Barbecued Burgers

The hamburger recipe from Jamie’s Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals is actually pretty darn close to my mom’s old recipe. He uses cream crackers crumbled up instead of bread crumbs and leaves out the Worcestershire, ketchup and horseradish.  I have currently settled on using the crackers, which do seem to provide a nice flavor, but adding the Worcestershire, because everything is better with Worcestershire I think.   But that’ s partly because I had some cream crackers left over from the holidays, which were starting to go stale.  Now that I’ve made these burgers twice in two weeks I’m out of crackers!

• 12 cream crackers, crumbed (or 1 cup bread crumbs or other cracker crumbs)
• 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley (he says 8 sprigs,  I just chop from the ends)
• 2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix all this up together, then form into 6 patties. (Yep, I think we don’t all need a 1/4 pound of beef in a burger! Stretch them out thin so they cover the bun and everyone will be happy.)   Pour a bit of olive oil onto them, then refrigerate a bit to firm them up before grilling.  You can cook on an indoor grill or outdoor grill or a good skillet, about 4 minutes per side.

Serve with the condiments of your choice. Ours vary depending on what we have around but might include:

• cooked bacon slices
• sliced avocado
• lettuce
• sliced onion or sauteed onion
• sliced pickles
• ketchup
• cheese

If we use cheese, I like to add it to the burger the last minute of cooking so it melts good. I also pop the split buns on the barbecue to toast them up a bit.  I’ve also found that our grocery store bakery’s Kaiser rolls cost about the same as a pack of really plain white hamburger buns and are much better tasting. Or if you’re feeling up to it, you can bake your own hamburger buns which are to die for!

I’ve got 5 copies of this cookbook to give away. So enter a comment by12pm PST  Friday Feb 19 mentioning the book or this recipe and I’ll select 5 random commenters to win!  For those of you that don’t win, they’re offering a $1 off coupon bringing the price down to $11.

I’ve only tried one recipe so far, but I’ve got several bookmarked to try later. I’ve just been remiss in reviewing this and wanted to get the review out. The publisher also sent me several issues of the All You magazine, which I’d not seen before. My teenager daughter enjoyed several of the articles on makeup and clothing and I saw several recipes in the magazines that I would like to try as well. Both the mgazines and the book have several coupons in them –and for things I actually buy, which is unusual, like Worcestershire sauce and Mahatma rice ($1 off each, as well as 4 other products).    The only drawback to the book and magazine that I can see is that it seems to only be available at Walmart.  But if you’ve got one of those near you, this is worth checking out. Skim through the recipes and see if it’s something you’d like.

Tonight I made the Parmesan Pork Chops.  This is very close to how I make chicken cutlets but I somehow never thought to do it with pork chops before. Even my daughter that “doesn’t like pork much” enjoyed these tonight.  I served with some applesauce, baked potato and green salad.

• 1/2 cup flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 3/4 cup bread crumbs
• 4 thin boneless pork cutlets (or cook longer if thicker)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 Tbs olive oil, divided
• 2 Tbs butter, divided

Put the flour in one shallow dish or pie pan, the eggs in another, and the bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese in a third. Mix up the eggs a bit with a fork or whisk. Stir together the bread crumbs and cheese.

Salt and pepper the pork chops to taste while you heat  1 Tbs of oil and 1 Tbs of butter in a frying pan over medium heat.  When the butter is foaming a bit, dredge a pork chop in the flour, then egg, the bread crumbs and lay in the frying pan.

Cooking Parmesan Pork Cutlets

Cook about 5 minutes total for thin pork chops, turning halfway through. These were delicious with some applesauce, a baked potato and green salad.

Remember: Enter a comment below before noon on Friday February 19  for a chance to win one of 5 copies being given away!

Tuna Melts

Bad picture but good tuna melts! A good friend sent me some English Muffins from Wolferman’s for Christmas. We started working together, whoa, something like 23 years ago I think and got along great.  Then  I quit work for a while to stay home with my kids and we drifted apart but still stayed in modest touch. Then she had her kids and quit work, but around that time  I was divorced and a single mom so the opportunities to get together were slim, although we still managed at least a yearly something I think. Just the past year or so, we’ve reconnected on a more regular basis for lunch and it’s been great.

And what a treat these muffins are! Big thick hearty fresh muffins.  We’ve been enjoying them from breakfast and I froze some for later. Tonight my youngest asked for tuna melts for dinner and I thought to use up the last of the “original” flavored muffins.

