Food on the Table

Have you noticed that the most cluttered cabinet in your kitchen is the one that holds the organizational containers?  Storage containers can save time and money, but can also become a shelf space waster. The typical cook likes to have easy access to their kitchen supplies, even the items used to store leftovers.  Here are five simple ways to organize the cabinet that holds all your plastic storage containers.

Take Inventory

The majority of people have storage containers that don’t match. You have a lid that you think fits a container, but you realize later that you threw that container away. First step is to take every piece out of the cabinet and lay it out so you can look at it effectively.  Next, match lids to bottoms.

Keep Only What You Need

Chances are you’ll find pieces that don’t match. In that case, trash the ones that don’t have a lid or bottom. It is wasting space to keep lids or bottoms with a secret wish that you’ll find the other half.  According to the Green & Clean blog, you can look up a database on Earth 911 to find a local recycling place that accepts the plastic.

Organize By Shape/Size

The most common shapes of storage containers are square or rectangle. If this is the case in your kitchen then stacking is easy.  Try to keep everything in one shape, as you can imagine it is hard to fit a square into a circle.  Round storage containers have been known to take up more space, so consider moving to all 4-sided containers.  The Conscious Consumer blog suggests buying in sets is more space-smart because they have been made to stack into each other, and might even share the same size lid.

Store Lids with Containers

There is no point in going through your plastic storage containers unless you put it back into the cabinet in an organized matter. Put all of your square lids together, circle lids together, and rectangle lids together and put them in front of the containers. Another strategy found by Lifestyles of the Organized is to arrange the lids from biggest to smallest inside a shoebox.

Maintain

Maintaining new habits is one of the most difficult things to do. By practicing putting everything back in the proper place it will soon become second nature. Organization is something that is easily overlooked and easy to get out of. Resist the urge to throw containers or lids into the cabinet. Try getting the family involved and keep things organized to save time!

We all know that greens are good for us, but that doesn’t always mean that our picky eaters like them.  Sometimes it’s good to mix it up by continually introducing new greens that your family hasn’t tried.  Adding them to familiar dishes is a great way to expand their palette.  In this week’s recipe I jazz up pasta with tomato sauce by adding a few twists and bumping up the nutritional content with escarole.  Escarole is used in a lot of Italian cooking and pairs well with white beans and garlic.  It is also used in the Italian classic – Wedding Soup.

Escarole is a healthy green that is a member of the chicory and endive family.  It is high in vitamin A, calcium and iron.  Escarole has broad outer leaves that are dark green.  As you peel back the dark green leaves, lighter green leaves are revealed.  As the shade of green lightens, so does the bitterness.  This makes escarole very versatile as you can use different layers of escarole to achieve the taste you want in your recipe.  When choosing escarole, the process is basically the same as any other green.  You want to choose heads of escarole that are bright green on the outside and have no signs of wilting or bruising.  Store escarole in your refrigerator crisper drawer and wash thoroughly right before using.  Escarole is a heartier green than most and will last about 5 days.

For this week’s recipe, I chose to incorporate escarole into an easy pasta dish.  It cooks up quickly and sneaks this healthy green in where they least expect it.  When making this dish, I always make more of the pesto than I need and use it for a sandwich spread or a dip for veggies throughout the week.  Bon Appétit!

Sundried Tomato Pesto with Escarole

Sundried Tomato Pesto

1/2 cup sundried tomatoes
1/2 cup canned fire roasted tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup pine nuts, divided
1/2 cup olive oil
1 package penne pasta
1 head escarole, chopped

Crumb Topping

2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup bread crumbs
2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

Bring a large pasta pot of water to a boil for the pasta and escarole.  Salt the water.  While water is coming to a boil, make pesto.  First you need to reconstitute the sundried tomatoes.  To do this, put sundried tomatoes in a pot and cover with water.  Bring to a boil until tomatoes soften.  Add tomatoes to food processor saving some of the water.  Also add garlic, fire roasted tomatoes and 1/4 cup pine nuts to food processor.  Process until smooth adding in tomato water and olive oil until it reaches a saucy consistency.   Season with salt and pepper.  Boil pasta according to directions, adding escarole in the last 5 minutes of cooking.  Drain both escarole and pasta.  Toss with sundried tomato pesto and top with crumb topping.  To make crumb topping, melt butter in a saucepan.  Add bread crumbs and pine nuts. Season with salt and pepper.  Top pasta with crumb topping and fresh basil.

