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    November 04, 2009

    Snickerdoodle Blondies and wrap-up of the Eat On $30 challenge

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    It's been a crazy last few weeks work wise and I haven't had time before now to post my thoughts on the Eat On $30 challenge.  

    First, here's a breakdown of the final numbers:

    Breakdown of costs:

    Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
    Lunch: Homemade pizza with homemade sauce, cheese and turkey sausage
    Dinner: French onion soup w/ swiss cheese and bread
    Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondies - 2

    Breakfast:
    3 Eggs: 57¢
    6 tbsp milk: 18¢
    3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
    Bread: n/a
    1 organic local apple: 70¢
    TOTAL: $1.78

    Lunch:
    TOTAL:  $0 because these were leftover from the previous nights dinner

    Dinner:
    1 pounds onions: 80¢
    Organic beef broth: $2.50
    8 oz wine: $1.44
    Bread: n/a
    4 oz Swiss cheese: 56¢
    TOTAL:  $5.30 (with leftovers for the next day's lunch)

    Dessert:
    Snickerdoodle Blondies: 76¢
    TOTAL: 76¢

    GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $7.84
    TOTAL SPENT FOR ENTIRE CHALLENGE: $54

    What are my thoughts on this challenge?  First of all - a reminder.  This is in no way an attempt to mimic the life of anyone on food stamps or on such a limited budget.  There's no way to do that and this challenge was less about stepping into the shoes of someone in that situation and more about bringing attention to the issue of hunger.  I think the challenge was pretty successful in that right.  A lot of bloggers participated and lots of people have expressed interest in doing this challenge the next time it comes around.

    With that being said, I guess what it comes down to is that I DID feel like a bit of a fraud doing this challenge.  There's just no way that what I do can mimic what's it's like to have to live with this on a daily basis.  I have way too many resources - too many stores within walking distance, too much cooking equipment, too much knowledge of how to cook and eat healthy - all of these are issues I covered in previous posts.  I'm so relieved to not have to do the endless calculations to see if something was in our budget.  I'm not talking about making sure to stay within a rough amount - I'm talking about the sheets of paper I filled out with the cost per ounce of lots of the foods we eat on a regular basis.  I'm grateful that I can pour a glass of cheap wine and not have to worry about how it will affect our budget.  Like I said, my husband and I are already very frugal out of necessity but I didn't expect how wearing it could be to constantly think about food, down to each and every penny.  I take my dollars seriously but I take those pennies for granted.

    What did I learn from this challenge?  I'm already a pretty thrifty person.  We have to be to stay afloat in this economy.  Vegetable odds and ends go into my freezer so I can make vegetable stock.  I do the same with chicken bones and scraps.  I was surprised by the way one ingredient can make the price per serving skyrocket. I love my Penzey's double strength vanilla but I'll be saving it for recipes where the vanilla flavor really stands out.  We do a pretty good job with not letting food go to waste in our house but I'm being even more vigilant about using everything up.  I'm also watching my grocery spending.  I'm not going to break everything down into a price per serving but I am going to keep better track of how much we're spending.  I think a lot of people underestimate how much they spend on groceries - I know I did and I'm going to keep better track of my spending in that area.  I was also amazed by how $60 seemed like such a huge amount in the beginning but when I started adding up the costs, that money flew out of my hands.

    What am I going to do differently next time?  I'm going to plan ahead of time so that my fridge doesn't have any leftovers that need to be dealt with.  I want to go into a store with the money I have for the week and buy what I'll need - no borrowing from my pantry and figuring out the cost per ounce.  I've thought about buying a box of food from Angel Food ministries and figuring out how to use that with the addition of a few staples - that would be a challenge because I'd have to come up with a menu based on what I got from there.

    I'd also love to get a group of people in East Tennessee to do this challenge with me the next time. I'll post about the next challenge ahead of time and I'd be glad to have a party afterwords at my house.  We could collect food or money for a local food bank in our area.  This time, I'm going to be making a donation of $27.69 to Second Harvest Food Bank - that's the price of one of those Penzey's bottles of Double-Strength vanilla that I've been taking for granted.

    I strongly urge you to donate either your money or your time to one of these organizations.  They do a great job helping the working poor in our community :
    Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee 
    Fish Pantries

    I also want to thank Tami of Running with Tweezers for organizing this great challenge.  She was a wonderful cheerleader and I'm grateful for her kind words and encouragement and for all the support I got from fellow participants, other food bloggers and my readers!  You all are awesome!

    I'm going to end my posts about this challenge on a sweet note.  I'm a sugar junkie and for the sake of my husband's sanity, I knew I'd have to have some kind of sweet treat while doing this challenge.  Chocolate desserts were out - too pricey and I thought about making an apple crisp.  But then I saw this recipe on my friend Maris's blog and I knew we had a winner.  Snickerdoodles are my husband's favorite cookie of all time.  He's been known to inhale a dozen cookies in less than half an hour and he actually tested several recipes a few years ago to find his "perfect" cookie.  Because these are a bar cookie, they're much easier and while they'll never replace the actual cookie in my husband's heart, we both thought these were fantastic.

