The Blonde Diaries

Tonight I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner. Mike and I are on a strict budget right now to try and recover from our honeymoon spending. One of our budget busters is grocery shopping. We stock up on items but never finish eating them and sometimes they go bad. For the past month, I have been shopping at home and trying to use up these items which we have stocked up on.

Tonight I reached my limit. I think I need to start looking for recipes and shopping from a recipe ingredient list. We are out of things to eat or at least things that go together. We are eating hot dogs with ketchup (out of chili), baked beans, peas, and a small salad. I would have loved to make a large “junk” salad for dinner but Mike insists on having protein in every meal and well, hot dogs won’t cut it and I have nothing else. It is all very frustrating.

I decided that I better start looking for recipes to cook with just a few ingredients as well as coupons to save on our grocery bill. I found a great $1.00 online coupon that will help me save a little money at the grocery store as well as fixing that no protein in the salad issue I mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Budding has developed a new product on sale in Texas, St. Louis, Missouri, and Arizona called Fix Quix. It is a diced meat product that you can add to any recipe or salad to help make a quick and nutritious meal. I have not tried it yet but I will be looking for it this weekend as it is sold at the local HEB and Kroger grocery stores – both available near me. There are three varieties – chicken, ham, and turkey and it looks just like you cooked the meat yourself on the grill and diced it up yourself. I can see using it with salads, pitas, and wraps just to begin with and then venturing out into chicken alfredo pasta and turkey enchiladas. So if you are in a food rut, need to save a few bucks, and want to try a new product look for the Fix Quix kits in your super market. Don’t forget if you live in Texas, Arizona, or St. Louis, Missouri to print that $1.00 off coupon to take with you! Unfortunately the coupon only works in those states/areas but be on the lookout for the product and coupon coming to your area soon.

I received my HungryGirl newsletter today and noticed she had 3 pretty tasty looking recipes included.  I wasn’t sure why everything was on a skewer/stick but didn’t really dwell on it.  I thought maybe it was a themed email and I missed the theme in the subject line of the email.  It wasn’t until I got to the very bottom in her factoid box that I saw tomorrow, Saturday, March 28th is National Something on a Stick Day.  Then it made sense.

It is amazing that there are all of these odd national days out there.  I mean who determines what gets a national day?  Can anyone declare a particular day and celebrate it?  Do you have to pass a law to be a national day?  And who in the world comes up with these things?  Just very odd to me.

In any case, there were 3 great recipe ideas in that email and I think I’m going to start with pig on a stick wrapped in a bacon blanket.  It is only 4 weight watcher points and I am so tired of chili cheese dogs.   I might try chicken lollipops or pizza on a stick if the pig recipe works out.

Normally, I do not have a problem picking a main ingredient and making a meal out of it. Today though, I have a problem. You see a few weeks ago Kroger had a sale on frozen fish so I picked up a bag of Tilapia and then a bag of Flounder. I have been using the Tilapia to make fish tacos at home but they are fairly light and flaky. I thought Flounder was a thicker or meatier fish but according to my mother it is very similar to Tilapia. So I’m not exactly sure how to cook it or more precisely, what kind of dish to add it in. I could always fish taco it but that gets a tad boring you know.

How do you cook Flounder?

One of the most famous recipes when you are on Weight Watchers is the diet coke cake. I have heard people talk about it at meetings and on online message boards for years now but have been too chicken to try it. I just couldn’t believe that you could make a cake with just a box of mix and diet soda. It just didn’t seem real or too tasty to me.

Well, my new coworker has tried it before and was talking about it a few weeks ago. It sounded so simple and easy to make and she swore that it tasted like real cake. I figure since she seems to be very similar to me that she was most likely telling the truth and I would give it a try. I hit up Kroger and found the new Reduced Sugar cake mix and brought home a diet coke plus from work to make my cake. And the ingredients sat for 2 weeks on the counter. Call me a chicken, call me skeptical, just know that I wasn’t sure even after buying the ingredients if the cake was worth the trouble.

But after more Googling (hello how do you ice this cake??), and mentioning it to my mother, I finally made the cake Monday night. Boy was the cake good, quick, and easy. It even looked like real cake when it was all said and done. I ended up using the entire 12 oz Diet Coke Plus and a box of the Reduced Sugar Devil’s Food Cake mix and followed the cooking directions. It came out really moist and without any real flavor differences. I also “iced” it with fat free cool whip. I would totally make this cake again but next time I want to try yellow cake mix, diet orange soda, and cool whip with fat free chocolate pudding mix for the icing. Yumm!

So there you have it. If you haven’t made the diet coke cake you should totally make it and give it a try. You can even make them into cupcakes if cake isn’t your thing. I think it comes out to 3 WW points per serving if you follow the serving size directions but I made smaller pieces to cut my points per day down.

Sticky Toffee Pudding has got to be my favorite dessert from my last trip to Walt Disney World. It is very much like a Bread Pudding but has a little British twist. I enjoyed this dessert from the Rose and Crown Pub while dining at the United Kingdom in Epcot. I’m not sure how I managed to fit all of the food I ate in and still enjoy this pudding but somehow I did and then I went back to my room and passed out in a food coma LOL. I was so happy to find this recipe on Deb’s website AllEarsNet.com because it was so tasty that I would like to try and make it at home. The recipe doesn’t look too complicated other than the long list of ingredients. I’ll have to give it a try at home over the Christmas holidays when I have a few days off from work. If you haven’t experienced this before I highly recommend eating at the Rose and Crown Pub on your next vacation or making this one at home!

Sticky Toffee Pudding

“Pudding” Ingredients

12 oz. dates, chopped and blanched
8 oz. hot water
2 tsp. vanilla bean
2 tsp. baking soda
1 lbs. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
4 oz. unsalted butter
12 oz. sugar
2 whole eggs
1/4 tsp. salt

Method

1. Chop dates and add to hot water.
2. Stir in vanilla and baking soda.
3. Cream butter and sugar, then add eggs one at a time.
4. On low speed add half flour and baking powder and all of the liquid; mix until combined.
5. Fold in rest of flour to mixture.
6. Fill greased molds halfway and bake 15 minutes at 325 degrees F.

Butter Rum Toffee Sauce

Ingredients
1 oz. butter
4 oz. heavy cream
3 oz. dark brown sugar
1/2 oz. dark rum

Method

1. Combine butter, sugar, and cream; bring to a boil.

2. Remove from heat and add rum. Stir until all is incorporated. Serve hot.

Custard Sauce
Ingredients
8 egg yolks
3 oz. castor sugar
1 vanilla bean
½ pint milk
½ pint heavy cream

Method

1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl until well blended.
2. Scrape the insides of the vanilla pod, if using, into the milk and cream, add the pod too, and bring to the boil.
3. Sit the bowl over a pan of hot water and whisk the cream into the egg yolks and sugar. As the egg yolks cook, the custard will thicken.
4. Keep stirring until it starts to coat the back of a spoon, then remove the bowl from the heat and the pod from the custard.

Serve warm or cold. Stir the sauce occasionally until cool, to prevent a skin forming, or cover with greaseproof paper while it cools.