Use It Up - Quick and Easy Summer Dessert

This isn't really a recipe, but I'll name it for you. :-D

Fruit and Cake Jumble

As I recall, we had had some friends to dinner some years back and she brought this yummy fruit mixture, among other things. She left the remnants with us afterwards and I had some cake on hand so I crumbled the cake and mixed the fruit with it. Then I put a few scoops of ice cream on top and it looks like I put some strawberry freezer jam over that. It was really good! 

This is a very simple way to use up stale-ish or leftover cake and chopped fruit. If you don't have enough liquid from the fruit, you can sprinkle it with bottled fruit juice of your choice or even soda. 

Whipped cream or vanilla pudding could substitute for the ice cream.

You could also make this with canned of frozen fruit if you don't have fresh. You might want to thaw the frozen fruit at least partially.

It's really just about being a little inventive with what you have. :-) Be creative and adventurous! And Enjoy!

Turkey Ham Special

This is an original recipe of my own as far as I know. I started making it years ago. You can make changes according to your preferences as it's very easy to make and switch up for variety or personal taste. You could use avocado or pickled beetroot in place of the tomato. You could also pop it into a bun or pita bread and eat it as a sandwich. 

This dish can be used for a quick lunch or for the meat dish of the main meal. If you use it for the main meal, you could slice the turkey ham a little thicker than you would for a lunch. Also feel free to change up the meat. It could also be made with sliced turkey or ham or roast beef or chicken breast. Just be sure it is fully cooked before hand. (Maybe a new use for leftovers?)

You will need:

Sliced turkey ham (or other meat)

Sliced tomatoes 

Sliced cheddar or cheese of your choice
Onion and garlic powder (optional).

Place a slice of turkey ham on a microwave-safe plate. Sprinkle lightly with the onion and garlic powder if you are using them. Place slices of tomato on top of this, and top with slices of cheese. Cook in microwave till the cheese is melted to your satisfaction. This is one serving. Repeat until you have a serving for each person being served.

If you don't use a microwave this could be done in a frying pan on the stovetop with just a little water and oil in the pan and a close fitting lid to hold in the steam. It will take a little longer than the microwave. 

If you are making this for a larger family you may want to try laying the turkey ham slices, etc. in a greased baking dish or pan, and baking it in a conventional oven. I have not tried this so, you will have to experiment. You probably should put the cheese on after the turkey ham and tomatoes are partially cooked.

Kitchen Tip – The Dating Game

(First published Oct. 2011.)



My mom has had a habit of keeping leftovers too long sometimes, as did her mother before her and her mother before her.  After one “incident” when this didn’t work out well for my dad, he suggested that we start dating every container of leftovers before we put them in the fridge so that we would know how long they had been in there.  This happened before I got married, but I still try to keep up the habit most of the time since it is very useful to know exactly how old something is!  You just can’t remember all that stuff if you have any decent sized collection of leftovers.

As you can see from the photo, I use a part of a sticky note and put the date on it.  Sometimes they do fall off of some lids because of the texture of the plastic.  In the case of glass storage dishes with plastic lids I often put the label on the side of the dish because it sticks better to the glass.

This not only helps you not to feed your family food that is too old, but it also helps you to use up the older things first, thus giving some added direction to the usage of leftovers.  And, I admit, upon occasion I have found some things in my fridge that were way too old to be used!  :-)

By the way, the sticky notes also work for putting food in the freezer.  However, I suggest you use a piece of tape to make sure it stays on, and also add the contents as well as the date with the year so that you know what it is and how long it’s been in there.

Dumplings for Soup

 

I was inspired awhile back to make chicken soup with dumplings. I looked up some recipes for dumplings and ended up combining two – one from the internet and one from my Mennonite cookbook. :-)  You may use these on your favorite chicken soup recipe or on some other type of soup.  Please see the note at the end, though, as there are some soups and stews that probably would not work well with dumplings.

Dumplings

1 1/2 C. flour (I used white whole wheat)
1/2 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 Tbl. parsley flakes (optional)
1/4 C. milk (enough to make a sticky dough)
3 Tbl. butter
1 egg

Measure dry ingredients and mix in a medium size bowl.  In a measuring cup stir egg and milk together.  Add milk mixture and butter to flour mixture and stir till blended.  (Add milk if more moisture is needed.)

Drop onto top of boiling soup with a spoon, or roll with hands if dough is stiff enough. Cover and cook for 12 minutes at a medium boil without removing the lid.

