I Don't Buy Bread!

Ever since I found myself as the weekday meal maker , I've taken on the cause of making from scratch as much of the food my kids consume as possible. Although I've not taken on making ice cream yet ( actually I have since writing this - ed.), I did commit to making my family's bread 'from scratch'.

I'm not really sure why I chose bread as one of my 'from the ground up' foods, maybe it was the smell of the bread as it bakes or the fact that I knew exactly what was going into the damn stuff that moved me to spend indespnsible 'me' time producing it. Never the less, about one to two times a week I find myself in the kitchen taking the temperature of hot water, activating yeast, measuring flour, adding those special ingredients that only a home baker could, kneeding the dough as my arms ache... WAIT! I don't kneed the dough, I have my bread machine do it!

That, my friends, is why I even consider making bread on a regular basis. I did try making bread without the help of technology and it was too involved for me to consider it as part of my regular cooking regimen. What I have found though, is that I only use the bread maker to do the tortuous mixing/kneeding. I set the bread maker to 'dough' mode and in 90 minutes I have dough that is almost ready to hit the heat. All I have left to do is take the dough out of the bread machine's bin, remove the paddle that makes that stupid hole in the middle of the crust, kneed it a couple of times, place it in a bread pan lined with parchment paper, let it sit for and hour, bake it at 325F for 25-30 minutes and there ya' go - FRESH HOMEMADE BREAD.

My kids love the stuff and I get to experiment with different recipes. My last 'success' was a hybrid combination of a bread machine white bread and a honey whole wheat bread. It's good!

So, I guess what I'm saying is - take the plunge! If you can mix ingredients and take the temperature of water, then you are all good to go with making your own bread for you and your kids.

A Possible Cross-Promotion?

I'm a fan of PeaPod.com.  When I place my bi-weekly order, I sometimes browse the new product area for an infusion of variety.  On my last excursion to this part of the site, I came upon HotPockets Snackers. Curious to a fault, I ordered a bag.

Upon their arrival, I put some on a plate and heated them up right away.  When I took them out of the oven I noticed that these little morsels had arranged themselves into a familiar design, one that is very reminiscent of something I've seen many times in Nintendo's Zelda Games.

Could this be a cross-promotional tie-in in the works?  You tell me.

Pick A Day & Cook Away!

One of the tenants of my approach to feeding my family is to make fresh food as often as possible. Granted, trips to fast food joints are not completely avoidable, but these excursions should be the exception, not the rule.

Now that sounds great in concept but in practice, this is not as easy as one would like. Some days you're the taxi driver, others you're the homework helper and in general weekdays are just too busy for one to spend hours in the kitchen. So how does the single parent get food on the table that's made from scratch and as healthy as one would prefer? The answer is "pick a day and cook away!"

What I mean by that is set aside a day where you have time to prepare two or three large meals that you can reheat during the week and to which you can add variety with your choice of veggies and other side dishes.

Here's an approach I like to use on Sundays (my day of choice). First off, I find a dish that I can prepare in a slow cooker.  For instance, I like to make a Short Rib Recipe that even my picky son will eat.  When it's done, I've got some very tender rib meat with a lot of sauce that goes great with rice, pasta or even fries. The other great thing about this recipe is that the prep time is pretty short and once it's off and running, I can make something else while the ribs are filling the house with an other-worldly smell.

Another great recipe to make that the kids absolutely love is Shepherd's Pie. This one does require some time - you need to make home made mashed potatoes and prep the chop meat; but this one is a guaranteed home run and you need only add a veggie to make the meal complete.

At this point, I've got enough food prepared to take care of Sunday night and probably 3-4 more days of good eating.  One last recipe that I like to sneak in is a Bisquick Quiche that is quite versatile. In fact, I often make this using left overs from the last few days. The beauty of this bad boy is that you don't need a crust to make it so there's no running to the store for a frozen crust or negotiating the perils of home made crust. And again, just add ruffage and you're good to go!

By the time I've finished making the quiche, it's time to eat and I let the kids choose which dish they'd like for dinner.  I then pack away what's left and I'm all set for the rest of the week.  This way, when my daughter has thirty minutes to eat or my youngest it getting picked up early by my ex, I'm not running to Burger King for an order of childhood obesity.  Instead, I'm providing them with a well-balanced meal of food that I've prepared with ingredients that I've picked. Oh, and I've got a bit of time for myself - fancy that!

Kitchen Fasting

I have a friend that periodically fasts in order to clear out her system.  She drinks certain teas and eschews chewing for at least a day or so in an effort to rid her body of toxins.  Now, although I don't do this, I do see the benefit and I've started to apply this approach to my kitchen...yes, my kitchen.

You see, from pay period to pay period I collect food in excess of my family's needs and find myself with something like eight cans of French onion soup, twenty plus almost ready to expire snack bags, more Bisquick than I can shake a stick at and a freezer with half-bags of frozen veggies, one pork chop, three opened bags of French fries and a bevy of plastic wrapped chicken thighs randomly tossed about.

When this state of affairs gets to the point of storage anarchy I decide that I need to clear things out and go on a food buying fast.

