Sandwich Rolls

(Upfront apology:  I dutifully took pictures of every step of these sandwiches, but my camera was on a scout camp out and my phone did not do such a good job.  I could post them here, but they would make you wish you had a new prescription in your glasses- or that you had glasses if you don't already.  I got a headache looking at them as I tried to insert them today.  Maybe I'll try again and use the real camera, but probably not.  Sorry.)

Last week I read about an very ingenious idea on Everydayfoodstorage.net- make sandwiches cinnamon roll style, bake and freeze them.  The kids just grab one (or two if they are teenage boys!), throw them frozen in their lunches, and they're ready to eat by lunch.  I don't know why I have never thought or heard of this before, but I tried them for dinner on both Friday and Saturday and my family loved them.  We had them 2 nights in a row because the first night I tried ham and cheese.  The second night I tried pizza.  Both were good and both were gone.

The members of my family are not huge mustard fans, so I did make a couple of changes from the recipe at Everydayfoodstorage.net.

First, I used the basic bread recipe from Fasteasybread.com because I'd used it before and it was familiar to me. I also knew I could substitute some of the white flour with wheat and it would work fine.  It makes 2 loaves worth of dough which I made into 24-30 sandwiches, depending on how thick I cut them.  I rolled one half on the dough at a time into about a 13" or 14" x 9" or 10" rectangle.

Second, instead of a honey mustard sauce, which no one would eat, I improvised a ranch flavored sauce from a chicken recipe I use.  First, I mixed up one can's worth of a food storage Cream of Chicken soup mix recipe that I have.  It makes 2 or 3 cups of powder.  I mixed 1/3 of a cup of powder with one cup of water, brought it to a boil and turned it off.

Cream of Chicken soup mix
2 c. non-instant powdered milk
3/4 c. cornstarch
1/4 c. chicken bouillon (about 12 cubes smashed)
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp basil (optional)
1 tsp thyme (optional)

Mix 1/3 c powder with 1 1/2 c. water, bring to a boil while stirring.

For these sandwiches I only used 1 cup of water because I wanted it a bit thicker to spread.  You could probably use a can of cream of chicken soup, but I only had large ones on hand and didn't want to open one.

I mixed the soup with 4 oz. of cream cheese (reduced fat) and a teaspoon or so of ranch dressing powder for flavor and spread it on the dough.  This ended up making enough "sauce" for 3 batches of sandwiches (about 36 rolls).

Next I covered the dough with a single layer of ham lunch meat and covered it with shredded cheddar cheese.

Rolling like a cinnamon roll was easier than I expected and cutting them into 1 inch slices was WAY easier than cinnamon rolls.  Usually with cinnamon rolls I use dental floss.  These cut really well with a sharp knife.  When I made the pizza rolls I used cheese only, no meat.  Those were easier to cut with dental floss.

The recipe from everydayfoodstorage says to bake at 400 for 10 minutes on a greased cookie sheet or in greased muffin tins for more a more "gourmet" look.  I tried both ways and found the muffin tins made rolls that stuck together better and were a more uniform size.

I let the sandwiches cool for a little bit in the pans, then all the way on a cooling rack, wrapped each in plastic wrap, and tossed them in the freezer.  The boys all took them for lunch yesterday and I thawed one for several hours on the counter at home to see what it would be like.  Obviously, they are much better right out of the oven, but they tasted pretty good thawed from the freezer.  The boys all took them again today, so that's a good sign.

This gives us something easy and different for lunches, at least for a while.  Plus, they have less fat than mayo on sandwiches, use less meat and cheese than a regular sandwich, I can get some wholewheat into the lunch bag, and there's less cleanup from lunch-making in the morning.  Wonder what other combinations we could try.  Roast beef and mozzarella?  Maybe with a little pepper and onion in there?  Turkey?  We ought to have a few weeks worth of experimentation ahead of us!

Treats and Sacrifices

The boys opted to get ice cream and have hot fudge sundaes at home last night after the Priesthood Session of General Conference instead of going out for ice cream.  There are two bonuses for that.

1) Ryan and I got to have ice cream last night with them and listen to their recap of the evening.
2) The left over ice cream allowed for some After Conference P'zookies today.  Steven and Ryan even made them.  All Greg and I had to do was show up.  Sweet!

