Kitchen Scoop Blog

Congratulations to the winner of Kitchen Scoop’s Windows 7 Phone giveaway contest -- Stephanie Woodson of Bettendorf, Iowa! The 23-year-old newlywed was selected at random from all of the folks kind enough to post their ideas on Kitchen Scoop for “how to do more with less.”

Stephanie’s tips included this one: “I do more with less by cooking in big batches. Having precooked chicken and beef helps me get dinner on the table quicker! It is healthier than buying precooked preprocessed stuff but just as convenient.” (Stephanie is our kind of gal -- check out the “Batch Cooking” tab in our Recipe Box for some of our favorite batch cooking recipes.)

We felt so honored to be chosen as one of the websites that got to give away the brand new Windows 7 Phone, but we started feeling a bit bad that we could give away only one! Every day we got so many great new tips from our readers. You all were so generous with your advice, with your kitchen and lifestyle tricks and with the time you took to post all of it.

The best part is now we have a great collection of all sorts of “doing more with less” tips that will live on at the site for all of us to use. Be sure and click over to the contest blog (here) and check out all of the great suggestions. And if you were one of the contributors, we’d like to say a great big THANKS!

Fish tacos are all the rage in restaurants, and so we figured we'd do something a bit different by filling the tortillas with shrimp.

This recipe from our Desperation Dinners cookbook takes just 10 minutes to put together since the supermarket has already cooked the shrimp.

It's especially flexible because you can use any combination of typical taco toppings you happen to have on hand. Our favorites include shredded lettuce, chopped tomato, shredded cheese, bottled salsa, sour cream and guacamole.

There are so many sizes and kinds of cooked shrimp available now, and we find that one or the other is frequently on sale. So just use the most economical shrimp, but if the tail shells are still attached, do remove before serving!

What’s the craziest breakfast you’ve ever eaten? Hands down, for me it has to be octopus at Lola in Seattle.

My friend Myra, a fellow food photographer, insisted we head to Lola for breakfast. Tom Douglas, owner of the Greek-inspired restaurant, is big stuff in Seattle as a restaurateur, American Chef and cookbook author. He’s received dozens of accolades over the years and is often credited with defining Northwest Cuisine.

So I was definitely interested in dining at one of his restaurants, but she lured me into Lola with the homemade doughnuts.

Preparing for the feast can make the best of us second-guess our cooking and baking times. If you have a full-fledged disaster or even a minor question, help is standing by! So don't hesitate to use these handy hotlines. At the very least you'll make a home economist on the other end of the phone feel missing friends and family of their own was worthwhile.

Turkey Tips:

Butterball Turkey Talk-Line: 800-288-8372, www.butterball.com

Perdue Consumer Help Line: 800-473-7383, www.perdue.com

Reynolds Turkey Tips Hotline: 800-745-4000, www.reynoldskitchens.com

U.S. Department of Agriculture Meat and Poultry Hotline: 888-674-6854, www.fsis.usda.gov/Food_Safety_Education/Ask_Karen

Baking Help:

Crisco Pie Hotline: 877-367-7438

King Arthur Flour Co. Bakers Hotline: 802-649-3717, bakers@kingarthurflour.com

Land O'Lakes Baking Help: www.landolakes.com

Cranberry Conundrums:

Ocean Spray Consumer Help Line: 800-662-3263, www.oceanspray.com

Happy Thanksgiving from Kitchen Scoop!

I’m curious -- how do you decide on a Thanksgiving menu? Are you a cook who’s steeped in tradition and would never change so much as a side dish? Or are you a magazine glutton, combing the popular press for the latest-greatest pies, salads and stuffing?

Do you fall somewhere in between perhaps? I think I’m one of the in-betweeners. Some dishes, like Scalloped Oysters, I just have to make, more because I crave them than because my family does. And then there’s the cranberry sauce -- plain or fancy? (I'm for fancy...) Doncha love the rice vs. mashed potatoes debate? Hubby and kids prefer potatoes, but I grew up with rice. Some years I fix both.

When it comes to recipes, Thanksgiving makes my head spin. My email list is full of messages like these: 15 Time-Saving Thanksgiving Desserts; 14 Yummy Potato Side Dish Recipes; and finally, 138 Thanksgiving Recipes!

Scones are so impressive for entertaining overnight guests – and so easy, too! All you have to do is get up about 20 minutes before your guests do and whip them up.

This may be difficult to believe, but yes, we are talking 20 minutes start to finish, including baking. (Okay, we did not include the time it takes to preheat the oven, but you can do that while you’re brushing your teeth or pouring a cup of coffee.)

Since Thanksgiving is this week, we decided to see if we could do a fall-themed scone. What came out of Alicia’s test kitchen was today’s recipe for Orange Cranberry Scones. (Alicia took this yummy photo also – makes it hard to resist giving them a try, don’cha think?)

The Carolina Inn has been called the living room of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for years. Oddly enough, Beverly and I never went there when we were students. Both Beverly and I spent four years in Chapel Hill, graduated from the university, and yet it was not until we were adults that we went back to the famous Inn that sits directly across the street from UNC’s main, historic campus.

Last month when Beverly was in my neck of the woods, we met at The Carolina Inn for afternoon tea. It seemed like such a civilized thing to do, and since both of us had only a few hours early Friday afternoon for a visit, we thought it was a better choice than meeting at a bar.

If you’re a pumpkin pie fan then you’re gonna love this recipe. If you think you don’t like pumpkin pies, then you’ve got to taste this cobbler before you decide. Based on the easy, tried-and-true magic rising crust I have used with dozens of other cobbler recipes, this recipe is unbelievably easy to put together. An because it serves a good dozen people, it’s the perfect budget dish at Thanksgiving or any other time you need a reasonably priced, yet delectable dessert for a crowd.

The next couple of weeks would be a good time to dust off your budget recipes and start saving a little money before the dollar-grabbing holiday season starts. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of a shift in your frame of reference -- start thinking “How can I do more with less?”

We're looking for as many good ideas as we can get to share with our readers here on Kitchen Scoop. The comments you post, (once per day), earns you an entry ticket to a drawing for the new Windows 7 Phone worth $500.

But first -- here's our entry:

One of our favorite ways to do more with less is to put more meatless meals into the monthly menu rotation. We have a whole vegetarian category here on Kitchen Scoop, easily found by using the search filters in our virtual Recipe Box. Today’s recipe for Barbecued Lentil Stew is brand new, and just such a recipe that elevates the lowly lentil to new heights. We think you’ll like it as much as we do. It’s low-calorie, low-fat and full of tangy and sweet flavor.

These delicious muffins combine the best flavors of fall for holidays or anytime you want a special treat.

They're easy to make with a lot of ingredients you can keep on hand in your pantry.

Gotta admit we tend to stock up on a bit too much canned pumpkin at Thanksgiving, so it's really nice to have a recipe like this that also works for Christmas.

Try them out and let us know what you think!