Big cheap food: The pork roast

Affordable and delicious

For most of my life, cuts of meat were something of a mystery. That's still the case, but I have at least managed to identify a few different categories, and know what to do with them. One of the recent cuts that I decided to research and demystify is the pork roast.

Why should you figure out what to do with a pork roast? Because it is cheap! Have you seen the cost of meat lately? It's crazy! Even basic cuts of meat cost about $5/lb where I live. One of the few cuts that you can buy for less than that is the various pork roasts, all of which run around $2/lb. 
 
Which pork roast do you want? Well, it doesn't really matter. As long as you are choosing a true roast, and not one of the various tenderloin products. You can most easily identify the right pork roast by price, it will usually be the cheapest form of pork. It will also be the largest - I rarely see a pork roast that clocks in at less than two pounds.
 
Look for the word "roast" or "shoulder" somewhere in the cut description. Picnic roast, pork shoulder blade roast, pork shoulder roast, the specifics don't really matter. Once you find the right section of the meat case, just pick out whatever looks best. 
 
Pork roasts are tough cuts of meat, which means that they respond best to a long, slow cooking process. A slow cooker is ideal for this. You can pop that baby in when you leave for work in the morning, and when you come home at night it will be juicy, tender, and ready to eat. (And your house will smell amazing!)
 
On a day when you will be home to mind the oven, you can also cook them either on the stovetop or in the oven. You can do either a dry roast or a wet roast (technically called "braising"). I recommend braising, because it will make the meat a lot more tender. 
 
Your basic procedure will be to put the roast in a pot with a lid, add 1-2 cups of liquid, then cook it at a low temperature (say, 300 degrees) for a long time (say, 2 hours per pound). Check it every hour or so, to make sure it hasn't run dry. 
 
Prepare ahead: this is not a fast process, and it can often take longer than that. Start it well in advance of dinner time! You can't really overcook a roast, so err on the side of putting it in too early.
 
Here are some great pork roast recipes to get you started:

 

'Tis the season for eggnog

Make your own eggnog at home.

Who doesn't love a good eggnog come Christmas time? Well actually I don't, however, when you have an entire family that does, you learn how to make it. The important thing to note when making homemade eggnog is to any Salmonella present in the eggs is destroyed.

You will need the following ingredients to make eggnog:

  • 4 eggs
  • 2/3 cup sugar
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1 2/3 cup milk
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • ½ tsp. cinnamon


Follow these instructions to make your homemade eggnog:

Step 1:
Place your eggs, sugar, and 1 cup of the milk in a small pot. Stir until combined.

Step 2:
Cook the ingredients in the pot until you get an internal temperature of 160 degrees F. According to FoodSafety.gov, this is the temperature needed to kill any Salmonella that may be in the eggs. You'll want to stir constantly as you cook this mixture or it will stick to the bottom of the pot.

Step 3:
Add the vanilla and remaining milk. Stir to combine and set aside to cool.

Step 4:
Whip the heavy cream until it starts to become thick. Fold it into your eggnog mixture once the eggnog has cooled completely.

Step 5:
Pour the eggnog into individual glasses.

Step 6:
Sprinkle cinnamon on top of each glass of eggnog and serve immediately.

Tip:

  • If you choose to not to cook your eggnog and just stir all of the ingredients together, use either an egg substitute or eggs that have been pasteurized.
  • You can also substitute the cinnamon with nutmeg. My family just happens to like the cinnamon better.

Junk food advertising makes kids fat

Adults, too!

This Salon.com article is up in arms over the state of junk food advertising aimed directly at children. But all of its conclusions are just as true for junk food aimed at teenagers and adults, too. 

One of the more interesting findings is that junk food ads - more than television itself - contribute to childhood obesity. In Quebec, where junk food ads aimed at children are banned, "the province has the least childhood obesity of anywhere in Canada." Kids in Quebec eat better than the rest of the country, to the tune of 2-4 million calories less per year.
 
This is preliminary data, and of course there is the "correlation does not imply causation" bugaboo. But it happens to square well with something I have noticed in myself, which is that my junk food consumption goes way down during the periods of my life when I am not watching television. 
 
Six months ago I replaced my television with a computer that acts as a combination DVR/Hulu/Netflix Streaming machine, which cut my actual "watching television with the ads and everything" down to just 2-3 hours a week on Sunday nights. Without the constant barrage of food commercials,  I find myself shopping more sensibly and eating a lot better in general.
 