Thanks for teaching my kids all about these, Christie.  Thinking of you this evening.  Sisters are awesome!

Basic P'zookie recipe: Make a batch of the chocolate chip cookie dough of your choice.  Bake in a pan until half done.  Remove from oven and top with ice cream.  Eat right out of the pan while hot.  Enjoy.  (Tip: Let your kids eat part of your share or you'll be asking yourself what you could have possibly been thinking as you run or walk about 20 miles a day for the next several weeks to counteract all the calories.)

Tomorrow we're having popcorn and apple slices dipped in caramel sauce for Family Home Evening treats while we talk about what we learned this weekend.  Good thing Conference only comes around every 6 months.  It's going to take me until October Conference to calorically recover from April Conference! 

(I guess we all have to make sacrifices sometimes!)

Routines and Being Educated by a Bag of Cheese

Our family loves cheese- and not just because it's in a three-way tie for Ryan's favorite word ("banana" and "stuff" being the other lucky winners).  We eat more of it than is probably good for us.  As such, I buy shredded cheese in big 5 pound bags at Sam's Club.  We eat it more sparingly if I buy smaller bags, but the price is better in big bags.  To get the best of both worlds I buy the big bag, cut open the top, and then divide it into smaller bags which are stored in the freezer until we need/want them.

 It's usually a process that creates quite a mess on my counter because there just isn't a real great way of getting a handful of finely shredded cheddar from one bag to another without dropping some on the counter.  I've done it this way for years and never gave it much thought.

Forward to today.  I cut open the top of the bag and it split down the seam that runs the entire length of the bag.  At first I was irritated.  Then I realized my life was just simplified for years to come.  Do you realize that with the bag split open like that I can fill a baggie right over the open bag?  Any cheese that drops falls right back into the pile of cheese ready to be part of the next handful.  I don't even want to mention how many years it took me to realize this and I didn't even do it on my own.  I really need to get my life out of it's rut more often.

 Makes me wonder just how much of every day is wasted because I do things the way I've always done them.
(Oh, and I'm feeling incredibly brilliant right about now.)

An Open Letter to Greg

Dear Greg-

Thank you so very much, I think, for bringing home that box of heavenly goodness.  Please feel free to do so at any time.  Loretta must be one amazing cook.  I do think it is a good thing that you do not travel to New Orleans very often and that we live on the other side of the country or your wife would seriously weigh 500 pounds.  I think that stuff should be on a DEA, FDA, or ATF hit list because I CANNOT stop eating it.  I hope you got some before you left because there's like a 99.99999998% chance that all you get when you get home is a box with a picture on it.  I don't even want to know how much butter is in it.  Good thing it's the 5th ingredient in a list of 6- right behind sugar, which is at least behind pralines and pecans.  One redeeming quality is that I can pronounce all 6 ingredients.  That means the calories are better for me, right?  I must admit that I'm not totally up on what a praline is, but I'll fix that as soon as I'm done here.  They are yummy, whatever they are.  Thank you so much for thinking of us.  We all appreciate it, but mostly me.  So glad you're home! 

Love,
Shan

pra·line/ˈprāˌlēn/Noun

1. A smooth, sweet substance made by boiling nuts in sugar and grinding the mixture.

2. A crisp or semicrisp candy made by a similar process.

PS-I've decided that I love online dictionaries!
PPS- Maybe it's not such a good thing that pralines are the second ingredient behind praline flavoring.  Looks like listing pralines at the top gives one a distorted view of how much sugar there really is in this box- and I notice there's no nutrition label.  Convenient..  This is definitely a time when ignorance is bliss!

Thanks, Thanks, and Thanks

“God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs”
Spencer W. Kimball (“Small Acts of Service,” Ensign, Dec. 1974, 5).

And sometimes he meets our wants. And sometimes it's in ways we wouldn't necessarily have chosen.

This week has been a great example. The screen door on our house has needed to have the screen replaced since we moved in. (That would be over two years ago, in case you've lost count!) Every morning I look at it and think how terrible it looks. Then I remind myself I don't have time to take it off it's hinges and replace it, so I walk on through and do my best to ignore it. I think Heavenly Father got tired of my silent wishes. This week the screws on the lower hinge pulled out of the frame. Twice. I now dreaded going through the door because we really didn't have time to fix it until today and it now sounded terrible as the bottom dragged across the porch. And, if I thought the screen had looked bad before, well swinging in every possible direction from only the top hinge wasn't doing anything to improve my opinion of the situation.

