Garden Bounty: Sausage Stuffed Banana Peppers with Fresh Angel Hair Pasta

Today's harvest is tonight's dinner. (Don't worry, I'll finish that series on saving money on groceries.)

My eldest sister passed this recipe on to me. Well, actually it was instructions more than a recipe. The instructions were: stuff a bunch of banana peppers with italian sausage, cover with a tomato sauce, bake til they're done & add some cheese to the top. That's what I did, honest...but I'll try to define it a bit better.

Ingredients

• banana peppers -- enough for your meal (I used 2 per person, plus a cherry bomb 'cause I wanted to see how it tasted cooked)
• Spaghetti sauce -- I used two jars, but that's because I know this will make two meals for us.
• Italian Sausage, hot or whatever you prefer. I used 4 links hot Italian pork sausage and 2 (much larger) links Italian turkey sausage. The turkey sausage was twice as large as the pork but contained only 5 grams fat/0 saturated. The pork sausage was much smaller and contained 15 grams fat/5 saturated. (I'm gonna wean my hubby off the fat one way or another.)
  
• 1/4 cup grated cheese. I'm sure fresh Parmesan or Romano would be better....even Mozarella, but I used colby-jack because it's what I have. It was fine.
  

First, cut & clean your banana peppers. Wash away those seeds and if you've ever had a skin reaction to hot pepper oils, wear gloves while doing this. My skin isn't bothered so much as my hands are like leather at this point in the gardening season. But I scratched my face with my fingernail and left a nice red welt that needed to be cleansed with an alcohol swab . (Alcohol will break down the enzymes that cause that burning sensation.) Even if it doesn't bother your hands, be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after handling it because it can irritate other body parts that you might touch...and some of those body parts might not like alcohol poured over them if you catch my drift.

Next, stuff the peppers. You can leave the peppers whole if they're large and shove the sausage down in them, but this was MUCH easier. I just squeezed the stuffing out of the sausage skins (dear hubby refused to photograph that) right onto the peppers and flattened it down with a knife as needed.

Pour a whole jar of sauce over the stuffed peppers.

Pop into a 325 oven for 40 minutes. (I think you can do 350 for 30 minutes, though.) During the last 5 minutes of cooking time, sprinkle the cheese over the top.

While that's baking, cook your pasta. (I found this store-bought fresh pasta MUCH lighter than dry pasta. I really liked that.)

I also sliced the cukes and cleaned the 'maters.

Here's how the peppers and sauce look when done:

And here's some mighty fine eating:

It was good. It was very good. I prefer the turkey sausage. Never liked the fattiness of pork sausages. Everyone approved. Everyone had seconds. There are still three servings for leftovers.

Okay, the littles didn't eat the hot stuffed peppers (they weren't hot) but they had pasta with sauce and turkey Italian sausage along with almost ALL the cukes and 'maters.

This guy ate most of the cucumber slices:

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Cutting Your Family's Grocery Bill Part 4

Reduce!

That's right, I said it. Reduce. Well, that's what we're talking about already, isn't it? Yes indeed. We've done our inventories, we've done our menus, we've done our fliers and lists and shopping. If your bill is still too high, let's look at reducing it even further.

We're going to reduce a lot of things which will reduce your expenditure on groceries.

1. Reduce waste! Use your leftovers. If you've just started doing menus, you've probably found yourself preparing more food than you usually do. This means more leftovers. Use them! Incorporate a leftovers day into your menu. Cooked beef lasts 4 days in the fridge before you need to throw it out. Cooked poultry or fish, 3 days. Cooked ham, 5 days. Hard boiled eggs, 1 week. Cooked sausage, 1 week. Use your leftovers for lunches. Add main dish meats to salads. Reduce future dinner entrees and use your leftover meats. Make casseroles. Freeze whole portions for quick heat & eat dinners in the future. I've started using leftover vegetables in "freezer soup." I keep a bowl in my freezer and fill it with the small amounts of leftover vegetables from our dinners. When the bowl is full, I thaw out some home made stock, add the vegetables from the freezer bowl and cook. Voila! Easy soup, and very cheap!
2. Reduce dependency on convenience items. Learn to make your own. Make your own mixes. Make your own stuffing. Make your own mac & cheese. Start with one dish that you fix frequently using convenience packages, find a recipe and try it out. I think you'll find that flavours are a bit more subtle, preservatives are eliminated, salt is dramatically reduced, nutrition is increased and, best of all, it usually takes NO MORE TIME than the convenience stuff. Take a look at my easy bread dressing recipe. This takes 15 minutes. That's how long the boxed stuff takes. This is SO MUCH BETTER! There are numerous free recipe sources online. Take a look at www.recipeczar.com or recipesource.com and see what's available. Recipe sites that have ratings are especially valuable when you're trying out a new recipe. Choose ones with the highest ratings. You can even search by ingredients to find a recipe for an odd assortment of items you'd like to use.
   
