Meaningful Meatless Monday: All Together in One Pot

It would have been easy to forget that today I was due for my second post on meatless meals. Days off from school always throw me off my game a bit. Combine this extended weekend with a very heavy snow falling all around us and it is enough to render me lazy and disoriented. But on this King of Holidays, I find myself reflecting on the vision of MLK and how that relates to my hopes and dreams as an environmentalist. Dr. King saw a better world where people would come together and strive for a deeper understanding of one another. Where we would live in harmony and peace with our fellow man and challenge ourselves to rise above and shed the complacency that plagued our society for so many years.  He dared to dream of a new way of living for future generations. We are honored and humbled by his leadership and we show a formal display of our gratitude on this day.

The Start of Meatless Monday: Tomato Cheese Pasta

I am far too verbose and much too crappy of a photographer to participate in Wordless Wednesday, so I'm goin' rogue and participating in Meatless Monday. I hereby proclaim that on Mondays, I will post a meatless recipe.
You don't have to be a rank and file member of PETA to see the benefits of eating more vegetarian meals. The demand for meat production puts extreme pressure on natural resources and is quite unsustainable. According to an article by USA Today and the Society for Advancement of Education, 56,000,000 acres of U.S. land are utilized for the production of hay for livestock. Only 4,000,000 acres are used to produce vegetables for human consumption. Water, feed and fuel are also disproportionately allocated to sustain meat product. The health and wellness of livestock animals suffers from these burdens and, thus, the risk of disease is passed on to us.

Cornbread for Yankees

As a kid, my family traveled in our motor home every summer and we typically headed south to take in the weather, the character, the history, and, most importantly, the FOOD! My Dad was from the mid-west so he introduced us to delicacies like biscuits and gravy and roasted corn. In the south, we learned to love fried okra and macaroni and cheese that didn't come from a box. One of our favorite places to eat was Cracker Barrel. Probably not a big deal to those south of the Mason-Dixon Line because they are everywhere down there, but to us it was heaven. If I could only pick one item to eat from there, it would definitely be cornbread.

Reader Tip - Save your butta wrappers

My pal and true warrior mom, Vampmommy, emailed me when she saw my granola bar post to say that I could use my butter wrappers in place of wax paper when I press the mix into the pan. Genius! I have used the wrappers to grease pans instead of grabbing a paper towel, but they worked perfectly when I made a batch the other day as a handy, pre-greased piece of wax paper.
People may have been calling me "Butta" since I was 15, but this is a new use for the smooth stuff and I am super grateful.

Make breakfast an oat meal

I have to admit that there is many a morning when I just slap a bowl of cereal in front of my kids and hope they finish it in time to catch the bus. I, myself, am not a cereal fan as I grew up lactose intolerant and with a mother who only deemed two boxes nutritious enough to put in her cabinet - plain Cheerios (not even Honey Nut) and Quaker 100% Natural (which is delicious even if I always thought it was for old ladies). We pretty much always have store brand Cheerios (the honey nuttyish) that I buy in the big bags and also use as snacks and in trail mix. The other weekday morning choices are usually english muffin or toast with either peanut butter or our homemade jam or apple butter. Weekends are when I go all out and do pancakes, eggs, waffles and the like.
But once temperatures begin to dip into the 50's and the grass is crunchy when I step outside at 6:30am I begin to dream of oatmeal mornings. For some reason, oatmeal seems to have been marginalized to a packety powdery status or viewed as a bit of a hassle. Those little flavored oat pouches are sure convenient, but just about every bit of nutrition has been ground out of it and the excess wrapping triggers my gag reflex. Plus, the portions are ridiculous. It takes about three of them to make a decent adult sized meal. Hmmm...I wonder if they do that on purpose so you'll have to buy more? No, corporations can't be that manipulative. They always have the consumers best interest at heart. *Insert sarcasm here*

