3 Moms, 3 Kitchens, 31 Days: Day Eight—Making Do With What I Have

In our 31 day challenge it sometimes takes some creative thinking and cooking to make do with what you have instead of just going out and buying what you need. Since we are on a budget, this is what I had to do today.

I made a double batch of chocolate chip muffins, which has turned out to be my kids' favorite breakfast. I made a double batch and froze the extras. I had intended for all the muffins in the freezer to be used for another breakfast, but several of the freezer muffins were eaten today since we were Yo-Yoing all day. But at least there's enough for at least one more breakfast in the freezer.

I've slightly adapted the muffin recipe I originally received from Toni, and I'm extremely happy with how they turned out. One thing I tried today was to mix all dry ingredients together and then mix all the wet ingredients together in a separate bowl. When I mixed the two bowls together I had a much easier time blending the mixture than when I added the wet ingredients one at a time.

I've posted this recipe before, but I don't think I've posted my variation before:

Chocolate Chip Muffins

• 1 3/4 cups white flour
• 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 cup buttermilk (I don't buy buttermilk, so I put 1 T of vinegar in a measuring cup, and then fill the cup up to the one cup mark with regular milk and let it sit for a minute before adding it to the mix.)
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 egg
• 1 cup chocolate chips (more or less depending on preference)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl (except chocolate chips) and all the wet ingredients in another bowl. Add the bowl of wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well. After it's mixed, mix in the chocolate chips. Fill greased muffin tin (or paper muffin cups) and bake for about 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

The next time I make this recipe I'm going to try to switch out a little more white flour with whole wheat flour and see if my family notices.

Today was another Yo-Yo day, so lunch and dinner varied for all of us. Joely and I ended up going to a Homemade Gourmet party this evening, so we got to snack there a little bit, too. Joely was pretty excited about the party because she got to help "smoosh" the meal that they prepared. (You had to be there to understand.)

Another twist to our day was that Jeff invited a friend of ours (who also happens to be our dentist) over for dinner this coming Saturday. Her husband is out of the country for a few weeks, so Jeff and I thought it'd be nice to have her over for some fellowship while he's gone. Of course I didn't have any dinner planned for Saturday, so Jeff suggested we make the "wet burritos" again.

But the thing is, I'm out of tortillas and enchilada sauce, and I'm not planning to go the store in town for another week.

So I'm trying to figure out how to make it work with what we already have on hand.

I remembered Toni posting recently about making homemade tortillas, so I found her recipe and decided to try it out to see if I would be able to make my own tortillas for Saturday.

After I mixed the dough, and started rolling out the tortillas, I realized that either I had not made the balls of dough large enough, or I wasn't rolling them out thin enough, because the tortillas only ended up being around 4 inches in diameter. But even with that slight miscalculation, everyone in the family that tasted the tortillas said they were delicious. (The recipe made more dough than in the picture. I forgot to take pictures until I'd already rolled out several of the tiny tortillas.)

Since I'm also out of enchilada sauce, I decided I'd try to find a way to make this from scratch too. I found what looks like a good recipe online, so I'm planning to make a small "trial" batch of wet burritos for lunch tomorrow to see if they taste okay with both my homemade enchilada sauce and homemade tortillas. (I'll have to make another batch of the tortillas tomorrow, too, since tonight's batch has been completely consumed!)

I'm sure you can understand why I really don't want to be trying out new recipes for the very first time when we have company on Saturday. I've been known to make numerous mistakes in the kitchen, even with recipes I've made before!

My other challenge is cheese. We're out of the Colby Jack shredded cheese I purchased last week, but I still have quite a bit of cheddar cheese cubes. I'd prefer to have Colby Jack for the wet burritos, but I think I'm going to just cut up the cubes and use the cheddar to top the burritos for lunch tomorrow. I'll probably still end up having to go to our local grocery store to pick up a small (and expensive) bag of Colby Jack for dinner Saturday, but at least I'll have made lunch tomorrow with what we have on hand.

On the way to the Homemade Gourmet party tonight, I did end up stopping by Dollar General to pick up some chili powder, garlic powder, paprika, and bag of white rice for Saturday. I spent only $2.50, and since I got the spices and rice for cheaper than I could have gotten them if I'd driven the 20 minutes into town, this extra, in-between shopping trip didn't bother me at all.

Make sure you head on over to Toni's and Kate's to see what's cooking in their kitchens today. And don't forget our "3 Moms, 3 Kitchens, 31 Days" LIVE online discussion tomorrow night (Friday, May 9, at 10 PM EST.) You can read more about how to listen in or participate in the discussion here.