The Kitchen Ecosystem: A Book Review

A large box came in the mail. What is this?! it was The Kitchen Ecosystem by Eugenia Bone. The box and mounds of bubble wrap were a bit much, but the book did come in pristine condition. It is quite the heavy tome. The cover is beautiful and the pictures throughout are wonderful. The introduction was very inspirational. It really got me thinking about how I have and can use so many of the food things I tend to toss out from bones to carrot tops. Eugenia talks about creating your own kitchen ecosystem where your meals are interconnected with each other and where there is less waste. I love the concept. I can't wait to implement it in my own kitchen, when I finally have one again.

I know many people who would love this book. It has creative recipes and they look mouthwatering. The problem that I have is that so many of the "staple" ingredients in her book are not available in our small town grocery store. Corn, check. Carrots, check. Chicken, check. Lobster, duck, fennel, not so much. The likelihood that I would be able to make many of these recipes is very slim. The one thing I really liked in this book was the variety of broth and stock recipes that can use leftover bits and bones. It is an awefully big book to keep around for that handful of recipes though.

I am inspired by the concept of this book. I plan to take Eugenia Bone's advice and create an ecosystem in my kitchen. I plan to use my own recipes with the foods available in my area. She doesn't recommend simply following her recipes, she wants you to create an ecosystem of your own and is simply showing how she has done it. In concept I give this book a 5 out of 5, but if I had purchased this book for myself, I would have been sorely disappointed. So, I will average it out with a midrange 3.

• More Info


• Author Bio

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

A Month of Meals: Your Questions Answered

Welcome back! Today I am answering your questions about my series on planning your menu on a monthly basis and on a budget. If you missed one of the posts, you can find them here:

Intro and Monthly Menu Planning

The Recipes

The Shopping List

Freezer Cooking Day

 

Were you able to get the BBQ sauce stain out of the table cloth?

Ha ha, yes! We finished all of our food prep after wiping off what we could. Then I coated the stained areas with my Norwex dish soap. I let it sit while I gathered up some other laundry to put in with it. It all went into the laundry with some homemade laundry soap. In the end you can't even tell it happened. I started freezer cooking at 5:00am on the weekend so it was all back to normal before my parents even got up.

What was your menu like on $100 a month?

I relied heavily on the dollar a day meals website. Unfortunately, the site is no longer up. We had soup 4 nights a week and nearly every meal was accompanied by homemade bread or biscuits. I spent a lot of time cooking in those days. We also weren't gluten free then and that made a huge difference.

Were all the recipes a hit with the family?

All but one went over well. The Italian chicken with potatoes and green beans was not our favorite. It was a bit sour, like eating an entire bag of salt and vinegar chips, which I love. It won't be making it onto another menu. The rest were fantastic.

Have more questions? I would be happy to answer them!

A Month of Meals: Freezer Cooking Day

We have our menu, our recipes, and have done our shopping. Now it is time for food prep. What I love about this particular menu is that the food prep is so incredibly easy. Most of the items are already frozen. All you have to do is put the ingredients in the bag and you are ready to go. I did my freezer cooking in just under 2 hours from beginning till the last hand washed dish was dried.The first thing you will want to do if you are following my menu is cook your ground meat. This is the only actual cooking involved in our freezer cooking day. You will want to drain it and also let it cool before putting it into the bags. While you are waiting for the meat to cook start writing up your bags. I label them with their name, special instructions like adding water or what to serve it over, the date, and cooking instructions.

Once you are ready to put the food in the bags you want to do two things. First puff up the bag and zip it shut. gently squeeze to make sure there are no holes in the bag. We had a major mess on my mom's white table cloth because half a bottle of BBQ sauce gushed out of a hole in one of our bags. You live and you learn, right. Second flip the zip top out. This helps the bag to stand on it's own and hold the mouth of the bag open.

Now it is just a matter of tossing the ingredients in the bags. This menu is well designed for freezing. With just a bit of work you will have those quick and easy frozen meals we all love the convenience of using. In this 2 hours you will have 26 meals done for the month, just heat and serve. Okay, some of them will be served on rice or pasta, but that is quick and easy to whip up.

Now is the time for your questions! Ask in the comments or where ever you have seen this series. Tomorrow I will answer all your questions and link back to all the posts in case you missed one. See you then!

You can find the rest of the series here.