3. Reduce spoilage. Use fresh tender fruit and vegetables early in your shopping cycle and keep the longer-storing fruits and vegetables for later in the shopping cycle. So eat grapes before apples. Use lettuce and cucumbers before celery and carrots. Learn the storage time for items. Here is an excellent reference for storing fresh, cooked, and frozen foods in your home.
   
4. Further reduce spoilage waste by freezing fresh fruit and vegetables before they rot. If your celery is getting wilty, chop it up and freeze it to use in stir-fries, soups, and casseroles. It works just fine! I've been doing it for years. Apples gone mealy? Peel and slice them and put them in freezer bags in the freezer along with some cinnamon for quick home made applesauce one day. Dice peppers and onions and lay them out on cookie sheets. Once frozen, place the pieces into baggies to add to omelets, soups, casseroles, recipes. If you freeze them on cookie sheets they'll freeze individually instead of in clumps so that you can remove as many as you need at a time and not have to use the whole bag at once. I freeze whole tomatoes and add them to my chili. Once they begin to cook the skins come right off.
   

Once you get started using leftovers and produce that might otherwise be waste, you'll be amazed at how much your food bill is reduced. I think it's safe to say that 25% of my groceries ended up as waste due to spoilage or mismanagement of leftovers. Once I started managing them, my bills were reduced a great deal. Salvaging celery by freezing it has saved many extra purchases of celery over the years. Doing this also speeds up meal preparation. If I'm making chicken noodle soup and I already have sliced celery and carrots in the freezer, my meal prep has just been eliminated.

I have two more posts upcoming in this topic.

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Cutting Your Family's Grocery Bill Part 3

Grocery Shopping

Now we're getting down to the good stuff, hmmmm? Before you go to the store, you've got to do a few things at home. If you haven't already done your inventory, you need to go ahead and take care of that. (Remember to note it on your inventory when you use items. I keep them posted in my pantry cupboard, top of my deep freeze, basement fridge and main refrigerator.) Inventory sheets in hand, let's head off somewhere quiet and work on that grocery list.

Gather up your store fliers. Around here they show up on Friday, maybe. Sometimes they mosey into my driveway on Saturday evening, along with Friday's paper. It might be Sunday or Friday or Monday in your neighborhood. Here I do my lists on Friday. Or I do them on Saturday. I might just not get around to it until Sunday. Whatever day works for you, peruse your store fliers and make a note of the big ticket items that you will need (like meats) that are on sale.

You know what your family needs on a regular basis. You know just how much they use of those items, too. Go ahead and list those regular purchase items. You'll have your milk, cereal, bread, peanut butter (it's a staple in my house), baby food, formula, etc.

Using your inventory and your menu, flesh out a menu for the coming week(s). How long your menu is depends on your shopping cycle. If you shop every two weeks, do a two-week menu. Remember, your menu does not have to be written in stone. You simply need enough meals to cover your entire grocery cycle.

Until you get accustomed to purchasing enough in one shopping cycle to sustain your family through the entire shopping cycle without additional trips to the store, continue writing out the breakfast & lunch menus. This will probably just include a whole lot of ditto marks -- or if you do it on the computer like me -- a lot of copying and pasting.

Why are we avoiding additional trips to the store? Because they are expensive. Because if you're a gatherer like me, the $5 you plan to spend on milk will quickly become $30 for milk and spaghetti sauce and marked down pasta and a candy bar because you deserve it just because you had to go to the store again and a bag of cookies for the kids lunches because you feel guilty over the candy bar you will not be sharing with the kids, etc. Every trip to the store is just more money out of your pocket. (My tip for inbetween shopping trips that absolutely cannot be avoided: go with exactly enough cash to cover your intended purchase and leave the debit cards, credit cards, and check books at home.)

So we've got menus, inventory, fliers and the beginnings of our shopping list. Where are we shopping?

