pinto beans and picadillo

I'm trying to lose weight and I really enjoy cooking. I've been working on making meal planning by at least the week a habit because it makes grocery store trips so much easier and cheaper. This is all culminating in a lot of really good meals and leftovers at home.

Tonight, pinto beans and picadillo with flour tortillas is what we're having. K and I are trying to get away from using the seasoning packets you can pick up even though they're super cheap. They tend to have either a lot of sodium or a lot of sugar you can avoid if you season things yourself. I'm trying to be mindful of being healthy for me and K right now but also for S to grow up eating good homemade food. I hope that I can teach him just by showing him that it's easy to eat healthy at home and still eat really good food. And also that it's important, easy, and fun to have physical activity in your life on a daily basis. Hopefully I'll get there myself on that one soon!

So anyway, pinto beans. Super easy. Super delicious. And a side benefit is your house smells amazing all day long. First, you have to either soak the beans overnight or do a quick soak where you boil them for an hour. Allegedly this helps you to not have gas when you eat them, but based on my experience with my husband last night, I'm going to say that I either didn't do it right or there's something else to add to it later to make it really non gas inducing. Then, you put them in a pot with a white or yellow onion cut in medium sized chunks, a hunk of pork fat, a jalapeno or two, and minced garlic. Cover the whole thing with water so there's about two inches of water covering it all. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to very low and put a lid about halfway over the pot. Let simmer for at least four hours. But longer is totally fine. Check every 45 minutes to an hour to make sure there's water covering the whole mess of goodness. About two hours into it or so, I taste the broth and see how it is. I usually add garlic powder and pepper to taste. They turn out really yummy. And if you want, you can make refried beans the next day. All you do is pour leftover beans in a pan, add a little bit of oil, and heat them and mash them all up.

And picadillo. I did one pound of ground sirloin, half a yellow onion, two small potatoes, a can of diced tomatoes, and a jalapeno. You put the onion, cubed potato, and beef (you could use ground chicken or turkey if you want too) in the pan and cook it all together. Make sure all the beef is crumbled and cooked through. Season it with salt, pepper, a small amount of cinnamon, cumin, and garlic powder. When the beef is cooked, add the can of tomatoes and mix in well. Add about half a can of water and stir it all up and then cover the pan to make sure the potatoes get nice and soft. You can eat this as a taco filling, by itself, or top off a bowl of beans with it. It's delicious!

So there's my random meal tips for the day!

recipe: plain cheap muffins

1/4 cup oil
1 medium egg
1 cup milk
1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder (3 teaspoons)
2 cups flour

In a large bowl combine the oil, egg, milk, sugar and salt. Mix it very well with a fork or wire whisk. Measure in the baking powder and flour. Mix again until all of the dough particles are moistened. Do not over mix. The whole thing should take about 20 to 30 strokes. Spoon the batter into a dozen well oiled muffin cups. Bake at 400° for about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool slightly before removing from the pan.

I made these last night to go with some garlic broccoli chicken I had also made. I think that particular recipe needs some tweaking before I share it, but these muffins were fabulous. I used 1/2 a cup of sugar and they were slightly sweet and had a good flavor and texture. They will be delicious heated up in the morning with some butter and strawberry jam. They're super easy and quick to make, and also very cheap.

I got this recipe from an awesome website called Hillbilly Housewife. She has a bunch of variations on this recipe, and I am looking forward to trying them. Enjoy!

my apartment smells like chicken

My lovely friend Splenda just posted a bunch of recipes on her blog. I read them as I boiled chicken. I have all of these terrific recipes that call for chicken and I found a web site with a bunch of tips on cooking well on a budget. One of the biggest tips is buying certain cuts of meat. I've pretty much only purchased boneless skinless chicken breast or strips. You can get roughly twice as much chicken for half the price if you get bone in chicken or leg quarters or whole chickens. When I made chicken and dumplings earlier this week, I bought a whole chicken that was cut up because I am simply not ready to attempt carving a whole chicken even if it is a cheap way to have meat in my apartment.

Well, I bought the wrong kind of cheaper chicken. I bought split chicken. I don't mind the bones or skin or pulling it apart to cook it and all of that. But I don't know where to cut what apart! And I don't really have knives sharp enough to do that anyway. Last night K made chicken fettucini and he just kind of cut as much meat as he could off of what I had purchased and cooked that up. It was delicious, but I do believe he prefers the boneless skinless chicken breast.

I don't know what I'm going to do with about five pounds of boiled chicken, but at least I can pull the meat off a lot easier this way. So it's not entirely a waste. I am still looking foward to those recipes. Now that I know I'm going to be working at Starbucks again and I have 25.5 hours for my very first week, maybe it would just be better if I paid more money and got the prepped chicken.