Tag recipes

Food outta nothing

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

This is going to be one of my cooking and grocery shopping posts, so if you’re not into that, you can feel free to skip this one. I was laid off from my warehouse job in September, unemployment expired in March and I’ve been surviving off my small publishing company (and editorial/writing/journalism clients) ever since. Being a small business owner, especially when it’s a new small business, is not for the faint of heart.

I had a loose plan of what I wanted to do today– get up, go get my coffee at Panera, swing by the Dollar Tree and maybe Grocery Outlet. I had $48 in my wallet and The No-Longer-a-Teenager complained that we had no food in the house except for the weird crackers and local cheese (local cheese from Joan Zachary’s cheese CSA).

My Panera iced coffee turned out to be the most perfect sip this morning, but the Dollar Tree next door was not open. I could go to Shoprite down the street but my $48 would not yield what I needed it to yield there.

Yesterday I prepped some seasoned white rice and teriyaki salmon, some lentils/split peas, and some pasta salad. My hope is that Eva, the college student and no-longer-a-teenager, and I can have a little bit of all of that for dinner. I thought picking up some tortilla shells and chips could mean some Mexican meals from the leftovers.

And we needed milk and half and half.

And then after all that cooking, I had a deep craving for spaghetti and super basic red sauce. So, I made some.

Creativity and patience are often the secret to making meals out of nothing. It’s often useful to designate some cooking time where you can coordinate some basic items that can be reused later– because making the decision to try and build a meal out of nothing while hungry usually ends in disaster. (I was a vegetarian for eight years until my daughter was born, took vegan cooking classes, and have incorporated some vegan choices into my life, so that helps me navigate cooking with minimal items.)

And like that bowl of spaghetti– sometimes the most simple things are the most satisfying. Sometimes you want a feeling in your belly or a specific spice more so than an item. That’s part of why I buy a lot of weird sauces and I love to keep on hand smoked paprika (for those ‘meaty’ desires), everything bagel seasoning (that can wake up those bored taste buds), and sesame oil (a must have if you enjoy Asian flavors). We all have our favorite seasonings.

Right now I’m drinking about 15 ounces carbonated water I made in my soda stream, with about 2 ounces of mango coconut water (from Dollar Tree), 2 ounces Seagrams ginger ale (leftover from Eva’s birthday party), and about 1 ounce fresh lime juice (limes cheap from Aldi). It’s refreshing in this hot day and different.

On Wednesday, Eva and I will receive a “meat box” from Hungryroot and we have a lot of leftovers from the in-law’s picnic yesterday (including half a ‘litter box cake’).

We needed some items to spice up our eating, preferably some fresh fruit, so how did I spend my $48 at Aldi?

Actually, I spent $38.53.

  • 4 small cans of plain tomato sauce, 47 cents each.
  • 4 cans chunk tuna in water, 85 cents each.
  • Everything bagel seasoning with jalapeno, 1.85
  • generic Spam, 2.15
  • larger can of chicken breast chunks, $2.69
  • quart of half and half, $1.98
  • half gallon of 2% milk, $2.22
  • two individual servings of Chobani Flips, chocolate chip cookie dough flavor, $1.38 each
  • 8 ounces New York Sharp cheddar, $1.75
  • Deli pack slices of provolone cheese, Eva’s favorite, $1.65
  • Hummus Crisps (no idea what these are but they look like pop chips), $2.19
  • Veggie Straws, ranch flavor (for Eva), $2.35
  • frozen broccoli florets, $1.15
  • cotton candy grapes, a big container, $3.98
  • multipack of fresh limes, $2.29 (cheaper than lemons)
  • bunch of bananas, 2.04 pounds, 90 cents
  • 2 avocadoes, 65 cents each
  • A dozen large eggs, $2.04

One of my guidelines is to look for items around $2. You will see that the grapes are the most expensive item on this list. By setting a mental guideline, I force myself to pause and consider whether the item on my list is worth the price. I ask myself questions like how versatile is this item? How many servings will I get out of this item? How healthy is this item?