This may seem easier than it really is.  One of the problems is that there may not be enough of a particular food to make a whole meal for the family.  Another is that a lot of what's left in the fridge is food that the kids either didn't want to eat in the first place (experiments) or grew tired of.

This is where the creativity comes in (either that or the dogs). For instance, I had about a half pound of frozen chop meat, a jar of mac and cheese sauce whose twin the kids didn't like, three partially used boxes of linguine and a dusty (unopened) packet of chili mix just sitting in their respective storage areas waiting for the grim chucker to send them on their way to the land fill.

Then I remembered a dish one of my friends at work mentioned: a chili-cheese casserole which he thought my kids would love.  Now, I didn't have the macaroni or twirly pasta that he recommended, but I did have linguini and I did have my quest for ingredient frugality. So I thawed and fried up the chop meat, added some water as per the chili package recipe, added the chili seasoning and added the cheese sauce.  After cooking the linguini, I put the pasta in a bowl and generously covered it with the chili-cheese concoction.  Along with a quickly thrown together salad of lettuce and cucumber and my frugal feast was a hit!

This is just one example of many creative combinations that I've come up with when pressed with the limitation of using only in-house ingredients.  It may not be haut cuisine, but it does take care of two important needs - feeding the kids and using up food that would otherwise would have been thrown out.

So I encourage you to occasionally put the breaks on that food spending compulsion, take stock of what you have in the house and push those boundaries of culinary coupling.  It's fun and it's good for your fridges digestion!

Just Like An African Grey

There are birds that live so long that you need to include them in your will.  Well I've come across a tool in my kitchen that I'll have to put in my will - the cast iron skillet!

For years I've used either Caphalon or non-stick treated pots and pans. They served their purpose but even the Caphalon eventually went the way of the albatross.

In addition, my daughter recently bought a bird and as you may know, these critters can be made ill and even die when a pan treated with Teflon becomes overheated. Apparently, when reaching a certain temperature, the pans emit a gas dangerous to the bird's lungs. 

So now I'm in need of some new gear and don't have the bucks for Caphalon and can't use Teflon treated stuff, what's a house-dad to do? Look on Amazon for the untreated pan bargain of the week, that's what!

Armed with my Amazon Prime account and an inkling as to what I'm looking for, I come across 13" and 10.5" cast iron pans made by the US company Lodge, both under $20!  I figure, heck, I'll give it a try.  If they don't work out, I can always leave them in the garage with the old rusted Dutch Oven my Dad put to pasture.

Two days later, my little friends come to the door and I immediately put the small pan to work. I decide to cook up some eggs over-easy. This should inform me as to whether or not they'll be a suitable replacement for my old non-stick pans.

Well, things didin't turn out as well as I would have liked.  The eggs stuck a little bit and left that plasticy residue on the pan. Never the less, I followed the instructions that came with the pan and scrubbed it clean with a soft brush and hot water, dried it immediately and rubbed vegetable oil onto every surface (of the pan, that is). 

At this point I was leary of these pans and was tempted to run to the local Target and pick me up some Teflon bird-killers.  Thankfully I restrained myself and the next chance I had, I cooked me up some liquid meat (eggs) and this time they stuck less, in fact they were almost perfect!  Repeated attempts were more successful than the last and I would say that at this point these beauties work just as well if not better than their non-stick counterparts.

Not to mention, the way these bad boys retain heat due to their dense construction, food browns much better and create more of that carbon-based flavor of love than those hipster non-stick abomonations.

The only drawback I can think of is that these mofos are heavy!  My 13" pan is destined to give me Arnold Schwarzenegger forearms.  I'm talking Terminator one guns, no middle-aged bags o'flab.

In conclusion, I love my new pans made by Lodge.  As far as I can tell, I'll never need a non-stick carcino-plated parrot-polluter for the rest of my life.  And even if I live to the obnoxious age of 100, I'll still be adding that line onto my will that'll bequeath good ole 10" and 13" to my next of kin.

Where Have You Bean?

Well, I'll tell you. Not only am I a single parent chef, but I'm also a single parent fix-it guy and I've spent most of the Summer restoring a bedroom and living room.  So, other than making meals for my crew and experimenting here and there with various new recipes, I've been in dormancy mode with regard to imparting words of cooking wisdom.

That being said, I'm going to start dipping my toes in the podcast waters once again and I hope to have a new video up within the next couple of weeks.  So stay tuned, and keep your eyes peeled for more 'nuggets' of culinary expediency and wonder from The Single Parent Chef!

Welcome to SingleParentChef.com

Hi! My name is Rob Houghton.  I'm a newly seperated father of three and enjoy making quick, healthy meals for my kids.

Upon getting separated, I fortunately had been the main meal maker for the family, so I wasn't particularly shocked or unable to make good food for my kids.  That being said, along with all of the other adjustments that came along, I started to think about the difficulties parents who didn't know how to cook were facing.  Meals that I may regard as easy, 15-minute throw-together dishes probably seem like insurmountable tasks for someone who had never boiled water or cut an onion.

So, here I am, comfortable with the ways of the kitchen - embarking on the unfamiliar arena of blog posting and video production, hopefully providing you folks with information that's useful and entertaining.

So, without any further blather, LET'S DO SOME COOKING!