Thursday, January 12, 2012

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard 1/12/12

Belle continues to be busy in the kitchen preparing meals with garden ingredients. Our meals are certainly not 100% homegrown. Maybe once in a while we're able to do that, but it seems like every meal includes something from the garden. We've saved a ton of money on our grocery bill. We're still hoping for the day when we can produce our own dairy products. So many of you out there have goats for milk and cheese and all things dairy. We'd sure love to have that opportunity to have goats.

Here's a couple  things Belle has prepared with garden ingredients since our last post with Robin at The Gardener of Eden.


Asian cabbage salad

With our humble winter cabbage harvest Belle made Asian cabbage salad. Its a cold salad dish made with dry noodles, sweet sauce and sliced cabbage.

Dressing
1/2 cup olive oil
3 tbs rice vinegar
2 tbs sugar
1 pkg of ramen noodle seasoning (I know, I know...)

Meat of your choice (optional)
1/2 head of cabbage (in our world that meant many, many tiny winter heads)
1 pkg ramen noodles crumbled/uncooked
2 tbs toasted sesame seeds

Grilled "Hen of the Woods" mushrooms.
We included these wild mushrooms (above) in a fondue dish that was part of our New Years Party spread of food.

Mashed potatoes with cauliflower and radish
Belle blended some of our cauliflower harvest from last spring with the radishes we harvested last week in mashed potatoes. It's our secret way of getting the boys to eat vegetables.

Shhhh, be very quiet, we're fooling our children!

To our surprise, even though the radish flavor was very strong, the boys ate it. I guess our pediatrician is right about children and their eating habits. The boys get to say whether they'll eat and how much, but we get to say what they'll eat and when!

9 comments:

  1. Cauliflower and radishes in mashed potatoes. I might have to try that one it kind of sounds good. Now if I could get our little girls to eat green beans!!!

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  2. We have never mixed the cauliflower with the mashed potatoes. But we do make mashed cauliflower often. You can add cheese and different spices to it. We like it better then mashed potatoes.

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  3. Stoney Acres, anythings worth a try when it comes to teaching kids to eat right! Good luck with the green beans.

    Robin, mashed cauliflower with cheese and spices sounds delicious. We've done that with whole pieces baked in the oven. We'll definitely be trying it mashed too.

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  4. Have mixed cauliflower and mashed potatoes but never thought of adding radish, interesting idea.

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  5. Doesn't it feel good to be able to know you have grown some of the meals that have been prepared from your own garden :o) Talk about saving money! We could go on and on about it :o)...We are blessed! :o)

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  6. I have never been hyper about preservatives etc. but sure do enjoy the freshness of what I can preserve from my garden and more so the savings. When you consider to buy a can of green beans from the store even at $.59 a can which I can get at one store and they are no longer 16 oz. cans, I can a whole lot of green beans for what case of them would cost at the store. $6 buys a whole lot of green bean seed.

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  7. Great recipe. The mushrooms and mashed poatoes look great too

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  8. Norma, Adding radishes was very good, but you've got to love radishes to enjoy it. They definitely dominate the dish.

    Ginny, It feels so good! It feels good to know we're eating good food and it feels good to save so much money. We are truly blessed.

    Wilderness, we enjoy the freshness and savings too. It's a big deal. I hope more and more people will see the value of cheap seeds over expensive cans!

    Mrs. Pickles, Thanks for commenting.

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  9. What a great idea, to hide things in mashed potatoes! I can think of so many vegetables I could cram into the creamy stuff.

    I cannot wait for some home 'grown' dairy products. We spoiled ourselves with having eggs 100 feet from our doorstep, and now we want more! Milk, butter, cheese... I am drooling just thinking about it.

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