Queen Creek Peach Festival

Remember how I told you about our picnic at the local park? Let’s continue on with another free activity that took place a few weeks back: The Queen Creek Peach Festival. I’m so far behind on updates from May… going back home to California is like a vacuum that sucks me right up every time. It was great to be home; I am sad every time I head back to Arizona!

A local family-owned farm hosted the Queen Creek Peach Festival four days during what seemed like the hottest weekend of the year thus far. On the final day of the festival, we jumped into the car, grabbed some Starbucks (story for another time, I’ve almost entirely cut caffeine out of my diet) and were ready to tackle the festival.

There were tractors providing rides to the orchard, celebrity chef demonstrations (which we couldn’t seem to locate), peach pancake breakfasts and tastings.

It was crazy hot and everyone and their mom wanted to ride the tractor, but we opted to brave the mile walk on the way to the orchard. I couldn’t get over how hot it was already in May. I’m also pretty sure there wasn’t a minute that went by without me wiping sweat off myself. Hot, I know.

But eventually we picked several pounds of peaches and also came home with a jar of farm-bottled peach salsa. Yummy!

So what’s the first thing we did with all those peaches?! Make breakfast, of course!

Sausage and Peach Pancakes

Pancake Ingredients:

• 2 c pancake mix
• 1 c water
• 2 peaches
• 8 oz package sausage

Syrup Ingredients:

• 1/4 c sugar
• 1 T cornstarch
• 1/2 c peach juice (we just blended up half a peach with water)
• 3/4 c maple syrup
• 1 T butter

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix pancake mix and water and pour into greased 9"x13" pan. Arrange peaches alternately with sausages that have been cut in pieces. Bake for 30 minutes. For Topping: mix sugar and cornstarch with juice and cook until thick. Add maple syrup and butter.

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My mom used to make pancake and French toast “casseroles” often. This reminded me of a specific Dutch baby recipe she’s made several times. As an added bonus, ours was made from Swedish pancake mix. Oddly enough, it puffed up to the same thickness as a regular pancake, which confused my crepe-eating palate.

I also enjoyed peach smoothies for days. Funny, we never made any cobblers or grilled peach halves with all those peaches!

Oh well, at least summer (produce) is finally here!! I love watermelon and cherries and am waiting to strike as soon as they’re available at the grocery store.

Eat healthy for under $10/day!

Ok, so yesterday I brought you the beginnings of my meal on a budget! After factoring in the smoothie and my leftover stir fry for lunch my meal today for the first half of the day came to $6.42... and I still have some left over for snacking on today!

In today's post, I'm going to show you dinner and weekend breakfast that fits right into that same budget! My total meal prices yesterday came out to be $8.74 (this is just for one person). But that does not include my $1.16 beer, a $0.25 fruit strip and $0.13 clementine, but you get it, we're still under $10 for one day.

Dinner last night featured a (semi-)home made chicken tortilla soup that makes 4-5 bowls depending on how much you want to eat for $9.28. This gives you about $2.32 a bowl which was more than filling enough to stand alone as dinner! Well, except for the bottle of Landshark I needed to cool down my mouth ;)

À la Sandra Lee, here's my (semi-)home made chicken tortilla soup:

• 1 can Amy's chili: $2.58


• 3/4 can chicken broth: $1.19


• fill empty chicken broth can with tap water


• 1 can corn: $0.75


• 1/2 can olives: $0.25


• 3 frozen chicken tenders: $1.75


• 1/3 red pepper: $0.33


• 1 spoon marinated/minced garlic: $0.16


• 2 stalks celery: $0.10


• 1c carrots: $0.25


• 1 t. pepper flakes: $0.10


• 1/4 c salsa (I didn't have tomatoes): $0.38


• handful of cilantro: $0.30

Toppings:

• 1/4 c grated cheese: $0.50


• handful tortilla chips: $0.07

In a large pot, mix chili, chicken broth, water and corn on medium heat. While that's cooking, thaw chicken in microwave and then sprinkle each side with a pinch of pepper flakes and garlic. Chop the pepper and grill all together on separate pan.

With the chicken grilling and liquids simmering, chop olives, carrots, celery and cilantro. Once the chicken is done, shred the tenders for small, bite-sized pieces. Dump it into pot along with chopped veggies, cilantro, spoonful of garlic and salsa (or tomatoes if you have them).

Reduce the heat to low and let simmer for an hour, or until vegetables become soft. Add more pepper flakes, salt/pepper for taste and spiciness to your liking.

It was really easy and will last me until the next few days!

Now on to this morning's Saturday breakfast. Today's preparation cost me about $2.99, and left me with nine cranberry clementine protein pancakes. I only ate two, so today's breakfast cost me $0.64 plus $0.37 for a glass of chocolate soy milk for a morning total of $1.01. Not too bad ;)

Cranberry clementine protein pancakes

• 2 c wheat flour: $0.67


• 2 t. baking powder: $0.09


• 1 t. salt: $0.04


• 2 eggs: $0.33


• 2 c milk: $0.25


• 2 T vegetable oil (I went with applesauce instead): $0.08


• 1 scoop protein powder (Aria vanilla): $0.34

For my add-ins:

• zest and juice of two clementines: $0.26


• 1/2 c Craisins: $0.26

In mixing bowl, stir together all of the dry ingredients. Then mix in wet ingredients until blended well. For the last touch, add your fruit/flavors -- I went with Craisins and orange juice/zest. The possibilities are endless! Then you're ready to start flipping on the grill.

Now, protein pancakes are not as fluffy as regular pancakes are so prepare yourself for that. They are very dense because of the wheat flour and also the protein powder. This is a fairly savory recipe (minus the fruit) and makes for not-so-sweet pancakes. If you're looking for that pancake taste, feel free to add in some sugar or better yet, honey (I may have put in a squirt of honey after testing the first pancake)! Also, I noticed my mix was fairly runny at first, so I put in an extra half scoop of the protein powder and a pinch of flour. That seemed to have done the trick.

Instead of dousing mine with syrup and butter, I grabbed a cup of frozen tropical berry fruit mix and nuked it for about a minute in the microwave (1 cup of the bag came to about $0.67 and I can put the rest back into the freezer for later). When you microwave frozen fruit, the juices start to come out and it's just as good as any syrup you might find! And can we talk about how filling these suckers were?!?!?! I really enjoyed the subtlety of the orange juice; you really could taste it in every bite!

I know that a lot of us are on kind of tight budgets right now, but who says you can't eat healthy and have fun doing it on a budget?! Soon I'm going to give away my tricks to spending wisely within a budget (can you tell I just went grocery shopping last night??).