A Month of Meals: The Shopping List

So far we have our menu and our recipes. Today it is time to go shopping. It is good to plan the menu a bit to the shopping. If you know that a recipe calls for half a bag of frozen veggies you might as well make it twice or select another meal that will use the rest. You can't buy half a bag after all and it keeps costs down if you buy 1 bag instead of 2 bags in which only half is used.

A few notes on my shopping list. We generally buy Kraft because their company is always upfront about gluten in their information. You can certainly get some of these things for less if you do not need gluten free. Also, I don't have milk on my list. I didn't even think about it. My mom does daycare and always has a ton of milk on hand. We have bought maybe 2 gallons of milk since we moved in. You can save by buying dry beans and rehydrating yourself. We just don't have the option for so much cooking. I also bought my pesto in two small jars. You could save a lot by making it yourself or doing a pesto sauce mix. Let's dive into the list now.

A Month of Meals Shopping List

 

Can Aisle

$1.58 Can Tomatoes and Peppers (Rotel) $.79 X 2

$1.58 Can Black Beans $.79 X 2

$6.36 Can Pineapple Tidbits $1.59 X 4

$1.58 Can Tomato Sauce 15 oz $.79 X 2

$6.16 Can Tuna $.77 X 12

$1.99 Sweet and Sour Sauce $1.99 X 1

$1.99 Ranch Dressing $1.99 X 1

$3.96 Italian Dressing $.99 X 4

$2.98 BBQ Sauce $1.49 X 2

 

$28.18 Can Aisle Total

 

Dry Goods

$5.98 Small Jar Pesto $2.99 X 2

$4.76 Box Au Gratin Potatoes $1.19 X 4

$5.97 Box Pasta $1.99 X 3

$7.98 Fritos Corn Chips $3.39 X 2

$4.09 Sushi Rice $4.09 X 1

$2.99 Parmesan Cheese $2.99 X 1

$2.69 Soy Sauce $2.69 X 1

$6.36 Corn Tortillas $1.59 X 4

$11.16 Box Cereal $2.79 X 4

$24.00 Oatmeal $6.00 X4 (We buy our gluten free oatmeal on Amazon)

$1.49 Jar Spaghetti Sauce $1.49 X 1

 

$84.25 Dry Goods Total

$112.43 Total so far

 

Cooler/Deli

$11.97 Hamburger (or other ground meat) $3.99 X 3 lb

$3.98 Cream Cheese $1.99 X 2

$4.99 Shredded Mozzarella 16 oz $4.99 X 1

$8.89 Shredded Cheddar (fine shread goes farther) 32 oz $8.89 X 1

$2.99 Cottage Cheese 24 oz $2.99 X 2

 

$32.82 Cooler/Deli total

$145.25 Total so far

 

Freezer

$20.97 Bag Frozen Chicken Tenderloins $6.99 X 3

$3.87 Frozen Green Beans (2 cut, 1 sliced) $1.29 X 3

$3.98 Frozen Corn 32 oz $1.99 X 2

$5.96 Frozen Stir Fry Veggies $1.49 X 4

$1.99 Frozen Broccoli $1.99 X 1

$23.96 kinnikinnick Donuts $5.99 X 4

 

$60.73 Freezer Total

$205.98 Grand Total for Meals

If you are eating 3 meals a day you are done for a grand total of $205.98 for your month! This leaves plenty of room in our family's $300 budget to add some of our favorite snacks. On our snack list we have the makings of meat and cheese topped rice cakes, veggies and dip, and apples and peanut butter. I also added in a head of leaf lettuce each week to add to our meals and use in taco salad the days we make our taco filling. So here is the rest of my shopping trip with our snacks included.

Snacks

$8.00 Rice Cakes $2.00 X 4

$9.98 Deli Meat (to be frozen in 4 bags) $4.99 X 2 lbs

$11.98 Sliced Deli Cheese (to be frozen in 4 bags) $5.99 X 2 lbs

$9.96 Fresh Cut Broccoli $2.49 X 4 Buy Weekly

$9.96 Fresh Cut Cauliflower $2.49 X 4 Buy Weekly

3.98 Dressing as Dip $1.99 X 2

$11.92 Apples $1.49 X 8 lbs Buy 2 Lbs (roughly 4 apples) weekly

$5.36 Peanut Butter $2.68 X 2

$5.16 Leaf Lettuce $1.29 X 4 Buy Weekly

 

$76.30 Snack Total

$282.28 Grand Total

Our grand total with snacks is $282.28. We are still $17.72 under budget. I am more than willing to admit that our snack costs are quite high. You could probably cut that back a lot but I am not worried about splurging because we are under budget.

