Forget the Menus!

Because we're having Pineapple this week! The grocery store within walking distance of us, Kroger, had a 10 for $10 sale on PINEAPPLE! So obviously we bought ten.


We'll probably be back later in the week to buy another ten. I bought them last night, and we've already consumed three of them. Last night Caleb had pineapples and bananas for dinner, and I had a pineapple, banana, spinach smoothie. This morning we had this big bowl of pineapple with our granola.



Let this be a lesson to you. When you are poor and you can get fresh food cheap, stock up! If you score some good fruit or vegetables, eat them every day for a week! Variety is had over the course of the year. We are feasting on pineapple now, and when strawberries come into season, we will feast on them. When we harvest lettuce from our garden, we'll eat salad every day. When you are poor, or just trying to save money, you have to take what you can get. Another example of why there can be no picky eaters!

Spinach Curry and Pita Bread

Everybody likes this one. Even people that don't like chick peas or tomatoes or spinach. My son gobbles this up, and always makes sure he has spinach with each spoonful.

The recipe is adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance to fit the needs of my small family, limited spice collection, and ease of preparation.

Spinach Curry (adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance)

• 1 (14.5-ounce) can of diced tomatoes

• 1 large onion, sliced

• 4 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 tsp of ginger powder (or a tablespoon of fresh grated ginger)

• 2 teaspoons curry powder

• 1 teaspoons ground cumin

• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 5 cups fresh spinach, chopped (I use about a half a bag of baby spinach-whatever I have left

• 2 cups chickpeas, cooked and drained, or 1 (15-ounce) can, drained and rinsed

1. Saute the onion for a little while..

2. Add the garlic and ginger to the mixture, and saute for a few minutes.

3. Add the spices and tomatoes; and saute for another minute.

4. I tend to add more water at some point. You want the final product to have a little bit of “sauce” to it, but not to be watery. I like to add water at some point and then let it boil off.

5. Add the spinach, I stuff as much in as I can, and put a lid on it and wait for it to wilt, then add more if there is more to add.

6. After you’ve added all of the spinach, add the chickpeas. Lower the heat and stir occasionally for about 15-20 minutes. This is what the original recipe says, but I usually don't want to wait that long. Let the water boil off so it's a good consistancy, not to watery, and eat!
   

The pita bread is basically just your bread dough (see my bread recipe), rolled into balls, and rolled to an even quarter inch thick. Let them rest for 30 minutes while you heat your oven to 500 degrees. Then bake them until they are golden and puffy. We like to dip ours in butter.

Sticky Buns (the healthier way)

Well, I just finished a post about stovetop bread in the van, now I want to do a post looking forward to an oven in my new house. The last post had the recipe I use for bread. Now I want to tell you how I plan to feed my overnight guests in my "new" home.

First, for dinner, make a batch of bread. Use the recipe from the previous post. Let it rise for 2 hours. Assuming you aren't having a lot of guests, and don't have a big family, take half the dough, and form it into a loaf on a cookie sheet or in a well sprayed loaf pan. Then let it rise for 40ish minutes while the oven heats up to 450 degrees. If you want 2 loaves of bread, double the recipe so you still have leftover dough for breakfast. After 40 minutes (or as long as you can stand if you don't have 40 minutes), bake the bread for roughly 25-30 minutes at 450 degrees.

Serve your hot, steaming fresh bread to your adoring guests for dinner. Put the extra dough in the fridge (covered up, but not air tight-I think you'll kill the yeast if they can't breath).

In the morning, get up before your guests, and get ready to make sticky buns!

You'll need:

1 cup of maple syrup

3 tablespoons of molasses

raisins

walnuts

cinnamon

the leftover bread dough (1/2 of the basic recipe)

1. Mix the maple syrup and the molasses together. I made up some measurements, but basically you can't really have too much of the sticky stuff. You can always add more if it looks scant.

2. Grease a square cake pan, and dump most of the syrup mixture in the bottom of it along with enough raisins and walnuts to cover the bottom of the pan. Your syrup mixture should cover the bottom of the pan so the raisins and walnuts are wading in it.

3. Then spread the dough out on the counter top. It's really too sticky for a rolling pin, just use your hands and keep stretching until it's a rectangle about 1/4 inch thick. Then liberally coat the dough with cinnamon, again, it's very hard to have too much. Sprinkle raisins over that, and drizzle more syrup mixture on top.

4. Roll the dough up and slice it into cinnamon rolls. Place the rolls into the pan so they are touching each other. Whatever syrup you have left, rub on the top of it (which will be the bottom).

5. Bake at 325 degrees until the dough is not sticky in the middle anymore. It'll be more than a half an hour, but less than an hour. Just keep an eye on it.

6. When it's all cooked, take it out of the oven and invert the pan onto a large dish.

7. Bask in the compliments from your guests when they wake up. Depending on their personalities, you may or may not want to point out how much healthier this is than the supermarket/traditional version.

Enjoy!