Another interesting proposal is to ban junk food advertising before 9 p.m., the way that we do for alcohol advertising. This would put junk food in the same category as beer and flavored vodkas: things that should be kept out of the reach of children. No doubt the junk food industry - which spends billions of dollars a year in advertising - would never allow this to happen. But it's worth considering, at any rate.
 
The junk food industry is happy to make minor changes in order to placate parents. For example, McDonald's now gives parents the option to choose apple slices instead of French fries as a Happy Meal side. Oh great - chemically treated pre-sliced apples packed in a plastic baggie, to go with the cheeseburger and soda. Keep patting yourself on the back for that one, McDonalds! 
 
SMH, as the kids say.
 
Meanwhile, the junk food industry is aggressively marketing to children, from corporate websites that draw kids in with simple Flash games, to creating ever more adorable cartoon mascots. For the period between 2007 and 2009, kids between the ages of 6 and 11 saw an increase of 56 percent more Subway ads and 26 percent more McDonald's ads. Yikes!
 

Leftover turkey quesadillas

Put that Thanksgiving turkey to good use.

One of my favorite things to do the days following Thanksgiving is to find new ways to use my leftover turkey meat. Up until I made the turkey quesadillas, my kids favorite recipe was creamed turkey over toast. The turkey quesadillas were so good, however, that I felt the need to share the recipe with you.

You will need the following ingredients to make the turkey quesadilla:

  • Leftover turkey
  • Flour tortillas
  • 1 green pepper
  • 1 small onion
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 8 ounces shredded cheddar cheese


Follow these directions to make your turkey quesadillas:

Step 1:
Spray a small frying pan with non-stick cooking spray. I prefer the olive oil cooking spray, but it won't matter much if you need to use a vegetable oil spray.

Step 2:
Turn the heat to medium. Chop the green pepper, onion, and garlic clove into small pieces and toss into the frying pan. Cook for about five minutes and remove.

Step 3:
Place one flour tortilla in the frying pan after giving it another shot of the cooking spray. Top with leftover pieces of turkey and the onions, green peppers and garlic you just cooked. Sprinkle cheddar cheese over all of the ingredients and cover with another flour tortilla.

Step 4:
Flip the turkey quesadilla once the bottom browns up. The quesadilla is done when the opposite side browns and the cheese has  melted.

Step 5:
Use a pizza cutter to cut the turkey quesadilla into four slices.

Step 6:
Serve hot.

Tip:
Replace the cheddar cheese with pepper jack cheese if you like more of a kick.
Swap the green pepper for a red pepper if you like more of a sweet taste.

Serve your guests Shirley Temples this Thanksgiving

A quick and easy drink that is sure to please.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving memories growing up was meeting my grandparents at the Inn near their home and ordering a Shirley Temple to go along with my meal. It was the only time of year I ever got one, and even my father and a few other family members would order one. Now that I'm the adult, I suggested to my sister that we make our own Shirley Temples to serve with Thanksgiving dinner. She agreed that it would be fun to introduce our children to this tasty drink.

Shirley Temples are so easy to make. They only require a few ingredients so you won't add much in the way of expense to your Thanksgiving meal. Follow the instructions below to create your own Shirley Temples.

You will need the following ingredients to make a Shirley Temple:

  • 7-Up
  • Maraschino cherries
  • Grenadine
  • Ice cubes
  • Drink umbrellas

Follow these instructions to make your Shirley Temple:

Step 1:
Set out one glass for each Thanksgiving guest.

Step 2:
Fill the glasses ¾ of the way with ice cubes.

Step 3:
Pour 7-Up in each glass until it reaches the top of the ice cubes.

Step 4:
Add 2 Tablespoons of grenadine to each glass.

Step 5:
Drop 2 maraschino cherries in each glass followed by 1 teaspoon of the liquid in the maraschino cherry bottle.

Step 6:
Stir the ingredients together and decorate with a drink umbrella. Serve immediately.

Warning:
You will need backup supplies. Your guests are going to be so delighted with their Shirley Temples that they are bound to request a second serving. Shirley Temples go great with dessert as well!

Papa John's Pizza is having an Obama crisis

Fibbing about the Obamacare increase in pizza costs

The founder of Papa John's Pizza is kind of having a meltdown. Not a deliciously cheesy, saucy meltdown either - more of a "Republican rage" sort of meltdown.

"Papa" John Schnatter has announced that it will cost the company a small fortune in order to comply with the new "Obamacare" statutes. He has dramatically wailed that he will have to slash the workforce and cut back hours for employees in order to not have to pay them health care. All in the name of saving you, the consumer, a whopping 11 cents per pizza.
 
