Good Monday morning to you!
I hope that all you U.S. readers had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend (well, I actually hope all of you had a good weekend, whether you had a holiday in your country or not!).
Mine was good, but boy, my house is a bit of a disaster after a number of days with very little time spent at home.
(The less time we spend at home, the messier things seem to get. I think it's because we're home just long enough to make messes but not long enough to clean them up?)
Anyhow, I have some miscellaneous stuff to share this morning. Ready?
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My fridge is crammed right now (ok, ok. It's always pretty crammed, but it's extra bad at the moment!) because I have a bunch of bones to make broth with.
I'll use this method, naturally.
Also, I have a fairly large amount of leftover mashed potatoes to deal with. I'm thinking maybe potato bread. Or potato rolls.
And I think I will use up the gravy and meat tonight by serving it over toast. I'll have to make some extra gravy, but that's pretty easy.
What are you doing with your Thanksgiving leftovers? I'd love to hear!
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BuckBooks, which I just learned about last week, is having a $0.99 productivity book event.
(their last event of the year, I hear. Subscribe to get notified whenever there's a new event happening!)
I really, really, really love productivity books (I would kind of rather read one than a novel, embarrassingly enough.), so I think I'm going to get at least one of these for my Kindle
(Productivity Hacks for Entrepreneurs has a lot of good reviews.)
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This morning, I enjoyed reading an interview with Christopher Kimball, of Cook's Illustrated.
(Laura Vanderkam posted the link.)
I particularly liked what he said about cooking being a skill that takes practice. And also that especially if you're a newbie, a good recipe is super helpful.
I have quite a few years of cooking under my belt now, but I still find the recipes from Cook's Illustrated to be incredibly helpful.
Plus, the concepts I've learned in following their recipes make my cooking better even when I'm not following a recipe.
(Brown things! Use salt to tenderize meats instead of vinegary marinades. And so on.)
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Don't forget that today is the last day to snag $200 from Capital One 360.
Some links in this post are affiliate links, which support The Frugal Girl at no cost to you.
We have no Thanksgiving leftovers thanks to my wife's family "forgetting" about my food allergies yet again. That said, the last time we made turkey was a turkey breast in a dutch oven (Cooks Country recipe from a couple issues back) and we cut one entire breast side off (following the keel bone) wrapped it in foil and froze it. We may thaw that out this week so that I might get some turkey.
I'm a Canadian, so our leftovers today are the chicken wings from our in-laws Grey Cup Party last night. (The Canadian Superbowl). We'll be eating those for lunch.
we have TONS of left over mashed potatoes. My husband, when making his "famous" mashed potatoes, adds tons of cream cheese and butter to it. For 7 lbs of potatoes, he hadded several sticks of butter and 2 bricks of cream cheese.
Any idea if they will hold up in potato bread, or will all the added fat weigh it down to much and mess up the recipe?
I imagine it would be all right, especially because most potato breads aren't super heavy on the fat to begin with. I wouldn't add them to something super eggy/buttery like brioche dough, but I think you'll be fine with potato bread.
Are you, perchance, also interested in other ideas for rich mashed potatoes? I, too, made a ton of them and so now have a list of ideas.
yes! any extra ideas you have, I will gladly take! My husband has a habit of going WAY overboard on calculating mashed potatoes per capita 🙂
Mashed potato cakes.
If your taters don't have egg, add some now. Also add whatever additives you want: hashed broccoli, chopped turkey, etc. Make burger-sized cakes. Optional: dip in beaten egg then breadcrumbs or panko. Pan fry or bake at 350/400F till hot all the way through. Serve plain or with sauce.
that sounds wonderful! I may do that tonight, while my potato bread is baking!
Loads of leftover mashed potatoes (seems to be a theme here...)
I used the mashed potatoes to make bacon cheeseburger potato soup. Mashed potatoes. chicken stock to thin out the potatoes, grated cheese, browned ground beef, bacon, green onions and *poof* leftovers gone and we're all a little bit fatter.
We had family come for Thanksgiving (yay!) so I actually have very few leftovers. Which really, is not a bad thing at all! 🙂 We ate leftovers for at least two meals. I do have some mashed potatoes and I think I'll try your bread recipe! I already turned my bones into stock - and made turkey soup for dinner one night. Even though we ate turkey for several meals as leftovers and in the soup, I still had a lot of that left over, and I did freeze it in four meal-sized portions for our family. I used some of the stock in each bag to keep it fresher/moister.
