Cold-brewed coffee

It’s July in Seattle and we’re experiencing the occasional summer-like day, which means it’s time to switch to iced coffee beverages!

A couple years ago I discovered the joy of cold brewed coffee. This super smooth coffee magically brews overnight, allowing you to wake up to tasty coffee goodness. I got this recipe from Rachel Meeks at Small Notebook. (Thanks Rachel!)

Cold-brewed coffee

1. Add 1/4 cup coarse ground coffee and 1 cup cold water to a container (I use a French press, but you could use a glass jar).
2. Sleep 7 hours (ideally).
3. The next morning, add 1 cup of water to the container.
4. Strain and pour the coffee over ice.
5. Add milk and sugar as desired.

That’s it!

With a little night-before planning, you could be drinking smooth iced coffee in seconds (without a trip to a coffee shop).

Here’s to fabulous summertime coffee. Cheers!

My 365 photo blog post for today:

Carrots galore

Carrots are a great frugal food. You can buy a big bunch of large carrots for just a few bucks at any time of the year. I recently discovered an excellent recipe for marinated carrots. It’s so good that I’ve been eating more carrots than I normally do (plain ol’ baby carrots get old pretty fast).

Here’s the recipe:

Marinated Carrots from ‘Mediterranean Harvest’ by Martha Rose Shulman

1 pound of carrots cut into sticks
2 T sherry vinegar
2 T olive oil
coarse sea or kosher salt
fresh mint, finely chopped (optional)

Steam the carrots for 5 to 6 minutes, until just tender. Refresh with cold water and toss with the oil, sherry, salt, and fresh mint. The carrots will keep in the fridge for a week, standing ready when you need a snack, lunch, or a dinner side dish.

That’s it!

Super easy, tasty, and frugal. Also plastic-free, if you buy individual carrots and bring your own reusable produce bag.

How do you like to eat carrots?

My photo blog post for today:

Salads with meatless protein

It’s Meatless Monday! Meatless Monday is a non-profit campaign aimed at reducing meat consumption in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet. You can get plenty of protein in your diet without eating meat.

Last weekend I whipped up a great protein salad using two of my favorite protein sources: eggs and humus.

Fresh lettuce, orange pepper, and green onions (veggies that I had on hand), topped with hard boiled eggs (allowed to cool) and a big dollop of Mediterranean humus. Lunch! No dressing needed.

Minimal cost, maximum taste, minimal effort, and plenty of protein.

Here are some other protein ideas for salads:

• quinoa  (this looks good: Walnut-citrus spinach and quinoa salad)
• cheese
• nuts
• beans
• chickpeas
• bulgur
• cracked wheat
• tempeh
• black eyed peas (not the boom, boom, pow variety)
• baked tofu

Salads can be the main course and come packed with meatless-protein. Poke around the web and find a recipe that inspires you! You can post recipes or a link in a comment. Bon appétit!

Glazed nuts

One of my favorite salads includes candied nuts, fruit and bleu or goat cheese. I’ve been buying glazed nuts, but no more.

Sorry Emerald, but these nuts are:

a. Overly sweet (corn syrup anyone?)
b. Not so nutty, more like sugar blobs 
c. Kind of expensive

Time for a change. Glazed nuts can’t be that hard to make. Right? I got the following recipe from my Mom, who used to make spiced walnuts during the holidays.

Spiced Nuts

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 T water
3 cups of nuts

To be honest I don’t measure spices; I eyeball. I did, however, measure the water and the sugar. You can change the spices to whatever you’d like. Here’s the step-by-step:

1. Bring the ingredients to a boil (minus the nuts)
2. Remove from heat
3. Stir in the nuts

The whole process takes ten minutes AND I can tell you that these nuts are much tastier. They taste like nuts (and sugar). Here they are sprawled out on wax paper.

Making my own glazed nuts allows me to make them just how I like (tastier) and save a few bucks. It’s a win-win situation.

Perfecto!

How about you? What do you like to make instead of buy?

Homemade banana bread

When I spy with my little eye something that begins with the letter O (overripe bananas), I think smoothie or banana bread. This morning I chose banana bread.

