My sweet Mother-in-law sent home with me a bag full of fresh veggies straight from her garden. This included a nice Zucchini. Normally, we don’t eat much zucchini, so I decided that I will make a bread with it to give the kids for a snack. I started searching for a good zucchini bread recipe, but all of the recipes call for a ton of sugar! So, I started searching for a “healthy” recipe for the bread and I came across this blog. Not only did she have a recipe with less sugar, but she also had some great tips for modifying your favorite recipes to make them healthier. If you get a minute, you should check it out!

This is THE BEST recipe I have ever used for making pancakes. Every one came out perfectly. They were fluffy and thick, and kept a nice round shape. Quick and easy, using simple ingredients. This is my new favorite pancake mix recipe! To view the original recipe and all of the comments check it out at Recipezaar, one of my favorite recipe search engines.

Here is my menu using the stuff from June’s box of Angel Food Ministry goodies. I tried my best to stretch these items for two weeks worth of dinners, but I just couldn’t make it work. So, you get 10 great meal ideas. Oh well, ten dinners for $30 is still a great deal in my book!

These recipes are assuming that you already have some basic staple ingredients. I’m trying to list recipes that don’t need a lot of outside main ingredients. If I don’t have an ingredient on hand, I try to substitute something else for it, or I just leave it out all together. This menu is mostly just for main courses. You can add whatever sides you have available from your own pantry. Depending on the size of your family, you may have enough left over for lunch the next day, or even another dinner!

1. Pan-Seared Ribeye Steaks, Steamed Carrots with Lemon-Dill Butter

2. Golden Honey Chicken, Pork and Beans

3. Sizzle Burger Hamburgers, Oven Baked French Fries

4. Honey Barbecue Riblets

5. Vegetable Stew (based on this recipe’s filling) with Bisquick Dumplings

6. Supreme Pizza

7. Italian Sausage Casserole (*make sure to save about 1/4 of the sausage for another recipe)

8. Cheddar and Chile Egg Casserole

9. Mac & Cheese Dinner (just mix in leftover cooked sausage and veggies)

10. One Dish Chicken Parmesan

I haven’t tried any of these recipes yet (except for my carrots), so I’m experimenting. Let me know what you think! Since I’ve just started ordering these boxes, I’ve decided to try to plan menu’s based on them each month. Eventually I’d like to add Aldi meals in as well. If you have any suggestions or requests please feel free to send them my way!

I don’t remember where I found this recipe; I’ve been using it for years and we love it! It’s so easy to make, and really kicks plain old carrots up a notch! Thought I’d share it with ya, since I’ll be adding it to my Angel Food Menu coming up soon!

(serves 6)

2 bags (12 oz each) baby carrots, trimmed (or peeled, sliced carrots)

2 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened

2-3 tsp. lemon juice

2 Tbsp. fresh dill, or 1 ½ tsp dried

¼ tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

Cook carrots in steamer basket over simmering water in covered saucepan for 8-10 min or until tender. Transfer carrots to a bowl. Toss with butter, lemon juice, dill, salt and pepper. Serve immediately.

This morning I was in a creative cooking type mood, so I decided to whip up a batch of oatmeal and experiment. With a little inspiration from Sashwhy’s link love about Homemade Instant Oatmeal Packets, I pulled out what ingredients I wanted to use: Instant Oats, Liquid Coffee Creamer in French Vanilla, and fresh Strawberries. It came out good, but I accidentally made way too much. So now I have about 2 1/2 cups of leftover oatmeal that I really don’t want to waste. Instead of tossing it out, I decided to use the wonderful internet to see if I could find a way to use this stuff up. I was really happy to find a few good uses, so I thought I’d share them with you all! I haven’t tried them yet, but here they are:

• Add it to pancake batter, bread dough, and muffin mix
• Add it to a smoothie mix

Leftover Oatmeal Muffins

1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1/3 c. milk
1/4 c. oil
1 egg
1/2 c. leftover cooked cereal

(Oatmeal, Zoom, Malt-O-Meal, Cream of Rice, or Wheat Hearts).Combine and divide among muffin cups. Bake in 350 degree oven 20 minutes.

Thanks to Cooks.com for this one!

Leftover Oatmeal Cookies

2 c. sifted flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 c. sugar
2/3 c. shortening
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. cooked oatmeal

Sift dry ingredients together. Add shortening and eggs and beat until creamy (about 2 minutes). Stir in oatmeal. Drop from teaspoon onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 375 degrees for 12-15 minutes. Yield: 4 dozen.

*Thanks to Cooks.com for this recipe

Fried Oatmeal

Spread leftover oatmeal into a square or rectangular container and freeze until firm enough to cut.

Cut into slices about 1/4 inch thick. Lightly coat with flour, or crushed graham cracker crumbs. Heat about 2 tsp. oil in pan (or spray with non-stick oil) on med-low heat. Place slices in the heated pan, and lightly brown on each side, allowing it to warm all the way through.

Top with maple syrup, powdered sugar, brown sugar, nuts, or whatever you like!

Leftover Oatmeal Bread

(I found this recipe on kitchenmage- thank you! I decided to copy and paste (and edit a little) this one due to some questionable content on this blog; just a forewarning.)

This makes about a single loaf of bread, but it is easy to scale to make larger quantities. All quantities are approximate and should be adjusted to suit your taste.