It took me about an hour to wander around getting all these prices and doing the math. Now that I have my prices I can refer to them later to make my budgeting faster in the future. I will probably add these items and prices into my grocery app to make it even easier as I can make up my shopping list in it and it will add everything up for me and even sort by food type making my shopping trip super fast.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="230"] Mighty Grocery Shopping List Free I have the paid version but they have a free version now![/caption]

What are some of your go to snacks? I would love to see that go down a bit.

You can find the rest of the series here.

A Month of Meals: Intro and Monthly Menu Planning

Welcome to the first of a week long series on menu planning and grocery budgeting. Today I am going to give an intro and share how I go about planning our meals a month at a time. Tomorrow I will be sharing the recipes I will be using for my 4 week menu. Thursday we'll focus on the grocery list and shopping. Friday is all about freezer cooking. Saturday I will be posting a review, answers to questions in the comments section, or social media, and a link back to all the posts in case you missed one.

Our food budget has been low for a long time. Our budget is currently at $300 but has been as low as $100. Some things to take into account if you want lower your food budget:

• Don't buy boxed or frozen meals. They are costly, filled with junk, and also wastefully packaged


• Be prepared to cook from scratch.


• Stop serving "family" style. By dishing the plates in advance you can make sure everyone has appropriate serving sizes and you can pack up leftovers if you intend to split a meal into two or more meals.


• Is someone still hungry? Instead of adding seconds, add a salad or apple slices with peanut butter.


• Don't plan a different meal for each day of the month.

Right now our family has some unique needs. Yes, we are gluten free, but that is not what I am talking about. We are living with my parents while we wait to go on mission in Montreal. My mom is a bit territorial over the kitchen so we need to be able to get in and out as quickly as possible. There is limited food storage space too. Plus my mom usually cooks dinner for us but when she doesn't I end up finding out at supper time. While it is true that we personally won't be using all of this month's meals this month, we will keep them stored in the freezer for the month or two that Adam will not be working before our leave date. All these things I kept in mind as I began looking for meals to add to our menu. So, let's get started planning the menu!

I planned a 4 week menu for September. For us it starts today and goes to the last day of the month. That means we need 28 suppers, 28 lunches, and 28 breakfasts. That sounds a bit daunting, I know. When you stop trying to think of 28 different meals for each, it gets better. Variety is great but it is also expensive and time consuming. On a normal basis, I would make a new menu each month. We keep the meals that we aren't tired of to the next month and add new ones. We'll start with supper because it has the most variety. You will notice that some of the recipes make enough for 2 meals for our family of three and I have taken that into account.

Supper

 

Make 2 of each.

 

Pesto Chicken and Green Beans: 2 meals

Mexican Chicken Taco Stuffing: 4 meals

Pineapple Chicken Stir Fry: 4 meals

Ranch Chicken and Potatoes: 2 meals

Italian Chicken Stir Fry: 2 meals

Italian Chicken and Potatoes: 2 meals

Hawaiian BBQ Chicken: 4 meals

Corny Chicken: 2 meals

Baked Ziti: 2 meals

Mermaid Hair Casserole: 2 meals

Beef and Broccoli Pasta: 2 meals

 

All but the ziti will be included in freezer cooking.

 

 

Lunch

 

Onigiri (rice balls) 3 days per week: 12 meals

Tuna Quesadillas 3 days per week: 12 meals

Leftovers once per week: 4 meals

 

Leftovers may include left over, reheat, meals or any food that is close to date. Mix and match and turn it into something new.

 

 

Breakfast

 

Donuts once per week: 4 meals

Oatmeal 6 days per week: 24 meals

Cereal 6 days per week: 24 meals

We are not huge breakfast people. We usually add peanut butter or fruit to our oatmeal. Lunch is a busy kitchen time here so I tend to do onigiri, which can be made in advance or quesadillas which are super fast to make. Donuts with hot chocolate are a special treat on Friday mornings. It is important to budget in something special. This isn't some crazy diet and it shouldn't be a punishment. We really look forward to Friday mornings and we make it a special family time.