I was on a kick with steel cut oats for a while. If you've never had them, you should definitely give it a try. They have a chewier and coarser texture than rolled oats and are derived from the inner portion of the oat kernel, but have only been cut into two or three pieces. The only drawback is that the cooking time can be be nearly double that of rolled oats and on weekday mornings it is tough to get it done. Some people do prepare them the night before in their crock pot, but if I'm being realistic, I know that getting the oats ready as I am stumbling through my nightly chores is about as likely to happen as me hopping into the nesting box and laying an egg. In addition, the kids are not huge fans and so these nutty little oat gems only make an occasional appearance in our breakfast bowls.
That brings us back around to traditional rolled oats. Everybody has some, but they are often relegated to the shelf of Seldom Used Baking Ingredients. My love for these grains in apparent in my Homemade Chewy Granola Bar recipe and there are many more delicious treats that these come in handy for, but they can also be amazing when they fly solo. Additionally, they fall into both the eco and cheapo categories. I purchase the 100% Whole Grain Old Fashioned Oats in the huge 42 oz. canisters. Not only does this cut down on excess packaging, but these containers can be reused for a multitude of storage purposes. The store brand oats in this size cost me $2.28. I find the serving size on the package to be about right for us. The girls eat a little less than one portion and the rest of us a bit more so it evens out. There are 30 servings per container so that works out to less than .08 cents per serving. Consider ten minutes total prep time and I am compelled to quote Grey's Anatomy and say "Seriously."

As for flavoring these grainy goodies, I like to keep it fairly traditional. My hubby enjoys consuming them al natural (gross), but the rest of us like a little more sweet lovin'. I typically go with either maple syrup/brown sugar/raisins or brown sugar/cinnamon/chopped apples with a little milk to cool it and add creaminess. Tomorrow I will be drying some of the apples that I just picked to utilize in oatmeal this winter as we try to ween ourselves off of foreign fruit. So let's say these add ins even double the cost per bowl, that's still only .16 cents per person and I'd like to see a sugar laden, packaging nightmare, crappy toy promoting box of cereal top that. So dig into the back of your cupboard or glance to the right or left of your normal breakfast aisle purchase and discover the warm and frugal goodness of a hearty bowl of oats.

You down wit DMP?

On our first night in our first apartment some 12 years ago, future hubby and I went to prepare dinner and it became clear that neither of us had a clue how to do anything related to running a household. My mother had bought us some groceries to get us started and among those was a boxed rice mix. I read the directions and, to my horror, they wanted me to let this mix simmer. "What the hell does simmer mean?" I called to the other end of the apartment ten feet away. David came up short so I called my mother and posed the question. She knew, but let us just say right now, and I will preface it by saying "I love you, Mom. You are perfect and amazing.", but my mother is NOT a domestic diva. She cooked, but didn't particularly like to. She cleaned, but it was not her forte. She was a lovah not a Martha. So I did not grow up under the tutelage of a culinary master. I had zero SKILLZ.
I did however, have the benefit of a cheapskate for a father. Seriously, a tried and true, argue over a 10 cent overcharge, return a hamburger to McDonalds, price haggling, use it till it wears out, no name brand EVER (think Joan Crawford sans hanger), tightwad. So this is the foundation for all my learning. This was the bag into which I would put all my tricks. That is where I am coming from and is where I will introduce one of  the backbones of our household success - Domestic Management Policies (henceforth known as DMP).  I'm a sucker for a good acronym. I'm cool like that. But really I use strategies rather than a strict set of rules to guide my routines and decisions. So I will, from time to time, post things under this category that go into some of these techniques and discoveries.
The first one I would like to do a post on is Keeping It Stocked. In my cupboards are things that will ALWAYS be there. As soon as I am running low or out it goes on the list. I keep backups of some of these things. These are the items from which I know I can make a plethora of meals without thinking about whether or not I have the right ingredients. When deciding if I want to try a new recipe, I really won't consider it if it needs more than one item that is not on the regular Stock list. So I will be working to get this inventory together which will include spices and perishables, as well as dry and canned goods. It will also be a reference so that when I post recipes they can be cross-referenced to see if all the ingredients are in the pantry.
We'll see how it goes. I have been wanting to compile this list for a long time. I am putting it out into the virtual world now so that I will feel compelled to get it done. Like Salt 'n Pepa, I work best under pressure. Stay tuned.