I'm the exception here - no leftover mashed potatoes. I didn't even prepare any this year. Instead, we had roasted sweet potatoes (cut in pieces, pour a little olive oil over them, mix with a package of dry onion soup).
So yesterday, the leftover turkey (cut in bite-size pieces) and turkey broth, sweet potatoes, package of frozen mixed veggies, 2 cans of black beans, 1 can of diced tomatoes, seasoned with chili powder, cinnamon, onions, garlic, & coriander - all went into the crock pot for 5 hours. Now I have a LOT of this mixture left over, so I divided it up into individual freezer containers and put in the freezer for lunches or dinners another time.
No leftovers here anymore, we just ate ours as is. I love leftovers! I also made 6qrts of turkey broth with the bones (started it the night of Thanksgiving). I wish I did have some leftover mashed potatoes though, then I could make pierogies.
On a separate note, I thought of you this weekend because I made homemade flour tortillas for the first time. I wondered if you had ever tried to make them. They were so delicious and unbelievably easy to make.
Lisey and I did try once, but we rolled them too thin and they were, um, a little crispy. Ahem. We need to give it another shot!
We made Shepherd's Pie, which was very convenient as we could use up the mashed potatoes in the crust and some leftover meat and veggies in the filling.
Often, we also make a flat bread out of the mashed potato:
http://www.carina-forum.com/ricette/bread/piadine/0000020_en.php
To use up some of my mashed potatoes, I made "mashed potato cakes" with this recipe: http://www.npr.org/2011/11/22/142661574/mashed-potato-cakes
They were delicious! My family has asked for more -- and since we *still* have leftover mashed potatoes (hubby went a little crazy with the mashed potatoes this year) I may make them again tomorrow.
We had a very small Thanksgiving at the in-laws so no leftovers here. I can't tell you how thankful I am for that! Our three week diet starts today and I don't need of that scrumptous food tempting me.
Never heard of BuckBooks but I'll have to check it out.
Cook's illustrated is the best, the only other book I love just as much are the Good Eats by Alton Brown. The man is my hero.
I had never seen Good Eats, but it just started streaming on Netflix, and I love it. Plus, unlike America's Test Kitchen, my kids actually enjoy watching it, because it's so goofy.
I owe much of my cooking knowledge to Alton Brown and Good Eats. I'm pretty sure I've watched every single episode (over the course of many years). I love that he explains the science of food and why it works like it does. I like the goofiness too!
Thanks for sharing the interview with Christopher Kimball. It was very interesting.
If you need any help with those leftovers.... 🙂
Hmmm....I would just serve the meat and gravy over the leftover mashed potatoes.
Not much left here except sweet potatoes and enough turkey to make turkey salad sandwiched for lunch.
I used my left-over mashed potatoes to make gnocchi for my homemade turkey soup. It tasted sooo good.
There IS a theme going! I'm also using my leftover mashed potatoes to make shepherds pie for tonight. Already made a delicious turkey noodle soup yesterday, and tomorrow night will be turkey tetrazzini ( Pioneer Woman recipe). Then that'll be the end of Mr Turkey! I've actually already frozen the turkey for the tetrazzini since I wasn't sure how soon I'd get to it this week. Love leftovers!!
My leftover problem was dressing. My guests didn't eat a lot of them (that I left out the sauteed veggies might be one reason, although the generous lashings of turducken fat was a partial counterpart to that brain burp). I think the future I just won't make dressing. It seems redundant to mashed potatoes and most of my usual guests like the taters better.
PS - I'm still getting used to your new site look. It's still so strange to me that I can't determine if I like it or not. Weird, eh?
I kind of feel the same way, actually!
Do you know what you slightly dislike? I can tweak a lot of things with the theme package I bought, so if you can put a finger on it, I can try changing something.
Do you like that there are fewer ads, at least? I'm hoping that will feel like an improvement on the reader end (because on the blogger end, fewer ads are a bit of a sacrifice!)
I used our left over mashed potatoes to make a lovely potato cheddar soup. I cook diced carrots, onions , sweet peppers until soft. Added veggie broth and cooked veggies until very soft then added mashed potatoes and blended everything together until pipping hot. I grated about a cup of sharp cheddar cheese and added that! So yummy!
I've been pondering what about your new page that's weird and I have some answers.
