Mr.

Step 1 was getting rid of as much of the Balsamic Vinegar as possible. I took the pack out the freezer and let it start to defrost for a short while - about 30 min. Then I rinsed it with cold water and got most of the marinade off.

Step 2 was keeping the defrosted chicken from sitting in any marinade that was still left. I used a mesh steamer cooker - put the chicken in the top and any marinade still left would drip through to the tray on the bottom.

Step 3 was getting some new flavour in.  By the morning, the chicken looked pretty much defrosted and there wasn't much marinade in the bottom - which meant I got most of it off, thank goodness. I moved the chicken to a bowl and stirred in honey and bbq marinade - the honey would hopefully help counteract the vinegar, and the bbq marinade has a strong flavour.

Step 4 was cooking the meat. I still had no idea what it would taste like, because I couldn't taste the chicken until it cooked. I opened a tin of canned tomato and onion, and added 1/4 of the can to the pan. I also added a few chili flakes.

Step 5 - tasting the meat. It was delicious. Couldn't really taste the vinegar at all.

So, my lesson is learnt - and luckily I didn't ruin too many meals.  I have a much better grasp on what kinds of marinades are suitable for freezing with meat.  I will make the balsamic marinade again - but probably not for a while.  The taste is kind of ruined for me right now.

And at least now I know - meat should only sit in balsamic vinegar for a short time before cooking.

Remind me never to be this productive again

Before I start, let me just say that being this productive has been a work in progress.

I have been fully inspired by this blog post: http://www.aturtleslifeforme.com/2011/06/freezer-meals-on-cheap.html, and although I am still not completely this organised, I am well on my way, and I think it will be worth it.

And so it was that I spent my Sunday afternoon doing the following:
(the carrot and pineapple was made last week, but I've included some of the pics here)

1. Making parrot chop

About 4 weeks worth of parrot food

2. Chopping up the fruit that didn't make it into the mix - either to give to my parrot frozen, to use in infused water or for smoothies

If you freeze the fruit in ice trays individually first and then put them into bags, it prevents them from sticking together.

 

3.Chopping up veggies for the month

Corn and cauliflower - these are "dry veggies" so if you freeze them in ice-trays, they will crumble when you take them out the ice tray. If you want them to hold their ice-cube shape, add a bit of water to the veggies before you freeze them

Green pepper and onion - these are "wet" veggies, so they will retain their ice-cube shape when you take them out. If you don't want to use them in ice-cube sizes, then you can always place them on a baking sheet in the freezer and flash-freeze them this way before moving them over into a ziploc bag.

Grated and chopped carrot. These are also dry veggies, although previous experience has taught me that grated carrot will hold its ice-cube shape without water. I did add a bit of water though, just to make sure. The chopped carrot I left dry.

Once I put the chopped carrot in the bag, I bashed it up a bit with the end of a wooden spoon to break up the cubes.

I also made up some veggie mixes for future meals

4. The onions were the last veggies I chopped up, then I took a tea break to clear my kitchen of the onion fumes which were making me cry.

5. Chopping up all the meat for the month.

Before and after - I always like to write the dates on the packs

6. Because I was feeling industrious, I also marinaded some of the meat before freezing

And after that, I was full-on exhausted. I don't know if I will ever do this again! 

But if I do: I will start with the meat, so that I can make the chicken stock while I do the rest of the food. As it is now, I still have to make chicken stock sometime this or next week. On the other hand, I don't have much space left in my tiny freezer, so maybe it's a good thing to wait until next week.

If I ever decide to do this again, and do it all in one day, I won't do it on a Sunday afternoon because I was pretty much done energy-wise and I didn't have a chance to recover before hitting work on Monday. Definitely would prefer doing this on a Saturday afternoon or even a Sunday morning, so that I have some time to relax and recover.

Although I was pretty exhausted afterwards, I was pretty happy with myself. Joking aside, I think I will do it again, and maybe I can even prepare some of the sauces beforehand as well - either to freeze seperately or to marinade with the meat.

One more thing I like to do when making sauces is to make double, and freeze half, save myself a bit of time and energy next time around.

So this may (or may not) be my last kitchen / food blog for a while. Now that I have learned all my important lessons and organised my kitchen for the month, I intend to focus my energy on some other things for a while.

Inspiration for the week

Why do I put so much pressure on myself to be everything, all at once, all the time.

