Learning to Budget Entry #1

On my fourth month here, I'm thinking about the practical things I've learned. Especially about living in the US.

I think the biggest lessons I've learned in the practical aspect, has been about money. Budgeting has become an important part of my day. It's been a challenge but also it's also been fun in its own way because it forces me to be creative. Out of all the things I've learned, here are the ones that have made the biggest impact on our spending/saving habits.

1. The most important change we've made:

  

Eating at Home versus Eating Out

We have color coded chopping boards. Green is for vegetables.

We eat at home 90% of the time now. Wherein we used to eat out about 60% of the time because we felt that buying all those ingredients and cooking for two would be more expensive and more time and energy consuming than eating out. But I've learned how to plan out meals (I may not be as ambitious as those who plan a whole weeks worth of meals) but I roughly plan out most of our dinners a day or two in advance. I usually base this on what we have at hand or around something we want to eat (like seafood or pasta.) And when we cook, we usually make enough for a few meals so that we have a stash of food good for another lunch or two.

We've also slowly built up our ingredients collection so that it's easy for us to change up things in a pinch. Bread crumbs, spices and seasonings, soups, and marinades have become some of our kitchen staples. And of course, our trusty crock pot and rice cooker now have permanent places on the counter.

Maximizing our freezer is another habit that I've picked up. Whenever we buy meat, usually in "bulk" (not crazy huge portions as we're still only two) we portion them out into servings already before wrapping them in foil and placing them in storage zip bags. For example, we'll buy eight pieces of chicken and portion them out into two servings. So we'll pack four pieces of chicken per bag, with the contents and date stored written on the bag for easy reference.

If I want to cook chicken tomorrow, all I have to do is place one of the allocated storage bags in the fridge to defrost today. Aside from meat, we've also got bagels, yogurt, pizza, basil, and more stored in the freezer. Yes, most of the time it really is cheaper to buy in "bulk" than in smaller quantities. All you have to do is store your perishable items well.

Grilled Steak and Asparagus

Some of the best meals we've ever had, we cook ourselves. We've had barbecue pork ribs, dungeness crab with lemon butter sauce, truffle macaroni and cheese, grilled steak, and more, all at the fraction of what it would cost eaten at a restaurant. (Being married to a chef helps of course.)  Not that we don't eat out anymore, we still do occasionally (you can't beat Japanese restaurants or the variety of food at the farmer's market) but we've learned the value and pros of eating at home.

Dungeness Crab with Seasoned Butter Sauce

And I'm very glad that we have, because I am really enjoying cooking now.

Budgeting Entry #2 in the next post.

P.S. Can I just say that I've become a huge fan of frozen vegetables in steam packs? All you have to do is microwave them and season them yourself upon serving. And at $1.50 a bag, very affordable and pretty good (for vegetables. I'm not a big vegetable fan.)

Safeway Steam Pack Vegetable Mix

The Chocolate Festival at Ghirardelli Square

A few weeks ago, I got a coupon for 50% for 15 tastings at the Annual Chocolate Festival at the Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. It was a no brainer, we immediately bought the tickets and looked forward to a day full of chocolate in the city.

We got really excited looking at all the different vendors they had, especially Ciao Bella Gelato among others. So on Sept. 11, bright and early, we headed into the city. (Well not too early as we like to sleep in a little on Saturdays and have brunch.) Upon our arrival at our Ghirardelli Square, imagine our dismay at the humongous crowd we saw, with super long snaky lines of people all waiting for their tastings! 

View from afar. I know it doesn't look that packed but wait til you get inside.

These people are mostly waiting in line.

We figured we didn't really want to wait too long for a tiny taste of chocolate so we chose a few that we wanted to try. We got to try pistachio caramel popcorn, a bite of bread, a tiny chocolate pancake, freeze dried fruit, a brownie bite, and I think.... that's about it.

Bread bites, I believe.

We did sit down to watch an R&D guy from Ghirardelli explain how chocolate is made but we didn't stay for very long.

