Monday Q&A | Takeout Food, Protein, and Sticky Tea Towels
Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you'd like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!
I am just wondering what ya'll do for take out. I know it is random but i mean is it like Chinese? Pizza? .. McDonalds???? 😀
-Missy
That varies from week to week! We have a $20/week budget for our takeout date night, so it's not like we're not relegated to McDonalds each week. And since I make pizza pretty much every Saturday night, we don't usually get pizza.
Our most common meals are burgers from Five Guys, sushi from a local restaurant just down the road, seafood sandwiches from a local seafood market, Chipotle, and subs from a small local joint. And we do sometimes get Chinese from our favorite takeout spot near our old townhouse (which isn't really that far from where we live now because we only moved a mile or two!).
Could you share with me how many gallons of milk your family goes through each week? And also, do you feel like you all get a fair amount of protein each day? I'm wondering if we are having meat overkill over here at my house....
-Chris
Milk
We usually go through two gallons a week; one in the form of homemade yogurt, and one in the form of, well, just milk (we mostly use it on breakfast cereal). This is less milk than a lot of families use and that's because ⅚ of us aren't big fans of drinking it (we drink tap water almost exclusively). I hate drinking milk and the kids only like to have a cup if they have cookies to dunk, but Mr. FG drinks a glass of milk with his dinner every now and then.
Of course, if it's chocolate milk, then 6/6 of us like to drink it. But chocolate milk isn't particularly healthy, so I don't make it all that often.
Just to be clear, I'm not down on drinking milk...it's just not a beverage that most of us here enjoy. 🙂
Protein
I'm honestly not sure exactly how much protein we eat each day...I'm just not precise enough to measure that! We don't usually eat meat except at dinner, but at breakfast we usually have milk on our cereal, cream cheese on our toast, and yogurt with our fruit (and I often eat scrambled eggs), and at lunch we often have cheese, yogurt smoothies, peanut butter on our bread, and nuts or sunflower seeds.
Mr. FG does often have some kind of meat in his lunchbox because he eats leftovers, and I also send beef jerky, nuts, and sometimes hardboiled eggs with him (of course, I send vegetables and fruit and such too...I'm just listing the protein-filled items here).
How much protein the human body needs is kind of a controversial matter, but I personally am not convinced that most Americans are suffering from a lack of protein (though our diets certainly do tend to be lacking in raw fruits and veggies and not-so-processed foods) .
I don't pretend to know how everyone else should eat, but I'm pretty happy with the amount of protein that our family eats...it fits into our budget and we all seem to be pretty healthy.
Often when I'm letting my breads rise for the second time (buns, rolls, french bread), when I go to remove the damp tea towel it has stuck to the dough and seems to deflate the risen bread before it goes into the oven.
1) What is causing this? Too warm of a rising place (I've been using a warmed up oven during the winter -- heat to 350 for just 1 minute, then shut off)? Letting them rise too long?
2) Is there any fix? Let them re-rise? They still taste fine if I bake them right away, but the size is a bit off (too flat).
-LeeAnn
This happens occasionally to me (you can see some ugly breadsticks I made when my tea towel stuck!), and when it does, it usually seems like I've let the bread rise too long and/or the rising place is too humid/warm.
Using a towel that is too wet or too dry can also cause this.
I've let mine re-rise for a bit before baking, but sometimes I just throw them into the oven anyway.
If this happens to you all the time, you could try letting your breads rise without a towel. To do this, place them inside your cold oven and put a small pan of boiling water on the floor of the oven. This will give your bread a warm environment and the humidity will keep the rising bread from developing a dry skin.
Of course, another alternative is to use greased plastic wrap to cover the rising dough, but since I bake so often, this would end up being kind of a wasteful, expensive option.
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Readers, the floor is yours!
Today's 365 post: Seeing the world through new eyes
protein: A personal trainer told me once that you should take your body weight in pounds, divide it in half, and that number is the number of grams of protein you should have per day. Seems like a lot. Maybe that's just for active adults. I never met that goal, but we don't eat meat every day. Granted, she was a personal trainer and not a dietitian.
Serious weight lifters aim for .5 to .75 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Most of are are not (or are no longer, ahem) serious weight lifters, and therefore are generally considered to need less. US RDA for an adult is 45 grams, about what you'd get in 3 eggs or 1 chicken breast.
That RDA is actually the maximum amount of protein you should get. The healthy range is 25-45. Most anyone can get that meat eater or not.
The body weight divided in half usually is used to determine how many ounces of water a person should drink in a day. Which is good, because if you eat too much protein, it ends up in your urine 😉
I've heard that about the water. Much more doable than the protein, for me, anyway!
25 is definitely a manageable number for me! Way easier.
Thanks.
RDA is the Recommended Daily Allowance. It's meant to be the ideal amount, neither the minimum nor the maximum.
The general point that most US'ans get enough protein without thinking about it, even vegetarians, is still true.
We are a family of four (Mom, Dad, and two littles... almost three years old, and 14 months old). Sometimes I feel like we are also overdoing the protein, but that's because my chest freezer is currently full, full, full with meat. We typically order pasture-fed beef and pork from our local, organic farm. A split-half of beef and a whole pig. 🙂 The whole pig thing ended up being more than we bargained for this year, because the butcher made an error and processed a really large pig with our cutting instructions. Usually, the farmers would keep a pig that large and have it cut to sell piecemeal to other customers. So we have *lots* of pork this year! We also get 1 dozen free range eggs per week from the farm, and 5 or 6 free range chickens per year. We end up eating meat for supper about 5 or 6 nights a week, but always with lots of veggies, a glass of milk, and a starch of some sort. The rest of the day, our protein comes from homemade yogurt (with frozen berries and granola), a small piece of cheese, and sometimes protein in lunch, since my husband and I normally take leftovers to work. My next goal is to find a reliable (but not too expensive) supplier of wild fish. Sorry this is kind of rambly!! 🙂
Honestly, I think most people worry too much about protein. I'm not vegetarian or vegan, but I figure if it's possible to be healthy on a diet that doesn't directly include animal protein, us omnivores are probably fine.
Beans, nuts, certain grains (like quinoa), cheese, yogurt (especially strained yogurt - also called greek yogurt) - all of these are high in protein, and if you're eating a well-balanced diet (see below) and you're healthy, what's to worry?
I like this quote for what and how to eat:
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
Eating meat every day is a fairly recent development, and only in developed countries. The reason there's a tradition of a "Sunday beef roast" or "Sunday roast chicken" is because that was the only day of the week a typical family could afford to eat meat. Every other day of the week was generally vegetarian.
And eating meat 3 times a day or more is probably even more recent.
Regarding the tea towels sticking, I've spoken with the staff at the King Arthur Flour bakers' helpline when I've needed help with a bread problem. I was told to use a dry towel. There is moisture in the bread but none on the towel so it doesn't stick. I think this was the physics reason behind this. SInce then I've only used dry and my bread has been fine-no sticking.
Hmm, I'll give that a try! I've had a problem with a too-dry towel before, but I'll give it another go.
I use a plastic produce bag from the supermarket to cover my dough as it rises. I've never had it stick.
I've had the same experience with a re-used produce bag (or loose roll bag) from the grocery store. Works pretty well.
Just to echo what EngineerMom said, you can get some really cheap vegetable protein sources, as well as eating meat.
Once you're used to soaking and cooking them, a big bag of dry beans/pulses/lentils is one of the cheapest, most nutritious foods you can buy. I've been making all kinds of dips and hummus recently, and if you like Indian food, rice and chickpea curry or a big pot of dal is a delicious meal that costs hardly anything!
I would like the recipe for chickpea curry!
Hey Sara, there are loads of different chickpea curries and dals online. Check out the BBC recipe site for good reliable recipes to start with and make them your own!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/search?keywords=chickpea+curry&x=0&y=0&occasions%5B%5D=&chefs%5B%5D=&programmes%5B%5D=
I like to try out stuff in any of Madhur Jaffrey's excellent books too.
I agree -- dry beans are the way to go. I cook a whole bag and freeze 2-cup portions. That way I also avoid the salt and sugar that goes into canned beans, often!
