Secret Recipe Club: Pumpkin Oat Muffins

So.
It's time for April's edition of the Secret Recipe Club!  For those of you who don't know, the Secret Recipe Club is a group of foodie bloggers who are assigned each other in secret.  We then stalk visit each other's blogs, choose a recipe, make it and all reveal who had who and who made what on the same day at the same time.  It's a lot of fun, and I always enjoy learning about a new blogger each month.
This month, I was assigned Anna's blog from over at bcmom's kitchen.  There were so many amazing things to choose from.  I always seemed to be one ingredient short, and I didn't want to go to the store.  I considered her Raspberry Swirl Bread (which I am going to make because it looks amazing!), and I wished I had an occasion worthy of her Caramel Rolls.  I also had some feta in the fridge, and still really want to make Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken, but I'll have to buy a bottle of sundried tomatoes.
I finally found a recipe for which I was sure I had everything.  I was so very, very wrong.  But that was okay.  I figured it out.
I present to you now bcmom's Pumpkin Oat Muffins:

Magazine Challenge: Mini Salmon Loaves

So.
Fish is not one of my favourite things.  It is one of J's, though.  I promised a while ago that I would start cooking fish for him more often, and I will when I see it on sale.  When I saw these in the December 2005 issue of Everyday Food, I figured they were worth a shot, and then promptly forgot about them.
In the past couple of weeks, I've been watching Save with Jamie on On Demand.  There are 4 recipes in each episode, and I would like to try most of them!  One thing that he makes every week is a "mothership roast" that can be turned into other entrees during the week.  One episode, he roasted a side of salmon and made a fish pie with the leftovers.  Fish pie doesn't really turn my crank, but one of the things he talked about in the episode was that if you were serving just the meat roasted, buy fresh.  In something where the texture of the fish wouldn't be noticed in the same way, you could use frozen.
When I went to the grocery store, the 3-day sale for fresh salmon was over.  I decided to see how frozen would be.
This was really a huge experiment.  I halved the recipe, probably overcooked the fish, and then couldn't get it to form into patties.  But based on what went into them, and the improvisation that I did, it all worked out.
I present to you now my adaptaion of the December 2005 Everyday Food's Salmon Cakes:

Asian Inspired: Teriyaki Meatball Bowls

So.
This is from the same weekend as the cake - my quest to make things while waiting for my paycheque and quickly running out of ingredients.  Yep, get ready to see what kinds of substitutions I can make!
I love to read the blog Budget Bytes.  I think I found her originally through Pinterest and a pin for black bean quesadillas that I have yet to make.  I used her refried beans in the crockpot recipe when I make them and discovered how easy it is to make beans in the crockpot.  I spend lots of time reading, but I don't always get around to cooking.
I did, however, read her Top 20 for 2012 with interest, and saw the quesadillas that I need to get around to making.  This recipe was also in the list, and looked intriguing and simple.  Everything in them is a pantry staple.  It also gave me a reason to use my food grinder.
I grew up in a house with a Spong food grinder.  I remember helping my mother make quiche by grinding leftover ham to use in the filling.  I never really saw the point of having one.  I didn't make quiche.  What would I want to grind?  While the name brand is fun to say, you don't need to own one to do so.  Then my uncle went into a retirement home, my parents cleaned out his apartment, and my mother presented me with his food grinder that appeared to never have been used.  It then sat on my shelf for 2 years.
Seeing as I wasn't buying anything this weekend, I suddenly needed a way to produce ground chicken.  I found one.
I present to you now Budget Bytes' Teriyaki Meatball Bowls:

Pintertest Kitchen: Cinnamon Roll Cake

So.
I have a confession to make:  I'm not particularly good with money.
Sure, one of the duties of my job is to oversee the spending for a building and make sure that I don't go in the hole, but the way that I do that is by telling my staff that there's no money.  Okay, that's not totally true.  We still have a photocopy budget, and we do some special things.  But at home, well...let's just say that Dave Ramsey wouldn't be thrilled.
J and I have taken steps to get ourselves on the right track; and I'm much better than I used to be.  But by the same token sometimes the money just runs out.  Like this past weekend.  Through a glitch in payroll, my pay isn't coming through until Monday.  This left J and I with about $25 to our name that wasn't spoken for.
Unlike many, the biggest change in our plans was that we wouldn't be going out for a meal this weekend and the cat tree we'd planned to buy got waylaid until next week.  As a result, I was left to figure out what we were eating with no trip to the grocery store.
Our church has been doing a series about letting go of our stuff and how we allocate our resources.  One thing that has rung very true with me recently is that we as North Americans feel poor:  like there's no money, we can't afford things and what a misnomer this truly is.  We are encouraged to live simply and share our resources, demonstrating God's love for those around us.  Heavy stuff, but an important reminder.  This weekend really made me think about this - we can't afford to go out to eat.  So what?  We go out for the entertainment of it.  I started combing my cupboards for what to make while we stay home.  The next few days will be posts from that weekend.  We ate really well while having no money.  I need to remember that.
It's a little embarrassing what lurks in my cupboards.  We spent the weekend eating recipes that I wanted to try from Pinterest that I just hadn't gotten around to.  I pinned two very similar cakes that I combined into this one with a couple of substitutions based on things I'd run out of.  Here are the pins:
I present to you now a hybrid of Cookin' Up North and Six Sisters Cinnamon Roll Cakes: