Week 11: (More) New Food

In case you hadn't figured it out yet, I love food. I love making it, I love eating it, I love talking about it, I just love food. So it should come as no surprise that I am using food yet again, to fulfill my New Year's Resolution of doing something new each week. Seeing as yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, I figured it was only appropriate to do something with potatoes.

The New:

As I mentioned above, I found a new way of preparing potatoes that I am pretty much in love with now. It's super easy and takes about half the time to cook, so I'm all for that. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• Potatoes (as many as you want, whatever size you want)
• Oil (being the broke college student that I am, I used vegetable oil because I had it on hand, but you could definitely use something else)
• Garlic Salt (or other seasonings, if you fancy)

Directions:

1. Scrub the dirt off the potatoes and make small slices in them, being sure not to cut all the way through. You want them to be attached at the bottom still. (See pictures below)
2. Brush oil on to potatoes, being sure to get some in the slices you made. Sprinkle garlic salt onto potatoes.
3. Cook at 425 degrees for about 28 minutes if your potatoes are small or up to 40 minutes if you used larger potatoes.

Things to keep in mind:

Making thinner slices will make your potatoes more crispy.

Letting potatoes bake for longer will also make them more crispy.

If you line your baking sheet with foil, cleaning up from this endeavor basically doesn't exist :)

The Evidence:

These 4 potatoes are just about to go into the oven...

And this is the deliciousness that came out 28 minutes later :)

The Verdict:

I will definitely be preparing my potatoes like this again in the future, and probably get a little more creative with the spices. I played it safe this time and just used something I knew I would love, but after making the potatoes this way, I get the feeling it might be hard to put something on these bad boys that would ruin them. Maybe next time I'll do something with rosemary...

Anyway, my point here is that this was so quick, easy, cheap, and delicious that I would definitely recommend giving it a shot if you're looking for a new way to serve potatoes (or even if you aren't :) )

I hope you all had a wonderful and safe St. Patty's Day!

Week 10: New Level of Organized

I apologize for such a late post on this tenth week of 2014! Things have been getting a little crazy with mid-terms and papers coming up, but I'm take a few minutes to stick to this New Year's Resolution of mine :)

The New:
Okay, so since I started Financial Peace University in February, I have been much better at not spending money willy-nilly. To get even more on top of it, I decided to plan out every meal for the month, and then stick to it! I know this may sound a little overboard, but it has solved my problem of trying to figure out what's for dinner 20 minutes before I get so hungry I feel like I could pass out.
Plus, it saves a ton of time when I'm making my grocery list every week because I have all the food right there, so it's much easier to know what I need for the upcoming week.

So here are my basic strategies:

• Make lots and have leftovers for lunch. Whether its chili, enchiladas, spaghetti, soup, stir-fry, whatever, it's delicious and super easy to heat up the next day for lunch.
• Meat every 3 days. This was something I started about a year ago because I watched a documentary that compelled me to do so for my health. As a result, I lost about 5 pounds and have kept it off. In addition to that though, it saves me a chunk of money every week. Meat costs much more than other proteins such as beans or whole wheat pasta.
• Highlight the extra meals and use them next month. Sometimes, leftovers last longer than expected or you opt for a PB+J because you just don't feel like cooking. If you highlight the meals you skipped out on, it makes it much easier to see them and implement them into next month's planning.
• Don't skip even one meal, unless you will be out of town (as I will be next week). Even if it seems silly to plan out breakfast for every morning, you might be surprised to find that it will save you time from trying to decide.
• Eat healthy about 80% of the time. This is much easier to do if you break it down to 21 meals a week, and plan to eat healthy for 17 of them. 

The Evidence:

Here are my calendars, as proof :) the different colored high-lighters are just for aesthetic purposes, and nothing more. Also, you may be able to see that I abbreviated leftovers as LO. 

The Verdict:

As if I were not raving about it enough at the beginning, this small addition of some organization has been extremely helpful in keeping me on track in my budget and in eating relatively healthy. Sure, it does take some extra time at the end of each month, but I think in the long run it is definitely worth it. 

Also, it is relatively simple to get started. All I do is pull up a blank calendar from Microsoft word, fill in the days, and record a breakfast, lunch, and dinner for each day. Super simple!

Are you already doing something similar? Tell me about it in the comments!

Week 9: New Food

The New:

This week, my new feat was attempting to make fried rice, and as I am now working on my second helping, I would say it went well. As is true for most of my new recipes, my inspiration came from Pinterest, but I did add my own spin on the recipe and it came out great.

All you need is:

5 cups brown rice, prepared

1/2 an onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups peas and carrots (I used the frozen kind; you can't beat that convenience!)

2 eggs

2 Tbs. olive oil

1/4 cup soy sauce

Directions:

1. Saute the onions and garlic in the olive oil. Once onions are translucent, add the peas and carrots and cook until veggies are tender.

2. Next, scramble the eggs in a bowl or cup and add to the pan, cooking until eggs are done.

3. Finally, add rice and soy sauce and mix it all together.

Enjoy :)

The Evidence:

Yummmmmy :)

The Verdict:

This meal was cheap, fast, easy, and delicious. I will definitely be making this again, although next time I will likely use another egg and more soy sauce. That's one of my favorite things about cooking: you can tailor it to fit what appeals to your taste buds. As I said, this recipe was a modified from one I found to make it suitable to what sounded good to me, and you can do the same.