My mom volunteers at a food bank and they can never unload the dry beans, so she saves the beans that they were going to send to the trash. Hard to believe that food is being thrown away at food banks! I certainly do realize that if I had to work outside the home as many of the clients there to, that I would have less time to spend cooking beans and planning menus!
I always use a dry towel... what are the advantages of using a wet towel?
I no longer put any kind of towel over my rising dough. I just set the bowl of dough in my microwave oven to rise. Works great for me. If I have any doubt whether the micro will be warm enough, I will heat a cup of water in it on HIGH for a couple of minutes, then remove the cup of water before putting the bowl of dough in. Usually I don't have to do this, though.
In the past, when I had covered the rising dough with and it stuck -- or when I just forget about some dough and it when overboard on the second rise -- if I had time, I just punched it down, reshaped it and let it rise a third time, then baked it. This works well if you have the time to let it rise again.
wow that is brilliant. it would also be super handy for someone in a tiny kitchen, like me! I've used the microwave as a "safe" place to temporarily protect precious squishables, prevent measured items from contamination, etc. Now, another use!
For the past month, I've been eating meat only once a day (by "meat," I mean something that used to be ambulatory 🙂 ). I usually have my meat for lunch or dinner, and at the other meal I have seafood, eggs, avocodo, or cheese/dairy.
There are at least 3 well-documented, pragmatic reasons for doing this (neither counting not discounting moral motivations). So, after resolving to give up beef for all of Lent, I decided to go one further and give this a try. First, dietary: meat is very calorie-dense per ounce, and cutting a serving of it out of your diet can cut a lot of calories (and, depending on what you use to replace it, a big dose of saturated fat). Second, environmental: generally, meat production is very resource-intensive. Local, pasture-raised chicken with little or no packaging like Kristen buys has a different environmental impact than commodity beef from high-intenisty feed lots 1,000 miles away (though there are lots of variations in-between). Third, cost. Granted, my one meal a day probably isn't making a huge impact on our food budget, but the times that we have eaten out and it's been my meatless meal, I definitely noticed a price difference!
An unforeseen benefit of this choice is I'm forced to pay just a little more attention to what I'm eating, especially at lunchtime. Do I want to "spend" my meat now, or do I want to hold out for dinner? What am I cooking for dinner tonight? Will I have leftovers tomorrow? And that's definitely better than mindless eating!
I've solved the problem of dough sticking to the towel by just using a bigger bowl. The one I use now is big enough that even when it's fully risen there's still a couple of inches at the top between the towel and the dough. This is probably a fairly obvious trick but it took me an embarassingly long time to figure it out 🙂
This is going to sound crazy, but my favorite place to set bread to rise is in the dishwasher whenthe cycle has just ended and it's still warm and steamy inside! I don't even empty it first, just slide the pans right in on top of the clean dishes. The only caveat is that things rise much more quickly there than on my much-cooler counter so I have to keep a closer eye on it or else it will over-rise and then collapse.
My favorite place to put my dough to rise is in my car when it is parked outside.
(Not on a HOT day, of course)
I save the plastic liners from cereal (they aren't recyclable in my area), I spritz them with a little cooking spray and use them to cover my dough. If the dough doesn't stick to them I fold them up (cooking spray side in), store them in the fridge in a Ziploc bag,and reuse them the next week or two when I bake bread.
P.S. Kristen, I'm jealous your kid's don't like to drink milk. I don't care for it (unless it's chocolate :D), but everybody else does. Five milk drinkers = 6 gallons of milk a week (I for yogurt, 5 for drinking). I'd buy a cow to milk if I had anywhere for her to live. I don't think I could pass a cow in the backyard off as a "dog" with glandular problems!!!!
I use a big bowl, dry towel and my oven that I only turn on till the indicator light comes on (less than 150 degrees) I leave it on only a minute or two, basically just enough to take the chill off the oven. I'm aiming for something just slightly warmer than room temperature.
I wish I wasn't the only one in our family that doesn't like to drink milk. The other three have to have it with supper, but I have managed to reduce the quantity somewhat by using small mugs instead of the huge glasses hubby would put out. No one has complained, as refills are okay, but usually the one mug is enough, even though they would almost always finish the big glass. We still manage to go through three to four gallons, not including the yogurt. A "dog" with glandular problems might work here considering the size of some of the dogs I've seen in the neighbourhood!
