Weekly menus planned with what's on sale in Arizona grocery stores. Target price per week is $75 to $80 per week and portions in the menus will feed a family of four to six, depending on appetites. So this is for the food buyer or preparer of the family. To help them plan to stay within a budget or give them the little extra ideas of what they need to come up with breakfast, lunch and dinner each day of each week.
Monday, October 5, 2009
A thought
Last night I was contemplating what I need to can this fall. Then thoughts turned to getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas which are just around the corner. Saturday I made chicken pot pies because we had leftover chicken and I made the pie dough from scratch. Doesn't sound like a big deal but I have heard all my life how difficult it is to make a good pie crust and my mom always bought the prepared kind because she couldn't make pie crust. We didn't eat that much pie anyway...but I've got this stigma hanging over me that it's easier or better to buy the prepared kind. And sometimes it is, I don't have a problem with buying it. But I was thinking...now when I am not as busy as I am going to be in a month...now is the time to make up some pie crust dough into disks or balls and freeze it for pies for Thanksgiving. Or I could get fancy and roll them out on plastic wrap then roll them up like they do with the prepared kind. Or even to have on hand for chicken pot pie or peach pie or apple pie. I am going to have to do that.
I don't know how to make a pie crust beyond a graham cracker one. I've tried once or twice and they didn't come out so I stuck to yeast things. One day, a girlfriend tells me, 'Some people are good with pastry, some are good bread' thus solidifying my certainty that I am unable to make a pie crust. In fact, I was thinking about blogging about the things we don't do because we don't get it right the first time, or somebody told us we could do one or the other, but not both.
ReplyDeleteMaybe in a couple of days.
Please make the pie crusts. Then post how you made them. My son loves pie and I'd love to make whole wheat pie crusts and fill them with all that fruit I'm been cooking up and drying out and freezing.
I am going to post the pie crust recipe that I found on the Martha Stewart website that I use. I am not an expert so I don't know about tenderness and texture, but I like it. I was going to do it yesterday, then today, but didn't. It's pretty easy and if I can do it, anyone can. I even won second place in a pie contest using that recipe. I use King Arthur flour when making pie crust. I think it might make a differend. Did you get your new pressure cooker yet? Was it a Kuhn Rikon? I got the "Big Bertha" for pressure canning during the summer and love it. Haven't done regular cooking in it though.
ReplyDeleteMindy--In the Food Storage cookbook I have, there is even a recipe for making apple pie from dried apples. I will post that also when I get a chance. For when you run out of frozen fruit, then you can make pies out of your dehydrated fruit. If there's a famine, I want directions to your house.
ReplyDelete