Note: It’s important to have enough liquid in your soup when you add the dumplings. If there is too little it might cook away and burn on the bottom before the dumplings are done.  Also, I wouldn’t recommend them for thickened stews or heavy soups that require regular stirring to keep them from scorching or burning. Twelve minutes would probably be too long to not stir such dishes.

Clearing Out the Fridge

It is a temptation to put this post in the “Laying Aside Weights” series, but since it really doesn’t have to do with the theme of that specifically, I suppose it will be better to let it stand alone.

The clutter in my fridge is not exactly a weight, although maybe some people would view it as such.  It can be a nuisance, but mostly it’s wasted space.  It’s cleaned out pretty well now, but the truth of the matter is that it will probably get bad again eventually.  Coming from a long line of fridge packers…well, at least two generations…I don’t see myself bucking my genes on this one. ;-) 

Not that I wouldn’t like to improve, and I actually think I have some. My mom, in her own right, has improved some to start with and I’ve tried to go a little farther. Neither of us have, nor desire, the “knack” my Gramma had of filling a fridge (and its freezer) with myriads of little plastic containers holding a tablespoon of this or that.  I can’t speak so well for our freezers, though we do make the effort to control them from time to time.  When you opened Gramma’s freezer it was a good idea to stand back.  Just the act of opening the door was likely to dislodge something that was being held in by the mere presence of the door.  Trying to extract something could even start a small avalanche.  Mom’s freezer and my freezer are sometimes not much better.  Sigh.

But, to get down to the point --

I decided it was high time to get the fridge cleared out of excess stuff.  Though I do try to date my leftovers to keep them from getting too old, I still sometimes have something that gets missed in the shuffle.  The bulk of my excess, however, is the result of opening too many jars of pickles, pushing untasty jams and sauces to the side because I can’t make myself pitch them, and saving “useful” things that are not as perishable as most foods – such as bacon grease.  Ahem.  (This is the down side of being a bit too paranoid about wastefulness, by the way.  There are two sides to that coin.)

I found at least 4 containers containing some amount of bacon grease in the fridge (I think it was five, but I’m not sure).  Yeah.  That’s a lot of old dabs of bacon grease, considering how seldom I cook bacon from raw and thus have excess to put away.  And, don’t ask me how many there are still in there because, though I discarded some, I added another one the other day. 

You see, the very best corn bread recipe I have calls for bacon grease (no wonder it’s so good, right?), so I can’t bear to discard it thinking about that delicious corn bread.  The thing is, though – I seldom, seldom make corn bread!  (Hmm….this looks suspiciously like “weight” thinking to me.  Something that does need to be laid aside!)  Plus, green beans and eggs are so good fried in bacon grease….

Well, Friday morning is the day our garbage is collected, so Thursday is a good day to do a job like this.  In an effort to acknowledge my limitations and not overdo, I made the decision to not clean the fridge at all, but only clear out the items that had no future.  I also decided not to try to do the fridge and its freezer on the same day.  (We also have a chest freezer, which needs to be defrosted, but it’s not quite so cluttered with useless things as the fridge freezer was – I think.)

If you are a “normal”, energetic, healthy, strong woman (I don’t know many, but there must be some), then you might think this is a bad plan and method and that it would be better to do the whole thing in “one fell swoop” as Gramma would’ve said (only not about the fridge).  If you have a chronic health problem, are often overly busy, have kids, homeschool, have hormones or any number of other things that tend to make women tired and run down, I suspect you will see the point in this plan. :-)  Anyway, it worked for me.

On the Thursday in question I cleared out the fridge, saving the cleaning for later (apparently much later).  Here is what it looked like --

Before:

Note the bag of (smelly) garlic on the top shelf – some of it is now growing in my dad’s garden.
You can just see a gallon size jar of pickles behind the milk and orange juice.  There were two jugs back there actually – one almost full of pickles that had the “lovely” flavor of vinegar, garlic and plastic.  (Not a commonly accepted flavor of pickles, but the result of a company switching from glass to plastic jars.)  There was also a glass gallon jar half full of kimchee.  Now, I like kimchee, but I couldn’t eat this kind because it didn’t agree with my finicky stomach.  My parents and I made the kimchee together, but it ended up in my fridge.  Now it’s at my parents’ house.