For 4 large English muffins, mix together:

• 12 ounces canned tuna, packed in water, drained
• enough mayonnaise to moisten
• capers if you like (my kids don’t, so I just add a few capers to mine

Toast the English muffins while you preheat your broiler and mix up the tuna.

Line a small baking sheet with foil for easy cleanup and put the toasted muffin halves on it, then divide the tuna among the muffins and spread out. (I had some leftover so you could easily do 6 halves. We only ate 1 each of these, along with some broccoli and cheese sauce.)

Top the adult portions with capers. Top each muffin half with a good slice of Cheddar cheese. If you added capers to any, add a caper or two to the top of the cheese so you can tell which have capers in them after they’re cooked!

Slide under the broiler for a few minutes, until the tuna is warmed and the cheese is melted.

We’ve got one leftover which one child has claimed for lunch tomorrow.

I was so excited to receive a copy of this cookbook to review: The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare

I’ve been following Erin Chase’s blog 5 Dollar Dinners for some time. I track my overall food budget, and used to track it even more carefully than I do today. That’s why I started CheapCooking.com. But I love the idea of setting a “do not exceed goal” for dinner, the highest cost meal for most of us.   She set that price based on what she felt were reasonable goals for a healthy dinner for her family of four where she lives, basically $1.25 per person for dinner, and her overall goal of less than $300/month for her family of 4.

Obviously, your own goals may vary, depending on where you live and how many you are feeding. But the idea of setting a goal for dinner is a great one, as I think most of us spend more on dinner than other meals. And having an overall monthly target lets you vary a bit week to week, as special occasions arise. Certain months you may stock up a bit more based on sales and other months, hopefully, come in a bit under.

Living in the San Francisco bay area, I find myself drooling over her sale prices. But don’t let your own circumstances derail the idea. Track your prices. Stock up on sale prices.  Use coupons where they make sense. Have a great repertoire of recipes that you can use for healthy balanced meals.  Where I live, there are no stores that double coupons, for example, but I bet you can cut your grocery bills substantially by following her guidelines, even without using coupons, and you will find some great recipes to add to your regular favorites.

Just the day after I received this book to review (meaning I didn’t pay for it, but that did NOT influence my review here, I would have bought it regardless so was thrilled to get a review copy! And if I get a review copy of a book I don’t like, I generally just don’t review it…), my youngest asked for spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.  We had two extras for dinner that night if I recall, and I still ended up with leftovers.

I had everything I needed in my freezer and pantry. I have a great meatball recipe handed down from my Italian ex-MIL but opted to follow Chase’s recipe so I could do a good review. The major differences would be fresh garlic over garlic powder  (I grow my own garlic so count it as nearly free at this point since you replant it every year but did cook this up with garlic powder just to test the recipe) and if I want to splurge I use a mix of ground pork, ground veal and ground beef. You can sometimes find this at reasonable prices but I use pure ground beef when I cannot and used that the night I made these.) I think the key is good Parmesan, which is cheap on a per serving basis since you need very little for maximum flavor.

I also make my own breadcrumbs whenever we have bread going stale, so always have a stash in the freezer.

Italian Meatballs

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning (or use some basil and oregano)
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (splurge here I say!)
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbs olive oil

Mix all the ingredients together and form into 1 inch balls. You can use a small cookie scoop if you prefer but I find the meatballs stay together better if you “pack” them a bit with your hands. I use my KitchenAid 5-qt. Stand Mixer to mix stuff like this. but then form the balls with my hands.

Preheat the oven to 350 while you’re forming the meatballs (and perhaps making the sauce!).

Heat a skillet with 2 Tbs olive oil and brown the meatballs over medium heat, turning periodically to brown evenly for a few minutes. Then put the meatballs in a lightly greased baking dish and bake at 350 for 15-20  minutes.

Serve with your favorite spaghetti or marina sauce (see below) and 1 pound cooked spaghetti. This will serve far more than 4 in my house, but we love leftover spaghetti and meatballs for lunches or leftover spaghetti and sauce in meatball sandwiches as well.  (Just toast some bread or rolls, preferably with some garlic and butter, then load up some meatballs and sauce, top with some provolone or mozzarella cheese and broil a few minutes.)

Marinara Sauce

• 1 28-ounce can of crushed or pureed tomatoes
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 Tbs dried basil
• 1 Tbs dried oregano
• 1 Tbs dried rosemary
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

I grow rosemary year round so used 1 tsp fresh chopped rosemary instead.