For example, the grapes were an easy yes, because that is cheap for those grapes. They are one of the few fruit items I will eat. Eggs, also a solid choice, can add an egg to a lot of meals for extra protein. Even Ramen suddenly looks like a decent meal if you do it “egg drop” style. I chose limes over lemons to save a dollar, but buying them also meant I could transform the avocado into avocado dip/guacamole/toast spread. And the Chobani was also a splurge and has more sugar than I need, but it is also a great snack if you are craving cheesecake or ice cream or canolis.

Two weeks in the life of Angel

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I wish I had some exciting reason that it’s been two weeks without a post. The reality is that I’ve been ghostwriting a novel and that every free moment I have has been dedicated to that client who is currently paying my mortgage. Luckily, I love the client, I love the story and I love the whole experience of being a part of the project so it’s not a hardship by any means.

The book publishing entity– Parisian Phoenix Publishing— has been paying the other costs of life. If you follow the blog there and/or read the Substack newsletter, you will see we are always doing something to keep the company and its authors growing. And if you need another reminder of why and where to buy books, check out the shop we’ve curated at Bookshop.org, where you can shop online and designate your favorite independent bookseller to receive the profits from the sale.

So, rather than try to catch you up with every bit of crazy while I’ve been away, let me provide this fine list:

The Initial Joys of Summer

  1. The Teenager only has a few more days of Teenagerdom and she has spent much of the last month renovating our garage into an indoor/outdoor living space. She is hosting her birthday party out there and I can’t wait to show you the final result.

2. I have started using the outdoor patio more as the Internet extends that far and there’s really no excuse.

3. We decided to try the Papa Johns Cheeseburger Pizza and their new Spicy Lemon Pepper Wing Sauce. The boneless wings are terrible, but the sauce is out of this world. And the burger pizza– especially with the $10 promotional price point–might be our new favorite food. The Teenager has proclaimed that all pizza should have pickles.

4. I spent some more time with my cat, Fog. We normally use a “crate and rotate”-style system for all the animals. For the last year, my boy Fog, our old tripod Opie and the cat the rescue gave up on, Canyon, have been in my room. We decided to let them free roam and this meant I got to spend some time during my long work days with my man, Fog.

5. Speaking of cats, our houseguest, Paulie, still loves to bite me, but he has gotten quite forward about being in my business.

6. We pre-gamed the Teenager’s birthday by going to Dave & Buster’s for some arcade time and then visited this strange convenience store with the old style poker video machines, alcohol, vaping supplies, penny candy, ice cream, strange snacks and all the household goods one would expect from a convenience store.

7. I made some new recipes including rhubarb quick bread (think banana bread but with rhubarb) and my own twist on fried pickles. I smeared/shredded cheese on a kosher dill pickle sandwich slice and then pinched it into a piece of Italian meat before breading and frying. Both were amazing.

8. My 2015 Jetta turned over to 71,000 miles. The Teenager has been driving it for work, so it only had 55,000 on it when I got laid off from Stitch Fix in September. But in other exciting news, before the end of the month, the Teenager should pay off her 2012 Nissan Rogue which we’ve had two years when we only planned to keep it for six months. It’s pretty much ready for a demolition derby now, but it was The Teenager’s first car loan and she paid it off six months early.

And lucky number nine….

(The Celts believed 9 was a holy number, because nine was a collection of three sacred threes.)

9. Today, I got to have a lavender matcha latte with my book-making, mixed media, painting artist friend Maryann Riker of Justarip Press. We stopped at Spectacular Coffee at Easton’s Silk Mill after indulging in a green sale (yes there is such a thing!) at Vasari Oil Paint.

Two weeks later… April reflections

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

It’s no secret that time mutates according to your age and stage of life, or maybe as we get older our mental sharpness as it relates to time fades.

I normally try to share the adventures, the decisions, and the flavors of life with a bent toward advocacy and speaking up not only for oneself but also for creatures unable to do so.

The weather is experiencing schizophrenia as I recover from several weeks of conferences, class appearances and meetings. Friday night we had a freeze warning and today it’s 86 degrees.