After:

Notice how you can actually see the light on the top shelf now.  That is because the multiple layers of stuff have been reduced!  Also, there’s a big, almost empty space on the second shelf.  The parmesan cheese has been moved to an upright position on the bottom shelf.  On the left of the bottom shelf is an unopened 2 lb. package of cheddar that expired in June or July – of last year.  Yeah.  Embarrassment, horror, disgust (at the waste), you name it.  There were white specks all over it which I thought to be mold, but I decided to open it anyway.  To my surprise and relief, it was still fine – NOT rotten!  The specks were the salt coming out apparently.  So we went ahead and ate it. ;-)  (This was some weeks ago and we are still alive, so YES, it really was safe, oh doubters.) :-)

The door doesn’t look a lot improved because I moved some of the odds and ends jars that were crowding the inside to the spaces I opened up in the door.

I actually didn’t take the “after” picture till a couple of days, so there are a few other changes as well, but you get the idea.  I think it’s actually even more empty now, and since I did this job in February, I seem to be keeping it better for at least awhile!  Not that I think a fridge should be empty.  When I have legitimate things to keep I’m fine with it, but the excess of things that were past usefulness was the problem.  Also, having the fridge more empty is handy because I can store leftovers right in the pan I will reheat them in, which saves on dish washing! :-)

To my shame, I have to admit that I totally forgot the drawers till later!  Ack.  I’m not sure I would’ve wanted to “share” them with you anyway. ;-)

Ok, I can’t believe I could write that much about cleaning out the fridge!  Looks like the freezer part should wait till another time.  Too bad, the story about…..well, you’ll have wait and see. ;-)  (We had “wait and see” a lot for dessert when I was a kid.  I so disliked that answer!)

Italian Fried Egg Soup

Here is a simple soup you can make with leftovers from a pot roast – as long as you didn’t use the broth all up making gravy. ;-)  My dad first made this for us without the meat and he called it Italian Fried Egg Soup.  I think that he had it when they lived in Ethiopia.  (In case that puzzles some of you, know that the Italians invaded and held Ethiopia for awhile during WW II.  Some of the Italians liked it there so well that they stayed or returned.  Some married into the culture.  Some started restaurants. :-)  Hence the location of origin.)
This recipe doesn’t have specific amounts here because I usually make it with leftovers.  Even if you don’t have meat, you can make a meal that still has protein because of the fried egg. broth and cheese.
You will need:
1 fried egg per bowl
1 to 1/2 a piece of toast per bowl
1 thickish slice of cheese per bowl (about 1/8 – 1/4 inch)
Leftover beef and broth
Cut the meat into bite-size chunks.  Heat the broth and the meat in a pan.  You may add some oregano, basil and green onions if you like.  This will add a more Italian flavor and add a bit of color.  Adjust the seasoning to your taste.
Meanwhile, fry the eggs and toast the bread.  You may butter the bread if you wish, but it will be soaked with the broth so it isn’t actually necessary.  It would add a bit of flavor.  Place a piece of toast in each bowl and top with a fried egg and a slice of cheese.  (You may break the cheese in half if you wish and separate it slightly.)
Just before serving (or at the table), ladle the broth and meat over the toast-egg-cheese stack.  Eat immediately.  (You don’t want to do this ahead because it soaks in to the toast quickly and will become soggy.  So, it’s nicer to eat it right away.)
With some salad or fruit you would have a complete meal. :-)  It’s quite easy and fast when using leftover pot roast and broth.  Hope you enjoy it!

Thoughts from the Past – America the Wasteful

April 17, 2006
America the Wasteful

A couple of weeks ago my parents and I had stopped to pick up a few items at a large store. As we were returning to our car across the large parking lot I happened to notice that someone had dropped a bag from a local fast food restaurant on the ground and either intentionally run over it, or it had been run over by someone else. Whatever the case, it obviously still had food in it, some of which was spreading itself on the pavement.

This small incident got me to pondering on the wastefulness of Americans - perhaps of most "western" cultures.

My grandparents went through the Depression and were all missionaries, so wastefulness was something that was frowned upon in our family (though not as strictly as in some). My mother used to wonder that her grandmother never got food poisoning from the aged leftovers she ate. I wondered that my Gramma didn't do the same; and my mom is in a fair way of being the same, despite my dad's efforts to convince her she can't use leftovers that long.