This loaf took 15 minutes to assemble and I think it was worth every minute. There’s nothing like homemade banana bread. Yum.

My Banana Bread Recipe (adaption of a Cooking Light recipe)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Beat together the following ingredients until well-blended: 

3 or so ripe bananas mashed
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
1/4 cup melted butter
splash of vanilla 
2 eggs

Now add the dry stuff:

2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

Butter a loaf pan and pour in the banana bread mixture. Bake until the middle is firmish – 40 minutes at 350 degrees (my kids like banana bread a little doughy). Let the bread cool for 10 minutes before attempting to remove from the pan.

If 15 minutes seems too time consuming for a single loaf, double the recipe. Then pop the extra loaf into the freezer for another day.

Homemade banana bread: A simple tasty treat.

Going Meatless on Monday

It’s Meatless Monday! Meatless Monday is a non-profit campaign aimed at reducing meat consumption in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.

But what about protein? 

No worries. You can get plenty of protein without eating meat. Check out Heather Levin’s excellent post: Frugal Ways to Get More Protein. 

What should I make? 

If you’re used to eating meaty meals, it can be difficult to make the shift to meatless. You may need some inspiration! Angela Barton has posted some great meatless ideas:

• Meatless Monday recipes
• More Meatless Monday recipes

If cutting back on your meat consumption seems impossible, try cutting back on your red meat consumption. Red meat has the biggest impact on your personal health and our environment.

Go Meatless on Monday (or any day) and post your results here. What did you make? Was it good? Please share.

The Meatrix (factoryfarm.org)

Summertime, and the eatin’ is amazing

It’s summertime. Time for great produce.

This weekend my sister was in town and we enjoyed the summer harvest. We made our food and consumed everything outside, something worth cherishing in Seattle.

The weekend lineup? First up we had a caprese salad of sorts. I chopped up tomatoes, avocado, fresh mozzarella, basil and purple cabbage. I dressed the salad with a mixture of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. I never thought I would say this, but the cabbage was the critical ingredient because it gave the salad a much needed crunch.

 

Next up was another salad that included lettuce, three types of roasted beets (from the farmer’s market), apricots, candied pecans and herbed goat cheese. Again, I drizzled the salad with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

And finally, Sunday morning we enjoyed a stack of pancakes with fresh blueberries.

What a great weekend! There are many great restaurants in Seattle, but we enjoyed staying home and eating summer food al fresco. Our homemade meals where peaceful, complete with bird chirps and water trickling, tasty (not the birds, but the food), less expensive than a restaurant and the parking was free. You can’t beat that.

Ah… summertime. When the eating is amazing.

Cabbage

After getting some great cabbage suggestions last week, I’m inspired to eat more cabbage. Cabbage is cheap and has a wonderfully long fridge life; a great frugal vegetable.

Recipes

I adlibed the salads so I don’t have a recipe to share. If you don’t like goat cheese, gorgonzola or bleu cheese work great with the fruit and candied nuts in the second salad.

I added fresh blueberries to the Light and Fluffy Pancake recipe from Cook’s Illustrated (included in The New Best Recipe cookbook). Why buy a pancake mix?

How about you? Are you enjoying the summer harvest? Please leave a Comment or a recipe.

Cold brewed iced coffee

This year summer started in Seattle before July 5, leaving Seattleites joyful and a little befuddled. Coffee is a staple of Seattle, along with rain, moss, and socks with sandals. When the temperature creeps above 78, my coffee sports ice.

I’ve been making iced coffee for years and just tried something new. I made cold-brewed coffee. Yes, apparently hot water is not needed to brew a good cup of joe. I brewed up some coffee in my fridge. Overnight. In cold water.

I got the idea from Lifehacker, but a post by Rachel Meeks at Small Notebook inspired me to take action. (Thanks Rachel!) 

Rachel’s cold-brewed coffee recipe

1. The night before, add 1/4 cup coarse ground coffee and 1 cup cold water to your container. I made mine in a French press, but you could use a glass jar.
2. The next morning add 1 more cup of water.
3. Strain and pour the coffee over ice.

I add a generous amount of milk and a touch of sugar. That’s it.

