Getting the Most Out of Ingredients
When you don’t have handfuls of money to throw at things, it’s generally a good idea to use all of something that you’ve spent money buying. For some things this is easy to do. Any pantry staple you buy and then just keep in said pantry until it’s used up. For other ingredients though it isn’t so obvious, and a lot of times you end up throwing things out. I’m going to give you some hints on how to use up less obvious leftovers.
The Cereal Report: The Return of Fruit Brute
I’ll be the first to admit I’m a big kid at heart. Not quite a manchild, on account of the negative connotation it brings, but I do spend the majority of my free time playing video games and watching cartoons. A good example of this reigns in my recent discovery that Monster Cereals were back in stores for the season. After a particularly gruesome ambulance call, I departed the fire department when getting home, and needed to deposit money into the bank. Immediately following this I saw the Halloween section of Pathmark and proceeded to buy three boxes of cartoon-monster themed cereals, since that’s what all people working as first responders do after leaving work. I also bought a Super Mario Bros. game too, but that’s just pouring it on at this point. You get the idea.
It helps me unwind. That and whiskey. Preferably together.
Interestingly enough, after resurrecting (no pun intended, I swear) Frankenberry and Booberry a few years ago, General Mills brought back Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy for this Halloween. That’s fairly awesome for all of us people born after 1984 when it was discontinued. So pull up a chair and feel important! This is the first time in almost three decades Fruit Brute has been on shelves.
Cheese Review: Goat’s Milk Ricotta
Last week I told of our adventures in Limburger cheese – a cheese that we ordered special from the internet. This cheese was a much more spur of the moment purchase. A few weekends ago on our way to the Garlic Festival we visited a local dairy farm. I mostly just wanted to hang out with the goats, but we also wanted to buy some super fresh cheese.
The cheese is that way guys!
It was really nice there because they had a large selection of fresh cheeses made from cow, sheep, and goat milk. They also had fresh milk, butter, and eggs. We spent a really long time in front of the refrigerator case trying to decide which cheese to try. We probably would have bought more if we’d remembered to bring an insulated bag. But we didn’t want to risk buying a lot of cheese and having it all go bad sitting in the car all day. Anyway, after a lot of debate we finally decided to buy the goat’s milk ricotta.
Cheat Codes: Homemade Pumpkin Spice Latte
As mentioned in my last post about pumpkin pie spice, every October September August, millions of yuppies and idiots run to Starbucks forking over shit-tons of money for their limited time pumpkin spice lattes. It’s a tasty treat that you can only get for a few months at a time each year, and is pretty fun as far as coffee is concerned. And again, there seems to be a tremendous amount of novelty in the idea of pumpkin pie lattes, since they do taste so reminiscent of their namesake, that you might fool yourself into thinking the flavoring is some sort of complex concoction involving impossible spices mined from the furthest reaches of outer space and dehydrated pumpkin flakes created using factory-grade machinery. But like I said in our article about making your own pumpkin spice, it’s really just a handful of spices you probably already have on hand. There’s no pumpkin involved, unless you want to get really fancy.
Though hopefully not THIS fancy.
Pizza Lab #9: Three-Cheese Pesto Grilled Pizza
Pizza Lab is a fun theoretical column in which Meg A. and Erik S. explore their innermost passion for baking and eating pizzas. It exists purely for the sake of experimenting in the kitchen. It may not necessarily be cost-effective everytime, so don’t try this at home kids.
I’m a big fan of Autumn, most of my friends know this. I recently went on about this in my pumpkin spice article. Despite this, September always was a bittersweet month, since Summer is still my favorite time of year no matter what. Halloween and pumpkins are nice, but IMO it’s not quite worth the loss of wearing nothing but t-shirts and driving with the windows down. So before the end of Summer, Meg and I wanted to do one last grilled pizza before temperatures dropped back into the 50s and 60s, making grilling your foods inappropriate and silly (unless of course you live in the south where it’s probably state-law to never go more than a month without igniting your barbecue). We grow lots of basil every summer, and thus make a lot of pesto each year. This combined with the fact that our last grilled pizza almost resembled a panino sandwich in texture made us realize we absolutely needed to make some sort of Tuscan pesto chicken panini inspired pizza. And while this was one of the more tame ideas for a Pizza Lab, it ended up being delicious to the point of borderline sexy.
Three-Cheese Pesto Grilled Pizza
Erik S. So this pizza was pretty okay I guess.
Meg A. Just okay?
Erik S. Sorry, that was a typo… So this pizza was OH MY GOD IT WAS SO OH MY GOD.
Meg A. Haha, that’s better. This pizza was indeed pretty magical. But we knew it was gonna be awesome from the beginning.
Erik S. Magical is a good way to describe it. Only pure magic could have produced such euphoria.
Meg A. Yeah, in our heads (and our noses) we had a pretty good inkling it was gonna be a sheer delight. It’s also probably the most decadent pizza we’ve made yet
Erik S. It’s interesting too considering it’s one of the least outlandish ones we’ve made too.
Meg A. True. It’s the most traditional-ish.
Erik S. Hm. Looking back at the photos is taking me back. Oh man… We need to relive that pizza some day. I’m feeling feelings.
Meg A. Do you need a minute? Don’t forget to lock your door…
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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