Everywhere I've lived has a no-frills type of store --- it's a bag-your-own, discount-price type of store. If you haven't been shopping at your own local no-frills type grocery stores, now is the time to try them out. I am very pleased with my overall savings and the quality of the food at our own local no-frills type store. My store happens to be called No Frills, but in your neighborhood it might be Aldi (gosh I miss Aldi) or Save-a-Lot, or Food Basics. Whatever it is, you need to be shopping there. Bring your own bags!

Now then, complete your shopping list based on the big ticket items that are available on sale to fill in the holes in your menu.

You are not going to go to multiple stores for your groceries. Chasing sales just costs you more in gas, in added unplanned purchases, and in peace of mind. If your big ticket items are on sale at one store and you're doing the bulk of your shopping at a different, discount store --- go to the discount store first. Why? Because they may have carry-over sale items from previous sales that are no longer advertised. They may have unadvertised items that are a better deal than those at the full-service grocers. You may be able to eliminate that other stop.

Here's how to get in that store, get what you need, and get out without spending more money than necessary.

• You must go with list in hand.
  
• Go alone, or at least without the kids (I know this isn't always possible)
• Do not be hungry when you go
• Stick to the list
• Get out of the store in 30 minutes or less (I can do it- shopping for five for two weeks!)
• Choose store brands over name brands
• Choose local, in-season produce whenever it's available

The big thing is getting out of the store as fast as you can. Sounds daunting. While you're getting used to this method of shopping you might not make it under 30 minutes. Just stick to your list. That's the point. I manage this and I'm not running through the aisles, knocking down the elderly. I just stick to my list, maintain my focus, and leave that store the minute I've checked off my final item and gotten through the checkout. I do not stop and ponder sales. I do not stop and wonder whether I've forgotten to put something on my list. I just stick to the list and get the heck out of there.

As for store brands vs. name brands --- come on, you're not really believing all that hype are you? Do you really think that the name brand is coming from a different factory than the store brand? tsk tsk tsk. All you have to do is try. If you're that averse to using store brand items, try them. Try one brand and if it doesn't meet your standards, try the next store brand. There are usually a few non-name brand choices. Try them all.

What about the kids? Can't leave them behind? Can't leave them with a grandparent or sitter for your 45 minute absence? That's okay, I understand. Your kids must not be hungry if they're going with you. Give them a snack before you head out the door. If the kids have a tendency to demand, beg, plead, etc., offer them up something that is free as a reward for good behaviour in the store. Take them to the park after you've put the groceries away. Play their favourite game with them. Whatever -- let it be free, and let it be a reward for their good behaviour in the store. If one child is well-behaved and another is not, make sure that child gets his reward. The other kids will see this and will want it to. Remember, you're going to be speed shopping so remind the kids that you MUST hurry. The speed factor alone may be enough to get you all through the store without a toddler meltdown over marshmallows or a first grader's begging for play dough. Stick to the list and get through the store as fast as you can.

Oh, did I forget to mention coupons?

Nope, I didn't. If you're already using coupons, then good for you. I hope you've found a method that works for you. If you're not using coupons, don't worry about it. You're not missing much. You need to focus on the bottom line right now and coupons will not necessarily get you to a lower bottom line. I will talk about coupons in a future post.

Now, if after all this, your grocery bill is still too high, we'll look at other ways I've cut mine down further in my next post.

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Cutting Your Family's Grocery Bill Part 2

Menu and Meal Planning
Now that you have everything inventoried, you're going to sit down and figure out what to do with it. Grab some paper and a pen, and maybe have your most often used cook book at your side as well.

Most families tend to eat the same 10 meals over and over again. This makes meal planning very easy. That's right, I said meal planning. Yes, those of you who know me well know that I have a tendency to buck any rigid systems....and that's why I have a very light and easy way of meal planning.

First: list your family's regular meals. By all means, include lunches and breakfasts as this will only help you with cutting that grocery bill and eliminating unnecessary spending.

In our home we regularly have the following for dinner (you might call it supper): pasta, several casseroles, salads of every kind, chili, chicken breasts, pork chops, roasts, tacos, burgers, hot dogs, pizza. There are ten items there. But if you look closely, you can easily see how those ten items could be 20-30 different things depending upon how you prepare them. Lunches consist of sandwiches or salads or soup, fruit and/or veggies. Breakfasts are generally cereal, oats, pancakes, french toast, bagels, english muffins, eggs, and the occasional (read rare) home fries, mush (you might call it polenta), sausages, or bacon.

