I made homemade bagels the other day using this recipe. They turned out tasting very good but looked a little less like a bagel.

Monday was Gabriel’s birthday. He is now officially an 8 year old and he couldn’t be happier about the whole thing.

We have a very large round skillet and this made two average sized pizzas. If you don’t have an over sized skillet use the largest round pan you have. Make sure to size your crusts according to the size of your pan. The smaller the pan the more crusts you will have. You will want to split up your toppings accordingly.

Fried Crust Meatball Pizza

1 recipe for Fried Crust prepared but uncooked (recipe below)
Leftover Meatballs
1 large can diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato sauce
Italian Seasoning to taste
Garlic Powder to taste
vegetable oil
Cheese – your favorite blend

Step 1 – Prepare your fried crust but leave it uncooked. You can find the recipe for this below.
Step 2 – Heat up your meatballs in a pot on the stove top. As they warm mash them up really well, stirring and mixing.
Step 3 – In a blender mix up the tomatoes, tomato sauce and seasonings until well combined.
Step 4 – Heat vegetable oil in the largest round skillet you have on about medium/high heat. You will want the oil to be about 1/4 inch deep. Sprinkle some water in it and if it sizzles it is ready to use.
Step 5 – place 1 of your crusts in the hot oil. Leave it alone for a few minutes until the bottom is beginning to brown. You will then want to flip your crust over – do this carefully but don’t worry if it doesn’t flip perfectly. Your toppings will cover any crust issues you have.
Step 6 – once your pizza is flipped you will want to quickly pour some of your tomato mixture over it and spread it around your pizza crust. This is your pizza sauce. Then, take some of your heated meatball mixture and spread it on top of your sauce and top with your cheese. Don’t do this sloth-like. The bottom part of your crust will brown much quicker than the top part did.
Step 7 – When the bottom has browned carefully slide the pizza out of the pan onto a waiting surface. We used a pizza pan then cut the pizza up and transferred it to a cookie sheet so we could use the pizza pan again for the second pizza. If you don’t have something like this to use you can always cover your counter with wax paper.
Step 8 – If you desire you can put your pizza under the broiler in your oven for the cheese to melt completely, though it should melt at least a little on top of the hot meatball mix. We did this for a few minutes with each pizza.

Slice and serve.

Fried Crust -

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups bread flour
2 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
2 TBS shortening
1 1/2 cup warm water

If you have a dough attachment for your mixer you can use that. If not use a bowl and a fork. Also, my original recipe called for just all purpose flour. I substituted half of it because I was running out of all purpose flour. Although the original recipe tasted just fine the substitution of the bread flour gave it a much fluffier, flakier feel which I liked a lot. The choice is yours – either will work.

Step 1 – Stir together first 4 ingredients until well combined.
Step 2 – Mix in the shortening until your mixture has a thick crumb-like appearance.
Step 3 – Add enough water to make your dough soft but not sticky. If your dough is sticky add a little more flour.

I walked away for a minute and when I came
back Kait(13) had left me a happy face in the dough.
She often makes me smile.

Step 5 – Mix it for about 5 minutes (or knead it if are not using a mixer)
Step 6 – Divide your dough into 2, 3, or 4 sections depending on the size of your skillet. As I said above, we have an exceptionally large skillet so two does fine for us.
Step 7 – Roll your dough sections out into thin circles about the size of your skillet’s bottom. You don’t want them paper thin, but more the thickness of a tortilla. They do not have to look perfect, they just have to be round. Once they are rolled out they are ready to be fried according to the Fried Crust Pizza’s directions.

Remember, although presentation has a little to do with serving your family it isn’t everything. Don’t be concerned if your pizzas don’t look perfect. The taste is what makes these so good.

Now that you have seen how I creatively used our meatball recipe for three dinners I encourage you to come up with your own interesting left over ideas. Not everything will turn out perfectly but don’t give up. Great, new, fun concoctions are just around the corner. Don’t be afraid of your imagination.
It is also very important to get your kids involved. Allowing them to throw in their ideas and help with cooking and cleanup will encourage them to enjoy creative food ideas more and help give them a feeling of purpose and importance. I will write on this very soon so stay tuned.