Now mind you, that is the amount that Papa John's says they will need to tack on to each pizza in order to cover these SHOCKINGLY EXPENSIVE AND UNREASONABLE GOVERNMENT MANDATES. How mad are you about an extra eleven cents per pizza? Probably not very mad, right?
 
But it gets better: an expert from Forbes has crunched the numbers and decided that Papa John's would only need to raise their costs by about four cents per pie. Four cents! That's not a price increase; that's a rounding error. And that furthermore, the costs are less than that of one Papa John's pizza giveaway per year.
 
Regardless of how you feel about the new health care regulations, I think we can all agree that even the worst case scenario, eleven cents is just not that big a deal. I doubt anyone is going to be all, "Wait - this pizza costs nineteen dollars AND ELEVEN CENTS? Forget it!" Like you're going to go up the street to the pizza place where it's eleven cents cheaper. Come ON.
 
This is clearly just an example of another billionaire CEO using their personal politics as leverage on the public. Like, "Oh no, if we don't vote Republican, THE PIZZA INDUSTRY WILL COLLAPSE." Furthermore, I feel like Papa John is using the election results as an excuse to jack up prices and cut worker hours in order to line his own pockets. 
 
The real losers in this intersection of food and politics is the Papa John's employees. It must sting to work at a company that is so vehemently against providing you with health care. Meanwhile, Papa John is kicking back in his 40,000 square foot mansion, probably wearing a monocle and lighting his cigars with $100 bills.
 
Eleven cents my butt. But hey, I guess you don't become a billionaire by passing up an opportunity to raise costs, right?

Homemade hot chocolate

A simple and yummy treat on a cold winter day.

It is about this time of year that my girls start begging me for hot chocolate. They don't want the packets either. They want hot chocolate made from scratch. It really only takes a few extra minutes to make a delicious cup of hot chocolate from scratch, so most of the time I can stop what I'm doing and whip up a pot. I should warn you before I give out our recipe that no one in your family will ever want the packet hot chocolate again.

You will need the following ingredients to make homemade hot chocolate:

  • Cocoa
  • Sugar
  • 2% milk
  • Half & Half
  • Vanilla
  • Mini-marshmallows
  • Cinnamon
  • Candy canes


Follow these instructions to make the homemade hot chocolate:

Step 1:
Pour 2 1/2 cups of 2% milk and ½ cup of half & half in a medium sized pot.

Step 2:
Add 3 Tbsp. of cocoa, and 6 Tbsp. of sugar to the pot and bring to a boil. Stir the ingredients continually.

Step 3:
Pour in 1 tsp. of vanilla and remove the hot chocolate from the heat.

Step 4:
Separate the hot chocolate into three cups. You can adjust the recipe if you have more than three people in your family.

Step 5:
Top the cups of hot chocolate with mini-marshmallows. Sprinkle cinnamon on top and hang a candy cane off to the side with the rod sticking in the hot chocolate.

Step 6:
Serve hot.

Tip: Some people like to ditch the marshmallows and use whipped cream instead. This is just a personal preference. We like the marshmallows because they begin to melt and taste great in the hot chocolate.
 

Secret of the Secret Sauce revealed!

It's not just mayo and ketchup

McDonalds' Big Mac Secret Sauce is no longer such a secret. And it isn't, as many people have claimed, just mayonnaise and relish or just mayonnaise and ketchup. Oh no, my friend! It is mayonnaise, sweet pickle relish, yellow mustard, white wine vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder and paprika. 

(The paprika adds a slight bit of taste, but is mostly there to add color. The color of the added paprika is no doubt what caused a lot of people to believe that Secret Sauce involved ketchup somehow.)
 
The secret was revealed in an official YouTube video where the company's executive chef answered questions from the audience. Someone asked what is in McDonalds' secret sauce, and Dan Coudreaut revealed the answer.

I think most people were taken aback that McDonald's would finally divulge the contents of their famous Secret Sauce. Personally, I was also surprised that the ingredients proved to be so pedestrian. Where is the xanthan gum? The disodium inosiphate? The wacky chemicals that I assume infuse every single item at McDonald's? In fact, this is literally a recipe that you can make at home. Many people probably have all the ingredients in their kitchen right now.
 
Coudreaut explained that the secret to Secret Sauce is that it involves contrasting flavors: sweet and sour. Add those to a hamburger patty and you really have something special. In this, it follows a lot of classic food aesthetics. The Thai food aesthetic comes to mind, with the way it strives to balance sweet, salty, sour, and spicy. 
 