Almond Spiced Popcorn

Sure, we would have wanted to try the chocolate martinis, chocolate infused teas, or mini Ghirardelli sundaes but we felt the portion in ratio to the wait in line just didn't cut it. But it was fun looking at all the different stuff they had on the menu!

And it was nice to spend a day out exploring San Francisco which we ended by having dinner in Chinatown. I know we would have enjoyed it so much more if there hadn't been such a huge crowd and a minimum ten minute wait to get a small bite of something that would fit in the palm of my hand. But at $20 per 15 tastings, I guess the value was ok. (We got ours for $10 though plus we got one more free for paying with visa, thanks to Living Social.) It was an experience in itself, but not something we're looking to repeat next year. 

Maybe the San Francisco Chocolate Salon would be less stressful more up our alley?

Swagbucks Searches

Since I spend so much time at home and in front of my computer, I've found a lot of interesting and fun things you can do online.

One of my favorite recent discoveries is SWAGBUCKS. (You'll see my new Swagbucks banner on the right.)

And what is it exactly? It's a search engine/rewards program that awards virtual or "swag" bucks to its users which you can redeem for a whole lot of stuff like clothes, school supplies, electronics, and my favorite, gift cards! The easiest way to earn "Swagbucks" is by using its search engine, instead of Google or Yahoo. Think about it. Google and Yahoo earn so much money from its users but do they share the wealth? Swagbucks does! You don't always earn with every search but you can get awarded anywhere from 6 to 11 Swagbucks at any given time.

And if you want to earn more, they've got free offers you can complete, surveys you can answer, videos to watch, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I've also found the Swagbucks toolbar to be especially useful, and I often earn just for using it!

Now I'm normally very wary of websites like these but Swagbucks doesnt require any credit card information. All you have to do is register for an account on their site. So far, I've only been using it for two weeks but I've already redeemed a $25 gift card for restaurant.com. And I only need a few more swagbucks before I can get a $5 Amazon Gift Card. Gift cards for Paypal and Barnes and Noble are a bit pricier but with a little patience I'm sure I can snag one.

Why not give Swagbucks a try. After all, what do you have to lose?

Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes! Yes, seriously!

After weeks of toying with the idea, I finally got around to making... Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes! 

When I tell people about Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes, most of them give me mixed reactions like "it sounds like a good idea in theory but I don't know...". Prompted by the fact that I've been super curious about them and that we had a lot of leftover buttercream frosting, I finally got around to trying my own version.

I started off with Hershey's Chocolate Cake Recipe (the same one you get off the box of Hershey's Cocoa Powder) because it's the chocolate cake recipe my chef husband swears by. But of course, our cocoa powder is Barry Callebaut, not Hershey's.

Here's the part that may make you raise some an eyebrow. After frying some 6 strips of bacon, I saved the drippings and substituted it for half of the vegetable oil required in the chocolate cake recipe. Then I chopped up the bacon and mixed it in the batter before baking. I ended up with over two dozen cupcakes (I knew I should have cut the recipe in half.) I don't know how Gerard and I are going to finish two dozen cupcakes!

After frosting the cupcakes with the leftover buttercream frosting, I added some caramelized bacon chips and a sprinkling of salt. Voila! Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes!

Cake-wise, I honestly think this may have been the best chocolate "cake" that I have ever made. It was soft, and moist, and it tasted so good, I could have eaten it without frosting! But the whole point of the bacon is to give you a "sweet and salty" experience all at once and I can say that this cupcake attained that goal. The cake and the frosting weren't overly sweet and the salt and bacon had just the right touch of saltiness. All in all, I'd say my experiment was a success. 

Now to find people to share it with because we're too tempted to finish all two dozen cupcakes by ourselves...

My Truffle Addiction

Gerard and I have been on the lookout for affordable truffle salt and we finally found some at the Sur la Table in Walnut Creek. During our last conversation, my friend Melissa had told me about truffle mac and cheese so that's what we decided to have for dinner since we didn't really feel like cooking anything too complicated anyway.

