The Six O'Clock Scramble

I knew this book was a winner as I glanced through the recipes. I'm getting pretty good at "reading" recipes and have loved the ones I've tried so far, plus have my little sticky notes on a ton more! Since I've been on a yogurt kick lately, I was thrilled to find a few good recipes using yogurt in here, including a yogurt marinade for chicken breasts and a lentil stew with a ginger-yogurt sauce.

As I understand it, first there was a newsletter service. Each week you get 5 recipes suitable for weeknights, complete with a grocery list to make your life simple. The recipes are organized seasonally and provide a really nice variety, with everything from beef to fish to vegetarian entrees. Suggested side dishes are noted as well.

What I have is the book that came after the newsletter but it's organized the same way. You get 52 weeks of seasonal recipes. You can copy the grocery lists from the book or go online and print them out. You don't have to follow the menus, of course. I don't. But if you wanted someone to do the work for you of planning your meals until you get the hang of it yourself, you'll find some awfully good food on your table with very little effort.

The recipes are clear and well-written. The index is done well, so you can find a particular recipe you might want to repeat later. Some seasonally organized cookbooks get too cutesy with the names and I can never find a recipe again later! Plus there's an extra index of recipes by category, making it easy to find something for potlucks or to make ahead. I've already recommended the book to a few friends who struggle with what to cook every night.

Refreshing Yogurt Drink: Sweet Lassi

I've gone off coffee somehow, but I still want something to drink in the mornings. This morning I made a yogurt drink, made from my second batch of homemade yogurt. It was delicious!

1/2 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup ice water
1/2 cup crushed ice or ice cubes
1 tsp or so of sugar, to taste

Mix this all up in your blender. Mmmmmmm....like a smoothie but without the sweetness of the fruit.

Yogurt and Beets

I've been on a yogurt kick lately. Not sure why. The kids have always loved smoothies. And periodically they'll go through a flavored yogurt period, then it will end. But I almost always have plain yogurt around for cooking. I use it in place of sour cream or buttermilk for baking.

I recently bought a yogurt maker, although I know you can make it without a "maker." It's just easier to me and it was cheap enough. So I also bought a yogurt cookbook because I find that we tend to like things I make with plain yogurt, including pancakes and waffles, coffeecake, marinated chicken, or corn bread. Of course we like buttermilk, too. Something about that sourness!

So far I've made a couple of recipes from this book and really like it. There are recipes for everything from appetizers to soups to side dishes to various meat dishes and desserts. I started by making the "Garlic French Yogurt Dressing" and have used that in two different recipes so far.

Garlic French Yogurt Dressing

1 cup unflavored yogurt
2 Tbs olive oil
2 Tbs lemon juice
1 garlic clove, pressed or minced

Mix it all up and chill. Use on tossed green salads, with cooked Swiss chard (cooked then tossed with the dressing, chilled and then served), and tonight I made a beet salad. This winter I roasted beets for the first time and one child loved them. I thought she might like the beet salad but it was a bit much for her. Oh well, I loved it! I saved a beet from the can and just sliced it up plain and the girls ate that.

Beet Salad
1 15 ounce can beets, diced
1/2 - 3/4 cup of the Garlic French Yogurt Dressing
salt and pepper to taste
minced fresh parsley or mint (I did the parsley)

This was such a nice side dish to the steak I made, cool and refreshing. I love pickled beets (well, pickled anything really!) but have not done much with plain beets until now.

Speaking of pickled things, my Persian neighbor called me over this evening to chat and ended up having me taste her pickled eggplants. Mmmm! I love eggplant anyway and with the pickled thing going, it was really good! She promised me a jar of her next batch. I can't wait!

Cheese Sauce Over...

Cheese sauce. This post on recipe copyrights had me thinking about the simple "recipes" that have perhaps endless variations, but are all basically the same. Cheese sauce is perhaps not quite as easy as boiling water--but nearly so!

Here's the basics for a medium thick sauce, about what you'd expect from a can of "cream of" soup if you're used to cooking with those.

2 Tbs butter
2 Tbs flour
1/4 tsp salt
a bit of white pepper if you have it
1 cup milk
1 cup grated cheese

Melt the butter over medium low heat. You don't want to burn the butter by cooking too fast, but you don't want to wait forever either. When it has melted, add the flour and stir in. I like to use a wire whisk for this but my flat-edged wooden "spoon" works nearly as well. I swear if I ever decide to market a CheapCooking branded tool, this flat wooden spoon will be my model. I always reach for it first.

Anyway, stir in the flour and cook a minute or two. The flour and butter quickly become this "thing" that has a life of its own. It moves as one. If you're in a hurry you can skip this minute or two of cooking but I find it adds some good flavor.

Stir in the milk. The easiest way is actually to microwave the milk during the minute or two you're cooking the roux, the flour and butter. But it's not strictly necessary. Just add a bit of milk at a time and stir to incorporate it into the flour and butter before adding more. I don't mean like a drop or two at a time, but maybe 1/4 cup or so in the beginning, then another 1/4 cup, then the rest in one fell swoop.

Bring to a simmer. You can turn up the heat if need be and you're impatient. Watch it though as the milk will burn at a high heat. This should just take a few minutes. Cook a minute or two at a simmer. This is your basic white sauce. You're done.

For cheese sauce, turn off the heat and add in a cup of grated Cheddar (or 1/2 Cheddar and 1/2 Swiss or something similar depending on what flavor you want and what cheese you have around) and stir until melted through.

Pour over any cooked vegetable, such as broccoli, and your kids will eat it up with no complaints. Or should.

I have a variation of this I use for Welsh Rarebit that I serve over toast for dinner periodically. Sinfully simple and good. It has beer and Worcestershire added. Mmmmm...

When you're faced with a recipe that calls for a "cream of" soup, use a variation of this. Use chicken broth instead of milk (or half broth and half milk) for cream of chicken. Saute some celery in the butter before adding the flour for cream of celery, mushrooms for cream of mushrooms.

The same process is used for:

• Macaroni and Cheese
• Creamed Spinach
• Garlic Pizza with White Sauce

and many, many more dishes. The only tricky part is getting the butter and flour to combine, then the liquid (milk or broth). When I first started out I would "curdle" one now and then from having the heat too high. Once you find the right setting on your stove, it's a piece of cake.

CheapCooking.com

Just a quick reminder to folks looking for more recipes and ways to save a few bucks at the grocery store. This blog is just part of a larger site called CheapCooking.com. I'm just not technical enough to figure out how to make it all look the same and get the regular menus in here. Maybe next year... In the meantime, click on over and explore over there as well!