    Snickerdoodle Blondies (Adapted from In Good Taste and Dozen Flours)

    Ingredients:

    1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour 
    1 teaspoons baking powder 
    1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt 
    1 cup packed brown sugar 
    1/2 cup butter, at room temperature 
    1 egg, at room temperature 
    1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract 
    1 1/2 tablespoons white sugar 
    1 1/2 teaspoons & 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, divided

    Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly grease an 8x8 inch pan.

    Sift together the flour, baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and salt.  Set aside.

    In a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg and vanilla. Beat until smooth

    Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture and mix until blended.  Don't over mix!  Spread evenly in 8x8 pan.

    Combine the 1 1/2 tablespoon of white sugar with the 1 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and sprinkle evenly over the top of the batter.

    Bake 25-30 minutes(this is what the original direction called for but ours were done at 23 minutes) or until surface springs back when lightly touched. Cool slightly but cut into bars while it's still warm.

    Here is a list of the other wonderful bloggers who participated in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

    Posted at 09:16 PM in baking, Eat on $30, frugal, recipes | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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    October 22, 2009

    Pizza as a Secret Weapon & Day 6 of the Eat on $30 challenge

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    Pizza - it's my secret budget weapon.  For $1.06 and the price of a pizza stone, I can make two large pizza crusts better than just about any I could find in Knoxville.  Friday nights are pizza night in our house and we do this for two reasons.  One - it's a fun tradition and it's a cheap one.  Two - homemade pizzas taste so freakin' good and they're fun to make.  I'll make a post next week with the pizza crust recipe we use and a couple of topping suggestions.  For the Eat on $30 challenge, we stayed pretty basic.  We went with a homemade sauce, mozzarella cheese, onions and homemade turkey sausage.

    IMG_3409

    Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
    I'm missing our usual sweet tea that we drink with most meals - a lot.  I also am having cravings for the crappiest candy imaginable - things like Laffy Taffy and Nerds.  I had a dream about Lemonheads.  I don't even want to try to interpret that.

    Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
    Again - I'm using a pizza stone.  You can make pizza without it but I think the results are far better with it.  I also find myself skipping ingredients so I don't have to account for the cost.  I had no idea how much a garlic clove should cost because we grow our own garlic.  I didn't want to run down to Krogers just to see how much it cost so I left it out.

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    Breakdown of costs:

    Pizza crust cost:
    3 cups flour: 51¢
    2 tbsp olive oil: 40¢
    1 tbsp yeast: 15¢
    Total Cost: $1.06 for two crusts

    Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
    Lunch: Hamburger Stroganoff over penne pasta
    Dinner: Homemade pizza with homemade sauce, cheese and turkey sausage
    Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie - 2

    Breakfast:
    3 Eggs: 57¢
    6 tbsp milk: 18¢
    3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
    Bread: n/a
    1 organic local apple: 70¢
    TOTAL: $1.78

    Lunch:
    Beef Stroganoff - 2 servings: $3.59
    TOTAL: $3.59

    Dinner:
    Crust: 53¢
    1/2 can organic tomatoes: 63¢
    4 oz mozzarella cheese: 56¢
    4 oz homemade turkey sausage: 26¢
    2 oz onions: 10¢
    TOTAL:  $2.08

    Dessert:
    Snickerdoodle Blondies: 76¢
    TOTAL: 76¢

    GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $8.21
    TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $46.16

    Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

    Posted at 01:16 PM in Eat on $30, frugal, musings | | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

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    October 20, 2009

    I'm a cheater - Day 5 on the Eat on $30 challenge

    I feel like I never have enough time in the day.  I'm horrible at time management so I'm sure that's part of my problem.  I'd love to be one of those women who wake up in the morning and have a list of things done by 9am.  Of course, that involves getting up by 8am so I may be reaching a bit in wanting that level of organization. 

    I also have a lot of demands on my time.  I run my own business with my husband and while I love being my own boss, when you work from home, it's hard to delineate where work stops and home begins.  I own more cats than I'm willing to admit to most people, several who have medical conditions and I feel like I've spent weeks of my life just scooping litter boxes.  I have a rather large garden by urban yard standards and I try to produce and preserve as much of our food as we can.  This involves lots of canning.  We have a house that was built in 1894 that will one day be gorgeous.  Right now, it's missing things like walls, plumbing in some areas and is a bit decrepit.  Lots of time goes into fixing it up.  My husband and I talk about kids but I'll admit that I feel so crunched for time now and I know how much time kids take!