With a little night-before planning you can be drinking iced coffee in minutes, without any fuss or a trip to a coffee shop. That is, if you like iced-coffee.

What’s your favorite way to enjoy coffee? Please leave a comment.

Possibly related link: Frappuccino alternatives

Frappuccino alternatives

When it’s hot, I love cold coffee drinks: iced lattes and sugary Frappuccino-style coffee drinks. While I enjoy an occasional Starbucks Frappuccino®, I don’t make it a regular thing. Instead, I make Frappuccino-style drinks at home using a mix from Mocafé.

I’ve tried a couple different mixes and so far Mocafé is my favorite – with it’s Trinidad cocoa, Brazillian Arabica coffee, and a dash of cinnamon. I buy Original Mocafe Frappe mix at a restaurant supply store called Cash & Carry.

A 3 lb container makes 35 servings if you use the 2 scoop serving size, but I use 1 1/2 scoops so I get 46 servings. Using 1 1/2 scoops started as a calorie saving measure, and I found 1 1/2 scoops was sweet enough. So let’s see… $14 for 46 servings, or 31 cents per drink + the cost of milk (19 cents). 50 cents per Mocafe vs $4 per Frappuccino. 

Making a Mocafé Frappé

1. Add 1 1/2 scoops of Mocafé Frappé to your blender.
2. Fill a 12 oz glass with ice cubes and then fill the glass with milk.
3. Pour the milk and ice into your blender and blend ’til smooth.

If you can’t find Mocafe locally, Amazon sells it. Another frapp mix I’ve seen locally is Big Train.

OR - bag the mix and make your own Frappuccino-style beverages. Try a variation of this recipe:

 Do-It-Yourself Frapp

• A 12 ounce glass filled with ice (about 2 cups)
• ½ cup espresso or strong coffee
• 3/4 cup milk or use a mix of milk and half-n-half 
• 2 teaspoons sugar or whatever your sweet tooth desires
• 1 tablespoon chocolate syrup or 1 teaspoon cocoa powder
• a couple shakes of cinnamon
• a scoop of vanilla ice cream (optional)

Add everything to your blender and blend ’til smooth. 

If you like Frappuccino-style drinks, it’s worth tinkering with the DIY Frapp recipe. When you make your own Frapps, you can control the sweetness and the quality of the ingredients. You can also make sure that nasty things like corn syrup solids and partially hydrogenated oil don’t slip into the blender.

Homemade coffee blended drinks are simple, refreshing and inexpensive. Why not blend some up?

Do you have a favorite cold coffee drink? Please share anything remotely coffee related in a Comment.

Money saving sites from LifeHacker

Here are a few money saving web sites from LifeHacker that you might find useful.

The first site is intriguing to me because of my quest to reduce food waste. It’s called Neighborhood Fruit. The site helps people find and share fruit that’s grown in urban neighborhoods (aka back yards). Fruit grown in back yards is often wasted. Neighborhood Fruit puts back yard fruit in the hands of someone who wants it. If you have extra fruit or would like to harvest some, it’s worth a look.

The next site specializes in recipes for inexpensive food with a long shelf life - canned food. Typically I’m not a canned food advocate, but I often need last-minute dinner options and canned food fits the bill. Canned foods are quick, relatively healthy, and cheap because you can stock up on them when they’re on sale.

Canned Food UK is interesting because the recipes are a little different then say… Canned Food US. There are recipes for jacket potatoes and numerous recipes that include baked beans. The ingredients are in metric, but you can easily convert the metric measurements. For example a 410g can of red kidney beans is a 14.5 ounce can.

Here’s the pitch: Canned Food UK can improve your metric skills, help you use your existing canned food (see my related post on skipping grocery shopping for week), and open your mind to new canned food options. For example, there’s a recipe for Crushed Pesto Potatoes that uses canned potatoes. I’ve never tried canned potatoes. Am I missing something?

And finally LifeHacker mentioned a prescription comparison tool called Medtipster. The interface couldn’t be simpler. Enter your prescription name and zip code, and the site returns a list of pharmacies with prices for your prescription. Who knows, you might be able to save a few bucks.

That’s it for today. Do you know a great money saving web site? Please leave a Comment.