So, if we're friends on Facebook, you saw that I made oh-so-good-looking pancakes. I doubled the batch. They look great. I froze them and pulled some out this week for breakfasts. And...
They're made with buckwheat flour.
A few weeks back when our flour supply was running low, I had a moment of "No bleached flour for me, I will eat more whole foods!" moment in the store and bought buckwheat flour. Which I have never worked with.
It turns out that buckwheat flour is much more grainy, with a very distinctive earthy taste. And, unfortunately, has not been too much of a hit. I recently made a chicken and biscuits recipe where the biscuits needed self-rising flour. Of course, I'm not one to go out and buy one or two groceries when I believe I can substitute with something else, so of course I used what I had on hand already...buckwheat flour. Well, the biscuits were flat and rather tasteless. I attributed it solely to not having the self-rising and didn't think the taste could have been affected *that* much.
So this week I tried the pancakes, and they were...weird. That strange, earthy taste that comes from the buckwheat.
Sigh.
They look fabulous, they just taste weird. I tried them again today, this time doused in peanut butter, honey, and chocolate chips, which tasted good but defeated the whole "eating healthier" purpose. (I wonder, in the future is it possible to do a mix of buckwheat and regular flour to make it a bit more whole-grain/"real" food-ish?)
Overall food and meal planning has been a battle for me. With our budget on groceries, I end up having to focus on ingredients for the main entrees each week and haven't been able to branch out to try more side dishes and such, so we mostly just have plain fruits or veggies for sides. And with hubby's much more selective tastes, I really don't experiment too much, which makes it oh-so-hard to look through my Pinterest recipes and recipes saved on my computer and realize that a good number of them are just not going to be made around here.
What do you do to make plenty of good meals that fit your family's taste on a budget? I went to a couponing class recently that suggested having 15 recipes to return to regularly and fill in inbetween with different new recipes, as well as going through coupons/what's on sale in the store and THEN making your meal plan for the week. I welcome more suggestions! Matt makes a good point of reminding me that we've only been married for a few months, so the fact that I'm no expert is not something that should be causing me so much stress, but when meal planning is consuming so much of my day-to-day life, I know it's something I need to address.
Hang in there, it's just been within the past probably 3-4 years (we've been married 8+) that I've really started feeling adept and comfortable (and even happy) in the kitchen! Maybe you need to uncork one of those bottles of wine before preparing dinner. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAs far as flour goes, I use mainly whole wheat. Occasionally a little white mixed in. We like the Hudson Cream brand. And I suck so bad at biscuits I have just quit trying on those. Don't come to me for any baking advice really though, because as much as I like to cook (now), baking is just not my thing.
Our favorite meals are a meat (grill/bake/saute whatever a chicken breast, or some pork loins, or some salmon or whatever), steam a bag of veggies (found very reasonably at Sams/Costco or aldi or even 10 for 10 at Kroger sometimes) and steam some brown rice. Boom. Meal. Healthy meal even. We also do a lot of wraps. Said meat, some cheese, spinach or lettuce and other toppings of choice. Whole wheat tortillas make the starch end of that one a little healthier too.
I remember when we were first married going shopping for meat one day and almost crying because I didn't know what anything in the meat dept. was or what it was for or how to cook it or what even was a reasonable deal. Thank goodness my hubby was a little more adept, but still that one was super tricky for me.
I'll offer a couple extra prayers for you. Early married life can be very overwhelming. Just so much! All at once!!! Stay the course, a sacramental marriage is your strongest asset.
Love you!
Hang in there! First off, I totally get you with those pancakes--a month or two ago, I got on this sourdough kick, and one day, decided I would make a gigantic pan of sourdough brownies. Welp, that didn't go so well, and they've been sitting in our freezer as I'm figuring out how to transform them into something good : ) Also, I've been intending to meal plan all day, but haven't gotten around to it-woops! Thanks for reminding me to do that with this blog post! : D
ReplyDeleteFor meals, we usually keep it simple and maybe once a week-ish do something crazy. Jacob and I eat a LOT of soups and stews, since they are easy (they just sit and cook while we do homework) and they are so versatile and cheap to make!--chicken stew, beef stew, veggie stew and soups. We usually make a huge pot, eat it for a few meals, and freeze the leftovers. For quite a while, we also would make bierocks and freeze them to help with simple meals during class days.
Another major staple to our meals is rice and beans. Sometimes we'll fry up some rice and toss in veggies and peppers to have a fried-rice stir fry thing, other times we'll do burritos (and its super easy-but a tad bit time consuming-to make homemade tortillas), and other times we'll just pile rice, beans, cheese, and meat with salsa!
Another staple in our diet is sushi. It really stretches out ingredients--once, I had just a little bit of BBQ chicken, and it made four BBQ chicken sushi rolls for our dinner!
Thanks for sharing the 15-meal idea, I think I shall borrow that! I hope you figure out what works for you and Matt, and he's right-you guys have only been married a few months, so it's impossible to have everything figured out. I've been married a year, and I'm constantly learning new things and figuring stuff out! God bless!
I'm still working on the whole budget/meal planning/healthy food trifecta, for sure!
ReplyDeleteWhite whole wheat flour = lighter in texture whole wheat flour with all the awesome benefits of a whole grain.
100daysofrealfood.com = Lots of things you like anyway, just real-foodified.
It gets easier with practice!