I haven’t been keeping up with my workouts, at first due to a sternum injury that just healed this week, and now I’m afraid I won’t have the finances to go back. I also haven’t kept up with my medical team– mostly out of fear of medical bills and knowing that I have an MRI scheduled for my brain aneurysm next week. I will have to pay for that out of pocket, but I’m hoping that will cover my deductible.

Nobody wants to hear about those struggles. We all have struggles like that but I will tell you one thing: the less financial security I have in terms of a standard 9 to 5 job, the simpler my needs become. And so far, as New Age laws and the Bible all say, the universe always provides enough. Or maybe we learn to be content with less. Or our priorities shift. It’s been seven-and-a-half months since I lost my full-time job, and in some ways, not doing physical labor every day has made my life better.

But in other ways, it certainly makes the unknown in my life that much scarier.

I don’t know what has given me the guts to forge this path of pursuing my own business (Parisian Phoenix Publishing) but I do know that now, when I feel stress, I also have the power to do something about it. When life at my non-profit jobs or my warehouse job got stressful, what control did I have?

Now, I at least have that freedom to change direction as I see fit.

I am the boss in charge of using and selling my skills and talents.

Hopefully the world sees that.

And I have the opportunity to work in spaces like Panera Bread, my sunporch and at my desk with my jelly fish lamp.

And if you’ve seen my jelly fish lamp, then you know, it’s pretty cool.

Occasionally times might be lean, and we might get creative and inventive with food. Such as last night’s casserole? mexi-corn dish? I called it a concoction.

Angel’s Mexi-Corn Concoction

I’m not positive but I think one could locate all of these ingredients at the dollar store. My local dollar store is The Dollar Tree.

In one pan, start one cup rice. When I added the rice, I also added a sprinkle of chili powder and parsley. I use real rice so I covered that and reduced to a simmer.

In a small skillet, I combined:

  • One can, about 6 ounces, of white meat chicken
  • One can creamed corn
  • probably two ounces mild cheese*
  • black pepper
  • smoked paprika (if you are doing the dollar store you might only find regular paprika)
  • a touch of the chili powder

*cheese might be the one ingredient not available at the dollar store. I added it to thicken the corn and make it creamier versus juicy if that makes sense

I stirred that and made it into a sauce.

Then, I opened a can of refried beans.

I layered the dish so that the beans were on the bottom, the rice in the middle and the corn sauce on top, but it turned out surprisingly satisfying and so I mixed it into a big, old mess.

What I really wanted was extra creamy mac and cheese, but I thought that would use up all the cheese and milk in my house and so I pulled out random ingredients and tried to replicate the savory, creamy textures but with more nutritional value than just cheese and pasta. I have been eating some sort of pasta or cheese dish for lunch for weeks now.

Yes, you might look at this and think it “weird” but I enjoy a culinary challenge of using up what you’ve got before going out and buying more. And I’m tired and just don’t feel like going to the store.

Rain, again? Personal update

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I’ve been spending quite a bit of my free time working on a freelance project for a savvy dentist who writes business books in his free time. While he’s a dentist, his books combine his profession and his work in emotional intelligence and leadership with his business acumen. It’s fairly fascinating.

My life right now is not nearly as fascinating. But it is interesting to me, and it’s been good and perhaps even healing for my soul.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had hoped to develop a regular posting schedule for both my personal and business blogs and to expand my Substack newsletter. And I realized that today is Thursday, and while my particular Thursday (how dare it be so rainy and cold again today? We had such a warm and lovely yesterday) might be dull to the average person… it’s been a good day.

Yesterday I took my friend’s sister to the doctor. She’s nervous to return to her normal bus usage because of some recent knee issues. I had a nice time, and it was nice to get out of the house and drive around on a sunny warm day.

Sundried tomato spinach artichoke pasta

In the evening, I made an amazing sun-dried tomato, spinach-artichoke pasta with a few ingredients from Grocery Outlet and some leftover fresh spinach that had finally started to wither. (To read more about that grocery trip, click here.)

The artichokes, sundried tomatoes and carrots I used in the sauce (and except for the artichokes I didn’t use all) cost me $4.50. The shredded cheese I used as a topper was $1.99. And the spinach I was nursing for the last week had cost $3, but I have already gotten my money out of it. I had the noodles in the cupboard, but I suppose if you included the pasta, the whole meal might have cost $12 to serve 4, with leftovers of most of the ingredients for other meals. (And I had a can of whole black olives in the cupboard I had picked up at the Dollar Tree.