    However, no matter how rushed I feel, I have an abundance of time when you compare it to a lot of people on food stamps.  I work from home so it's easy for me to let a pot of stock simmer all day.  Eating a meal of leftovers involves no planning.  No figuring out how to get it to work and heat it up.  I have time to bake my own bread and preserve my own food.  Granted - I make the time for that but I'm not having to work two jobs to get by.  It's not a choice between me baking bread or working an extra job so my kids can have clothes to wear.

    I've got lots of ways to save time:   I make extra and freeze it. My freezer right now holds containers of gumbo, Hopping John, spaghetti sauce, mushroom-wine sauce, chicken stock, frozen pizza dough & a bag of breadcrumbs.  Whenever I make something that might freeze well, I usually double the recipe so that I have some to eat later.  I also have a list of quick, easy meals that are made from wholesome ingredients but come together in a flash. I always have pasta on hand and I make use of a slow cooker and pressure cooker.  But these tips might not be helpful to someone who doesn't have the extra money to buy food in bulk.  You have to first own a pressure cooker or a slow cooker. I bought a chest freezer so I'd have space to save leftovers - that was a serious upfront investment.

    What it comes down to is that there's no way I could do this challenge and not cheat.  No matter how closely I count my pennies or follow my planned meal plan, there's no way this even begins to approximate the choices and considerations that someone who lives this budget on a daily basis has to deal with.  I knew that when I started this challenge but I don't think I really KNEW that.  It's become a lot clearer to me that no matter how strictly I follow this challenge, I can't really follow it because I'm not really living this life.  

    PS - I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post.  My data card got corrupted and all my pics were corrupted as well.

    Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
     I often make Beef Stroganoff with hamburger. It's a great way to use ground beef and make it different.  I've never really followed a recipe before but I had to with this challenge.  I needed to know the exact cost to make sure our budget could swing it.  So I turned to SimplyRecipes.com because I knew Elise had posted a recipe for this dish recently and I knew her recipe would be great.  It was wonderful.  Instead of winging it, I'll probably use her recipe in the future.  Normally, I'd serve this dish over egg noodles but since I had penne pasta and it was cheaper, I used that.

    Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
    I've been thinking a lot about the time component of this challenge.  The amount of time it takes to make sure that we don't go over our budget - the calculating out every last thing.  But even though that's a pain, I'm lucky because if we do go over our budget, it just means I've screwed up this challenge.  It doesn't mean I won't be able to pay my electric bill.  Calculating out my costs isn't personal to me because the consequences aren't very dire.  Granted - I want to not go over my budget but if I do, all I lose is a little bit of pride. That's a pretty small price to pay in comparison to someone who doesn't have the leeway in their budget.

    Breakdown of costs:

    Hamburger Stroganoff:
    2 tbsp butter: 24¢
    1 lb local, grass-fed ground beef: $3.45
    8 oz onion: 40¢
    8 oz Bella Mushrooms: $1.67
    1.25 cups sour cream: $1.19
    1 tsp lemon juice: 4    ¢
    3 oz penne pasta: 19    ¢
    TOTAL: $7.18 for 4 servings
     

    Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
    Lunch: BLTs
    Dinner: Hamburger Stroganoff over penne pasta

    Breakfast:
    3 Eggs: 57¢
    6 tbsp milk: 18¢
    3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
    Bread: n/a
    1 organic local apple: 70¢
    TOTAL: $1.78

    Lunch:
    bread: n/a
    2.5 oz grass-fed bacon: 93¢
    6 oz tomato: 60¢
    1 tbsp mayo: 25    ¢
    TOTAL: $1.78

    Dinner:
    Beef Stroganoff - 2 servings: $3.59
    TOTAL: $3.59

    GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $7.15
    TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $37.95

    Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

    Posted at 10:17 PM in Eat on $30, frugal, musings | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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    Day Four of the Eat On $30 challenge

    Just a quick recap for day four of the challenge.  I'll have a longer post tomorrow with some thoughts on why time is such an issue in doing this challenge.

    Thoughts on the food I ate on Day Four:

    I had dinner all ready to go - or so I thought.  Every couple of months, I make a huge batch of caramelized onions that I partition out and freeze to use in french onion soup or to add to pastas and pizza.  I could have sworn that I had several in my freezer but after freezing my hands off looking, I realized I was out.  Instead, since it was such a crazy day, I made BLTs again.  It looks like we're going to have an earlier fall this year so finding ways to eat those ripe garden tomatoes is no hardship.

    Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
         I'm really glad I'm doing this challenge.  But I'm already prowling the net for recipes to make when this challenge is over.  This isn't a way of life for me - that's something I'm trying to keep in mind.  Everything I'm doing is much harder for people who have even less money to spend and don't see an end in sight to their day-to-day challenge.

