No MSG cookbooks

Any cookbook will likely have MSG-free recipes in it, you just have to know what you're looking for. Its nice to have one that you can trust, though, and we checked out Battling the MSG Myth: A Survival Guide and Cookbook by Debby Anglesey through WSU interlibrary loan. Available for $21 at msgmyth.com. She has delicious recipes in here, and there is so much additional knowledge you have to know to avoid MSG, not just reading labels, and you can get it from her book. She does still have recipes with a lot of sugar, which is also hazardous to our health, but I love how she sneaks shredded carrots and other veggies in her main entrees. Its a pretty complete book for anything you'd want to make from salad dressings to sauces to candy, and contains education all about the MSG myth and shopping tips.
Debby's not the only one that has written a cookbook. Here's another one called No MSG For Me by Lisa Kramer, available in many locales on the web.

Grocery List Generator

I may be the only one silly enough to want this, but you know how recipe websites let you "print off a grocery list"? I think that's so useful. However, I'm not going to cook all my dinners from one website, and often I just cook my own recipes. So, I searched the web for a grocery list program, and this is what I found.Grocery List Generator This is a Firefoxadd-on, with a suggested donation of $3. It can be organized into an aisle-by aisle grocery list. It involves putting your recipes and ingredients into a database, and then generating a grocery list by selecting meals from your list, the quantity of those meals, and it makes an aisle-by-aisle organized grocery list to print. This is a gem. I was wasting lots of time in the grocery store with an unorganized list, and wanted to zip right through and save time at home doing my ingredients list. Sometimes its a huge hurdle for me to even get a grocery list. But with this, just click, and the planning's done.

Is it suitable as a food storage grocery list? For those with food storage on hand, how do you make a fresh produce/perishable items list? One weakness of grocery list generator is that you can't check off which ingredients you already have. Some generators do.

I was just blown away at how a another grocery list generator has been at my fingertips all along: An Excel Spreadsheet. Foodstoragemadeeasy.net has made an Excel download in which to put all the ingredients for your meals for one month, Excel multiplies it by 3, and you get to print off a 3-month food supply shopping list. I cut and paste rows so that ingredients are organized aisle-by-aisle according to my grocery store.

The down side to both of these is its takes a large time investment to start up. Entering in all your recipes can be tedious. Maybe some of you will find it worth it.

Top ten (17) reasons to Homecook

The top reasons to do home cooking are

17. Time
16. Dishes
15. Its when you've got pizza dough all over your fingers that you realize you still need to get the pan ready and grease it.
14. Its almost time for dinner and an ingredient or two is missing or rotten.
13. Dinner flat-out ends up all over the floor.
12. Planning and shopping for meals
11. Your significant other always comes home on time.
10. The kids don't eat it.
9. You always know where you'll be at 4pm.
8. Its always kind of a mystery what time it will be ready.
7. You get to pick it up off the floor in bits after dinner's over.
6. After the infant's been crying for an hour and a half because she's a) been neglected and b) smells the really good meal your making for the family that just had a baby, you get all packed in the car and drive off to deliver it when you hear glass shattering. You look in the rear-view mirror and realize that that was their dessert that just slid off the roof of the car (oops) and your 7x11 Pyrex pan is in tiny pieces.
5. The oversized serving spoon gets a little top-heavy in the little 1.5 qt. saucepan and flips out onto the baby. The sauce that was "boiling" runs down his head, through his shirt, and the skin peels off his little chest.
4. Its more nutritious (but still has MSG in it. See pitfalls of homecooking)
3. Get to choose what you eat, make it your way, try something exotic
2. Save money
...and the number one reason to make homemade meals is:
1. You'll be self reliant and ready to cook in an emergency

Dinner solutions

Someone local had the brilliant idea to do a once a month cooking group. (See OAMC blog.) This is how we do it: the leader sets a date, everyone RSVPs, and then we cook enough of the same meal (just times it by the number of participants) for each family plus one for ourselves. We've agreed to make meals that serve 4 persons (1 lb. meat) times the number of participants. On trading night we bring the frozen meals, labeled with the name and cooking directions on it, perhaps copies of the recipe to hand out, our ice chests, and trade with everyone. Sometimes we'll play games too. If there are buns, pasta, rice, tortillas, red sauce, a cup of sour cream, etc., to go with the meal, we provide these, too, and trade them as a duo with our meal. Here's a picture of my freezer containing 17 meals, ice cream, butter, and meat. Once a month cooking is the latest fad in the cooking world, but is not a new idea. You can read all about it if you want to look it up.
The frozen meals can be packaged into zip lock freezer bags, sucked of all the air with a straw, and laid fat in freezer for freezing. With this method a considerable number of frozen meals can fit into a small freezer. Another method is to get aluminum pans, sold at our local grocery for about 60 cents each, and then tightly seal the top with plastic wrap and/or aluminum foil. For meals without sauces, where there could be air trapped such as meatballs, a vaccuum pack sealer can be used.

