I don’t know about your kids, but my tweens love to gross me out with spooky or disgusting stuff. And of course that makes for an interesting Halloween delimma, that’s when all the spooky, scary paraphenalia is out on the shelves for them to dream about. Spiders down my back, slime coated handles, you get the idea…

But, it is fun, putting aside Halloween, to play around with them a little. So this year, I picked up a copy of JustNotMartha.com’s 35 Easy and fun Halloween Recipes ebook to see if there were any ideas I could use to gross out the kids.

But, my intended surprise was spoiled when the kids caught me going through the ebook and came to look over my shoulder. They had so much fun going through looking at the recipes and playing picking things to make just based off the names, like:

- Ewey Gooey Eyeballs
- Scrambled Brains
- Vampire Bat Stew

Even though, I’m not going to do these for Halloween, I found some great ideas for snacks and even meals in the recipe portion of the book.

There are 35 recipes total, ranging from appetizers and snacks, to kids-friendly entrees, and of course desserts. The two candied apple recipes were enough to have our mouths watering. For a sampling of some of dessert recipes, check out this video:

Even though the ebook is geared towards Halloween, the recipes are appropriate for a kid or tween party, just a fun family dinner, or even for a harvest party.

Several recipes use pumpkin (which is super nutritious), including Pumpkin Soup, “It’s the Great Pumpkin Pull Apart Cake”, stuffed mini-pumpkins, Cranberry Pumpkin bread, and of course instructions for roasting pumpkin seeds.

For those of you who participate in Halloween, there are four bonsus: 15 pumpkin carving templates, 5 Spooky short stories, one multi-chapter spooky story, and 7 ideas for halloween party fun, several of which are wholesome enough for a harvest festival or just a fun fall kids party.

With bonuses, the ebook is a hefty 175 pages, most of which are from the bonus stories. The recipe portion is 36 pages.

For $7, 35 Easy and Fun Halloween Recipes is a reasonable buy if you are looking for some fun kid-friendly recipes to try, even if you don’t do Halloween. But for those of you who do do Halloween, the bonuses make this ebook a great deal.

“Mom, Michael says that cooking is for girls,” My 9 year old son shared as he came in from playing with the neighborhood kids to cook dinner. 

“What do you think?” I asked, wanting him to to express his feelings on the subject, especially in light of the boy’s critical remark.

“I think he’s going to be very hungry when he grows up,” my son says. And after we laugh at the remark, he explained his thoughts – that there’s not always going to be a time when mom or a girl is going to be around to cook for him. And he’d like to eat. 

The whole situation was good for my son to figure out what he truly thought about boys cooking. It was the first time he had really encountered any opinions that boys shouldn’t learn to cook – that it is a girl’s job.  

But it does bring up a question, as moms I think we should ask ourselves: “Should we teach our boys how to cook?” 

It takes more work to teach our kids to cook than to do it ourselves. And yes, Cooking is traditionally “for girls”. Even in today’s “equalized” world, mom is the one responsible for cooking and feeding the family.  But yet many chefs are men.

My son cooked his first pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving 2008

I come from a family culture where it’s not unusual for the men to cook. Though I have never seen my dad cook outside the grill, one of my uncles spent time as a chef and is a wonderful cook. And, I learned a great deal about cooking, baking, and canning from my grandfather, who is the least ”girly” person I know. 

Personally, I’ve required all my kids  to be kitchen helpers, and we’ve done cooking activies together as a family. My son’s favorite memories are those when we all cook together – like the few times we’ve canned or for holidays when there’s so much to cook, we split up the jobs.

Last year when I gave my oldest daughter a day to cook dinner for the family, my son and both his younger siblings wanted their own day to cook. I was almost out of a job.  It became a time to learn to cook a meal that not only they like, but would also please the other members of our family. A practical on thinking of others and feeling that pleasure of serving a meal that others enjoy.