I don’t know about you but I am the the primary dinner maker in this house. My husband loves to grill and Kait likes to experiment but the job of grocery shopping and dinner preparation falls 98% on my shoulders. Although my kids are responsible for breakfast and lunch, I am in charge of having the ingredients available for them to prepare those meals, too.

Because we are on a very strict grocery budget – between $250 and $300 a month for our family of 8, I have learned to be very wise with the resources I have, my husband’s hard earned money, and my time.

• The biggest money saver, and the one that took me the longest time to learn but seems so simple to me now, is that cooking on a budget isn’t just about getting cooking supplies for cheap. I have learned how to budget my spending on everything I buy when I am grocery shopping. This includes toiletries, cleaning products, medicines, vitamins, etc.. I may not ever find a coupon or sale on milk but since I no longer pay for toothpaste, shampoo, or conditioner due to deal hunting and coupon clipping, buying milk isn’t as much as a financial burden. Seriously, this one money saving idea has cut our grocery budget in half.
• Another idea I have taken to recently is planning out my weekly meals according to sale and coupon match ups. This can save a tremendous amount of money and even make meal preparation much less time consuming.
• When you find an exceptional deal on something you use often make sure to stock up. We got 25 boxes of cereal two weeks ago for between $.89 and $1.10 a box. When I saw the sales and matched them up with coupons I had been collecting I knew it was a cereal stock up week.
• Don’t feel that you always need to stick to the same items every time you shop. Get creative and try a new idea if it happens to be on extreme sale. A month or so ago we found some frozen bagged pasta and chicken meals by Birdseye on sale and with my coupon match ups for $1.25. I bought them and just added more pasta and some easy cream sauce to make a meal that fed my entire family of 8 for under $2. (I had gotten the pasta on extreme sale, too).
• Bake bread. This is super easy if you have a bread maker. We got ours at Goodwill for $12.99 and they had plenty to choose from. Adding bread to a meal will help fill your family up without them feeling the need to have thirds or fourths.
• Cook for more than one night at a time and separate the different night’s portions before you put them on the table so that your family isn’t tempted to dig into the second night’s meal.
• Clip coupons, get a CVS card, don’t be afraid of rebates, etc… My CVS card and Walgreen’s Easy Rebates have helped tremendously in cutting our grocery budget in half. Just in the past month I have gotten 8 tubes of toothpaste for free and I have almost 20 tubes in the cupboard with more free at CVS this month. We can’t possibly use this much toothpaste and are saving the extras up to send with our church on their missions trip in 5 months. We are also stocked up on feminine products, shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, dish soap, make up, household cleaners and smell good stuff, and way more. Most of it was free!
• Teach your kids that the kitchen is not their own personal pantry. Not only will this help your pocketbook but it will help you to know what your kids are eating and how much bad and good stuff they are getting. On the same note, it is important for your husband and children to have good snacks available to them. Favorites for us are homemade muffins (I love these dipped in yogurt), homemade breads and bread sticks, granola bars, or anything else found on sale. I always try to keep snacks in the house by finding them on sale and matching them up with coupons. These deals aren’t ever the same but my family really enjoys the variety.

With just a little work and some patience I have found that it isn’t all that tough to cook and keep snacks available for my big family on a budget. By carefully managing our grocery money I have not only cut our budget tremendously, I have also made meals and snacks for my family more interesting.
What works for us may not work for you – you may have to tailor your budget to suit your husband’s wishes. With some prayer and a little creativity you should still be able to put a dent in your spending.

Part one of this wifing section focused on an easy recipe that could feed a family of 8 for three dinners. This is the second dinner I made with that recipe.

We made meatball subs with homemade sub rolls with the leftover Giant Porcupine Meatballs from night one. This was a Sunday dinner so I made the sub rolls the day before. I heated the meatballs back up in the crock pot a few hours before dinner.