Now we're not big on making things from scratch, but making things better. So at Safeway, we found triple rich mac and cheese and my chef husband sauteed some mushrooms and prosciutto to mix in, which he topped off with bread crumbs and the truffle salt before popping in the oven for a few minutes.

So there you have it. Semi-home made truffle mac and cheese which didn't even make it to the next day. 

Warning: extremely addictive

The truffle salt added this really rich, unique flavor to the mac and cheese. The flavor is so addicting, I've taken to just having a taste of the salt every now and then. But I've stopped now that my lips feel dry and cracked from too much sodium. 

Visions of truffle salt enhanced dishes are swarming through my head... definitely can't wait to try it with some fresh french fries and popcorn too.

Easy Peasy Chocolate Nut Clusters

I love chocolate covered nuts. I love chocolate covered many things.

Today, I had a craving for nut clusters, something akin to my mom's favorite See's almonds in chocolate so I decided to make a few pieces. I mostly try to make things in small batches so they won't go to waste or so we won't tire of them too easily.

Ever since my husband taught me how to microwave melt chocolate (stop every thirty seconds and stir after) it's been super easy to make chocolate covered things.

For my nut clusters, I started with:

1/3 Cup Chopped Chocolate (I use Callebaut, of course. This time it was a dark chocolate.)

1/4 Cup Chopped Pistachios

And that's it!

I microwave melted the chocolate and it only took 2 30-second intervals to fully melt it so a minute total. For large quantities of chocolate I'd definitely go with the double boiler method but for this, the microwave worked perfectly.

I mixed in the chopped pistachios and spooned the mix onto my trusty Silpat atop a baking tray for three perfectly sized Chocolate Pistachio Clusters. (I told you I liked things in small quantities.) 

Then I put the tray in the fridge for a few minutes just to let the chocolate harden again.

There you go, super simple! For larger quantities, just double or triple the recipe, and you don't even need to be exact with the chocolate/nut ratio. You can even change up the nuts for variety, try peanuts, almonds, macadamia nuts whatever! Next time, I even want to make an almond nut cluster with dried cranberries.

I wish we had some of those individual candy liners to spoon the mixture on to but I'm definitely thinking to get some for when we make these as Christmas gifts. I'm determined to give home made chocolate gift boxes this year. 

So that was my chocolate craving. For now. I'll probably have another Chocolate Marshamallow Tart after dinner. 

Puff Pastry Possibilities

I've recently discovered puff pastry, so easy yet so versatile!

I wanted to do something different with leftovers aside from reheating and serving so this is where puff pastry first came into mind. I had some leftover pork belly, mushrooms, and gravy so I sauteed them all together to use as filling for these babies.

Since the pastries were already pre-made, all I had to do was throw these little flat discs of dough into the oven and watch them rise and turn a perfect shade of yummy, flaky, golden brown. I cut out the top and inside as instructed and filled the pastries with my pork filling, which did make for a very yummy lunch.

While putting away the box (I'd only baked half of the pastries) I came across their website, www.puffpastry.com, which lead me to a myriad of interesting and easy recipes. Since I was craving dessert (when am I NOT craving dessert) I checked out their dessert section and came across even more ingenious, easy, CHOCOLATE recipes. 

I really really wanted to make the chocolate ravioli, but I didn't have the right type of puff pastry or the heavy cream on hand. So I chose to make Chocolate Marshmallow Tarts instead as I already had everything in our pantry.

It was super easy, just spoon some chocolate pudding into the puff pastry, and top with marshmallows or marshmallow creme. The recipe calls for broiling to brown/melt the marshmallows but lucky for me, my husband has a creme brulee blow torch. Oh what fun!

There you have it. Super easy dessert in under five minutes (aside from baking the puff pastry.) And it was so filling, I only ate half of it. I don't know how often that happens, probably cause I was still full from lunch in the first place. Puff pastry is actually very filling!

I'll definitely have to try the Chocolate Ravioli recipe next time. Ooh the puff pastry possibilities...