    Breakdown of costs:

    Need to add another loaf of bread to the budget - 92¢

    Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
     Lunch: Sandwiches with Nduja, mozzarella & tomato from garden
     Dinner: BLTs
     Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie - 2

    Breakfast:
         3 Eggs: 57¢
    6 tbsp milk: 18¢
    3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
    Bread: n/a
    1 organic local apple: 70¢
     TOTAL: $1.78

    Lunch:
         Bread: n/a
    1/2 oz of Nduja: 57¢
    2 oz tomatoes: 20¢
    1 oz mozzarella cheese: 14¢
     TOTAL: 91¢

    Dinner:
         bread: n/a
    2.5 oz grass-fed bacon: 93¢
    6 oz tomato: 60¢
    1 tbsp mayonnaise: no idea of the cost but think it's safe to estimate 25¢
     TOTAL: $1.78

    Dessert:
         Snickerdoodle Blondies: 76¢
     TOTAL: 76¢

    GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $6.15
    TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $30.80

    Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

     

    Posted at 12:52 AM in Eat on $30, frugal | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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    October 15, 2009

    Quick Day 3 Recap

    Just a quick recap for today - it's been a crazy day of work and I'm feeling under the weather.

    Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
    Bread is my friend.  Fills me up cheap.  But I'm not getting nearly the amount of fruits & vegetables I should be eating each day.  I can't afford them on this budget.

    Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
    I'm really glad I'm doing this challenge.  But I'm already prowling the net for recipes to make when this challenge is over.  This isn't a way of life for me - that's something I'm trying to keep in mind.  Everything I'm doing is much harder for people who have even less money to spend and don't see an end in sight to their day-to-day challenge.

    Breakdown of costs:

    Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
    Lunch: Mushroom Barley Soup with bread
    Dinner: BLTs
    Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie

    Breakfast:
    3 Eggs: 57¢
    6 tbsp milk: 18¢
    3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
    Bread: n/a
    1 organic local apple: 70¢
    TOTAL: $1.78

    Lunch:
    4 cups Barley Mushroom Soup: $3.04
    bread: n/a
    TOTAL: $3.04

    Dinner:
    bread: n/a
    2.5 oz grass-fed bacon: 93¢
    6 oz tomato: 60¢
    TOTAL: $1.53

    Dessert:
    Snickerdoodle Blondies: 38¢
    TOTAL: 38¢

    GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $6.73
    TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $24.65

    Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

    Posted at 11:16 AM in Eat on $30, frugal, musings | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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    October 13, 2009

    How the hell do you cook barley?!!

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    I've been lucky enough to grow up in a family where a lot of emphasis was put on eating healthy food.  My mom is a retired nurse and we were drinking 2% milk before most people had heard of it.  Granted, some of the nutritional advice of the 80s and 90s has turned out to be wrong (margarine anyone?) but fresh fruits and vegetables were always emphasized.  We had a garden and I grew up thinking vegetables were pretty tasty and could never understand why some of my friends thought they were disgusting.

    I'm also very lucky that I know how to cook.  My parents strongly encouraged that by praising me for making some of the most disgusting dreck I can think of.  Remind me some day to tell you about the weevil pudding.  They bought me cookbooks and helped me clean up the disaster of a kitchen I always seemed to create.  I grew up watching my mom cook.  Baking cookies for us, making us a batch of homemade playdo to squeeze through the garlic press, stirring the huge pot of spaghetti sauce that she made every summer to freeze - cooking was an act of love and this attitude transferred over to me.  Sure - my mom got busy between working the night shift and taking care of us but she had a repertoire of quick, easy meals that she pulled out when the need arose.

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    Because I loved to cook and was strongly encouraged to experiment in the kitchen, I learned how to cook a lot of stuff - quite a bit of it by messing it up a few times.  My parents either paid the cost for those messed up meals or I was able to absorb the cost of those meals when I was living on my own.  A lot of people don't have that luxury. When you have a limited amount of money to cook with, you can't take chances that it won't turn out.

    I also have access to blogs, TV shows, magazines and cookbooks where I can learn how to cook things.  I took several nutrition courses in college and have subscribed to several magazines that discuss health issues like this.  What seems like perfectly common knowledge to me is not to a lot of people.  I think assuming that our knowledge is known by everyone else is an issue that's at the root of so many of our problems in this country.

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    I think the food blogging world is a fantastic place and full of some of the most wonderful, helpful people in the world.  But I also think it's easy to get caught up in the belief that what we know is known by everyone.  There are so many people who don't have any idea how to cook or any idea what kind of food is healthy.  I was at the Fellini Krogers one day and I saw a woman buying breaded fried okra.  I overheard her telling her daughters that vegetables are healthy.  Far too many people would rather mock her for being stupid, rather than try to understand that with the knowledge she had, she really was trying to do the best she could to put healthy food on the table.

    Another example - lamb shanks.  One of the cheapest cuts of lamb and one lamb shank will flavor a whole pot of beans.  But I know how to soak dried beans.  I know that lamb is tasty because I've had it before.  I know what to do with that strange knobby piece of meat to make it taste good.  I know these things because someone taught me how.  That's so easy to take for granted!