My trick for that delicious sauce was to take several of the artichokes, a clove or so of garlic, and one of the sun dried tomatoes (hand torn) into a skillet with some of the oil from the artichoke jar. I left that simmer on low while I tossed the rest of the jar of artichokes, some carrots, all the remaining spinach, and about half the jar of sundried tomatoes (and as much oil as I could spare from that jar without leaving the tomatoes exposed) into my Ninja food processor. I added a couple olives, then chopped some other olives and added them to the skillet.

Mixed the whole mess up with the pasta, added cheese to taste and delivered to the table.

As I put the leftovers away and cleaned the kitchen, I noticed the fridge was crusty so I wiped up some of those shelves (and then I went as far as to organize items so The Teenager might find them– hummus by carrots, yogurt with milk and pudding for easy snacking, cheese, beverages, bread).

Lending a hand

Yesterday, as I left my friend’s sister’s house, I literally drove my Southern Candy’s house. So I stopped and gave her a hug before heading home to the work I had from the dentist. Today, I visited another Stitch Fix colleague who had some trouble with her unemployment paperwork. She felt terrible to bothering me– but I told her– “I’m glad you felt comfortable calling, because I hope that means we all really will stay in touch. Too many lay offs mean the end of relationships.”

Believe it or not, we laughed a lot while she fought with the government web sites. She even gave me a small Wawa gift card to thank me. She said she figured I wouldn’t take gas money. I laughed and said, “These days, with us all unemployed, I’m not so sure.”

But it is nice to be reminded that we can all work together, and sometimes it’s nice to have people who you can ask for help.

When I got home, I had received a Fix. Now, I figured I would keep nothing from it because of my situation, but my StylePass is active so it costs me nothing to order and return it.

Here’s a video of the unboxing:

Review: First Purple Carrot shipment and their black pepper tofu

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Unboxing first purple carrot box

First I’ll let the photos and video speak for itself.

Next, a little back story. Some familiar to my readers, some probably new.

1. When other people go to Target, order weird lamps off the internet, buy clothes or troll yard sales, my version of retail therapy revolves around food. Wegmans is my happy place.

2. I spent my twenties as a vegetarian— even tried veganism for about six months. Back then, you had to go to the natural food store to buy non-dairy milk and you had two choices: rice or soy. Both came in aseptic boxes that were shelf stable. I don’t like the big business that agriculture has become, and I don’t like not knowing what is happening to my food via industrialized farming.

Why did I stop?

I got pregnant. The teenager has always been a huge carnivore. I had gestational diabetes while pregnant so I started eating turkey sandwiches to change up some of my proteins.

Then when the teenager was about 18 months old, I started craving bacon cheeseburgers (and I don’t even really like bacon). That was probably when my anemia started.

3. I am really enjoying this tour of meal delivery kits I’ve been doing this summer. Hello Fresh has flashy recipe cards, a lot of rice, a lot of prep and amazing sauces. Hungryroot has a nifty blend of “groceries” and “recipes” so if I just want that out-of-this-world snack cheddar, I don’t need to order the whole grilled cheese kit. The recipes are an easy blend of processed and fresh, so the fridge-to-table time is a fraction oh Hello Fresh.

Now we add Purple Carrot. It’s the plant-based Hello Fresh. Three things about them I liked as soon as I opened the box:

  1. They send a booklet of all the recipes for the meals and extras, regardless of what you ordered. I lost the Hungryroot recipes. And Hello Fresh gives you your meals. This is practically a little cookbook.
  2. Their bags and containers are all clearly labeled.
  3. The bags and containers are all clear. It’s easy to see everything.

Based on my initial impression— making one of the four meals I ordered— here are my thoughts.

Pro

  • The vegetables shine, instead of being a side dish.
  • I finally know how to make tofu crispy.
  • Even though they are plant based, they still have high protein options.
  • So delicious

Con

  • Takes almost as long as Hello Fresh