Combine everything and simmer at least 15 minutes, longer is good too. Just stir now and then and leave it at a very low simmer.

Store the sauce for a week in the refrigerator or 6 months in the freezer.

If you can grow any or all of the herbs and garlic that cuts the cost significantly and improves the flavor.

Review Recap

The girls love my normal meatballs and sauce recipe but declared this really good, as did our guests.  I do think meatballs are better with some ground pork and/or veal but that might knock it out of your budget. For pure ground beef, these are delicious! And I think if you had 1/3 each of ground beef, pork and veal, you’d have a killer recipe.

I  play around with marinara sauce so much I don’t know that I have a “normal” but this is a great one. You might think about adding some fennel if you’re into a stronger Italian flavor but that’ s purely a matter of what you’re used to.

I’ve gotten pretty good at reading recipes over the last 18 years of cooking and can say that most of these recipes read well, even if I haven’t cooked them all. Some are very similar to some of my old favorite recipes and others are new but sound great.

I served this meal with some garlic bread and a Caesar salad. I did use a store-bought dressing but made the croutons from a leftover hot dog bun (coat with some butter and sauteed in a bit of  butter with some herbs).

Updated to add: If you’d like a chance to win a copy of the cookbook, which just hit the stores today, post a comment. I’ll randomly draw a winner on December 29.

If you don’t win, you can buy this from Amazon by following this link: The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook: 200 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, and Nourishing Meals That Are Easy on the Budget and a Snap to Prepare or look for it in your local bookstore or ask your library to buy a copy.

White Bean and Ham Soup

This is from The Supper Book: 10th Anniversary Edition by Marion Cunningham. Kind of funny–you can buy a hardcover of this on Amazon (used) for $3 (plus shipping) but the paperback version, that I have is $8 (still a deal!). This is so simple, but so delicious. Certainly frugal, let’s see $1 for the beans, two onions for 50 cents maybe. The ham is the expensive part and that’s only because I actually did buy a small piece of ham just to make this. Normally I would have cooked a ham and used a ham bone but that’s hard to do with just the two of us! So I used about $2.50 of ham. Her recipe says 4 servings but I know we’ll get at least 6, likely 8. I’ll likely serve with a small sandwich, like a tuna melt.  So $1 / serving or less.  You’d pay more for a can of ham and bean soup and it wouldn’t be half as good and you’d get two small servings.

• 1 pound white navy beans or Great Norther beans
• 2 onions, chopped
• 2 cups or so of chopped ham or smoked pork butt or a leftover ham bone with some meat on it
• water to cover
• salt and pepper to taste

Soak the beans, either overnight or by the quick soak method: cover with water, bring to a boil, cover, turn the stove off, and let the beans sit in the hot water for an hour or so. Then drain and use.

Put the beans, onion and ham in a large stockpot. Cover with water by 1 1/2″ . Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer, cover partially and simmer 2 hours or so, until the beans are tender. Watch the water level and add a bit more if needed. Taste and add salt and pepper as desired.

This is ham and bean soup at its simplest and it’s delicious. If you want more in it, you could think about adding some carrots and celery (I would saute first in a bit of oil with the chopped onion then add the other ingredients.)  You could also use chicken broth if you wanted. But I think you will be surprised at how delicious this is in its most simple form.

• leftover taco meat
• homemade salsa if it’s summer or bottled if not
• chopped lettuce
• grated Cheddar cheese or a Mexican blend
• refried beans or black beans or whole pinto beans
• sliced olives if you’d like
• chopped avocado if you have some
• chopped fresh tomato
• chopped green onions or yellow onions
• tortilla chips or broke up leftover taco shells

If you’ve got a vegetarian in the family, this is a great dish because you can serve everything in small bowls and let everyone build their own taco salad, with or without meat.  You could also substitute leftover cooked chicken for the ground beef. It’s very flexible.

Lemon Butter and Herb Chicken

lemon butter chicken

For tonight, I’m doing a quick twenty minute marinade in a butter, lemon juice and herb sauce then basting and barbecuing. This came from an Orlando Sentinel article with 5 recipes for chicken quarters.   There are several good sounding recipes there so go check it out. I’m using fresh rosemary just picked from the garden. Mmm…. the scent alone makes you hungry!  I roughly halved their recipe and am cooking 2 legs and 3 thighs.