Link up your picky eater recipe here!

Did you know that sale items vary from store to store, even in the same chain?  That’s why Food on the Table has the Compare Store feature.  This allows you to select your grocery store based on what’s on sale.

The example below with three H-E-Bs, a popular grocery store in Austin, TX, shows how the Compare Store feature works.  You can see that one H-E-B has chicken breast on sale, the other has bratwurst on sale, and the third doesn’t have chicken breast or bratwurst on sale.  If one store has a better deal than the other, you can choose to shop at that store.

What do you think about this new feature?  Did you know grocery sales varied by store, even in the same chain?

We found a great deal on chicken thighs this week! At just a dollar a pound we are able to stock up on chicken and make this wonderful recipe. This recipe is regularly priced at $5.25, however, we were able to bring it down to $4.95.

Chicken Thighs Marengo

Servings:  6

Ingredients

2 lb chicken thighs, skinned ($2.00 on sale)
2 medium tomatoes, cut in wedges ($1.12)
¼ tsp dried thyme ($0.09)
½ C dry white wine ($0.36)
1 clove garlic, minced ($0.44)
4 green onions, sliced ($0.29)
1 C fresh mushrooms, sliced ($0.43)
2 tsp olive oil ($0.14)
¼ tsp pepper ($0.01)
½ tsp salt ($0.01)
1 T minced fresh parsley ($0.06)

Directions

Trim excess fat from chicken.  Rinse chicken with cold water, pat dry.  Place in a shallow container.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Coat a large skillet with cooking spray; add olive oil.  Place over med-hi heat until hot.  Add chicken to skillet; cook 2-3 minutes on each side until lightly browned.  Remove chicken from skillet, and drain on paper towels.  Wipe skillet dry with a paper towel.

Recoat skillet with cooking spray; place over med-hi heat until hot.  Add mushrooms and cook 2 minutes, stirring frequently.  Remove mushrooms from skillet, and set aside.  Recoat skillet with Pam.  Place over med-hi heat until hot.  Add green onions and garlic; saute 1 minute.  Stir in wine and thyme.  Add reserved chicken.  Bring mixture to a boil.  Cover; reduce heat, and simmer 25 minutes.  Add reserved mushrooms and tomato wedges; simmer 2 minutes or until thoroughly heated.  Sprinkle with parsley, and serve immediately.

This is linked to the $5 Dinner Challenge.

Well, we survived the first week of middle school unscathed. We even manage to stick to our menu plan which I consider a small victory. There were a couple of nights when I almost threw in the towel and considered take out. Luckily, those nights were the ones where I’d planned simple dishes made up of leftovers from previous weeks so I had just enough gumption to get dinner on the table. This week we continue to get into our school groove but I’m looking forward to family getaway with the grandparents over the long holiday weekend, so I only have to plan meals through Thursday night. After that I have a few days off from cooking and meal planning which will in the end help me be better at for the rest of the fall. This week I’m continuing to cook family favorites because I’m comfortable making them and everyone enjoys them. I’ll also be making extras for lunches to take advantage of sales at my local grocery store for multiple meals during the week.

• Monday: Sensational Sirloin Kabobs with long grain and wild rice
  Food on a stick continues to be a family favorite and everyone can pitch in to help assemble the kabobs. They grill quickly and leftovers are great in pitas or on salads for lunch.
• Tuesday: Pineapple Shrimp Rice Bake with steamed vegetables
  This dish comes together quickly and I can help with homework or make packing lists while it bakes. My favorite kind of dish.
• Wednesday: BBQ Beef Burgers with oven fries
  It’s still grilling season in Texas and we love our burgers. This is an easy mid-week meal and leftovers heat up quickly for lunch.
• Thursday: Easy Paella
  This paella looks impressive but is easy to put together. We’ll have leftovers for lunch and snacks on Friday so we can leave a clean fridge behind when we go on our end-of-summer vacation.