1. The font is small relative to the size of the margins and the line spacing (i.e., gap between each line of text).
2. The font is a little too light-colored (for me, at least). It shows as medium brown/gray. Darker would be easier to read.
3. The sans serif font. Serif is easier to read.
I hadn't noticed that there were fewer ads. I guess that means I don't notice ads much - sorry. I am happy there are fewer moving ads. But I'm happy to put up with (static) ads if it helps you out.
Hope this helps.
Yeah, my old theme had a serif font...the exact one isn't available with this theme, but I switch it to a serif font. Whaddya think now?
I got rid of that stupid moving ad because it was driving ME crazy. (and I just got the report on its earnings, which were totally not worth the headache. Good riddance!)
Much easier to read, thank you. I thought of another thing: there's a lot of white space at the top of your blog, requiring a relatively large amount of scrolling before getting to the good stuff.
I adjusted that a bit...better now?
And thanks for all the feedback. I appreciate knowing what you all like because after all, the blog is for you! If it's not easy to use on the reader end of things, it doesn't matter at all if the design blows MY hair back. 😉
Lookin' good! I'll let you know if anything else occurs to me. I've had a bit of training/practical experience in designing professional webpages so maybe something will surface from the depths of my mind.
I would agree with WilliamB on all points, particularly the low-ish contrast between the white background and the gray type. There seems to be a fairly large amount of white overall, which can be hard on some people's eyes. Not having a blog myself, I have no useful suggestions on how to change that if you were interested in doing so - sorry.
With respect to the font, do you have the option of either Arial or Calibri? They tend to be easier to read in Word documents at least.
I'm also having a hard time reading the lighter colored font. I thought it was just my computer until others mentioned it
I switched it to black...do you feel like it's better now?
Perfect!
Yay! Thanks so much for your feedback.
Yes! It's amazing what a difference it makes. Thanks for the tweak!
All this talk of food has me wishing our Canadian Thanksgiving wasn't so long ago! I could go for some turkey and dressing right now 🙂
I've noticed that our house is way messier when we're hardly home too, and I couldn't figure out why. I think your theory must be right. Glad you had a great Thanksgiving 🙂
I had to come and stop by to see the new theme and I'm on the fence about it (although I will keep reading your blog no matter what!)
I'm guessing you've made the jump to Genesis because the new Thesis is so confusing! I did the same thing.
The text is still grey in the comments, and I think it would be easier to read if it were black. Also, I don't think the photo for the header is the best one, since it doesn't really represent you or your blog.
Finally, are you still with BlogHer? I can't see their ads any more. I'm only asking because I keep applying to them and getting rejected (maybe because I'm in Australia), so I'd love to know if you still think it's worth it.
All the best 🙂
Yes, I'm still with Blogher, but I need to get new ad code so that the rectangular one is the main ad (right now the supplemental code is in the sidebar, so it's not showing the BlogHer logo and such.
And yes, I made the jump to Genesis because holy moly! The new Thesis was horrible. SO confusing. And the reason I bought Thesis in the first place is because it was so easy originally.
The header photo is totally customizable, and my current plan was to sort of change it with the season. I'm not sure what I'm going to do longterm, though, because it's kind of a good idea to have a logo and not something that changes all the time.
I'll see if I can change the text in the comments to black!
Shepard's pie. Use leftover meat, gravy, and frozen veggies. I like the mixed veg. Pour into and top with mashed potatoes or stuffing/dressing. Bake.
I meant to say "pour into pan and top with mashed potatoes or stuffing/dressing. Bake."
The supermarkets here in TX were selling meat off cheap the day after Thanksgiving, I only have a tiny freezer but I got a 14 lb fresh turkey for $4, 1 lb turkey mince $1 & 1 lb chicken tenderloins $2...bought as much as I could store.
Wal-Mart has $2 for 10 lb potatoes right now, but I don't think they'll store. Saying that they have been @ $3 for 5 lb in recent weeks so even if they get wasted it's cheaper...
Been wondering whether to get another fridge or fridge/freezer, but I have so little appetite much of the time I think I'd waste a lot in the end. I do prefer things fresh!
It is crazy how many leftovers people have for days and days! It is also important to remember to try and stay healthy after the huge Thanksgiving feast. Check out our blog with different inexpensive and healthy food ideas for Thanksgiving leftovers, or just everyday meals for those on a budget! We also have some tips for easy work outs to do at home to work off the holiday calories 🙂
http://livingyoungbrokeandfabulous.wordpress.com
Thanks!