I really enjoy reading and owning recipe books, but I’ve discovered that they are not practical instruments for usage.  I’ve got about 5 square feet of shelf space devoted to recipe books in our pantry and that is were they sit.  There are zillions of great recipes I’ve never tried because going through recipes when I’m making up our weekly menu plan is tedious.

So I want to go through each book and pick out recipes that have ingredients we enjoy and seem to be something I would actually make.  But what to do with those recipes after I’ve done this is my dilemma.  Do I copy them into a computer file?  Do I type them up and reprint them onto index cards?  I’m undecided as to whether to have them available on a computer screen or on paper.  I do have a computer in the kitchen and have accessed online recipes using them directly from the screen so I’m not opposed to this format.  Having them in a binder or on index cards also is perfectly acceptable to me.  But what is the most efficient and effective way to make these recipes more useful and available to me?

In the end, I’m not going to get rid of all my recipe books.  There are a few to which I hold no attachment and will get rid of as soon as I’m gone through them and decided what to do with the recipes I like.  Other books I will keep readily available in the kitchen, but the remainders are going into storage to free up space.  Oh, and I forgot to mention the billion or so loose recipes of every shape and size imaginable that I’ve collected over the years.

I’m kind of leaning toward a paper format for organizing these, mostly because I’m still sentimentally attached to paper unlike some folks from the generation behind me.  Paper is still easier for me to perouse versus a computer, but a computer can organize all those recipes in all sorts of useful ways.  Argh!  I’m not convincing myself of an organizational plan here.  Any ideas from anyone??

My favorite local grocery store’s sales start on Thursdays.  So I’ve started shopping on Thursdays because sale items tend to run low if I wait for another day.  Thus the reason my menu planning goes from Thursday through to the next Wednesday evening. I also like to have a baked good on hand for snacking and this week I’m going to make zucchini bread.

Breakfast Mondays – Thursdays is generally cold or hot cereal, milk and  OJ or other 100% juice.  Occasionally, I will make scrambled eggs or some other hot breakfast.  Fridays we go to McDonald’s drive-thru because we both go into Springfield early for the day.  Dave to go to work and me to hang out with my sister-in-law so I can help her.  Saturdays & Sundays I make a hot breakfast.

Lunches Mondays-Thursday for Dave I make a PB& J sandwich, pack a little bag of chips/pretzels, some baked yummy of some sort, carrot and/or small fruit.  I just make due for lunch with whatever we have for leftovers or maybe canned soup.  Saturdays & Sundays we don’t generally eat lunch because we’ve had a big breakfast.

So dinners are the only thing I’ve really got to plan.  Below is this week’s dinner menu.

Tonight:  pork chops, spinach artichoke dip spread on toasted French Bread (new recipe…will post if it tastes good), small salad.

Friday:  Spaghetti with Italian sausage & mushrooms, small salad and any leftover spinach artichoke dip

Saturday:  baked potatoes with fixins’ (broccoli, diced ham, sour cream, grated cheese, butter)

Sunday:  baked chicken, chicken flavored rice, broccoli or corn (a veggie from the freezer)

Monday:  Tacos with fixins’ (sour cream, cheese, salsa, lettuce, tomatoes)

Tuesday:  Clam chowder and grilled cheese (this is using Snow’s canned clam chowder, homemade chowder is nice, but costs a small fortune to make).

Wednesday:  quiche (eggs, diced ham or sausage, minced broccoli, cheese…this stuff is really yummy)

Now, I’m hoping to get all the ingredients I need and stock pile a few boxes of cereal which is on sale (and I have a coupon) for $60-$65.  I have to go to two grocery stores and the butcher shop to do this…I’ll post my success or failure when I get back.

While searching the Internet yesterday for a good muffin recipe I came across a recipe called “easy fruit coffee cake” at Tammy’s Recipes.  I wanted to see if it could be a dessert cake and possibly a breakfast treat cake so I made it last night.   We ate it last night for dessert and this morning for breakfast, it was that yummy.   This first time, I tried making it with some fresh blueberries I’d frozen late last summer.  But we both decided it would be fantastic with raspberries, strawberries and especially apples.  Dave liked it so much he wants me to make it for his co-workers for their weekly meeting next week.

I’m going to post the recipe as I made it.  Tammy’s recipe was slightly different and if you want her original just click on Tammy’s Recipes in the paragraph above.

FRUIT COFFEE CAKE

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  I used a plain old cast iron skillet with cooking spray, but a greased 8 or 9 inch baking pan is in the original recipe.

BATTER:

2 cups of all-purpose flour

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons of sugar

1 tablespoon of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2 eggs

14/ cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 cup of fruit (like I said blueberries worked great, raspberries, strawberries and apples would also probably be yummy)

TOPPING:

1/3 cup of all purpose flour

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup butter, softened (I used room temperature butter)

1 teaspoon cinnamon

INSTRUCTIONS:

1.  In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and the salt.

2.  In a little bowl using an electric mixer beat the eggs for about 2-3 minutes making them frothy.

3.  Pour the eggs, oil,  milk & vanilla on top of dry mixture and stir until combined.  Fold in fruit.

4.  Pour the batter into your prepared pan.

5.  For the topping, mix flour, brown sugar and cinnamon then drop in butter slices.  I used a pastry cutter to mix everything together, but two knives to cut in the butter would work just as well.  You want the topping to have small crumbles of butter throughout.  Sprinkle this mixture over the top of the batter.

6.  Bake for 50-60 minutes.  Mine was done at 50 minutes.  At 40 minutes, I covered the cake with foil because the topping was getting pretty brown.

7.  I served it warm for dessert and cold for breakfast.  Might be really tasty with vanilla ice cream when serves as dessert.

After the cake had cooled in the pan for about 30 minutes and because I used a round cast iron skillet, I was able to put the foil back over the top, flip the cake out upside down and place it right side up on a cake pedestal.  It made a pretty presentation.

I love vegetable beef soup (homemade).  So all day I’ve been tinkering with a lovely crock-pot full of vegetable beef soup.  It was a tad bland so I decided to add some herbs.  And I had a little accident with the jar of thyme right over the crock-pot.   I didn’t dump the whole jar in, but let’s estimate it at about 2 heaping tablespoons.  Arf!  I took a sip almost two hours ago and it tasted horribly thymee (new word).  I’m going to go “doctor” on it, but we might just have to suffer through eating a huge pot of really strongly favored soup.   Major bummer!

In the toolbar section to the right you will see a category for other blogs I like to read.  If you click on Biblical Womanhood today, she’s started a new challenge and I think I’m going to take part in it.   And she’s got a pretty easy cleaning/decluttering task to attend to this week and it goes along with my plans to get my house more organized before the baby arrives.  This week she has challenged folks to clear out all garbage from the entire house.  Since I’ve been down with a nasty cold for a week, my house actually needs to have this done so the timing is great.  Then she says to scan each room for quick stuff we find that can be given away, sold or is a maybe item to get rid of.

All that sounds easy enough and I’ll feel like I’m making headway toward getting the house completely cleaned and organized.  The sun was shining in brightly through our open curtains over the weekend and I got to see just how many cobweb/dust bunnies had accumulated in corners and on the ceiling since this past fall.  These things tend to sneak up on a person.

It is still January and there is still tons of snow on the ground with more to come, but it’s time I get busy on some Spring Cleaning chores.