Why do I never feel good enough, never feel like I have done enough, never feel like I have accomplished enough.


This week, my meditation is going to be "It's okay not to be perfect". I need to be more accepting of who I am, flaws and all.

Meals from the Meal Plan

Here are some meals I made with the Budget. Most of these took me 5 - 10 minutes to prepare, and most of them require very little "supervised" cooking.

I do prepare a lot of ingredients beforehand - chopping and grating vegetables, sauces, etc .. basically anything that can be frozen. Because everything is on a meal plan, I can just take out all the ingredients to thaw overnight without having to spend ages pondering over what to make.

These went just over the R20.00/ meal budget (only by a few rand, I promise)


Bacon, mushroom and cream pasta
- 1 packet of bacon bits cost me about R30.00, I used 1/3
- 1 250ml tub of cream cost about R10.00 (I think it was just under, but still)
- Fried some chopped onion, bacon bits and chopped mushroom together, added the cream and cooked for a bit. Served with spaghetti.

Crumbed and stuffed chicken breasts with butternut mash and roast potatoes
- Mashed the butternut with some maple syrup and brown sugar
- Roasted 2 potatoes with some rosemary
- Chicken breasts were stuffed with some zucchini butter and grated carrot, crumbed with breadcrumbs, Parmesan and finely chopped almonds
- Link to recipe for zucchini butter: http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-jennie-cooks-zucchini-b-121770

R20 almost exactly

Butternut and Bolognese Cannelloni
- Made the Bolognese sauce with mince, 1/2 can of tinned tomato, 1/2 can of tomato puree and 1/2 packet of tomato paste, and I added some butternut (which I had boiled first). This actually made enough for 2 meals, so I froze half the mince mixture).
- Stuffed into the cannelloni and topped with a white sauce (which I made from a packet sauce) and some grated cheese.

Breakfast for Dinner
- Used my muffin pan to make breakfast cups and baked french toast. It was delicious. 


R10.00 - R20.00 per meal

Chicken and pineapple skewers with roast potatoes
- I basted the chicken and pineapple in sweet-chilli sauce and skewered them because everything tastes better on a skewer.

Boboti and Rice
- The Boboti sauce was made from a packet sauce

Satay chicken on skewers, with oven chips and onion rings
- The Satay sauce was made from a packet sauce
- Oven chips and onion rings were part of the grocery budget

Spaghetti Bolognese
- Mince, 1/2 can of tinned tomato, 1/2 can of tomato puree and 1/2 packet of tomato past2
- Served with spaghetti

Roast chicken, roast potatoes and roast vegetables
- Pretty much a staple food in my house. Each week I used a different vegetable - whatever I had in the house

Chicken casserole with rice
- Another staple in my house. I used different things to make the casserole sauce - sometimes a packet of soup, sometimes some chutney and mayo. Add some chopped vegetables (whatever I add) and potato.

Less than R10.00

Fried chicken strips with oven chips and onion rings, in a pita or with baked potato
- Yet another staple in my house, because this can be paired with almost any side dish and cooked with just about any marinade
- Fried up the chicken strips with some onion, grated carrot, green pepper etc, with whatever marinades or sauces I had in the fridge.
- Perfect for a Friday

Mexican rice
- By far the cheapest meal I made
- Link to recipe: http://damndelicious.net/2014/08/27/one-pot-mexican-rice-casserole/
- I made everything in one pot. It was enough for 2 meals, so I froze half.


Inspiration for Next Month's Meal Plan
Here are some things that didn't make it onto the menu in October, but I am planning for November. I can't vouch for how easy they are to cook, or how easily they fit into the budget, but it's always nice to have some inspiration.
Korean Beef: http://damndelicious.net/2013/07/07/korean-beef-bowl/
Asian Beef with Mushrooms & Snow Peas: http://juliasalbum.com/2014/09/asian-beef-with-snow-peas/
Sweet & Sour Chicken - no real recipe as yet, just an idea formulating in my mind
Something with Quinoa - I have only made it once and I think its time to try again - maybe this: http://damndelicious.net/2014/04/09/one-pan-mexican-quinoa/

Going easy on myself

I'm definitely having one of those weeks where I am feeling overwhelmed. 

The house isn't just its usual "lived in untidiness" ... it just seems, dirty and messier than usual.
And why are there always dishes to be done. And clothes to be washed.