Special Sauce is actually part of a long tradition of creamy condiments that mesh sour and sweet. Most people assume that it is Thousand Island Dressing, which is a similar concoction that was popular in the 1950s. (My grandmother made a sauce by mixing mayonnaise and ketchup; she called it Thousand Island, although it wasn't quite. But what it was, was cheap.)
 
In Europe, particularly France, and in Cajun cooking, remoulade is the all-purpose sauce that goes with everything. A good remoulade is reminiscent of tartar sauce, but with a much more complicated flavor. It is usually served with meat, everything from fish and chips to thinly sliced roast beef. 
 
The Cajun version is often spicy, with a dash of Tabasco or other hot sauce to give it a nice kick. It is frequently served with cold cooked shrimp as an appetizer, or with hard boiled eggs.

Review: DiGiorno Pizza

It is just like delivery.

I've seen the commercial for DiGiorno pizza a million times before I decided to give it a try. I wanted to put their slogan “It's not delivery. It's DiGiorno” to the test. I have to say that this pizza is so good that it is now our pizza of choice.

If you like having pizza once a week like we do, or on occasion, DiGiorno is not only cheaper than take-out, but you can always buy it ahead of time so that you have it on hand when you get the urge to bite into a slice of pizza. We make it a habit to keep one box in the freezer at all times. Our favorite is the pepperoni, but it must be everyone else's favorite because they often run out of it at the grocery store.We also never pay full price for the pizza. Coupons abound for this product so it isn't hard to get a dollar off. Plus, the pizza goes on sale all the time for $6.99. That's $5.99 after the coupon. I don't know about you, but I can't get delivery in my neighborhood for anything less than $8.99, and even that is rare.

Here are the products that DiGiorno currently has for sale in the 12-inch rising crust pizza: Italian Sausage, Sausage and Pepperoni, Pepperoni, Three Meat, Four Cheese, Bacon Blitz, Buffalo Chicken, Supreme, Spicy Chicken Supreme and Spinach Mushroom and Garlic.

Thin crust pizza comes in Four Meat, Four Cheese, Pepperoni, and Supreme. You can also get a garlic bread pizza, half and half pizza, crispy flatbread pizza, cheese stuffed crust pizza, ultimate toppings pizza, pizza and breadsticks, pizza and wings, pizza and cookies, pizza dipping sticks, pizza and cinnamon sticks, Italian style favorites, deep dish and 200-calorie portions.

Dried mango slices: surprisingly delicious!

Great addition to a gluten-free food stockpile

As a rule, I am not a big fan of dried fruit. But I live in a rural area that is often susceptible to big weather issues that keep me trapped at home for days - sometimes weeks - at a time. And when I went gluten free a few months ago, I started to realize that most of the food I usually stockpile is gluten full. This has led me farther afield to experiment with shelf-stable, gluten free food stuffs that stockpile well.

And thus: dried fruit. Dried fruit in the abstract has a lot to recommend it. It has the same fruity taste (more or less) as real fruit. It has the same amount of fiber as fresh fruit. A lot of dried fruit has some added sugar, but that isn't too worrisome in an emergency stockpile. (No one's going to begrudge you a few extra calories on the fourth day of a power outage.) 
 
Most importantly, dried fruit has all of the fiber of the original fruit. It's hard to get fiber in a shelf stable gluten free stockpile. Most things with fiber also have gluten (including oats, which are all considered cross-contaminated with gluten unless specifically labeled otherwise).

I took a trip to the nearest bulk food department and bought a little bit of each dried fruit. Most of them I could rule out immediately. Apple chips are delicious, but surprisingly pricey at $4 for a little 3 ounce bag. I detest banana chips, so those are out. Raisins are okay, but I get sick of them quickly. Pineapple had promise, but proved to be a little bit too fibrous. 
 
The dried papaya slices were fairly good. The ones I found were spears, and I thought they would have had a better texture if they were sliced thinner. I suppose you could slice them yourself, but that seems like a lot of work.
 
The surprise winner, ahead by a wide margin, was mango slices. These are tender yet toothsome, sweet but not overly sticky, with a good flavor and a great chewy texture. And cheap, too - usually around $6 per pound.
 
I have a thing where mango skins make my tongue numb (it's not uncommon) so I rarely eat actual mangoes, but I love the taste. So tropical! So exotic! 
 
Granted, dried mango slices are not the greatest source of nutrition. They are high in vitamin A but little else. But if you need a good gluten free snack to add to your emergency food stockpile, or even just a delicious treat to stash in your desk at work, I highly recommend them.
 

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