Valerean

For my first thrift of 2025 I went to our local brick and mortar Goodwill to see if I could find a few things, like this holiday and party cookbook. I need some inspiring recipes and I like Taste of Home cookboosk because the recipes are easy to adapt to our low-fat and sugarfree preferences. I also cruised the craft aisle and found a mystery bag of brand new patterns. I've been wanting to try making clothes again, so this was too tempting to pass up. I think the universe just gave me the thumbs up on that, as there were 33 unused patterns in the bag. They include a few children and family patterns, but most are for women and all of those include my size. The thing I love is that some of the patterns are for things I want to make, like aprons and pajama pants. Just the perfect bundle for me. The cookbook was $1.99, and the bag of patterns was $7.99 (or about twenty-four cents each pattern.) With tax that came out to $10.68. Added: I have changed the the...

My guy has gotten into thrifting with me, and last month took me on a little shopping spree which he also paid for, so I did not spend a dime for this lovely 9" cast iron grill pan, which will be great when I want to make salmon or paninnis. It's in new condition, and it's a Lodge, so it was definitely worth $9.99. Although I vowed not to buy any more fabric, I did see a bundle that had three different fabrics I needed for holiday projects. My guy talked me into getting it, and since he was paying, I caved in. I'll do a separate post on the fabric once I measure it, but it was also worth the $14.99 price tag. I stopped buying new clothes a few years back, and some of my worn-out t-shirts became a quilt over the summer, so I picked out three cotton shirts in new condition that I can wear through fall. From left to right the prices were $5.99, $4.19 and $4.19. I also selected a few more shorts; all of these were $5.99 each. I really don...

Because it looked economical and tasty I wanted to try this wine-braised chicken and pearl onion recipe in my slow cooker, only I couldn't find pearl onions at our market. So I cut up a regular onion and that worked just fine, as did 1-1/2 chicken breasts I used instead of the chicken thighs. We had it on steamed white rice, and it was very good. If you don't like tarragon I'd skip it, though. I think the only tweaks I'll make to it next time is doubling the liquid and seasoning ingredients to make more gravy, and adding some chopped celery as my guy suggested (he likes celery in everything.)

I needed to thrift some yarn to go with my new skein of art yarn, so we headed over to our local Goodwill to hunt for some. I ended up with yarn, a cookbook and some holiday napkins. You can't beat a Christmas-themed cookbook for $1.99. This one sells new for about $15.00. It should give me some ideas for holiday cooking, which is always a challenge. I got this bundle of four large snowflake cotton napkins in mint condition for $4.99. Similar napkin sets in the same size sell at Target for $34.00. I'm going to use these like furoshiki and wrap up some gifts with them. Recyclable wrapping is always a good idea. This is the bundle of yarn I picked up for $5.99, which was a steal. The orange-red yarn was my primary objective, but I can use the three skeins of chenille yarn to make slippers and hats (and these run about $5.99 each new.) Not sure what I can do with black tulle, but we'll see.

I was looking through my photo archives the other day and noticed how faithfully I photographed our Thanksgiving table every year. This one is from 2011, when we had a guest along with the kids (I think my nephew, although I'm not sure.) I have always been proud of what I've made for Thanksgiving dinner. I worked very hard on the meal every single year. But unless Katherine or my nephew are visiting I'll probably never make a big one like this again. Honestly? That's a relief. Thanksgiving 2008. The tradition of the holiday being my burden started with my mother. She expected me to help with the cooking for Thanksgiving from the time I was five, and put so much responsibility on me that I could make the whole dinner by myself before I was a teenager. I've always liked cooking, but not the stress and effort involved in making holiday dinners. It was what was expected of me. Mom trained me to view Thanksgiving dinner as my holiday job, and I've ...

The other night we went to Target on an errand, and I noticed a ceramic-coated cookware set I had been eyeing was 50% off its $100.00 sticker price as a pre Black Friday deal. The set comes in ivory, light green, a pastel orange and this blue. Since I really need to replace a couple of my ageing, sticking skillets I decided to buy it. I got another 5% off for using my Target red card to buy the set, so I got all four pieces and three lids for $48.50. They included three felt stacking cushions, which I don't need but are nice if you have limited kitchen space. Ceramic-coated cookware is not cheap, so I feel like I got an excellent deal.

This was the bento box meal I ordered when we took Kat out to her favorite Japanese restaurant over the holidays. Like a lot of my dining out experiences it's becoming a fond memory, because it's just too expensive to eat out anymore. Since going out to lunch now costs $20.00 for the two of us, and dinner runs $35.00 to $40.00, we're dining at home almost exclusively now. This doesn't instantly tame our food budget either; prices at the market require us to shop at four different stores to get the foods we need for the least amount of $$$. I've become an aggressive bargain hunter, too, and never pass up a good deal on anything I regularly use. I want us to eat well, too, but inflation has prompted me to make some changes to how I cook. When I used to make my guy's favorite pasta sauce I thought nothing of adding a pound of lean ground beef (which is now $10.00/lb.). Not anymore; I've cut back on the meat in that recipe to 1/4 of a pound. That sti...

This week I discovered Kite Hill's everything plant-based cream cheese (what a mouthful!) which will brighten my breakfasts quite a bit. Used sparingly, it's quite good on bagels. Vegan cream cheese alternatives tend to taste a little chalky, so if you want to try this one only use a little. Breakfast is a particularly challenging meal for me. I eat a banana in the morning, but nearly all the other foods considered acceptable for the first meal of the day aren't on my diet list. Cold and hot cereals contain too much sugar. Bacon, eggs, and sausage are likewise out. Sometimes I'll have waffles or pancakes, but they're heavy. I get easily tired of toast and sugar-free jelly. I've been thinking about trying to make my own crepes, but often I don't have the energy to cook right after I wake up. So to have a product that works nicely with bagels is great. :)

For something different the other night I tried this Cajun Chicken Club Sandwich recipe , which was delicious. My tweaks were using onion rolls and cutting the recipe in half for two sandwiches (I also used only three strips of bacon.) My guy and I really liked it a lot. Image Credit: Cajuncookingrecipes.com

I had some overripe bananas to use up, so I decided to try another recipe from the vegan cookbook Maria gave me, and baked this utterly scrumptious vegan & sugarfree chocolate chip peanut butter banana bread. This is the banana bread for people who aren't terribly fond of bananas, as it's got all the chocolate and peanut buttery goodness of a cookie combined with the wholesome banana breadness. The book calls for a quarter cup of sugar but I left that out and frankly it was plenty sweet enough from the bananas and the stevia chocolate chips I used. Here's the recipe if you want to try it.

I'm trying to eat vegan or at least meatless three days a week now, which means I can pretty much eat whatever I like versus having to make meals to suit my guy's tastes (he doesn't suffer; I cook a separate meal for him.) I like these days so much I may increase them to four or five in the future. Anyway, here is everything I ate on a typical meals-for-me-only day: Breakfast: 16 ozs. of sugarfree cranberry juice, a banana and a toasted everything bagel thin (about 1/3 the size of a regular bagel) with vegan cream cheese substitute. I usually just have juice and fruit, but I needed to use up these bagels before they go stale. Lunch: Orange sugarfree sparkling water, four vegetable egg rolls and a cup of organic microwave white rice. Dinner: Cherry sugarfree sparkling water, a bowl of my homemade veggie bean soup, a small romaine salad, and another toasted everything bagel thin with plant-based butter spread (normally I would bake some rolls to go with the...

My cholesterol has gotten out of hand, so I have to make some drastic changes to my diet, which includes no more beef or pork at all, and eating vegan at least three days a week. I don't mind, although my guy won't eat that way, so I'll have to make separate meals for us most of the time now. I love chili, but I don't care for it made with ground chicken or turkey, so I'd mostly given it up (I've been cheating and having a little when I make the regular kind for my guy.) I need to find healthier alternatives, so I tried a recipe for a roasted sweet potato chili from a vegan cookbook Maria gave me that sounded interesting with some corn muffins for my dinner the other night. There's a lot to love about this recipe -- it tastes a little smoky, like something you've made over a campfire. It's rich and filling, and the flavors are wonderful. I've never tried cooking with poblano peppers before, and I have to say, they're deli...

