The Daily Dish Recipes

Many people actually own conversion charts to make preparing meals easier. Whether you want to half the recipe, or double the recipe, conversion charts simply make cooking easier.

Have you seen Online Conversions? I love this site. It has conversions for everything, but their cooking area is great offering a way to not only convert standard sizes, but can sizes as well. In addition, it offers weight, volume and even oven temperature conversion to make things much easier, especially when a recipe comes from somewhere besides your home country. I love this site the most for conversions.

In addition to online conversions as a source for cooking conversion charts, there is also Convert Me which is a great site but has popups that annoy the heck out of me. It is accurate and helpful and has much more to offer than the first site if you can get past the annoyance.

Of course, I don’t like to stop what I’m doing when I am working in the kitchen, so I purchased a conversion chart that is magnetic and sticks to the side of my fridge. I love it. I got one free a few months back from a business in my junk mail. It was strange, but it has a few conversions the other chart doesn’t have, but the one I bought has much more.

Do you have a conversion chart?

I cook for a crowd every night of the week, with seven of us, most of our meals are at least 8-10 servings or more. Add a few extra guests to our mealtime and we are cooking for a crowd easily. In fact, if I add a friend and her family to our mealtime, I am cooking for 12 which in my opinion is definitely cooking for a crowd.

So how do I do it and do it easily? First of all, I cook from scratch which does add just a tiny bit more preparation and time, but it cuts down on cost big time. Not to mention that cooking from scratch allows me to easily double, triple or even quadruple (yes I have had to) a recipe.

If you purchase a conversion chart it will make doubling or tripling recipes much easier. You will probably also need to have more baking pans on hand, etc. because it usually requires more space. You also need more time for cooking.

Do you ever have to cook for a crowd?

Time to do a little meal planning for the upcoming weekend. Usually I try to do this around Wednesday, but with my birthday having been in between, I got carried away and forgot about it. So now I am left figuring out what’s for dinner tonight, tomorrow night, Sunday night and now even Monday night since it isn’t a “typical” weekend.

I think I have decided to make things easier this weekend and am going to cook up several lbs of chicken tonight. I can make chicken breasts tonight and then on Sunday night perhaps I can cut it into cubes and do a chicken pasta. Delicious. I also might just do a quick beef casserole and with the leftovers create a beef stew for Monday night. I love it when I can prepare one meal and turn it into another nights dinner with leftovers.

What are you eating this weekend?

Happy Birthday to me!

Yes, it is truly my birthday today. Which one? That really doesn’t matter. I think it’s … 29 again. Anyway, I’m here to assure you that you can celebrate a birthday for hardly any cost, and still have the person feel extra special and loved.

Here’s how it went:

Send kids to friends house at 5pm.
I arrive at friends house at 6pm.
Be greeted by my children in funky and hilarious costumes jumping out at me. Costumes were seriously pieced together from multiple halloween costumes using wigs, boas, funny clothing, etc.
Be in awe at the decorations. Single balloons hanging all over by individual strings made the room look extremely festive. Huge banner on butcher paper that my children decorated and colored and wrote funny things on. One roll of streamers hung in various locations in the home where balloons didn’t actually work.
Receive great gifts that my friend obviously spent time picking out. She rocks!
Eat a delicious meal of delivered pizza, eat a slice of cake and then sit around laughing, talking, being funny, singing, and playing Wii.

Hello? I loved it. It was so much fun to be in the company of family and friends and with the exception of the amazing gifts, it didn’t cost her a lot to host a party in her home and help me feel celebrated and loved. It honestly doesn’t take a lot, and if someone expects more - are they really the kind of friend you want? Seriously the whole night rocked!

I enjoyed the four “life groups” - Food, Family, Friends and Fun!

In honor of my birthday which is tomorrow, I thought I would do a few quick tips on planning a birthday dinner for an adult. Yes, I have a friend that has been actively doing this and I cannot wait to get to her house tomorrow night to eat. She’s allowed me to be in on the meal all along.

First, be sure and fix a favorite meal or something that you know the birthday girl or guy loves. Usually you can do some type of pasta, because most people like it. Keep in mind any aversions to foods, allergies or general dislikes.

Second, ask the person if they want a cake. You might be surprised that many adults don’t actually want a cake or if they do, they might like a specific type. I requested a Raspberry White Chocolate Cake that I happen to really enjoy.

Third, ask family members to be included in the decision making process, decorating or food preparation. She invited my children to help decorate, make food and wall hangings and a few other odds and ends. My children felt appreciated and like they had some how contributed. It was nice for them.

