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Recipes Uncategorized

The Evolution of Beef Stroganoff

Family and our food history are important to me

Beef stroganoff is a recipe that has been around since the mid-19th century, and is classically a beef dish served with a sour cream sauce.  And the evolution of beef stroganoff is well documented around the world.  For my family, it may very well have originated in Russia, and been brought over by my family in 1922.  My grandmother and her siblings were orphans of the revolution, and came to America, poor and alone.  I can imagine that beef may have been substituted for another ingredient, either mushrooms or additional vegetables, or it was a very special meal reserved for special occasions.  In either case, it’s a recipe that has stuck with my family for close to 100 years!

It was one of my favorite meals when I was a kid

My mother’s version of the recipe was a quick, cheap meal to feed her brood of five children.  And it wasn’t called stroganoff.  It was hamburger gravy.  In Iowa during the mid-sixties, ground beef was the go to meat.  It was cheap, easy to work with, and good protein for large families like ours.  My mother’s version didn’t include sour cream.  Mom’s hamburger gravy was very simple, very quick, and very hearty.  And  it was one of my favorite meals when I was a kid.  It  was, ground beef, in a milk gravy sauce, with onions, lots of black pepper and served over mashed potatoes.  Sort of like SOS, but with fresh beef instead of dried beef.

In 1968 Better Homes and Gardens released the Casserole Cookbook.  We got a copy of the ninth printing in 1973 and we started to use it frequently.  I still have that copy, and pages are stained, and the Hamburger Stroganoff recipe still has a torn piece of paper marking the page.  It was a very simple recipe with canned condensed soup, ground beef and sour cream.  Other Stroganoff recipes include canned mushrooms.  Let’s just say that the rubbery mushrooms were usually left out.  I didn’t like mushrooms and didn’t even bother to substitute them with anything else.

Beef Strognoff With Zucchini Noodle

Over many years, this tasty recipe morphed from the originals from the Casserole book to my personal version.  I put the mushrooms back in, added extra sour cream, and made a simple creamy sauce that’s gluten free.  Instead of noodles, I use sauteed zucchini or summer squash.  It’s still one of my favorite meals, and using the squash instead of noodles gives me the veggies lacking in the original recipes.  It’s a win-win for me and the family.

Family and our food history are important to me.  It was rare that we had any fancy meals, but everything was cooked with care and our health and happiness in mind.  I admit to having been a very picky eater, and I’m still picky about the food I cook.  We always do the best we can with our food and our time together.  I’ve been blessed to teach some things to the next generation, and hopefully, they will pass this amazing food legacy on to their kids.  My granddaughter is already enjoying helping in the kitchen and cooking her play food on imaginary stoves.  This apple has not fallen far from the family tree!  Someday, she can make her mark on this classic family recipe.

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Meal Planning Stories Uncategorized

Meal prep and planning

Meal Planning revisited

A few years ago, when I started this website, one goal was to teach people how to plan meals and shop as  efficiently as possible.  Several new services and businesses have cropped up to reduce stress for the people eating the food.  While there is nothing wrong with any of these options, planning is important.

If you use a delivered meal service, everything is in a box, the recipes, and portioned food.  A friend of mine tried a meal kit service, and liked it, but realized that she still had to cook the food.  Although some of the packaging was recyclable, much of it went in the the trash, and the food had to be shipped cross country  before it spoiled.  These are not inexpensive options.  She ordered meals at the cost of about $10 per person per meal.  Recipes changed constantly, there wasn’t much consistency with the food.  If you loved a meal or recipe, it wasn’t always available again.  Again, if you love to cook and try new recipes, it’s a great plan, but most people need to get a good meal on the table quickly, with the least amount of stress.

I test products,

and received a meal kit from a large super market chain.. Yesterday afternoon, I made the kit, a meal designated for two people.  It contained appropriately portioned salmon, Basmati rice, a packet of blackening seasoning, green beans, a small onion, a large green bell pepper, seasoned butter, a lemon, chicken stock, and slivered almonds.  My job was to read and follow directions, (important to any recipe) and make the food.  I had to provide cooking oil, salt and pepper, the cookware and my stellar knife and cooking skills.  This was not a kit for beginners.  And it really wasn’t something I would make on a busy weeknight.  Since I was photographing along the way, it took a little longer than the anticipated 30-40 minutes.  So I poured myself a glass of wine, and got down to the business of making a meal from a kit.