Not just anything can be frozen. There's a list of ingredients that do not freeze well. Its also important that no air is in the meal either, or it will get freezer burn. Disposable aluminum pans, commonly used for freezer meals or potlucks, may corrode in contact with acidic foods such as tomato sauces. So, use sparingly or for short durations with acidic foods.

We haven't exactly always followed the rules, but here's what we've exchanged lately:
Burritos and spanish rice
Beef enchiladas
Beef pot pie
Beef stroganoff
California Chili
Cheesy rotini
Chicken chow mein
Chicken enchiladas
Chicken pot pie
Chicken rice cream soup
Chicken Saté Sauté
Chili verde with homemade tortillas, cornbread mix
Cowboy Tacos
Garlic Chicken farfalle
Italian chicken
Lasagna
Pineapple chicken
Pizza rolls
Potato casserole
Potato stew
Pulled pork sandwiches
Red turkey chili
Ritz Chicken
Shepherd's pie
Swedish meatballs
Sweet and sour meatballs
Taco casserole
Taco soup
Unstuffed peppers
White turkey chili
Baked ziti

Anyone could start a group like this, or if you're local, you could join ours. I don't know why people aren't flocking to participate. I hear some say they don't want to cook that much, but its just making a big batch of one dinner. I do admit it takes me about 6-7 hours to do it, but when you consider I don't have to make dinner 7+ other nights, it saves a lot of brain work on meals and leaves me free to do other things, which I like. We just pray everyone else brings us something good! Its also possible to just double, triple, etc., your own meals at home and do once a month cooking independently.

We've all had those nights where we just haven't come up with a meal yet. The freezer meals are like gold to me, and I know others share the same sentiment, "when its my husband's turn to cook, he's not allowed to use the freezer meals. Only I can use them," says one friend.

My sister participates in another cooking solution in Provo, UT. She has a group of two other friends, and they each have one night a week that they cook for the entire group. Its the other two girls' responsibility to pick up their meal on the night someone is cooking, or it can be arranged to be dropped off. I'll ask her how its going, or went.

Pitfalls of Home Cooking

Our family is up in arms. There are so many hazards to eating- we don't know what to eat anymore! On top of MSG, try avoiding BPA and fluoride, and you've got a nightmare!

Fifty-five of the 62 recipes I regularly use had some problem or another with MSG. Perhaps they're common to your cooking, too. The most frequently used by us are:

• Chicken broth save and freeze in small containers broth from chicken from chicken that has "no natural flavoring added" (read package)
• Cream of Chicken or Cream of Mushroom Soup substitute cream sauce, sour cream whole whipping cream, half cream/half milk, half sour cream/half milk, homemade yogurt, whole milk, or bean recipe
• Chicken Bouillon or Beef Bouillon I use the real ingredients listed on the back: salt, garlic powder, onion powder; May add broth, too
• Cheddar Cheese try to find cheese without enzymes, just rennet or cultures (impossible), and replace aged cheeses with mild varieties such as mozzarella or Colby. Many hard cheeses contain MSG. The powerful "enzymes" used in modern times breaks the protein into it's amino acids, one of which is glutamate. (Anglesey, 86)
• Can of Tomatoes or Tomato Sauce Look for brands that use white lining in cans such as Muir Glen products. Avoid products with citric acid. Substitute fresh tomatoes, home canned, or frozen tomatoes.
• Chili make homemade- recipe here
• Canned Mushrooms often contain citric acid; substitute fresh
  
• Soy sauce use ginger and Oriental five spice powder
• Salsa often contains added citric acid; make homemade
• Mayonnaise substitute plain sour cream (read labels; Knudsen's whole sour cream), homemade mayonnaise (store in the coldest part of your refrigerator (the bottom and back) for up to two weeks), plain homemade yogurt, mashed avocado, olive oil or butter spread on bread, or mix
  1 C sour cream
  1 tsp oil
  1 to 2 tsp sugar
  salt and pepper to taste
  2 tsp lemon juice or vinegar
  1/2 tsp mustard if desired (Anglesey, 85)

Less common but still prevalent in our recipes:

• non-fat milk solids
• feta cheese
• Worchestershire sauce
• Falafel mix
• enchilada sauce
• ketchup- go to www.msgmyth.com, click on recipes
  
• Frozen Breaded Chicken
• Taco seasoning
• Au Jus packets
• Horseradish sauce
• Marinade packets
• Box chicken dressing/stuffing
• tomato soup
• bottled spaghetti sauce
• Italian style bread crumbs
• chicken gravy mix
• Hoagie buns
• Hamburger buns
• Tortillas
• meats (read labels for no natural flavorings)
• ramen noodles
• Rice mixes
• Boxed add-meat dinners
• cottage cheese

Things not containing MSG, but which often contain nitrates:
Pepperoni
Deli meat
bacon
packaged corned beef roast

Things we'd commonly eat for lunch which may have MSG:

• cream cheese
• store-bought bread with dough conditioners, etc.
• mayonnaise
• cheddar cheese
• hummus mix
• jelly
• canned soup
• tuna fish (read label for no "broth")
• feta
• instant lunches
• hot-pocket type pizzas