But this is our family. Where do you fall in on this? Do you think boys should learn to cook? Why or why not?

Please leave a comment. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

…Shannon

So far in this series on lowering the cost of meat in your grocery budget, I’ve covered my three key strategies:
- Knowing my buy price
- Buying in larger quantities, and
- Doing the prep work one time.

In the last post, I shared the simple method I use for ground beef and ground turkey. The principles are the same with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but it does require a little more prep work.

Again, my goal is to handle the meat once, usually with a day or two of buying it. That way, when I’m ready to cook, I just pull a bag out of the freezer, and either cook it (if the dish allows) or defrost it so I can cook it the next day without any extra prep work.

My husband and I have been using this method since we were first married, when it was just the two of us. Then a meal-size package was only two peices of meat; now it has to contain enough for six of us. But the methodology is exactly the same.

Preparing Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breats for the Freezer and Future Meals:

To start, I gather up my tools:
- the platter of chicken
- quart-sized,  Ziploc freezer bags
- kitchen shears (scissors)

Kichen shears, chicken, and freezer storage bags - all ready to go.

For the storage bags, be sure to use Freezer grade bags. After trying multiple different brands, I’ve chosen to stay with Ziploc, but if you don’t have them available or you are not using freezer-grade bags, be sure to double bag your meat so you don’t get freezer burn.

Also, kitchen shears (scissors) are a must! Trimming chicken with a knife is a major pain (in my opinion). If you don’t have a pair, I highly suggest investing in some. They are indespensible for preparing chicken and other types of food.

Also, if you don’t like to handle raw meat, you might want a pair of sterilized rubber or latex gloves.

And as always, be sure to follow proper food handling guidelines, especially when working with raw chicken. My rule is that no one can do the prep work with me unless they wash their hands before and after touching the meat. And they can’t touch anything else while working with the meat.

For each piece of chicken, I do two things:

1.  Trim all the fat and gristle off using the kitchen shears. I am not gentle. And I probably chop off more than most would. But I save all the trimmings for making chicken stock later and/or for pet food.

Trim the fat and gristle from the chicken breasts

2.  Cut the chicken breasts into serving size peices. Now that there are six of us, I have different size peices for different members of my family. But remember a recommended serving size is not a whole breast of chicken; it’s 3 oz or the size of a pack of cards. Most chicken breasts can be cut in half or even thirds to get good sized chicken.

For thick peices, I’ll also use the scissors to butterfly cut the thick parts so that each peice is of similar thickness.

If stir fry chicken is on the menu, I’ll cut up a breast or two into stir fry sized strips.

And if chicken strips are on the menu, then I’ll do the same – cut some into the size I use for chicken strips.

Cut the chicken breasts into serving size pieces

Then I bag up the chicken into meal-size servings. So each Ziploc bag contains exactly the amount of chicken needed for one meal. For our family of six, a tray of chicken usually yeilds 3-5 meals (bags), plus a bag of trimmings.

Marinade can also be added before freezing

When you are done you’ll have several meals worth of chicken and one bag of trimmings for stock or pet food later.

Ready to freeze and cook later

To save freezer space, flatten the bags and stack them in the freezer.

Flatten bags fit better in the freezer

 
I like to have a consistent place in the freezer for each type of meat (poultry vs. beef vs. trimmings for stock). But if you don’t have a system like this in place, be sure to label the bags with a permanent marker (don’t use water based, it won’t be readable later).

Now, all I have to do  is grab a bag and throw it in the heated pan and start cooking.  This really works well for baked chicken dishes, stir-fry, and sauteed chicken.

For fried chicken or breaded chicken, or marinaded grilled chicken, I’ll pull the bag out the night before and let it defrost in the refigerator. Then it is ready to go the next night.  And, if you have the marinade in the bag already, all the marinading is being done during the defrosting. (works wonders and saves a ton of prep time.)