I have a few health issues that require me to see a nutritionist regularly and she recommends 30g for a moderately active adult woman in child bearing years. She also recommended that no more than 1 serving of that comes from meat per day - and that's for everyone, not just people with health issues.
If you look online, it's pretty easy to access protein charts that show amounts in vegetable sources. These sources are ideal because they usually carry high proteins for energy/muscle health, but little/no bad fats, cholesterol, and other not-so-desirable nutritional components like meats do. And generally speaking, they're much, much cheaper. 😉
We've discovered that protein, eaten during the day with some type of carbohydrate, keeps us from feeling hungry and seems to give energy to keep going. But our protein is quite often not meat. My husband's 12-hour work schedules, often with no real break, is kept going by protein. Example: A piece of toast with peanut butter as he leaves the house at 6:00 am. A hard boiled egg, peanuts and raisins, crackers and cheese, yogurt with fruit. These are available in his lunch box regularly to grab throughout the day. I do place a meal in his lunch as well. Usually it is leftovers.
Our sit-down-to a meat and potatoes meal occurs when he is off work (4 days a week). By the way his "12-hour schedule" often goes until 9 or 10 at night.
I use a dry towel when letting by dough rise and just put it in the oven w/ the oven light on. I dont heat the oven at all. The light warms it up just enough.
New follower! Christi sent me:) Glad to have found you!
Laura
My question for you is what do you think of health care issues? Do you take the kids to the Dr. for every cold or do you go only for emergencies or check-ups and what about the dentist too? These are expensive for families. Your menu looks good. Be careful with the mushrooms I got some bad ones I ate by mistake and I got so so ill.
Thanks for the answers Kristen....I think I'm envious of your little anti milk drinkers, lol. 😉
Oops...Snapper=Chris.
I got a Cambro graduated container (4 liters) for bulk fermentation of dough. It has a lid and I can easily see when it's doubled. This container was inexpensive at the local version of Smart and Final.
When I do have to raise dough in a bowl I have shower caps from the dollar store (10 for $1) that I wash and reuse many times, so there's less waste. You can spray the dough with some cooking oil (I fill my own oil mister) if you think the dough might touch, but it rarely does because I pull up the middle of the shower cap like a circus tent. The shower caps work great over loaf pans as well.
I cover free-form dough with a big bowl or pot. I got a big enamel turkey roaster from Goodwill for $3, and the base of that turned upside down is big enough to cover almost any shaped dough.
Just curious about your comment on the chocolate milk not being healthy? If you compare white milk and choc milk from the exact same brand, all the numbers are exactly the same ( same amount of vitamins/nutrients/fat etc) except choc milk has a few more calories.
it has a lot more sugar though...and a tiny bit of caffeine
Sorry, more "two cents"! ;o)
We try to limit meat meals to 3 or 4 times a week. We try to eat fish once a week if we can fit it in the budget (sometimes it's frozen fish because fresh is too pricey). We do serve protein at EVERY meal in the form of eggs, cheese, legumes, and occasionally nuts or nut butters in addition to meat and fish. Two of us (I'm one of them) have blood sugar issues, and if there's not enough protien our blood sugars don't stay stable--but it doesn't take much and it doesn't require meat at every meal.
We're also working on at least 3 servings of fruit and vegetables at every meal while trying to reduce the white starches. We've been having fun with whole grains you can buy inexpensively in bulk like bulgur, Quinoa and lentils. If you add some sauteed onions, carrots and celery to the grain you've got "pilaf" and everyone likes that. I'm going to try some barley--just saw some interesting recipes.
I don't think I've seen burritos on your menus. Our kids love burritos--you can make the tortillas yourself easily at home and fill them with beans, leftover vegies, rice, and a dollop of homemade yogurt. It's an easy, quick, nutritious meal for pennies. When summer comes a lot of our garden vegies end up in the burritos or eaten raw along with them. If we have leftover chicken, we'll throw that in as well.
Thanks to Kristen and to all for the help with the dough sticking to the towel! To clarify, it's during the second rise on free-form dough (rolls, french bread, etc.) that I seem to have this problem I will try many of those suggestions! You all are great!