Enter today and my sweet husband. He spent the better part of the day working on the frame and hinges. I spent the better part of an hour on the screen. He wins the prize for doing the most work, hands down. End result is that we have an unblemished screen on a door that not only is hung properly, but now closes all the way by itself, no scraping sound effects included. Bonus!

Or, how about that food storage we're always working to build? Some days it seems like we aren't getting anywhere. Nearly a year ago we signed up for Sunday papers to get coupons. I hadn't had a ton of success over the summer and was considering canceling the paper. This week Macey's had Libby's canned veggies on sale for 3 cans for $1. That was a great price I hadn't seen in a long time, so I ad matched it at Wal-mart and bought 2 dozen cans. Then, on Sunday, both the Parade magazine and one of the coupon inserts had coupons for $1 off three cans. Well, they were still on sale for $.33 each at Maceys so off I went and bought 33 cans for something like $.34- I still had to pay sales tax. New printable coupons for $1 off 3 cans of Libby's veggies came out the day after the sale went off. Drat. Figures! At least I'd gotten what I could. I'd just save those coupons and hope for another sale before they expired. Greg brought home a copy of the Daily Universe from work later in the week. Macey's ran a one page ad that included 3/$1 Libbys veggies extended until Friday at the Provo store only. So, happy, cheap date night, we went and bought 24 more cans for $.25 total. The shelf is full and the wallet's not totally empty.

And, sticking with the finance theme, Erica was in the market for a Homecoming dress. She'd been asked by a nice guy from school and was looking forward to a fun evening. She and I have looked a bit for dresses, but not found anything. Someone mentioned yesterday that Penneys had dresses on sale- and clearance prices at that. We headed over there this morning. Lo and behold, the second one she tries on looks great and is modest. It also has a clearance price tag for $27. Mom and daughter are both very happy! Upon checkout, it rings up at $13.97 for a with-tax total of $14.91. Even happier! Less than an hour of shopping, a cute dress, and a fabulous price. Who could ask for more?

Now, none of those things mentioned above are needs in the sense that we were going to die if we didn't have them. A screen does allow us to enjoy the cool breezes while keeping the bugs out of the house. We are counseled to have food storage and there have been times when we've really needed it, so we do our best to be obedient. Homecoming isn't a required event, but it sure is a fun date and a memorable part of high school. (However, if you agree to go to the dance, you do need to wear clothes. That one is an absolute must.) Wants they all were on some level- verbalized or not. I like to think that Heavenly Father was watching over us this week and through many different people, most of whom have no idea who we are, gave us little gifts to lift our spirits and brighten our journey here on earth. None was big or grandiose, just something small to let us know He's up there and aware of us and our needs. I know that I'll be saying silent thank-yous every morning on my way out the screen door, each time I open a can of vegetables, and as I smile and wave Erica out the door to the dance. And, those are just three of the reasons today I have to say thanks.

We Grow 'Em Big Here

So, this Spring all the daffodils and tulips popped up just like they were supposed to. Mixed in among them we had a couple that never bloomed, but I didn't think much about it. They kept growing and growing, though, and today were about twice as tall as any of the other plants.

I was out talking with my next door neighbor this afternoon. His little boys broke the tops off of the tallest plants and suddenly we could smell onions. Wally's garage was opened, so he got a shovel and we dug up what we discovered were the biggest green onions I've ever seen.

This is one that I bought last week at the store:


These are the ones we dug out of the flower bed this afternoon:


I think I'll look up a recipe for onion soup unless anyone knows something better to do with them! (Then, I'm going back to gardening school until I can tell the difference between all the plants.)

$.99 Strawberries in March

Sunflower Market has $.99/lb. strawberries. The second week in March. That seems early to me, but I'm not one to complain about such things. They are beautiful, huge, and oh so juicy. (I would have taken a picture for your enjoyment, but the only way the camera is currently functioning is for Erica to press hard on the front edges of the lens with her fingers while pushing the button. We currently have lots of pictures of Erica's fingers and not much else.) I bought 5 tubs today. We ate one after school and the other 4 have been made into jam and are sitting in my freezer, except for a little in the fridge- some of which will probably not live to see tomorrow morning as I will eat a piece of toast before bed. I don't know who thought of having a sale on large, gorgeous, yummy strawberries in March, but today they are my hero. And probably tomorrow and the day after, and Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday as well. Maybe if I offer to keep them at hero status, we'll have them again next week as well.