• 1/4 cup butter or margarine
• juice from half a lemon
• 1 tablespoon dried parsley
• 1 tablespoon garlic salt
• 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried savory
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• a healthy sprinkling of black pepper

Barbecued lemon herb chicken

Melt the butter, add the seasonings. Reserve some for basting and pour the rest over the chicken. Let sit 20 minutes or so, then grill until done, basting now and then. Cook over medium heat for about an hour.  It took me years to learn that chicken barbecues better over a lower heat for a longer time.

El Pollo Loco Chicken

This is another recipe from America’s Most Wanted Recipes: Delicious Recipes from Your Family’s Favorite Restaurants. I’ll let you know tomorrow how it turns out, as I’m marinating the chicken pieces overnight and will grill them tomorrow.  The marinade reads well though!  And smelled good…  The recipe called for 1 cup olive oil. I’m not sure I would use good olive oil, or that much, if the cost is a consideration.  This made a LOT of marinade, more than enough for a whole chicken cut up into 8 pieces.  I’m using 7-8 chicken legs and thighs.

• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1 cup oil
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/4 tsp oregano
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
• 1 1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce

We’ve got fresh tomatoes for salsa, ripe avocados for guacamole and fresh cilantro in the garden so I’m planning on some nice chicken with tortillas, guacamole, and salsa tomorrow tonight. I’ll probably cook up some beans and rice too.

Related recipes:

• pinto beans
• black beans
• Spanish rice
• salsa

• 4 eggs
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 Tbs butter
• 1/4 cup or so shredded Mexican cheese
• 1/4 cup or so sour cream
• a few large dollops of tomatilla salsa

Whisk the eggs together in a medium bowl and add salt and pepper to taste. Grate the cheese. I just had some of the Mexican blend around otherwise I would have just used Jack or Cheddar.

Heat the butter in a 10 inch skillet over medium heat. When it has melted, tilt the pan so the buter has coated the bottom well. Then pour in the eggs.

Cook slowly until the bottom has begun to set. Tilt the pan and lift the set eggs to let the runny ones run under the set part. Continue until the eggs are still wet on the top, but not too runny. Add the cheese, salsa, and sour cream to half the eggs, then fold the other half over onto the top. Cook another minute or two until firmly set.

Cut the omelet in half and serve with some toast. French bread is fantastic but any buttered  toast will do.

Pull the skin off the chicken and pull the meat away from the bones, watching for gristle or fat.  Dice it up finely. You should get about a cup of chicken. Add enough mayonnaise to moisten, then stir in some diced dill pickles. (Or sweet pickle relish if you’d like.)  If it was just me, I’d add some diced celery as well but the kids gripe about that so I left it out. Depending on the chicken, you may or may not need to add some salt and/or pepper.

• 1 cup diced cooked chicken
• 1/4 cup or so of mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup or so of diced dill pickle
• salt and pepper to taste

I toasted some whole wheat bread and spread this out for 3 healthy sandwiches.

Served with a simple green salad of:

• 2  cups chopped red leaf lettuce
• 1/2 an avocado, chopped
• 1 tomato, chopped
• oil and vinegar dressing to taste

Now if it had been just me, I would have added some garbanzo beans and sliced red onion and maybe some sunflower seeds or dried cranberries to the salad.  But I kept it simple, for one night at least.

So after hearing he died I decided to alter my dinner plans and cook something from one of his cookbooks tonight for dinner. I settled on the Egg Croquettes because they are like nothing I have ever even heard of, let alone eaten. I liked them. Different, but good. One child at them happily, the other didn’t like them. (This is the one that used to be totally adventurous so it’s funny how they change through the years!)

A simple supper anyway, nothing too spicy or complicated or demanding. I’ve made chicken croquettes and potato croquettes before but these were my first egg croquettes!

• 4 eggs, beaten together
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup grated cheese
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• 3 Tbs olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 -2 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 8 oz can tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup peas (frozen or canned or fresh)
• 1 cup of rice cooked in 2 cups of chicken broth

Heat the oil in a frying pan and start the onion and garlic cooking over medium low heat while you mix the eggs, bread crumbs, cheese and parsley in a bowl.  When the onion and garlic are soft, add the tomato sauce, water and peas. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer.

Meanwhile start the rice cooking. Bring the chicken broth to a boil, then stir in the rice, reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 25 minutes.

Use a soup spoon to drop the egg “dumplings” or croquettes into the simmering sauce. Drop them around the pan so they are not touching. Do not stir them!  Cover and cook over low heat 25-30 minutes.

Serve the croquettes and sauce over the cooked rice.

Serves 4.