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    My husband grew up in a very country family.  I'll admit that I was shocked the first time I went to a family dinner.  I remember asking him where the vegetables were and he laughed and laughed at me.  "Honey - there were tons of vegetables there!" And when he explained them all to me, I got it.  There WERE tons of vegetables there.  They were just all fried, drowned in bacon fat and covered in processed cheese.  But they were healthy because they were vegetables!  He had never eaten a green green bean.  When I mentioned that I loved peas, he readily agreed.  His favorite dish was canned green peas, mixed with velveeta, cream of mushroom soup and covered with buttered Ritz cracker crumbs.  Now he plants peas with me every spring and when we harvest them, we eat the first crop straight from the vine.  But he had to learn that snap peas from a vine were completely different than peas from a can.  

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    There are several groups out there that are doing their best to teach low income families how to cook with whole foods and how to eat nutritiously.  In a perfect world, every state would have these programs.  But until then, a lot of people are just getting by the best they can.

    Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
    I love No Knead bread.  So cheap and makes better bread than I can buy most places.

    Barley is a wunderfood! $1.19 a pound for organic barley.  It's cheap - bulks up readily, tastes great. 

    Turkey feet look pretty gross bobbing up and down in a stockpot but I love what bird feet do to a pot of stock.

    Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
    It's amazing how much I can crave something that I can't have.  I usually keep a small bag of jelly beans from Earthfare in my office.  They have no artificial colors in them so they're ridiculously pricey, so they're out for this week.  Naturally, they're all I can think about.  I want a damn jelly bean and I want it now!!!

    I almost killed my husband when he changed the end cost of the turkey stock THREE TIMES!  Eat on $30 - you were almost responsible for the death of man!

    Breakdown of costs:

    I made a huge pot of turkey stock on Saturday.  I'm going to count it as I use it in recipes.

    I also cut off a tablespoon of butter to use as spread for bread or other minimal uses.  I'm going to just count the cost of the whole tablespoon here and when it's gone, I'll count another one.

    Breakfast: Chorizo scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
    Lunch: Hamburger patty and leftover veggies from yesterday + 2 oz cabbage
    Dinner: Mushroom Barley Soup with bread
    Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie

    Turkey Stock:
    8.5 lbs of turkey carcass: $4.72
    1 lb turkey feet: $2.50
    8 oz onion: 40¢
    1 lb organic carrots - $1.04
    TOTAL: $8.66

    Mushroom Barley Soup(see below!)
    2 tbsp butter: 24¢
    10 cups turkey stock: $3.60
    2 containers Bella mushrooms: $3.34
    10.5 oz organic carrots: 68¢
    5 oz organic celery: 95¢
    12 oz onions: 60¢
    6 oz organic barley: 45¢
    TOTAL: $9.86 or 76¢ a cup


    Breakfast:
    3 Eggs: 57¢
    1/2 oz Chorizo: 44¢
    6 tbsp milk: 18¢
    3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
    Bread: n/a
    1 organic local apple: 70¢
    TOTAL: $2.22

    Lunch:
    1/2 lb hamburger: $1.73
    2 oz sautéed cabbage: 11¢
    TOTAL: $1.84

    Dinner:
    4 cups Barley Mushroom Soup: $3.04
    1 tbsp butter: 12¢
    bread: n/a
    TOTAL: $3.16

    Dessert:
    Snickerdoodle Blondie: 19¢
    Sweet precious wine: 72¢
    TOTAL: 91¢

    GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $8.13
    TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $17.92

    Mushroom Barley Soup

    This freezes well and tastes even better the next day.

    2 tbsp butter, divided
    2 1/2 cups onions, chopped
    1 cup celery, chopped
    1 1/2 cups thinly sliced carrot
    2 8-oz packages mushrooms, sliced
    1 cup pearl barley
    10 cups chicken stock
    3/4 tsp salt (this depends on how salty your stock is)
    1/2 tsp dried thyme

    Heat 1 1/2 tbsp butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it bubbles.  Add the carrots, celery and onion to the pan and saute 5-6 minutes until they start to lightly brown on the edges.  Add mushrooms and saute until they soften, about 5-6 minutes.  Set aside.  In a large saucepan, melt the remaining 1/2 tbsp butter over medium-high heat until bubbly.  Add barley and stir constantly until it brown a little, between 6-8 minutes.  Add stock to barley and add vegetables to pan.  Add salt and thyme.  Simmer 20 minutes and taste.  Add more salt if necessary.  

    Makes about 13 cups

    Please click here for a printable recipe!

    Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:


    Posted at 08:00 PM in easy, Eat on $30, frugal, musings, recipes | | Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

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    October 12, 2009

    Why I Am Grateful for Our Fellini Krogers

    Even though we don't live in a wealthy area (random people sitting on my garden wall-check, used condom on the sidewalk-check, empty malt beverage bottles routinely stuck in my flower border-check), we're lucky enough to have a fairly decent-sized grocery store within a 15 minute walk.  No - we don't have the olive bar or an extensive organic selection like grocery stores in more prosperous areas of our city but we do have what many here refer to as the Fellini Krogers.  One trip shopping there and you'll understand why.  I once had the mind blowing experience of listening to the muzak version of "Master and Servant" by Depeche Mode while a man in a woman's flowered nightgown shopped nearby.  Our local foods co-op is only 15 minutes away.  We can buy local eggs, milk and produce and they have a decent selection of bulk foods as well.  They'll have even more of a selection when they move a few blocks away and expand over the next couple of years.

    I'm lucky though.  In a lot of poorer areas in Knoxville, the only local markets are neighborhood corner stores where the food tends to be more expensive and whole foods are few and far between.  I ran down to our local corner store today and was able to find a few fruits like apples and bananas but they were overpriced and looked way past their prime.  Beyond snack type food like Easy Cheese, there were a few convenience meal products but very little in the way of whole foods.  The most nutritious meal I could put together was some spaghetti noodles and jarred sauce but those were at least 50% more expensive than they were at our grocery store.  Similarly, in some of the more remote areas of Grainger County, TN, there's one grocery store and that's it.  Forget about trying to buy organic produce or trying to shop around for the best price.

    I'm also lucky because we own a car.  Granted, neither one is very impressive but they run (knock on wood!) and get us where we need to go.  I'm able to shop sales if I need to and drive to the grocery store.  Yes - we do have some mass transit in our city but it's pretty pitiful and I can't imagine trying to carry a load of grocery bags and wrangle a couple of small children.  

    Another advantage we have that a lot of people don't is that we own our house.  Granted - it's ancient and under renovation and because of our budget, renovating it is taking us a long time.  We're hoping to get walls in the rooms that are lacking them this year and we might even go crazy and put in storm windows to keep the winter breeze from tussling our hair.  But we own our house and that gives us a fairly decent space to store food.  I have a Rubbermaid tote full of pasta that I bought when it was on sale a couple of months ago.  I've got a creepy cellar where I can store our canned goods and things like potatoes and apples.

    More importantly, we have a YARD! I think I drove our realtor crazy when we were house hunting because having a yard with sun was of utmost importance for us. The first year we were in the house, we put in two raised beds and we've been increasing them every year since.  Gardening can be an expensive hobby but every year, Marcus and I grow over 1000 tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings to sell at our local farmers market.  This income funds our gardening and allows us to eat the localest local food that ever localed! It also makes it a lot less expensive to eat tons of organic produce.  I'm a very strong proponent of backyard "victory" gardens and we preserve a lot of our food to eat during the fall and winter.  But again - we have a backyard where we can do that and we have the time to do that.  It's very easy to run out back and weed a bed while I'm on hold with a business associate.

    It's very easy to take for granted the access most of us have to nutritious foods.  But a lot of people lack this access and I wish we did more in our society to address that.  One thing I'm thrilled about is that our downtown farmers' market began to accept food stamps this year!  This is a wonderful opportunity for people to get their hands on fruits and vegetables and I'm thrilled the Market Square Farmer's Market is doing this!

    Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
    I love chorizo scrambled eggs.  A little bit adds a lot of flavor and you don't have to add any oil to the pan when you add the eggs.

    I love my Penzeys Double Strength vanilla but if I had another kind, I would have used it in the Snickerdoodle Blondie's I made.  Using it added a whopping $1 to the cost of the dessert.

    My sandwich contained Nduja that I bought from Boccalone while in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago.  Anita from Married with Dinner suggested it and I only wish I had bought three more.  It's wonderful because the tiniest amount gives tons of flavor and it spreads so nicely, especially if the bread is warm.  Yes - it's not inexpensive but I use so little that it's economical in my book.  My stomach and wallet are happy.

    Free-range grass-fed ground beef is worth the extra cost to me.  I don't have to worry about E. coli in my food and it just plain tastes so much better. 

    Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
    I hate calculating every single penny.  Not so much the calculation but the research of having to account for everything.  I had no idea how much baking powder was so I was stuck until my husband went down to Krogers and got the price.  I'm so grateful that I don't have to calculate everything down to the penny in my normal life.  But it also has made me aware that there are ways I can cut costs without missing it.  I do love my Penzeys vanilla but I'm going to buy some vanilla beans and try making my own.  The Nduja?  Worth every penny - so much so that I'm thinking of ordering some.

    Breakdown of costs:

    I baked bread and rather than try to figure out the amount of bread we use each day, I'm just adding this loaf to yesterday and I won't factor that cost in for each meal.