This is like building with Legos

Everything is in the box, and I had no say in what ingredients I can use, no room for creativity or adapting.  So I got out my knife, cutting board, cooking oil, and put a little Kosher salt in a bowl, and grabbed the pepper grinder.  I opened the box and et voila! salmon, green beans, a giant pepper, etc., etc.  First step, wash the veggies, Check!, cut up the pepper and onion, Check! heat up a saucepan, Check! and so on.  The end result was just okay; I wouldn’t pay for this in a restaurant.  It was very convenient to have everything all in one box, but I missed picking out my vegetables and adapting the portions.  The green bean to rice ratio was unbalanced.  The kits provide excellent meal alternatives, but it removes us, culturally, one step more, away from the source of our food.

A lot of people don’t want to cook.

In the past, the only options were TV dinners or frozen pizzas.  However, food manufacturers (I kind of hate that term), expanded the choices, but most were still frozen or canned, and not very appealing.  Enter the pre-made and assembled fresh and never frozen meals.  Supermarket chains, like the one that gave me the kit, have developed one meal, one tray, for one person, products and it’s all fresh, pretty healthy, and tastes pretty good.  A meal consists of a protein like chicken, pork or seafood, plus one or two sides, maybe green beans or asparagus, and something starchy like potatoes or rice, and a sauce.  Again, it’s easy pop them in the oven, and thirty minutes later, FOOD!  It still removes us from the source of our food, but the general concept is sound.

Hire-a-Shopper

Many retailers have hire- a- shopper services.  For a small additional charge, you can order your food and other items online and have the option of either picking them up or having them delivered to your home.  These are great options, and as a sometimes caterer, I see this as a huge win by reducing the time to shop for the food I’m serving my customers.  I can spend more time prepping and organizing the event. But the product ordered may not be the product delivered, especially if  uncommon ingredients are needed,

I love all these options, but with all of these options, you still have to plan and create a list.  This is where my original plan comes into play, the simple, list of repeatable meals that your family loves.  Easy out the door breakfasts and lunches.  Meals than can take as little as fifteen minutes to get on the table for church and soccer nights. And more time for special meals for the weekends.

All of this makes me miss the good old days.  We knew farmers, planted our gardens, ate meals socially with family and friends.  We created our own convenience meals by cooking on the weekends and having some leftovers during the week.  While it’s still my primary method of meal planning and cooking, boredom with eating the same thing all week becomes a struggle.

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Stories Uncategorized

More about Evolutionary Eats

Something came across my line of sight today.  A company with a very similar name is now providing a service that was never in my list of tasks; however I think the concept is interesting.  It prompted me and really gave a kick in the backside to better define the goals.

Evolutionary Eats is for people who want to learn how to be personally responsible for what they eat. My goal is to teach you how to shop for your food, or how to hire someone to do it for you. It’s to teach you how to plan meals, teach your kids to eat better food, and make good choices when they are out of sight. It is not about judgement, accountability or anything else. We are personally responsible for what we consume, in all aspects of our lives, and how we choose to view ourselves, in every situation.

On Facebook, many of my friends post photos and links to recipes.   That is part of the beauty of social media.  As a food person, I am constantly working on recipes, concepts for recipes, photo shoots, and then putting it all together in a consumable form. To be honest, most of the time I glance at the recipes and photos, and then move on. And to be very honest, I do all of it myself.  On occasion, a friend will check out something I am doing, but really it’s all me.  One person with some basic technical knowledge, slapping together something that is almost cohesive and coherent.

I listen to podcasts by  Srinivas Rao, instigator of Unmistakable Creative.  Recently, I got a big nudge.  I realized my readers need some drama, a great back story of how this came about, and why I feel so compelled to continue. The interview was with Donald Miller, author and business man.  There is a long back story, and why I know  that I am on the path God intended.  There are probably only a few people who know the whole story.   For a long time, I was a victim, and I played the role, even after I had the power to be free of it.

All of this ties to food.  Food has made me evolve, transform, so much of myself. It was always the background for what was going on in my life and in my small, limited view of the world.  Food is healing, not only for our bodies but for our souls as well.  God showed us this early on in Judeo-Christian history.  This morning for my daily reading was Leviticus 6:1-6, regarding the daily burnt offering.  It reminded me to “to keep the fires burning”; never let it go out. And to make that daily communion with God.

When I tell snippets of my story to people, they are amazed.  I believe it’s the rea-20150219_115404son it has taken so long for me to get to this point.  At one point I resovled to not tell this, because it didn’t seem to have any bearing on the goals, and I didn’t want to hurt those involved.  But now, it seems the story is important to tell.

More to come; it is about the food.