The Sweet Taste of Volunteering

Before our youngest child started middle school, my husband and I agreed that it would be a good idea for me to stay home, so long as finances allowed for it.  After all middle school is not for the weak and never has been.  As part of this plan, I volunteered to work in the school office every Tuesday.  What started out as a plan to keep up with my daughter turned out to be so much more. For the last 3 years I have used the staff as my guinea pigs - ahem, I mean testers - for many of the recipes for my blog.  They did not seem to mind being forced each Tuesday to have a sweet treat. Unfortunately, getting honest feedback from them was tougher than nails as they were never critical - I think they were afraid if they gave honest feedback I might stop bringing treats.  Anyway, I digress.  Most of the days I had planned out what I would bring because it was something that had been floating in my head all week.  But then there were those days where I was really busy and completely blocked for creativity.  Those were the days that I had to open up the fridge to see what I had and use my inner "Chopped" skills. Funny how I feel those tend to be my best desserts.  It's like I'm being creative and don't realize it until the finished result.  Now, three years later, our daughter is ready to move on to high school.  It has been an honor and privilege to work in the office with some of the finest ladies I know.  I will miss them dearly and I am proud to say that buttering (or sugaring) up the staff just in case my daughter got in trouble was not needed.  She made it through with a strong shell and, thanks to some of her amazing teachers, a solid focus for the future... I'm jus' sayin'!

One Pot (food processor) Cheese Tart

Preheat oven to 350º

In my food processor I combined the following for the crust.

9 bakery style (non-frosted) sugar cookies
2 Tbs. melted butter

Blend until combined
Pat into an 8 inch tart pan, all the way around and up the sides.
If you use a bigger tart pan just use more cookies and a tad more melted butter.
Don't wash the processor bowl out, just free it from any excess crumbs you may have lingering on the sides.

Place the following in the food processor .

1 8 oz. Brick of Cream Cheese (Room Temperature)
1 Egg
1/2 Cup of Sugar
1 Tbsp. of Vanilla

Whirl until creamy. Spread evenly over crust. Place tart pan on a cookie sheet. Bake in oven for approximately 25-30 minutes. It will be done when it only has a slight movement to the middle but the sides are firm.  Cool completely before topping with your favorite sliced fruit. I used mangos and strawberries as they came in my co-op produce basket this week. I also melted a little peach jam and brushed it on top of the fruit to give it a little glisten. This is also a good tip if your fruit is not very ripe or sweet. However, I feel perfectly ripe fruit is the way to go on this tart.

I would love to see what your favorite fruit combos are - keep me posted.

Many cupcake flavors were taste-tested over 3 years.

I will miss Tuesday afternoons - These ladies made volunteering so fun. 

Food for Thought

If you've been following my blog recently, then you're probably aware of the little adventure that I took on just over a week ago. To sum it up, I, along with a fairly large group of other Austin food bloggers, agreed to live off of a typical bag of groceries one would have been given at a local food pantry, supplemented by a few dollars typically available from the food stamp program and some dairy from the WIC program. My family's week of following along with this project is now over and you might be wondering how we did... First and foremost, we certainly are not comparing the daily plight that the food pantry's clients face to our week-long experiment - nothing can simulate that real-world experience that these people face. Looking back on the week, nobody in my family complained, tossed out the "I'm starving" comment or went to bed hungry, like so many others that face hunger daily. I was able to put together good meals and make the food last all week, and my family went right along - maybe not eating what they might normally have, but not complaining either.

So what did I learn from this project? Mainly, that my preconceived notions were wrong, this project was an eye-opener for me both personally and socially. My awareness that the hunger situation in our nation is so much larger than I thought and that we seriously need to step up to the plate and rally against it. We can do this in big or small ways. You know that $5.00 latte you get every morning? Take just one of those away ($5.00) and give it to your local food bank where they will turn that into $25.00 worth of food. Amazing, right? Or sending out an e-mail to all your neighbors that says, on this particular day, I'm going to the local food bank - clean out your pantry and set aside anything that is still good, but that you never use and I'll come by to pick it up to donate. Or how about planting a few extra veggies in your garden this spring and donating that extra produce to your local food bank (surprised about this one? I sure was). How about donating your time, because that is just as precious. If you can donate even once a month to your local food bank or food pantry, I promise you your life will be forever changed. You will have a one-on-one chance to be a blessing in someone's life and here's the extra icing on the cake - you will be blessed beyond measure for having had the opportunity to look hunger in the eye and know you made a difference.