Now look at your inventory and see how many meals you can make from what you already have at home. Fill in a rough menu plan.

I used to plan each week carefully including breakfasts and lunches and follow the daily menu. But because my body, mind, and spirit have a deep and abiding aversion to strict structure, I bucked that system and simply plan meals. I don't have to have them on any set day unless they are meals that are dependant on left-overs from another meal, and that gives me the freedom to be somewhat spontaneous in my meal choices. For instance I have burgers, steak, chicken, taco salad, chicken quesedillas on the menu for next week. I won't have red meats two days in a row so I know we'll be having some variation of hamburgers, then chicken, hotdogs, then chicken, taco salad, then chicken....etc. How I prepare them will be decided, but when I do it is up to the wind. It's my organized-but-not-too-strict menu planning system. It works for us.

I always make sure that our dinner meals contain a protein source, two vegetables or fruits, and maybe a grain. A grain is never mandatory in our dinners as the kids eat cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch (or half sandwiches for snacks), and get quite their daily fill of grains. Desserts are only a bonus, never a given. They also happen to be fairly rare.

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Cutting Your Family's Grocery Bill Part 1

When I first moved to Canada and began grocery shopping, the experience was traumatizing. Grocery prices in Canada are significantly higher than they were in the states. (Apparently a lot of those prices are beginning to align and Americans are having a tough go of it now.) I truly sympathize. This is hard. I was accustomed to spending about $400 a month feeding a family of five in the states. I come to Canada and our food bill was as much as our rent ($1,000). What the heck was I to do? I was already shopping at the budget stores.

It took me a couple years, but I got my grocery bill back down to $400 a month. When things are extremely pinched, I can get it down to $200 a month without sacrificing nutrition or variety even...but there isn't much fun stuff in it.

What is the process?

First, you must take inventory of all you have. You may think you've got nothing, but everything counts. Pasta in the pantry, a few cans in the cupboards, frozen foods. While you're inventorying, toss the old stuff. You must organize your freezer if you plan to cut your family's food costs. Luckily this is easy and relatively painless. It took me about three days to go through everything, inventory everything, and clear out anything that was past its expiration date. I was still taking care of a home and five other people and I also washed all the cupboards and storage containers, otherwise this would have taken me one full day.

The Inventory
The great thing about the inventory is it enables you to organize items by their use. I have certain spices I use quite frequently--almost daily. These get placed front and center of my spice shelf. I have staples that I use quite frequently. These are placed between eye and shoulder height on pantry shelves. Doing this keeps things tidy. You don't want to have to move things out of your way to get to the things you always use. If I organized my spices alphabetically I would continually be knocking others over to get out my most frequently used ones. Less frequently used items go to the far sides of my spice shelf or the highest and lowest of my pantry shelves. (Very infrenquently used items go to the highest shelves as they're at about 6' and require a stool to reach.) We end up with everything where I need it to be. Here is how my inventory looks:

Baking staples:
Almonds -- 2 cups
Baker's Chocolate -- 1/2 bar
Baking Powder -- 1 full can
Baking Soda -- 2 full boxes, 2 open boxes
Bread Crumbs -- 4 cups
Bread Flour -- 3 cups
Brown Sugar -- 1 full bag, 1/2 bag
Cake mixes -- 0
Chocolate chips -- 0
Cocoa Powder -- 1/4 can
Cornmeal -- 0
Corn Starch -- <1/2 box
Custard Powder -- 3/4 can
Evaporated Milk -- 0
Graham Crumbs -- 2 pie shells' worth
Honey -- 1 pint
Icing (canned) -- 0
Icing Sugar (Powdered Sugar) -- 4 cups
Kosher Salt -- 4 cups
Lemon Rind -- 1 cup
Molasses -- 1/4 pint
Olive Oil -- 2 quarts
Oats -- 2 large bags full +
Pancake Mix -- 1 full box
Powdered Milk -- 1/2 cup
Raisins -- 1.5 cups
Salt -- 1 cup
Sea Salt -- 3 cups
Shortening -- 0
Splenda -- 1 large bag, full
Splenda Brown Sugar Blend -- 1/2 cup
Sweetened Condensed Milk -- 0
Tapioca -- 1/8 cup
White Flour -- 2.5 kilograms
White Sugar -- 2 kg
Whole Wheat Flour -- 1 kilogram
Vegetable Oil -- 2 quarts
Yeast -- 1/4 cup +

Do you get the picture, or do you want the whole thing?

