Cooking Binge

Tonight was a busy night! I had a couple of experiments that I wanted to try and finally a hassle-free night to do it.

First up - hot cocoa mix! Now I've been on this kick lately to find ways to make convenience foods from scratch and see if they are as good and more economical. We go through a lot of hot cocoa at our house - it's like our coffee - so I thought it would be a good one to try. As best I can tell it was really good, but it's sort of hard to say when you burn your tongue. Guess I'll have to try another cup tomorrow and wait a little longer for the taste test. The other cool thing about making your own is that you can alter the flavors and calorie content. The recipes I found suggest using different types of coffee creamer (french vanilla, hazelnut, etc) or adding things like cinnamon and chili powder. I think I'll keep tweaking, but I haven't worked out the cost factor yet - powdered milk is surprisingly expensive! Here's the recipe I used, but I halved it until I knew whether I liked it or not.

For dinner tonight I made Easy Italian Meatloaf. It was a great recipe from my Kraft Food & Family magazine. (Minor vent - this used to be a great free resource, but now they charge you $14 per year for it. Might be a different story if it wasn't just virtually a book of ads for Kraft products. Guess we'll see if it goes back free when no one subscribes.) The issues are available online though, so I can share the recipe with you! I really liked this nice twist on traditional meatloaf and the only change I made was to substitute half the ground beef with ground turkey for a healthier final product. It also makes a pretty big loaf, but you can't really half it without having half a can of diced tomatoes and half a box of stuffing left. Meatloaf sandwiches baby!

Last but not least was another experiment in saving some moolah - homemade granola. I love this stuff on yogurt and was going through boxes and boxes of Kashi for like $5 per box. I decided it was time to see if I could make something I liked and then customize it based on what's available for dried fruit and such. Tonight I tried rolled oats, steel cut oats, almonds, and a wonderful concoction of maple syrup, brown sugar, honey, cinnamon and vanilla. Then I added a few bits of banana chips (very good addition!) It smelled like those stands in the mall where they roast the nuts and sort of tastes like them too. I like it, but think there's room for improvement!