My cupboards have gone from bad to worse, and I only have myself to blame. Why do I always just stuff the clothes in there. I could, like a normal person, take the time to put them in neatly. But I don't, and now it is an unliveable mess.

The meal plan needs to be done, and the grocery list needs to be drawn up and I am feeling uninspired. Do we really need to have dinner every night?

There is so much in the house that needs to be done, why am I the only person it bothers. Why am I the only one who see's the mess and the dust.

And all I want to do is run away from my life. Not forever. Just for a day or two.

I know in a few days my hormones will be calmer and I will go back to ignoring the piles of laundry and dishes. I know that eventually everything gets cleaned. I know that living life is more important than fretting about the housework. I know that I don't need to take on everything myself.

I have my own meditation at times like this, something along the lines of "just go easy on yourself".  It doesn't help right away, but it does help me to stop and breathe and relax for a minutes.

Thifty stock ideas

A while ago when I was starting my budget and looking for thrifty idea's, I saw someone who suggested freezing leftover wine in an ice-tray to add to cooking. I laughed when I saw this, because, I thought to myself, I never have leftover wine or would waste wine like this!

But then, a few weeks later, I noticed that the bottle of red wine we had been drinking had a tiny bit of red wine in the bottom - not enough for a glass, it was barely 2 sips.  And so, I did the thing that had previously made me laugh - I added it to an ice tray,

When I tried to remove them from the ice-tray to convert it to a ziploc bag, I noticed that the wine hadn't frozen really well and was a bit mushy.  I suspect that this is from the alcohol content which doesn't freeze well.

 Another idea for stock comes from my mom.  In a pinch, she would use a teaspoon of marmite in a cup of boiling water as stock.  I have done this a few times when cooking mince that needed some extra flavour.  My thrifty tip though, when you finish a jar of marmite, add some boiling water to the jar to get all the marmite out.  Remember, thriftiness is about using up every extra bit that you can out of something.  I did this last weekend, and used my icetray to freeze the marmite-stock water until I'm ready to use it.

Homemade chicken stock

I don't usually bother making my own stock - I mean, chicken stock cubes aren't expensive and don't take much effort to mix up.  On the other hand, chicken stock is great thing to add to almost any meal to give it extra flavour and that "made with love" taste. Plus, the real thing is full of health benefits anyway that you can't get from the cubes.*

So, since I have the bones anyway from the chicken breasts, I have started making my own chicken stock. I also have started saving up all the bits of vegetable and vegetable peelings that don't make it into my meals in a tub in my freezer, so this batch is my first chicken-and-vegetable stock.  It came out a big darker than my usual chicken-only broth, but it tastes okay so I am sure that the vegetables are the reason for the darker colour.**

The vegetables I used for the stock - mostly carrot peelings, some tomato and baby marrow.

The finished product, after straining and a day in the fridge

After making the stock, I strained it and left it in the fridge for a day to cool. I prefer to do this, so that I can take off the layer of fat before storing in the freezer. It still looked like it had some vegetable bits in it, so I strained it once before.

I bought these juice bottles earlier in the year to store soup for perfect lunch-size portions (They cost about R2.00 each).  They have come in super handy over the year.  Each bottle can take about 250ml of liquid.  The rest of it I decided to freeze in an ice-cube tray (each cube is 15ml of liquid). I like to use the cube-size portions when I just want to add a little bit of something extra. 

When you are done making the stock, keep the chicken bones.  It's amazing how much chicken is still leftover. Not enough for a meal, but just enough for a little something extra. 

The leftover chicken bones after making the stock

The chicken meat I took off the bones.

You can use the chicken meat for any number of things.

1. Freeze it in an ice-cube tray.  For those days when all you can manage is toast and cup-a-soup or 2-minute noodles, that bit of extra chicken can really make a difference.

2. You can add it to scrambled eggs or omelets when your breakfast needs something a bit extra.\

3. My favourite: add some mayonnaise for chicken mayo sandwich filling.

I'm sure that there are tons of other things you can do with it.

Ready for the freezer until I need to use it

*Read this article for the health benefits of chicken broth: http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2013/02/21/10-reasons-i-drink-bone-broth/

** If you want some info on how to make a stock, you can check some recipes here, but it's not exactly brain surgery: http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/how_to_make_chicken_stock/