That seems to be it. We have all the meals planned for the whole month. The next step is to get all of our recipes together and I will see you tomorrow for that!

Have questions about planning the menu? Ask them in the comments and I will make sure to get them answered!

You can find the rest of the series here.

Restaurant Love

Welcome to the blog hop! If you are just joining in you can find the starting line here: http://www.supporting-artists.com/. Get the whole code and you will win a set of Supporting Artists designed recipe cards. Keep reading to find out my letter in the code and where to go next...

I love going out to eat! We don't do it very often but we just came back from vacation and got to go a lot. We went to one of my favorite places, Rainforest Cafe.

Normally I prefer not to hit a chain restaurant but there is just something about Rainforest. They have got the most fun atmosphere. The thunderstoms while you eat, the moving animals, the aquariums, they just make it so memorable. Plus with our 5 year old, there is never a dull moment and the Cafe keeps him well entertained.

On this visit my husband, Adam, and I shared the Honey Mahi Mahi and Shrimp. Oh, yum! It was big enough to share and was fantastic. It was made up of bite size chunks of fish and shrimp battered and glazed with a sweet honey sauce. To be honest, the mahi mahi was kind of strange with the sweet sauce. The shrimp on the other hand was absolutely delectable. It may be one of my new favorite foods. The dish it pretty pricey ($20.99) and is on their special menu right now, but is so worth trying if you find yourself there.

Now that you are hungry, lets keep you moving along on this food themed blog hop...

My letter is: U

Now head on over to http://ourchildrensearth.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/edible-eco-friendly-play-dough/ to get the next clue in the code. Have fun and here is a peek at the card I designed for the package.

Gourmet Pizza at Home

This pizza looked beautiful coming out of the oven! I couldn't resist sharing it. Here are the layers in order:

Crust

Pesto sauce

Light coating of Parmesan cheese

Quartered grape tomatoes and dollops of cream cheese

Shredded cheeses (odds and ends of several bags)

If you have never had a pizza with cream cheese on it, you are really missing out. This is my new favorite pizza and the whole family loved it. We will absolutely make this again!

Tasty Menu for Outsmarting Diabetes

Ever since having gestational diabetes I have diabetic meal planning in the back of my mind. It really caught me off guard when I got that diagnosis and someday it could happen again and I don't want to go into it with no knowledge of what to eat. I found some fantastic information on prevention.com and it had a fantastic menu. We have tried many of the meals listed and they have been a hit for the whole family! I especially love that the ingredients needed are available at my normal grocery store.

This is one of my favorites from the menu. It really surprised me! I did baby spinach and it has chicken, honey mustard, and sliced grapes.

Valentines Goodies

I made heart quesadillas with tomato tortillas for a sort of red orange color.. Easy to do, just use a regular cookie cutter.

Snack time is popcorn...we love pop corn at our house, with topping of any kind!

Our Valentine popcorn has strawberry popcorn seasoning from Dell Cove Spices and some conversation hearts for good measure. 

Mini Corn Dogs

How cute are theese?! Adam did corn bread mix in his cupcake pop pan and popped in a piece of hot dog in each one before covering it and baking.

Mini corn dogs! Plus Adam made them gluten free.

Jayne loves mini corn dogs...good thing they are on the menu every week!

Going Bento

I have been lurking on the Bent on Better Lunches blog for a while now and with our new meal plan, I can finally give them a go myself! If you want to see some fantastically creative lunches you should check out her blog. Here are my first 2 bentos...

Beef Salad, carrots with dip, and pineapple with grapes

Tuna and Cheese Quesadillas, Mozzerella heart, pineapple with kiwi, and butterscotch pudding

Fruit and Veggie Rainbow

Jayne is becoming a bit of a picky eater and we all have a tendency to eat too many grains. So, we made a food colors chart. The goal is to collect all the colored magnets each day by eating that color of food. It is working out splendidly!

 First step is to tear strips of colored paper for the fruit colors. We have red, orange, yellow, green, and blue/purple. Then we flipped through grocery adds to find produce that is that color and glued them onto the sheets.

 Then we broke out the contact paper. We laid the strips one at a time and smoothed them on well. We started at the bottom and worked up so that we would have a rough edge between each color.