I remember years ago being in a home for dinner. The lady had prepared a nice meal of baked chicken. Afterwards, as we were cleaning up the kitchen, the young wife proceeded to deposit all the food trash from the meal into the broth in the baking pan which also contained what was left of the chicken carcass. My mom asked her why she didn't use that broth to make soup. The young lady had never thought of that before and was sorry she had wasted it! This in spite of the fact that she was raised in the country by frugal parents.

There are other instances I’ve heard of or seen - the family who never ate leftovers and so the wife threw out everything left including the roast beef; the family who threw away cookies when they were more than a couple of days old; the people who were going to throw out the remainders of a turkey breast until their dismayed guests offered to take the it home, and so on. One sickening example was the church where almost all the women threw away all their leftovers after a church dinner regardless of their family's financial state (and some were quite poor).

Wastefulness. It is the result too often of fullness of bread and no "need" to extend our hand to the poor. Ezekiel 16:49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. 50 And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good.

Now I admit that my family is not perfect at this by any means. We throw away more spoiled food than I like, and at times I feel really bad about it. I don't suggest that we become paranoid nor over scrupulous. That only makes us anxious and can cause useless guilt (to say nothing of food poisoning). It is interesting though, that while so many things are preached and set forth today as "necessary" for us to do to "please God", you almost never hear this kind of wastefulness condemned. And yet, we have Jesus Christ Himself as the example of wisdom in this! After the feeding of the five thousand we read in John 6: 12, When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. 13 Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten.

Proverbs 12:27 The slothful man roasteth not that which he took in hunting: but the substance of a diligent man is precious.

Leftover Oatmeal Cookies

I had quite a bit of leftover oatmeal recently, but I wasn’t that keen on making Cooked Oatmeal Cake.  The thought crossed my mind that there should be a recipe for making cookies from cooked oatmeal, so I looked it up online and sure enough there was!  It looked good, though, as usual with a few changes. ;-)  (I reduced the sugar already, in case you like to do that with cookie recipes.) 
Most of my family here enjoyed these quite well.  Ahem!  There was one dissenter who takes exception to raisins in his cookies, but that makes more for the rest of us, right?  My husband liked them at any rate, and after all, that’s what counts for me. ;-)

2 C. brown sugar
1 C. butter
3 eggs
2 C. cooked oatmeal
2 C. all purpose flour
2 C. white whole wheat (or regular whole wheat)
[Note: You can use 4 cups of all purpose flour.]
3 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
3 tsp. vanilla
3 C. chocolate chips
1 C. coconut
1 C. raisins
Cream sugar, butter, eggs and cooked oatmeal.  Mix in the flour, baking soda and salt; then the coconut, chocolate chips and raisins.  Scoop onto baking sheets by tablespoonsful about 1 – 1 1/2 inches apart and flatten slightly. Bake at 375F for 10-15 minutes or until cookies are set and starting to brown slightly.  Allow to cool on baking sheet about 5 minutes before removing to racks.
(I put mine on parchment, so I had no trouble with them sticking.  I don’t know if the baking sheets need to be greased.  The original recipe said nothing about it, but it was a little short on instructions.)
These cookies freeze well.

Cooked Oatmeal Cake

[After I’d created this post I looked at the calendar and discovered that today is National Cereal Day.  How appropriate is that?! :-) ]
I hate wasting leftovers.  I always feel like I’m throwing away money!  Here’s a great way to use leftover cooked oatmeal.  If you don’t usually have leftovers and would like to make this cake, then make some extra next time! :-)

Cooked Oatmeal Cake

1 1/2 C. cooked oatmeal
1 C. brown sugar
2 eggs
1 stick butter (1/2 C.)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
1 1/3 C. flour
Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat.  Mix in oatmeal.  Add and mix in soda, cinnamon and flour.  Pour into a greased 9x13 cake pan.  Bake at 350F for 35-40 minutes.
-------------------------
Mom and I made this together recently with some leftover oatmeal that my husband had cooked.  He’d put in dried cherries, so we reduced to the sugar (to the amount given above) and it came out really well.  We also omitted the cinnamon and put some almond flavoring in instead.  Then at the last minute we added chocolate chips!  It was really good, and not too sweet.  We substituted white whole wheat for part of the flour as well, but I don’t remember the proportions we used.
Anyway, this is a quick and easy cake, a nice way to eat leftover oatmeal, and quite versatile!  Use it for breakfast, for coffee cake, for dessert, tea, lunches, or just for a healthier sweet snack.  Try your own variations too.  As you can see in the picture, the batch I’d made there had raisins or cranberries in the oatmeal.