• 1- 1 1/2 c. Cooked Oatmeal
• 1 c. water
• 1/8 c. brown sugar
• 2 c. (+/-) bread flour
• 1 tsp. instant yeast
• 1 tsp. salt

In mixing bowl, stir oatmeal, water and yeast together enough to break up oatmeal. Let mixture sit on counter for 15 minutes. Add brown sugar and 1 cup of flour and mix to combine into wet dough, about 1 minute. Add additional flour, mixing well after each addition until the dough comes together into a rough dough. This may take 2 cups, or it may take 3+ - it depends on all sorts of things.

When the dough holds together, turn it out onto a well-floured counter. Knead, adding more flour as needed, for 2-3 minutes. Cover and let rest (autolyse) for 20 minutes.

After the autolyse, add the salt and knead for another 3-5 minutes, adding more flour as needed. Determining when the dough is sufficiently kneaded is mostly a matter of experience. It will no longer be sucking up flour from the counter, the surface will smooth and be less sticky (although still a little tacky), and it will feel more bread-like. You will know it when you feel it.

Place the dough in clean bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in bulk.

Turn the dough out on floured counter and punch it down gently. Shape the dough into a loaf and let rise until doubled in bulk.

Preheat oven to 375°.

Bake for 30 minutes and check for doneness (hollow sound when tapped on bottom, 195-200° internal temperature. Let cool for an hour before slicing.

Toasted, spread with butter, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, this bread makes some of the world’s best cinnamon sugar toast.

If you have boxed cereal in your home, here’s a neat little tip for you:

Once the bag of cereal is empty, cut it open and use the bag as waxed paper for your freezing needs. Just don’t bake with it, I tried this as an experiment and it melted.

Many of you have expressed interest in hearing my thoughts on the quality of the Angel Food boxes. After using a lot of the products that I purchased, I’m ready to give you my opinion.

I’ve heard from other’s that the meat isn’t so great, but I actually think it has been really good so far. I haven’t used it all up yet, but I’ve eaten the steaks and the chicken and they have both been wonderful. We took the steaks over to my dad’s house, grilled them, and split them between all 5 of us. They were really good! My dad loved them, and asked me where I got them and if they were very expensive. I said, “Would I have bought them if they were expensive? You know me!” I told him all about Angel Food Ministries, and he wanted a box too!

The frozen food has been good, except for the Lean Cuisine Frozen Mushroom Pizza’s. Hubby didn’t like them, but the kids did, so I guess it depends on your taste buds. The burritos, and veggies have been great.

Everything has been good, as long as you are used to generic brand foods. The cereal, generic Frosted Flakes, wasn’t exactly like the original, but it was still yummy.

All in all, we’ve been very pleased with our food, and I can’t wait to get next month’s box. I’m planning on making a monthly menu based on the Angel Food box, and Aldi’s groceries. I will post that towards the end of the month, before the boxes are distributed.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you may have about Angel Food. Happy to help!

My newest, most favoritest snack lately is Bread & Butter Pickles. I just LOVE them!! As I finished off the jar tonight, savoring every last morsel, I noticed that there was quite a bit of pickle juice (or “brine”) still left over. In my frugalness, I began wondering what I could do with that deliciously flavorful liquid. After a little searching, here is what I have found:

• Mix it with your favorite barbecue sauce to intensify the tangy flavor. Add 2 tablespoons per 1 cup of sauce and combine well. Spread over grilled chicken during the last few minutes of cooking on the grill.

• For a delicious potato salad, add 3 tablespoons juice to ¾ cup mayonnaise and mix with 3 pounds of cooked potatoes. For a classic macaroni salad, add 3 tablespoons to ½ cup mayonnaise and mix with 2 cups of cooked macaroni.

• Use as a marinade to soak your favorite veggies in while refrigerating.

• Combine ¼ cup pickle juice with one jar of barbecue sauce and one large bag of little sausages in a crock pot. Heat thoroughly and serve in crock pot to keep warm.

• Marinate chicken or shrimp. You can also add: 1 cup juice to ½ cup olive oil, 1 clove minced garlic, and ¼ cup fresh chopped cilantro in a zip-top bag. Add one pound of either chicken or shrimp, roll it in the liquid and marinate for 1 hour before grilling.

• Put sliced cucumbers, onions, carrots and/or pieces of cauliflower in leftover pickle juice and in a couple of days they will be pickled.

• Slip sliced onions into a jar of sweet-hot bread and butter pickle juice. The “pickled” onions liven up turkey, chicken or ham sandwiches, as well as hamburgers.

Plus, there are many recipes out there which use pickle juice in them. A simple Google search will bring up tons of great ideas. So, the next time you are tempted to dump that juice down the drain, think about all of the ways that you could put it to good use instead!

To find these ideas and more check out  eHow.com and ilovepickles.org

If you happen to have an Aldi nearby, you may have realized what a valuable resource this budget friendly grocery store can be! We get most of our groceries from there, since we’ve been sticking to a $25-$30/wk grocery budget. While blog surfing tonight, I found an awesome page on Mom Advice. If you shop Aldi, or if you have one close by, you should check this out! They have created an Aldi Menu Planner, listing meals using ingredients only from this store. I was really excited when I found this. I’ll have to test them out, and see how budget friendly they really are!

Okay, maybe everybody knows this trick already. But, for those of you who might not know, if you add a pinch of salt to a gallon of milk it will make it last longer. Something about the salt preserves the milk from spoiling as quickly. Just a handy little tip (Of coarse, around here milk doesn’t last long enough to spoil!)

For more kitchen tips visit Tammy’s Recipes.