 Here is our finished chart! We cut out sticky magnets to hold it to the fridge and magnet squares in each section to put the color shapes. The shape magnets are card stock (from scrapbooking) and put on sticky magnets. Each time we eat a color we put a magnet on the chart.

Jayne loves the new chart and is eating many more fruits and veggies now. He even suggested that we get some carrots, because they are orange you know. Above is the first meal after starting. I had to share because purple grapes and green kiwi look simply fantastic together!

Frogs and Popcorn

No, they do not go together, but they do get to share a post! I have a couple of fun pics to share today. Here they are...

Adam made Jayne this super cute frog mask to keep him warm. We are still walking everywhere even though it is winter and this keeps his little face warm...as long as he keeps it on!

Jayne is always asking for "special" popcorn. I put candy in his popcorn once and now he always wants me to do something special with it. He has decided that this is his favorite. Stove top popcorn, a little salt, and bits of dried apples and pears. Healthy and delicious!

Buffalo Chicken Lasagne

I love the Six Sisters Stuff blog! When I saw the name of the recipe I knew I had to try it. I love buffalo wings and slow cooker meals...perfect combo! We made the lasagne yesterday and it was oh so good. Jayne had some too and he liked it. It is a little spicy, as you would expect. The one thing I didn't care for is the bleu cheese crumble on the top. We talked it over while we ate and determined that next time we would skip the bleu cheese and instead top each plate with a bit of bleu cheese or ranch dressing instead. It was pretty easy to make and it made enough for our little family to eat 3 times. Here is the link to this fantastic recipe...

http://www.etsy.com/listing/91670489/2-starter-pads-sets-for-michelle-levi

We also made it without the green peppers because I don't like them.

September Goals

It is a new month again! I love the fall, even if most of the month is "technically" still summer. We have a lot of big changes happening this month and it is going to mean a lot of work and planning. So here are my big 3 for the month...

* Research some new recipes to add to our menu planning to help get our food budget down, we have worked our way up to about $175 each month. We would like to get it back down to the $110 mark that it was at last winter.

* Start planning holiday gifts. We will be on a tight budget again this year, but we will be able to spend time with our families this year becasue I will no longer be working and that will be a great gift for us all!

* Begin work on the holiday season at The Crazy Elephant. With me being a work at home mom very soon, I need to put a huge focus on my shop as a source of income. I will have more time to work on it now and can treat it like my job, something I have wanted to be able to do for a while now. I will be working on Etsy's holiday boot camp toward the end of the month and I want to work hard to make it successful for me.

In case you have not caught it by now, I will be staying home very soon. We have been working on this goal for 5 years now and it is comming up. Our car's brake line broke on Saturday. We can't fix it till tomorrow at the earliest, but the cost of fixing it and time we can fix it will have a big impact on when I am done at work. In the meantime I am going to focus on my goals and look forward to personal success!

What are your goals this month? Share in the comments and inspire someone!

Tuna, Rice and Peas

I threw together this new recipe last night and it turned out great! So, I thought I would share. It was super easy to put together. Jayne helped and enjoyed making it with me.


Ingredients
3/4 cup long grain white rice (we used jasmine rice)
1 1/2 cup water
1 can tuna, drained
1/4 cup peas
4 oz Velveeta, small cubes
2 chicken bouillon cubes

Mix it all together in a casserole dish. Cover. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes. Stir. Bake for another 30 minutes. We topped ours with some shredded cheese. It came out at the perfect consistency, no extra water. If you want it to be a little more saucy, try adding a little more water or covering for the second half of the cooking time. It is always fun to experiment in the kitchen, so share what you did to make this recipe your own!

Our Dells Vacation

It was a CRAZY 3 days! We basically did 3 kinds of activities. We played at Magiquest, the Great Wolf Lodge indoor water park, and visited the outlet mall. We drove there with my parents and my brother, sister, and her husband were there too. Adam and I also saw the midnight showing of Harry Potter which was a ton of fun! We ate out once each day and it was mostly good.

