Monday Q&A | Takeout Food, Protein, and Sticky Tea Towels

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

I am just wondering what ya’ll do for take out. I know it is random but i mean is it like Chinese? Pizza? .. McDonalds???? 😀

-Missy

That varies from week to week! We have a $20/week budget for our takeout date night, so it’s not like we’re not relegated to McDonalds each week. And since I make pizza pretty much every Saturday night, we don’t usually get pizza.

Our most common meals are burgers from Five Guys, sushi from a local restaurant just down the road, seafood sandwiches from a local seafood market, Chipotle, and subs from a small local joint. And we do sometimes get Chinese from our favorite takeout spot near our old townhouse (which isn’t really that far from where we live now because we only moved a mile or two!).

Could you share with me how many gallons of milk your family goes through each week? And also, do you feel like you all get a fair amount of protein each day? I’m wondering if we are having meat overkill over here at my house….

-Chris

Milk

We usually go through two gallons a week; one in the form of homemade yogurt, and one in the form of, well, just milk (we mostly use it on breakfast cereal). This is less milk than a lot of families use and that’s because 5/6 of us aren’t big fans of drinking it (we drink tap water almost exclusively). I hate drinking milk and the kids only like to have a cup if they have cookies to dunk, but Mr. FG drinks a glass of milk with his dinner every now and then.

Of course, if it’s chocolate milk, then 6/6 of us like to drink it. But chocolate milk isn’t particularly healthy, so I don’t make it all that often.

Just to be clear, I’m not down on drinking milk…it’s just not a beverage that most of us here enjoy. 🙂

Protein

I’m honestly not sure exactly how much protein we eat each day…I’m just not precise enough to measure that! We don’t usually eat meat except at dinner, but at breakfast we usually have milk on our cereal, cream cheese on our toast, and yogurt with our fruit (and I often eat scrambled eggs), and at lunch we often have cheese, yogurt smoothies, peanut butter on our bread, and nuts or sunflower seeds.

Mr. FG does often have some kind of meat in his lunchbox because he eats leftovers, and I also send beef jerky, nuts, and sometimes hardboiled eggs with him (of course, I send vegetables and fruit and such too…I’m just listing the protein-filled items here).

How much protein the human body needs is kind of a controversial matter, but I personally am not convinced that most Americans are suffering from a lack of protein (though our diets certainly do tend to be lacking in raw fruits and veggies and not-so-processed foods) .

I don’t pretend to know how everyone else should eat, but I’m pretty happy with the amount of protein that our family eats…it fits into our budget and we all seem to be pretty healthy.

Often when I’m letting my breads rise for the second time (buns, rolls, french bread), when I go to remove the damp tea towel it has stuck to the dough and seems to deflate the risen bread before it goes into the oven.
1) What is causing this? Too warm of a rising place (I’ve been using a warmed up oven during the winter — heat to 350 for just 1 minute, then shut off)? Letting them rise too long?
2) Is there any fix? Let them re-rise? They still taste fine if I bake them right away, but the size is a bit off (too flat).

-LeeAnn

This happens occasionally to me (you can see some ugly breadsticks I made when my tea towel stuck!), and when it does, it usually seems like I’ve let the bread rise too long and/or the rising place is too humid/warm.

Using a towel that is too wet or too dry can also cause this.

I’ve let mine re-rise for a bit before baking, but sometimes I just throw them into the oven anyway.

If this happens to you all the time, you could try letting your breads rise without a towel. To do this, place them inside your cold oven and put a small pan of boiling water on the floor of the oven. This will give your bread a warm environment and the humidity will keep the rising bread from developing a dry skin.

Of course, another alternative is to use greased plastic wrap to cover the rising dough, but since I bake so often, this would end up being kind of a wasteful, expensive option.

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Readers, the floor is yours!

Today’s 365 post: Seeing the world through new eyes