So, if you aren’t doing something like this, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Other Posts in This Series:

Saving Money on Groceries: Meat

Save Money on Groceries: Meat – Part 2

Previously, I shared one of the key strategies I use to save money buying meat. But there are two more keys strategies I use to keep our meat grocery costs low: 1) how much I buy and 2) when I do the prep work.

Using these strategies, I not only save money on groceries, but also in eating out, and in time it takes to prepare meals.

Basically, when meat, especially boneless, skinless chicken breasts or ground meat, is on sale at my buy price, it usually is in large quantities (sometimes called family-size or bulk packs). So I buy as much as I can afford or that meets the purchase limit.  

For example, this week, boneless, skinless chicken breasts were on sale for $1.47/lb – definitely below my buy price, but with a purchase limit of two. So I purchased the two. Sometimes I’ll go back on another day and buy the limit again. 

So right now there are two trays of chicken breasts in my refrigerator. Now I what I do, is within a day or two of buying the meat, I’ll take 15-20 minutes and prepare it all into meal size packages and freeze it.

My husband and I discovered this tactic when it was just the two of us; and we’ve been doing it for the last 15 years – with chicken, with ground turkey, and with ground beef (our staple meats). Granted the size of our “meal-size” package has changed over the years as we grew from us the two of us to six of us; but the process is exactly the same and the savings both in time and money is significant.

For ground beef or turkey, I simply  break the bulk or family size pack  into meal size chunks, and put each chunk  into a quart-size, Freezer Ziploc bag. I press it flat to save space in the freezer. Then, we squeeze out the air out of each bag and seal them. And finally, we nealy stack them in the freezer, in an area I’ve designated for that type of meat. 

meal-sized packages of ground beef, stacked in the freezer ready to go

When I need meat, then I just pull a package from the freezer and put it directly into the pan. And, it’s the exact amount that I need with no other prep work involved.
 
Next in this series, I’ll show how I process boneless, skinless chicken breasts. It takes a little more work than ground meat, but makes cooking with chicken very fast and very simple!

Other Posts in This Series:

Saving Money on Groceries: Meat

Saving Money on Groceries: Meat – Part 3

Meat. It’s a centerpiece of most American meals, including ours. While at one time I was a vegetarian and now only eat small amounts of poultry, my husband is a meat eater. Every meal needs to have meat. But being on a budget, sometimes a very tight one, I’ve had to learn some strategies to keep our meat costs down.

First off, we have our staple meats:
- Whole chicken
- boneless, skinless chicken breasts or tenders
- lean ground turkey
- lean ground beef

And then we have our splurge meats:
- beef roast
- beef tenderloin (filet mignon)

Now others I have talked to about this think I’m slightly crazy to buy the lean ground meat and the boneless, skinless chicken, but I have found that by strategic shopping and buying the meat on sale  or from the grocery store that offers the best price, I get more actual meat (vs fat & bone) from which I can make a wide variety of dishes; My family is eating healthier; and I can still make my budget.

For chicken, both whole and boneless, skinless, I watch the sales. Grocery stores (in the U.S. anyway) have their sales on about a 12 week cycle. And I know that there’s a surplus of chicken in the Spring and the Fall, so prices are consistently low for a few weeks during that time.

I also know what my “buy price” is per pound. A buy price is the price that I know is low enough for me to buy it. For example, if I know that the stores around here usually carry boneless skinless chicken breasts for $2.99/lb or more. But when it goes on sale, the price is usually $1.99/lb or less. So when I see boneless, skinless chicken breasts  for $1.99/lb or less then I know it’s time to stock up.

Now, each area is different and each item (and family) has a different buy price. But by paying attention to what we are buying and paying, we’ve been able to strategically lower our food bill, especially for meat.

In my next post, I’ll share how I  prep meat for the freezer so that when it’s time to cook, I don’t have hardly any prep time.

Other Posts in This Series:

Save Money on Groceries: Meat – Part 2

Saving Money on Groceries: Meat – Part 3