I inventory my cooking staples (these are not the same as baking staples), my freezer (deep freezer), and my refrigerated items that last a long time (like salad dressings, condiments, etc.) I do not inventory milk, butter, margarine, etc., because items used so frequently are self-inventorying just by their frequency of use. Show me a mom who doesn't know how much milk she has in her home.

The bottom line with the inventory is that it will prevent you from making unnecessary purchases. Even if you can't see behind the giant cannister of flour, you can look at your pantry inventory and know that you do indeed have oats and raisins for the oatmeal raisin cookies your child needs in class tomorrow. If you first shop at home, you'll save money.

I find the baking staples inventory the most valuable since I do not bake frequently. I keep the inventory posted inside my pantry door and jot notes when I use a lot of something. As you can see I have a lot of zeros in that list. I know I will need to purchase those items before October, November or December when I'll do some holiday baking. (We've been known to bake several hundred cookies in November and December.....that's what we call "some holiday baking.")

Step two of cutting your grocery bill will be in the next installment.

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$160 in FOF -- But A & P has met their freshness standards!

It seems frightening to me that A & P is reporting they've met their freshness standards and are ending the Fresh or Free program effective September 4, 2008.

Let's see what was not fresh yesterday:
It was a $38 spiral-sliced honey ham that was not fresh which I replaced with this bone-in ham shoulder. I'm seeing lots of soups this fall :) And ham and fried cabbage. The puddings were a replacement for refrigerated strawberry shortcake cups. For crying out loud, the egg beaters expired in July! More axe deodorant. My son will never stink!

Juice, fruit salads and a chicken salad, english muffins, So good tetra (the out of date ones were from 2007!! They apparently just reshelve the darned things. They keep re-appearing.) Caramel dairy things. I like the chocolate but the chocolate was all out of date. The steaks were a replacement for a $20 box of chicken wings from the deli. (ewwwwww.) I was going to buy the steaks anyway as they're a pretty good deal and nice quality. Oh, that's right, I did buy some more!


The milk was a replacement for a 4L bag of Goat's milk which expired August 1. The yogurt tub was a replacement for a small Astro 4-pack of plain yogurts. I'd rather have the small ones but all of them were out of date. I use plain yogurt in place of sour cream all the time. In my cooking the small ones work perfectly so I can pop them in the freezer and pull them out as needed. More juice, Silk soy milk, Bertolli olive oil. Woohoo. I wish I'd subbed an extra virgin olive oil but there were fresh replacements of the same kind. Orange juice. There were three varieties of this juice out of date. We're not much for juice in this house, but with the heat I don't mind the kids getting a bit of vitamins with their hydration. Also, Roy works 12-hour shifts out in the elements. He needs all the hydration and nutrition he can get.

Speaking of Roy he had a nice little lunch today with the FOFed fruit salad, FOFed juice, and some of that lovely road-side jam we purchased this weekend during out fruit stand tour. I'll tell you later how to know if a fruit stand is worth stopping at or not.

So, A & P, now that you've met your freshness standard, how do you explain the $160 FOF above? Not to mention all the expires we left in the store! I see a hiring wave of stock persons and intensive stock rotation training for them. Hopefully along the way they figure out how to remove expired items from the shelves and have them NOT turn back up on the shelves!

A & P won't have any more of my business after September 4. Not only are their prices exorbitant, but their staff are surly and inhospitable most of the time. Even when I haven't FOFed, the staff are less than pleasant at best. That makes a difference for me.

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Sometimes, Its the Little Things You Do

I try to let my husband know every day that I still adore him. (I do, by the way.) Since he works 12-hour shifts and is gone from home for at least 13 hours a day, I might not get to tell him that he still lights my fire.

Then sometimes, it's just something simple that lets him know I did a little extra just for him. Just 'cause.

When hubby told me that he noticed a lot of the guys at work had the same sandwich bags we do, I knew I had to act. I wouldn't want hubby's lunch getting mixed up with anyone else's. Thus, I let him know that I care that his belly gets filled while he's out there working his fingers to the bone for us.

And how does one do that?

I think a picture tells the story best:

Thphthppthpt.

I suppose you want to know his reaction to this. It was a tickle and a "you think you're funny." Ha ha ha haha hahaha! Not he thinks I'm funny. I think I'm funny.

And I do. I giggled all evening.

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