Fourth, remember to have fun yourself. Don’t always assume you have to be the entertainer. Remember that sometimes its nice to just relax, so sit back and kick your feet up. More than likely, he or she will truly appreciate your efforts and would rather see you sit down and enjoy it with them.

Did you know that most grocery stores put the more expensive products at eye level? They do this because some people shopping quickly will just grab the first product they see. If the item is at eye level, they will grab it up and wind up paying much more for it.

Instead, be sure to look both high and low when looking for products. Don’t assume that the bigger package is the best deal. Sometimes purchasing two smaller packages winds up being more cost effective. The same thing goes for assuming that two smaller products are the way to go. Sometimes the big bulk package is a much better option.

Where do you find the best deals in your local grocery stores? Is it way up high, way down low or somewhere in between?

Prices might be rising, but deals, sales and other good finds are still very much available at your local grocer.

Today’s deals at our store included:

- A 10 for $10 deal. These are always great especially if they allow you to combine the items and get many different kinds.

- Deli Meat at .99/lb. They had two types of turkey and 1 ham that were on sale for .99/lb. I haven’t any idea why, but getting real deli lunch meat for that price is a great find for me.

When I looked at the end caps at my local grocery store, they had some summer drinks and strawberry short cake makings for sale. Interestingly when I shopped down the actual aisles, the cost for larger and even smaller packaging were a MUCH better deal. Avoid buying directly from the end cap and look down the aisle for the better bargains. You might just be surprised.

Food prices are rising dramatically, even as gas prices slowly lower in some areas. While many can live without gas, nobody can actually survive without food, which means now its time to look at ways to lower your costs, and still continue to feed your family.

A gallon of milk a year ago in our area was about $2.56 on average. Now it is about $3.13 on average.

A pound of strawberries last year was about $2.89/lb. Yesterday, our local grocery store had them for $3.99/lb.

As the prices continue to increase, it will become more and more difficult for families to provide good meals and nutritious foods to their families.

So what do you do about something like this? Actually, you need to evaluate how you shop and start trying a few new things to make the food last longer and to make your costs go down.

Even if you think you don’t have time to cook from scratch - you need to. This saves you so much money each month, and can stretch your food dollars. It also allows you to wind up with leftovers which can then be transformed into another dinner either by adding a variety of ingredients, or simply as serving yesterday’s leftovers as today’s side dish.

If you have never looked at a sale flier before because you figured the deals are in the store - now’s the time to start doing that. Pay attention to what is on sale. Consider stocking up on non-perishable items or items that will last a bit of time so that you can always have these things on hand.

My last piece of advice, seriously look into purchasing a freezer. It doesn’t have to be huge, but having an extra freezer placed in the basement can allow you to stock up when sales on meats are prevalent. You’ll be able to take advantage of good deals and always have something in the freezer.

How is your family helping to combat the high cost of food?

I found this recipe a few weeks ago, and decided to try it out on my kids. Before I even got to preparing it, they were in on the action and they helped make most of this themselves. They taste great and we played around with various dipping sauces to see what works best.

Potato Chip Chicken Strips Recipe

1 1/4 c. sour cream
1/4 tsp. garlic salt
1/4 tsp. onion salt
1/8 tsp. paprika
12 oz. package of potato chips, smashed
2 1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts cut into 1 inch strips
1/4 c. butter, melted

In a medium to large size bowl, combine the sour cream, garlic salt, onion salt and paprika. In another bowl, dump the smashed potato chips. Take a 1 inch chicken strip and dip it into the sour cream mixture, coating evenly. Next dip into the potato chip mixture. Place the coated chicken strip into a greased baking dish. Once full, drizzle the chicken strips with melted butter. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink. Serve with different dips and sauces. So good!!

We made these a few years ago at a VBS summer camp program I was in, and my kids still request them all the time. They are super fast for quick dinners, and they make tasty snacks too.

Twisted Hot Dogs in a Blanket Recipe

1 tube of breadsticks (the refrigerated kind)
12 beef hot dogs
12 popsicle sticks or wooden skewers

Open and separate the dough. Roll each piece of dough into a 15 inch rope. Insert your skewers or popsicle sticks into each hot dog lengthwise (like you have a hot dog popsicle). Start at one end of the hot dog, wrap the breadstick dough around the hot dog in a spiral ending at the bottom. Pinch each end to seal it closed. Place each wrapped hot dog on a greased baking pan about 1 inch apart. Bake at 350 degrees for 18 minutes or until bread turns slightly golden. Serve with ketchup or mustard for dipping. They are so much fun to eat.