I've been fortunate enough to never have experienced true hunger. Because of this project, however, my mother shared some very personal stories with me about how programs like this helped our family. Growing up, I always thought my mom was so good at taking a few groceries and turning them into loaves and fishes for our family. So I was shocked when she told me that there were so many times that my father's business did not produce enough revenue to cover groceries and he had too much pride to except food stamps or handouts. It was feast or famine in his business, and in the down times, she would get groceries supplemented from our church pantry, shop at day-old bakeries, pick fruit from local orchards and go in with another family to purchase a side of beef. Somehow, she made us kids all believe it was just another field trip or adventure as we visited various ethnic stores and farms, not realizing it was just where the sales were that week. In the process, she saved my father's pride and taught us to appreciate food for the soul. The bonus was that she always managed to turn that food into some good eats. I am forever grateful because out of that came three foodie children, now grown, who appreciate any kind of food whether it's a bag of beans or filet mignon. We won't hold our nose up to what's placed in front of us if it's placed with love and I find myself now trying to teach my children this same theory.

We have been blessed to have been able to support our own family over the years, but like so many others, we could easily be a missed paycheck or two away from not being able to make ends meet. The difference now is that I know that my local food bank is there to catch me and not allow me to go hungry. They are there to educate us on nutrition and show us that we can eat thriftily and still serve tasty meals. In the end, this project gave me a new awareness to something I honestly - and shamefully - never gave a whole lot of thought to, and equally important, revealed a bit of my past that I may never have known about. If there is a reason for all of this hunger, I will never understand it. But I will be making some serious changes. I will start living more out of my pantry instead of "buy, cook, put away, then buy more instead of use what I have" and I will investigate and educate myself with more organic, sustainable foods. I will be volunteering with my mom and daughter (3 generations) at our local food bank. And I will be sending my extra Meyer lemons and blood oranges from my backyard each year to the food bank.

Every night at the dinner table, I am more than grateful that I get to share dinner with a quirky, loving family and that I get to prepare food with love for each of them. This week, I realized that whether it's a pot of beans or a high-dollar steak, when it comes right down to it, it's about the family and the love and the sense of community that feeds me and keeps me sustainable, and not that fancy new recipe I just have to try - I'm jus' sayin'!


Breakfast for Dinner

I found that using the fresh herbs in my garden all week really made a difference in flavor. It costs very little to start an herb garden and you can grow inside an apartment or in a pot on your patio, or section off a portion of your backyard. This particular night, we had herbed omelets and spicy candied bacon.


Spicy Candied Bacon

Arrange bacon on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle with brown sugar and any spices you would like. I used chili pepper flakes and ground cumin. Bake 350 degrees for about 25 minutes, keeping a watchful eye so that the sugar does not burn.


Gnocchi in Sage Brown Butter

One of the items in our pantry bag was potatoes. I had tried making gnocchi once before and it was a complete flop (picture paper mache, but worse) SO I decided to try it again, but this time, I would go with my gut on how to tackle it.

I start with 4 small baked potatoes. You can use your microwave or oven, whichever you prefer. I peel the baked potatoes and run them through my ricer. I then put them in a large bowl, sprinkled with salt and pepper. Drop in one egg and start adding flour while mixing until I get the right consistency to knead into a rope. Roll into a rope about the thickness of your index finger, and slice into sections about 1" in length. I then drop them in salted boiling water, and wait for them to rise to the surface before taking them out and placing them in a skillet to toss with browned butter and minced fresh sage (from the garden). This time it worked! They were perfect little pillows. Dinner was served and I felt so proud of myself for accomplishing this dish. I think I even did a little "gnocchi jig", if there is such a thing!


Morning Oatmeal

I have always been a bit of a oat snob. I like texture so I would purchase steel oats to accomplish this. Addie Broyles convinced me in her article to try making oatmeal with plain old rolled oats (which was in our pantry bag). I did and I am hooked! I took a handful of oats in a bowl, poured some milk - just a tad bit over the top of the oats - and placed in the microwave for about 2 minutes (this depends on how much your making as well as your microwave so you may want to play around with it). When it was done, I sprinkled a little cinnamon, brown sugar and dried crannies and nuts on top. This had all the texture of steel oats with a much smaller price tag. It also held me over all morning 'til lunch. Hats off to Addie!

Thinking Outside the Boxes & Cans

It's day 3 in the Austin Food Bloggers Challenge where Austin bloggers take a typical basket of items one would receive from their local food pantry via the CAFB, supplemented with $30.00 from the food stamp program and a few bucks from the WIC program. Our mission is to take these items, along with a few of the items we might normally keep in our pantry on a daily basis, and create some nutritious, delicious meals that will stretch out to feed a typical average family for a week.

With stretch being the key word here, I'm not used to stretching my mind to play "Chopped" without access to a Food Network-like pantry. I may not be serving my food to celebrity foodie judges, but I am serving these meals to the most important people in my life - my family. My first challenge was coming up with a menu. I usually make a weekly menu, but it's based on my desires for trying new recipes while mixing in old favorites. This week's challenge forced me to look at my menus from a completely different perspective. While sitting down to figure this out, I had to take into consideration that, at the end of paying bills, I would probably not have any "extra money" to just go pick up those extra basic ingredients - let alone any "exotic ingredients" - that I normally would to try in some new recipe. What if I had to make a decision between getting that beautiful, fresh produce from Central Market or paying the phone bill and instead buying canned veggies and fruit? What if this was the week we needed toiletries? What if my daughter's birthday was this week and she wanted a party and I had to figure out if we could actually do this or politely ask her to understand that we just could not afford the cost of a birthday cake?

Seem a bit extreme? Unfortunately, it's not. For a large portion of our society, these decisions and more are made every day. The more I investigate and learn about our local hunger issues, the more frustrated I get. I find that, like most important issues, it's all about awareness and information first, followed by small, individual actions that by themselves do not make change, but when put together, make a real difference and can effect a change. I hope to take information I've learned and share it with more of my friends so that they, too, can share with their friends and maybe we will start a new positive buzz about changing the face of hunger.

Back to the menu - since the special this week on meat at my local grocery store was a choice between a value pack of lean round steak and some fatty pork chops, I decided to go with the beef. It will work better with the food my family is used too. Also, by buying it in bulk at the "value pack" price, I can actually grind some of it into ground round for burger recipes and spend less than if I bought regular ground beef. I started thinking literally outside of the box. I took some of my family's favorite meals and changed them up a bit to accommodate the items in my "new" pantry. I also spoke to quite a few friends that I regularly exchange recipes with and asked them about a time when they had to really watch their pennies. What were some of their tricks? Ends up, quite a few of my friends have fallen on hard times at some point in their lives (not including those fun college years of surviving on mac-n-cheese and hot dogs). They had lots of ideas to share on how they creatively stretched those dollars. Coupons, co-ops, growing your own gardens and using fresh herbs for seasonings, extending pasta dishes, potlucks, soups and slow-cooked meals were all touched on. With all of that info and the items and budget I was given, here is what I came up with for one week's worth of dinners.

Day 1 - Spaghetti Bolognese, Garlic Toast, Fruit Cocktail, Mixed Green Salad



Day 2 - Amy's Lasagna Soup, Crispy Chipolte Quesadillas



Day 3 - Fresh Garden Herb Grilled Steak, Baked Potatoes, Herb Butter Lettuce Salad with Avocado, Pears Simmered in Cinnamon


Day 4 - Chimi Churi Steak Tacos, seasoned Rice and Beans, Avocado Salad

Day 5 - Gnocchi with Carbonara Sauce, Corn Fritters, Cucumber Pickle Salad

Day 6 - Breakfast for Dinner, Baked Oatmeal with Peaches, Candied Bacon

Day 7 - Leftover Pizza - (homemade pizza dough with a wide range of leftovers from fridge to put on as toppings)

Of course, my family has no problem eating cereal for breakfast everyday so that was not a challenge - not as healthy as I'd like, but in budget! Giving up sodas and fancy coffee creamers for a week will actually have a "good" reverse reaction as well.

Doing this project for only a week does not come anywhere close to understanding what hunger feels like and I won't even pretend to understand that sinking feeling of sadness that comes when you kiss your child goodnight and they tell you they are still hungry. We are already the most charitable nation on Earth and yet we still see the face of hunger in most every town. Together we can educate, raise awareness and continue to take those necessary, small, individual steps towards meaningful change.
Won't you join me? Because when it comes to thinking outside the box and stretching your dollar, look no further than your local Capital Area Food Bank, where they turn every five dollar donation into twenty five dollars! I'm jus' sayin'!

Amy's Amazing Lasagna Soup

Lasagna Soup

1 lb. ground beef
1. onion, chopped
Lasagna Hamburger Helper
6 C. water
1 large & 1 small can diced tomatoes ( I use 2 14oz. cans)
1 can corn
1 zucchini, chopped
2 T. Parmesan cheese

Open one box of Lasagna Hamburger Helper and set aside. Saute beef and onion. Drain well and add 1 seasoning packet of Lasagna Hamburger Helper, water, tomatoes, corn, Parmesan cheese. Cook 10 minutes. Next, add Lasagna noodles and zucchini. Simmer 20 minutes; sprinkle Parmesan, serve and enjoy! I serve with a salad and garlic bread sticks.