PS- The suggestion given last fall about how to get the cents sign didn't work for me. I'm going to have to get a custom keyboard for days like today.

PPS- If your strawberries are cheaper, I'm glad for you. Eat many and feel good.

PPPS- Sunflower also had London Broil steaks for $1.97/lb., but they were out. They were selling sirloin steaks at the same price instead until their shipment came in. It was a happy grocery day. Glad it kind of fell apart yesterday (the regular day).

TVP

This one's for trublubyu. She asked me to tell about TVP. I must say here that I am far from being an expert. TVP stands for Texturized Vegetable Protein and is made from soy beans after they extract the oil. It is a product that I grew up on, that's how I know about it. I haven't really done any research beyond that. My mom used it as a way to save money and that's why I started using it as well. I have since learned to appreciate it for the dietary pluses. You can use it alone or mix it with other meats. I prefer to mix it about half and half. (There is a joke in our family that my mom would get the TVP ready and start cooking dinner. She'd get the froxen hamburger out of the freezer, wave it over the top of the pan, and put it back in the freezer. We'd have TVP and essence of beef. Just a joke, but we chuckle about it.) Since I mix it half and half with my hamburger or ground turkey, I get the same amount of "fill" in a dish, but half of the fat. Also, I've been told that soy helps lower cholesterol. Even if it doesn't, the lower fat intake is great for lowering cholesterol.

You can get TVP in several flavors and forms. I prefer to use unflavored flakes, but will also use the more granular form also. It's very good about taking on the flavors it is cooked with. I use about 1/2 cup to equal 1/2 pound of hamburger or ground turkey. If I have a recipe that calls for only 1/2 pound of ground something, I just use the meat and don't bother trying to use half TVP. If I need 1-1/2 pounds of meat, I use 1 pound meat and 1/2 cup TVP. I put it in a bowl and add just enough warm water to get it wet all over and then let it sit for a couple of minutes. You can supposedly add it dry to whatever meat you are cooking, but I HATE biting into something and finding a little crunchy something I wasn't expecting. Soaking it a bit beforehand prevents those unexpected surprises. Then I just add it to whatever meat I'm browning. It absorbs the rest of the juices so I don't have to drain the meat and then it tastes like the meat. (I use meat that is at least 90% lean. 93% if I can find it.) I only use it in casseroles, soups, or sauces- things it can blend in with other textures, or soften fairly well. I do not use TVP on its own (no TVP burgers, for instance, Blech!), nor do I like it mixed in with tuna. I have a memory of eating a tuna sandwich with little crunchies (other than relish) in it as a child and I just can't bring myself to try it again. Maybe someday.

Where to find it? That's usually my problem. I used to get it at the LDS canneries, but they stoped carrying it several years ago. Some grocery stores carry small packages (about 10 oz.), but it's kind of expensive. I think most health food store would carry it. I've heard there is a frozen product that is similar, but I've never tried it. I've also seen soy protein powder, but I don't know how you'd use that. Maybe in a drink? Some Sprouts in AZ carry it and some do not. You'd have to ask. As I mentioned, Sunflower Farmers Market near me just started carrying the more granular form. It cost $1.99/pound. I just bought 1-1/2 pounds and it comes to probably 3-4 cups in a pound. If I only use 1/2 cup for every 1/2 pound of hamburger, it comes out to about $0.25- $0.33 (where's that cents sign!) per 1/2 pound equivalent. That's a bit cheaper than hamburger and is better for you!

Not everyone likes it, and that's fine. I was worried about my kiddos liking it, but no one has ever said a word. I've been out of it for the past month or so and could only slightly tell a difference. Mostly, my food felt heavier in my stomach from the added meat, but that's it as far as I could tell. The amount of meat I used when I didn't have any TVP got to me more than anything else. I like being able to buy the big pack of ground beef at Sam's or Costco and have it last a couple of months. We went through it twice as fast without the TVP. I kept hearing little cash register dings in my head everytime I got out 2 packages of meat instead of 1. (Yes, I am basically cheap!)

Ok, that's about it. I hope I covered everything. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.