A train comes by and blows bubbles at us at Buffalo Phil's

 I will start with the food. Day 1 we went to Moosejaw Pizza. It was really over priced and our waitress was fairly rude. The food was good though. Day 2 we went to Buffalo Phil's. You need to make reservations if you want special seating, and trust me, you do! The special tables get their drinks and kid's meals delivered by remote control train! Jayne loved it and was very well behaved because he was occupied by trains the whole time. It was a high price restaurant but the food was good and the service was as well. Plus there is a lot to be said for being able to keep the kids entertained. An important note...If you get a coupon for a free train ride, DO NOT take your small children! It turned out to be an adult style roller coaster and Jayne was terrified! The last day we had lunch at Sprechers. The waitress was not very good at describing the meals and made us wait a long time before ordering. The price range was medium high but the food was a little more bland than I was hoping for.

Jayne poses with his magic wand

Magiquest was were we spent the most time. Jayne loved using his wand all over the hotel. For anyone who is not familiar with Magiquest, it is kind of like a video game. Instead of sitting in front of the TV, you actually scour the 4 floors of the building looking for the items you need for your quest. It is quite a workout as you are constantly going up and down the stairs. It was a lot of fun for the whole family. It was also a great deal. You need to buy your wand, but the $11.99 admission is all day if you are just visiting, but all stay if you are staying at the hotel. That meant 3 full days of play for our entrance fee. That was a lovely surprise! I should also mention that the "Magi name" that Jayne gave himself was Light Zodo and he got on the top charts for gold, points, and runes the first day.

Jayne poses with his wolf ears in our bedroom

We also got to spend all the time we wanted at the water park. We had a hard time with that one. Jayne doesn't like loud noises. The constant splashing sound, multiplied by the echoing interior, was a lot more than he felt comfortable with. We did get him to do some slides though and in the end, he gave in and had fun.

Jayne with the wolf in the lobby

Jayne did a great job during our stay. He had a rough time though. Since we were constantly doing things he didn't get the rest time he needed. And when we tried to get rest time in, he was distracted by all the other people staying in the 3 bedroom room. That is something we will have to consider the next time we take a trip.

I get a turn with the wolf ears

Stretch It: Food

Food was by far the most difficult area for us to cut back. You need the right balance of health vs. frugality. We are still working at it and have shaved down our food budget every month. Here is what we did...

-Eating out. This is the hardest area for us. Eating out is a very expensive way to dine. We have been working hard to just say no, but sometimes it is hard not to. When we do eat out, we try to be smart about it. Many fast food places have coupons as do sit down resteraunts. When we go to a sit down resteraunt we choose a dish to share. Most places give you enough food for 2 or more, so you might as well share. The last time I went to TGI Fridays, I got a 3 course meal for $12.99 and I can teel you that it would have been enough for all 3 of us.

-Plan Ahead. We used to be a

"what should we have for supper tonight, I don't know let's pick something up at the store"

kind of family. That is a good way to watch your food budget skyrocket. We staarted planning our meals for the week and it helped so much. Now we plan our meals for a whole month. We still aren't quite used to picking up food for the month, so we occationally need to pick something up but not as much. We try to change a few meals every month to keep us from getting bored.

-Cooking. This is the most important part of our food budget. Without frugal meal choices, we would not be able to keep our budget down. We have a mix of recipes from http://dollaradaymeals.com/ and some of our own creations. Most of our meals cost $1 or less for the whole meal. It took a lot of time to research low cost meals that were less than $5-10 a meal. Most places have frugal recipes that are aparently on the budget of someone who makes much more than us! Another site I really love is http://www.youtube.com/user/DepressionCooking. Clara grew up durring the depression and shows (videos) how to make some really great frugal dishes. They actually sparked the creation of some of our own recipes.

Cutting down your food budget can be hard. With a little research and a willingness to try something new, it can be done. Keep in mind that frugal meals are usually made from scratch. When I started, it took me 1 hour per meal. Now that I have been able to streamline it a little, I tend to do about 1 hour of cooking a day. Check out the recipe below. It is tweaked the way we love it and is a healthy, hearty, frugal meal...

Vegetable Rice

Ingredients
2 large potatoes

1 small onion

3 carrots

3 cups beef stock

1 cup minute rice

pepper

salt

Chop up your vegetables. Put the beef stock in a pan and cook till boiling. Add the vegetables. Cook until the carrots and potatoes are tender. This takes about 10-15 minutes, but cook them to your desired softness. Make sure your stock is still boiling then add the rice and stir it in. Cover and remove it from the heat. Let sit till the rice has absorbed the beef stock, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and your meal is ready to eat.
makes 4 hearty servings

(also great topped with cheese)