    Breakfast: Chorizo scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
    Lunch: Sandwiches with Nduja, mozzarella & tomato from garden, Snickerdoodle Blondie
    Dinner: Hamburger patty from local grass-fed beef, brown sugar roasted local, organic winter squash & sautéed local, organic cabbage
    Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie

    Bread:
    2 cups all-purpose flour: 30¢
    1 cup King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour: 21¢
    1/4 tsp yeast: 4¢
    1 tsp salt: n/a
    4 oz beer: 37¢
    TOTAL: 92¢

    Snickerdoodle Blondies(will post recipe soon!):
    1 1/3 cup flour: 20¢
    1 tsp baking powder: 2¢
    1 tsp kosher salt: n/a
    1 cup packed brown sugar: 33¢
    1/2 cup butter: 93¢
    1 local free-range egg: 19¢
    1/2 tbsp vanilla extract - $1
    1 1/2 tsp sugar: 3¢
    1 3/4 tsp cinnamon: 33¢
    TOTAL: $3.03 (16 pieces) - going to add these individually to the days we eat them.

    Breakfast:
    3 Eggs: 57¢
    1/2 oz Chorizo: 44¢
    6 tbsp milk: 18¢
    3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
    Bread: n/a
    1 organic local apple: 70¢
    TOTAL: $2.22

    Lunch:
    Bread: n/a
    1/2 oz of Nduja: 57¢
    2 oz tomatoes: 20¢
    1 oz mozzarella cheese: 14¢
    TOTAL: 91¢

    Snack:
    Snickerdoodle Blondie:19¢
    TOTAL: 19¢

    Dinner:
    1/2 lb hamburger: $1.73
    1.5 lbs winter squash: 1.94¢
    2 tbsp butter: 24¢
    .8 lb sautéed cabbage: 71¢
    1 tbsp brown sugar: 2¢
    TOTAL: $4.64

    Dessert:
    Snickerdoodle Blondie: 19¢
    Sweet precious wine: 72¢
    TOTAL: 91¢

    GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $9.79

    Our daily budget is $8.57 so we went over a bit but we also won't have to factor in bread for the next few days.

    Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

    Posted at 07:57 PM in Eat on $30, frugal, musings | | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

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    October 11, 2009

    Eat on $30 Challenge - Poverty and Hunger in East Tennessee

    This coming week, I'm going to be participating in the Eat on $30 Challenge, organized by the fabulous Tami of Running with Tweezers.  There are a number of reasons why I'm doing this challenge but the main reason is to bring a little attention to the issue of hunger in the United States and especially in East Tennessee and the Appalachian region.

    70,000 people in the city of Knoxville and Knox County will go to bed hungry tonight.  That's 20% of the population in Knox County - a truly staggering statistic.  At the closest elementary school to our house, 78% of the students are eligible for the reduced or free lunch program.  We have a local food pantry several blocks away and every month the number of people making use of that pantry increases.

    I downloaded the statistics for monthly food stamp participation in Tennessee.  In October 2008, 46,317 individuals and 21,949 households received food stamps.  In September of 2009, 56,766 individuals and 27594 households received food stamps.  In every single major metropolitan area in Tennessee, demand for food stamps has risen.  But this isn't just a problem found mainly in our urban centers.  I went through the statistics for every single county in Tennessee and every single one showed an increase in the number of people and households using food stamps.  In October of 2008, 443,115 households got some form of food stamps.  Only eleven months later, that number has risen to 542,930 which is a 22.5% increase.  In our state, the average monthly food stamp benefit works out to be $1.07 per person, per meal.  

    Urban poverty tends to have a face in our society but rural poverty is less known. I have spent a decent amount of time in the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina and have seen poverty that made it seem like time had frozen since the Great Depression.  Appalachia is an area that has seen great progress since the 1960s but poverty is still is endemic to many areas.  The per capita income in Martin County Kentucky is $10,650 and 37% of its residents live below the poverty line.  In the Central Appalachian region, per capita income is only 71% of the national per capita income.  My Grainger County husband's family has a long, proud history of farming but it's become a lot harder to make a living farming, especially with the demise of the domestic tobacco market.  Most of them work two jobs just to get by.

    In our society, we spend a lot of time categorizing people into groups and pitting them against one another, liberal versus conservatives, city dwellers versus country folks, etc.  We pit religions against one another and feed into the simmering resentment between people of different races and backgrounds.  But poverty is an issue that touches all of us, either directly or indirectly.  I own my own business and I'm grateful that my husband and I can work for ourselves, but in this economy we're all vulnerable and anyone of us could find ourselves in a situation where we had to rely on food stamps or food pantries.  I see people dressed in very nice clothes getting groceries from our nearby food bank and it reminds me that nothing in this life is ever certain.

