I was lucky enough to enjoy the most relaxed holidays ever, in my new home, with A and Jasmine and Beatrice frolicking about. I spent a lot of time knitting and even more time cooking. My most proud accomplishments were beef gyoza and baked beans (from scratch!).
I bought gyoza skins at Fairway a while back, fried up the ground beef with onion, ginger and garlic (all chopped wicked finely, since I don’t have a food processor), stuffed the mixture into the skins, fried ’em up and put them in the freezer. A’s evaluation: “This is a good something different, not a weird something different.” The total ingredient cost was about $3 for 30 gyoza, so I was pretty excited.
The baked beans were a much longer process, but not much work. I was supposed to use navy beans, but there weren’t any at my grocery store, so I got something called miniature red beans, soaked them over night, threw them in the slow cooker with onion, turkey bacon, brown sugar, maple syrup (didn’t have molasses), ketchup, worcestershire sauce and water. They needed to cook for like 14 freakin’ hours, but the total ingredient cost was only like $4. Next time I would forgo the turkey bacon, because it doesn’t add much in a slow cooker situation, so if nothing else, this is a good go-to for frugality.
Too bad I mostly ate the cakes and cookies from A’s grandmothers, instead of my delicious homecooked goodness. I guess that’s what New Year’s resolutions are for…
Layla Schlack 