Egg yolks

It being my birthday, I made myself my favorite cake - angel food. Marbled angel food, which means two cakes. Two dozen egg whites needed, and two dozen egg yolks left over.

James's birthday is about two weeks after mine, so I froze half the yolks to use for a couple yellow cakes for him (well, one for him and one for the kid to take into daycare). That left a dozen egg yolks left. I know they're cheap, but I hate to just throw them away. I thought about making mayonnaise for chicken salad sandwiches, but that's a lot of work and I probably won't even eat all of the chicken salad, seeing as how I usually forget to eat lunch and/or dinner most days.

So, what to do with all those egg yolks? Ice cream! I don't have an ice cream maker, or a candy thermometer, but it still turned out pretty good.

Vanilla Ice Cream

Pour 4 c heavy whipping cream and 1 c milk into a pan with some vanilla and heat up. Meanwhile, mix 4-6 egg yolks with 1/2 c sugar. When the milk is hot, whisk the egg mixture into it, then mix in 1 c sugar. Cook over medium-low heat until it reaches 170 degrees, or it sticks to a spoon, or you're sick of cooking it. Pour into a shallow 9x13 freezer-proof pan and stick in the freezer. Every hour or so, stir it up so it won't form crystals. Et voilá - ice cream that is much yummier than anything from the store.

Roasty risotto

Recently I've been trying to stretch our food budget without resorting to eating crap (something I will never ever compromise on - I will let my family starve before I allow ramen into our house, no matter how cheap it is). Some of my useful methods:

• Look through all the weekly ads, make a list of what's on sale, and stock up.
• Discount meat! We have an extra freezer, so if I see a good deal I grab it and save it for later.
• Freeze leftovers for lunches.
• Reuse leftovers in creative ways - for example, meat can be thrown into chili or a casserole.

Last night we had a crockpot roast for dinner (I usually don't buy these unless they're discounted or on sale - this one was BOGO). What little meat is left will be made into chili tomorrow, along with some pulled pork from the freezer from another past dinner. But what about the broth? I'd cooked the roast with carrots, potatoes, a packet of Lipton's onion soup/dip mix, and some water. Since I didn't make gravy, I had about 2-3 cups of liquid left. Sure, I could've thrown it away, but it was really flavorful. So, I used it for roasty risotto!

Usually I make my risotto with white wine and chicken stock. This time I used red wine to compliment the beef flavor. Once cooked, I mixed in a jar of mushrooms. I think a cheese like gruyere or provolone would've been best, but all I had on hand was Italian 5-cheese blend (mozzarella, Romano, provolone, Parmesan, and Asiago), so I mixed that in as well as an additional half cup or so of Parmesan. Yum!!

Thanksgiving!

We hosted Thanksgiving dinner this year. Here's the menu:

1. Turkey, of course - 14 lbs in a bag with some poultry seasoning and flour sprinkled on top and a can of Coke over that.
2. Stuffing - made from bread, onions, celery, sage, poultry seasoning, and chicken broth (I'll post the recipe soon)
3. Gravy - made from the turkey drippings and some flour
4. Mashed potatoes
5. Honey-glazed peas and carrots - cooked carrots and sugar snap peas in the crockpot with a little water, then made a glaze of butter, salt, and honey to pour over them
6. Rolls
7. Apple rolls - chopped apples spiced with nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, etc, rolled up in a piece of fillo. I'm going to have to play around with this some more.

And then for leftovers:

1. Individual turkey pot pies using the chicken and biscuts recipe
2. Broccoli and turkey cheddar risotto (also made ham and cheddar risotto and herbed mushroom risotto with sage, rosemary, basil, and monteray jack cheese, just because I was in the risotto mood)
3. Turkey chili (recipe below)
4. Apple sauce - cook chopped apples in a little water until soft, put into food processor, add in a little butter, and add sugar to taste. Yum! This will further be recycled into pumpkin applesauce cookies.

Turkey chili
1 can dark red kidney beans
1 can light red kidney beans
1 can pinto beans
1 can ro*tel
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can tomato soup
1 can chopped chilis
1 onion, chopped
a bunch of turkey
4 bay leaves
generous amount of chili powder

Combine all ingredients in a crockpot and cook on low all day. Great with tomato chili cheese bread (made by throwing all those ingredients into basic bread machine bread).