My guy really likes soft pretzels, but since the pandemic began we've not been to the city (where the malls are) to buy them. They sell soft pretzels in the freezer section at the market which are almost as good, but they're pricey and the box takes up too much room in my little freezer. That's why I decided to learn how to make them myself. The best-tasting and easiest recipe I found was this vegan version ; although it does take a bit of time to make they're just like the mall soft pretzels. The only difference is that I make them into balls rather than attempted the twisted pretzel shape, which I can never manage with my stiff fingers. The balls turn into soft pretzel bites. :)

One reason I wanted to grow tomatoes in the garden this year was so I could make my own pasta sauce from scratch. I've never tried to do that, and my guy loves Italian, so it would be very helpful. It's a lot of work, too. After picking our ripest tomatoes I blanched and peeled them, chopped them, added onion, garlic and spices, and cooked them over a low heat. I then pureed the cooked tomatoes, and finally spoon-pressed puree through a sieve to remove the seeds. All that took most of an afternoon, and was extremely messy. Here is the result -- a little over two cups of pasta sauce. It tastes very good, although not that different from the canned stuff I use as the bases for my pasta sauces. Also, my guy can probably eat the whole thing in one sitting. While I'm glad I can cross this off my cooking bucket list, I doubt I'll make sauce like this again. We can't grow enough tomatoes for me to make enough sauce to keep my guy satisfied, and the process ...

We harvested our first head of broccoli from the veggie garden yesterday. Kat told us that the little yellow flowers are the "pick me now" indicator. I steamed the florets with a little olive oil and sazón completa, which is the way we most like to have it. It was delicious, and the stalks very tender, much better than the stuff we buy at the market.

I needed to use up a bag of pecans leftover from holiday baking, so I tried out a new low-sugar pecan crescent cookie recipe (very close to this one ; mine just used 5 tblspns. of powdered sugar, and I sprinkled the tops instead of rolling them in more powdered sugar after baking.) After the first batch of crescent-shaped cookies came out I wasn't happy with how thick they were, so I rolled the rest of the dough into balls and flattened them with a fork dipped in powdered sugar before baking. They're like shortbread with nuts, and not too sweet. My guy liked them a lot. I still think they're too thick, but I might try rolling out the dough and doing cutouts next time.

I decided to try making homemade crackers the other day. Reasons: a) the ones I can buy have too much artificial crap in them; b) any box I buy goes stale or expires before I can eat them all and c) I didn't think it would be that difficult. I'm still pretty good with a rolling pin. I tried this vegan recipe with just pepper and salt as a trial run. They came out okay; a little like pie crust chips. I need to roll the dough out much thinner and add some rosemary next time.

In my eternal quest to find a fun, holiday-themed recipe to make as food gifts for our neighbors I tried this gingerbread coffee cake recipe . I happen to love gingerbread, and it definitely would be an interesting gift. I sampled a small sliver to test the results, which were a mixed bag. As promised in the recipe notes the cake itself isn't that sweet, and does taste like gingerbread. But for me it didn't partner well with the icing drizzle and chopped crystalized ginger topping (and on the latter, whew. That stuff is very gingery-spicy.) The icing was far too sweet and had no real flavor to it, while the chopped ginger had too much bite. Part of the problem is me. My grandmother always made real gingerbread (like cake, not cookies) with a lemon-flavored topping that sits in the back of my head and to which I compare everything I try to make. Anyway, I might try and tweak this recipe in the future, but for now I'm back to square one.

My guy loves his mother's Italian sausage pasta sauce, but I really don't. The first time I made it I had to use an entire bottle of olive oil to follow the recipe, which frankly made me gag every time I tasted the sauce. It takes two hours to simmer, too. Even thought I've gradually made a healthier version of it over the years, it's still loaded with fat that we don't need to be consuming at our age. Hoping to find an alternative, I started hunting around online. On a whim I tried this 20 minute sausage pasta skillet recipe , tweaking it a bit with chicken Italian sausage and using only two fresh tomatoes and adding 8 oz. of tomato sauce (most of the sauce ends up in the bottom of the skillet.) I also adjusted the amount of chili flakes and crushed fennel to about a quarter of what the recipe calls for to suit our personal taste. Turned out very tasty; my guy ate three full plates and told me not to make any changes at all. That is his highest endorsem...