My sub roll recipe is similar to my French Bread recipe but with a little sugar and butter added. After the sub rolls are done you will want to pile them with meatballs, mayo, catchup, pickles or relish, onions, cheese, lettuce, or whatever you like.

Sub rolls – bread maker recipe: this makes 8 to 10 hoagie style sub rolls

• 6 cups flour (I either use all purpose or bread machine flour)
• 2 packages active dry yeast (or 4 1/2 teaspoons)
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 TBS sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 egg beaten with a tablespoon of water

Step 1 – Put the first four ingredients in your bread maker on the dough setting, don’t cook it. This takes about 1.5 hours. When the dough is finished it should be very risen and touching the top of the bread maker if you have an average sized machine.
Step 2 – Dump it out on a lightly floured surface and separate into 8 to 10 equal size portions. Let the sections rest for about 10 minutes.
Step 3 – Roll out each half into a 6 or 7 inch long rectangle with your rolling pin. This doesn’t have to be perfect.
Step 4 – Starting from a long end roll the rectangle up jellyroll style, pinch the ends closed, and place it on a cookie sheet, then do the same with the other sections. Many directions call for a greased and cornmeal dusted cookie sheet but last time I forgot to grease it and mine turned out just fine. Don’t put the rolls too close together. They will rise and double in size and you don’t want them to rise into each other. I use two cookie sheets.
Step 5 – Set the cookie sheet(s) on the stove top, cover the rolls with a towel, and preheat your oven to 375. Let the rolls sit and rise for about 30 minutes.
Step 6 – Brush them with your egg mixture very gently and put them in your oven for 15 minutes. Take them out, brush them with the egg mixture again, then cook them for another 5 to 10 minutes. Pay close attention, once they are light brown on top they are done.
Step 7 – Take them out and let them cool. You can serve them right away or store them in a sealed container or bag for a few days. They will last in the freezer for a very long time.

Tips:
**Make sure you don’t make your sub rolls more than 6 or 7 inches long. If you do this you are likely to have long, skinny rolls. They are still usable and taste just as good but they don’t look as much like sub rolls. Your 6 inch rolls will rise and expand and turn out just fine.
**Add food coloring to your rolls in the beginning in the bread maker for added fun for the kids. This can be a festive addition for the holidays!
**Don’t expect sub roll perfection. Most people aren’t going to make perfect looking rolls the first time they try. It’s okay because they will still taste very good and beat store bought rolls in taste every time – no matter how they look.
**This recipe makes great bread sticks, too. Make smaller sections of your dough and roll them up in a snake like fashion. Cook them the same – this will make a lot and they taste very good.
**My family likes me to split the sub rolls open, add cheese, and toast them under the broiler just before serving. This isn’t hard and only takes a few minutes.

The final dinner in this recipe is Fried Crust Meatball Pizza. It is very good and is super quick to throw together. Stay Tuned!

I tried my hand at making homemade yogurt in my crock pot. This took all day but was very, very simple. I didn’t have to do much of anything.

This portion of the wifing series will cover a few things:

1. Creative use of leftovers
2. Cooking for a crowd
3. Cooking on a budget
4. Organizing meal chores – keeping kids involved without loosing your
mind.

I always try to cook in bulk because it’s a time saver and it is just easier for me, having to feed 8 mouths each night, when I plan out dinners this way.
To keep leftovers from becoming mundane I have gotten pretty creative at re-using one night’s dinner to create an entirely new meal the next night. I love it when my husband and kids enjoy what I cook for them. I don’t want them to get bored and I try hard to keep them excited about ‘the family table’.
Here is what I did with my Giant Porcupine Meatballs, my beloved Crock Pot and my way-sweet bread machine. This is the first of three dinners I made out of one night’s cooking. Two more recipes will soon follow.

The first night we had Giant Porcupine Meatballs over a bed of rice with homemade garlic bread. Yum! All of this was very easy and made for a delicious dinner that has been requested in my home a few times in the span of about 2 weeks.
It may seem like a lot of work but remember that you are cooking the bulk of 3 nights of dinner. It really doesn’t take me very long to put this together, though there are a lot of steps and it may seem to take a great deal of time. Honestly, it doesn’t. I make my crock pot and bread maker work for me. In fact, our bread maker has a spot of its own on the counter because I use it almost everyday.

Giant Porcupine Meatballs with zesty tomato sauce

• 2 lbs ground beef (uncooked)
• 3/4 cup regular oatmeal (uncooked)
• 1/2 cup white rice (uncooked)
• Italian Seasoning (to your families preference)
• Garlic Powder (to your families preference)

Mix above ingredients together then form into large balls (between golf ball and baseball size). Cook for a few minutes in oil in a skillet until the outsides are brown. Then place the meatballs in a crock pot.

For the tomato sauce

• 2 28oz cans of diced tomatoes
• 1/2 cup Katsup
• Garlic Powder
• Italian Seasoning

In a blender add one can of diced tomatoes and the 1/2 cup Katsup. Blend until smooth and pour into your crock pot. Then, blend up the second can of diced tomatoes with the seasonings and add that to your crock pot. You can do all the blending together if you have a mamajama blender but the average sized blender will require you to half and half it. You can substitute a couple jars of spaghetti sauce if you prefer.
Once your sauce is poured onto the meatballs in your crock pot put the lid on and set it on high for 1 hour. After an hour put it on low and cook for about 5 hours. Don’t try to stir it. The meatballs might fall apart.
I serve these over a bed of rice with Katsup and homemade Garlic Bread.

I make my French Bread partially in the bread maker. If you don’t have a bread maker I highly recommend one. We got our first one for $15 at a garage sale, like-new, and it was a $120 Breadman. When the paddle got lost in our last move, which costs $20 to replace, we decided instead to just search for a new-used bread maker and got one from Goodwill for $12.99. They had quite the selection and I chose a like-new Sunbeam. It is a top of the line bread maker and I am very happy with it.

So – for the French (garlic) Bread: this makes two loaves of garlic bread

• 6 cups flour (I either use all purpose or bread machine flour)
• 2 packages active dry yeast (or 4 1/2 teaspoons)
• 2 cups water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 egg beaten with a tablespoon of water
• 1/2 cup butter mixed with 2 teaspoons of garlic powder

Step 1 – Put the first four ingredients in your bread maker on the dough setting, don’t cook it. This takes about 1.5 hours. When the dough is finished it should be very risen and touching the top of the bread maker if you have an average sized machine.
Step 2 – Dump it out on a lightly floured surface and tear it in half. Let the halves rest for about 10 minutes.
Step 3 – Roll out each half into a rectangle with your rolling pin – about 18×12. This doesn’t have to be perfect – my 3 year old has done this with only a little help.
Step 4 – Starting from a long end roll the rectangle up jellyroll style, pinch the ends closed, and place it on a cookie sheet, then do the same with the second half. Many directions call for a greased and cornmeal dusted cookie sheet but last time I forgot to grease it and mine turned out just fine.
Step 5 – Set the cookie sheet on the stove top, cover the rolls with a towel, and preheat your oven to 375. Let the rolls sit and rise for about 30 minutes.
Step 6 – Brush them with your egg mixture and put them in your oven for 15 minutes. Take them out, brush them with the egg mixture again, then cook them for another 10 minutes. Pay close attention, once they are light brown on top they are done.
Step 7 – About 10 minutes before you serve your bread cut it in half lengthwise and spread on the garlic butter generously. Set open faced on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven under the broiler for a few minutes. Pay attention so it doesn’t burn – you just want it toasted.

Tips
**If you aren’t starting your bread immediately wait to put the yeast in until right before you start it.
**Bake both loaves of garlic bread but put one in the freezer, not buttering and broiling it right away. When you plan to use it take it out about 1 hour early to thaw it, then cut, butter, and broil it just before serving.
**Separate your meatball meal into 3 meals from the beginning after the meatballs are cooked. Not only will this make portioning three nights of dinners easier, but it will keep your family from eating too much at one dinner. The bread really helps with this.

My second use for our meatballs was meatball sandwiches with homemade sub rolls. This was very good and really easy. I’ll post this recipe soon!