    So what are the other reasons why I'm doing this challenge? I think anything that bring awareness to the issue of poverty and hunger is a good thing.  At the same time, there are some personal reasons why I'm doing this.  Even though I see the lines of people trudging to our local food bank,it's easy for me to get caught up in my own worries about our budget and concerns about the economy and how it affects us.  There's a lot to worry about.  But I also have a lot to be grateful about.  I also struggle with the balance between being a food lover and blogger and keeping in mind that not everyone has the luxury of being able to cook what they want.  I deal with the guilt that my food dollar doesn't stretch far enough to buy all the local and/or organic foods that I'd like to buy but I also try to remind myself that it's a luxury to be able to feel guilty about that and at least we have the means to buy food. 

    This week, I'm going to attempt to do the Eat on $30 challenge using a decent amount of local and organic products.  However, after crunching numbers, I can already tell that we'll have to compromise a bit.  We never buy anything but local, grass-fed beef but we will buy chicken or pork that's on manager's special at our local Krogers if it's cheap enough.  I don't like doing it and we haven't recently but we do have a few cuts of meat in our freezer I might use.  The stock we'll be cooking with is from a turkey that we got on sale after Christmas last year, supplemented with turkey feet supplied by River Ridge Farms. We do buy our milk from a local dairy and our eggs are free-range eggs that aren't certified organic but the farmers that produce them raise them according to organic methods.  The cheese I'll be using is not organic and is our local store brand.  I also will be using some organic fruits and vegetables.  We have a large garden but that's a resource that a lot of people don't have.  I'll factor in the price for those things by using the price for them at our local grocery store.  If I need to buy them from the store, I'll use resources like the Dirty Dozen list so that I know which produce I buy has to be organic and which I can economize on.  I'm not counting the various fresh herbs we grow in my budget.  The parsley that grows in my yard has reseeded itself year after year so it has long paid for its room and board in my garden.  I also grow several perennial herbs that I've had for years or have gotten from other gardeners in my neighborhood.  For things that we preserve, I'll use the current price of a comparative product from our local food co-op.  I also won't be factoring in plain kosher sea salt into my budget.  There are a few items where I might be unsure about the final cost.  In that case, I'll always go with the highest reasonable estimate I can figure out.

    It also might be more realistic if I took $30 and went to the grocery store and bought food with it - no tapping into my large freezer or stockpiles in my pantry.  That's going to have to be a challenge for another day.  I've got numerous perishable items in my fridge that need to be used.  I learned last year that the average household wastes 14% of their food purchases and one thing we've tried to do this year it to reduce the amount of food that goes to waste in our house. My budget also can't handle buying things like whole wheat flour when we already have almost a full bag that needs to be used in our pantry.  I'll also be using fruits and vegetables from my garden but I'll be factoring in the price that it costs to buy them from our nearest grocery store.

    I've got a crazy week ahead but I'm going to try to at least post my daily menu the next day.  I'll try to post a couple of recipes but if I'm not able to do that this coming week, I'll make sure to post them in the weeks after.

    This challenge isn't a patronizing attempt to try on what it's like to live on food stamps for the week.  It also isn't an attempt to mimic the millions of people in our country for whom hunger is a daily companion.  It's about reining myself in - giving a little bit of substance to my beliefs. It's about balancing my love for food and it's myriad possibilities with the understanding that so many people don't have that luxury of choice.  Mainly, it's a way to reaffirm the knowledge of how lucky I really am.

    Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

    Posted at 04:07 PM in Eat on $30, frugal, musings | | Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

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    September 21, 2009

    It's Fall, isn't it?

    IMG_3178

    This is the time of year when a food lovers thoughts turn to apples, potatoes, roast pork and gorgeous winter squashes.  After all, Fall starts tomorrow and all the food magazines are publishing gorgeous spreads of food featuring hearty autumn fair.  It's time to make rich stews and bake apple pies and snuggle up with your significant other in thick cable knit sweaters in front of a roaring fire.  

    If I tried snuggling in front of an roaring fire right now, I'd pass out from heatstroke.  I live in Tennessee and while the temperatures have cooled down some, days in the low to mid 80s and evenings in the low to mid 60s don't exactly cry out for chili. In fact, right now is when our gardens tend to be producing the most.  If our plants have survived the dog days of summer, the cooler temperatures are encouraging our tomatoes to actually set fruit.  And the lack of high 90 degree heat actually encourages me to get back outside and reclaim the garden I gave up a few weeks ago.  The peppers are full of blossoms and the second crop of cucumbers and squash I planted are starting to set fruit.

    Even when the leaves have turned, it doesn't mean our gardens stop producing.  I get tomatoes well into October and I've even heard tales of some crazy people (present company excluded of course) who have draped their tomatoes with plastic clamped together with large binder clamps and managed to keep their tomatoes going well into November.

    The farmers markets are still full of summer produce.  You can find everything from okra to watermelon.  Peppers are still in abundance and the only thing that seems to be in scarce supply are cucumbers and summer tree fruits.  Apples are available and sweet potatoes and winter squash are starting to appear.  Jerry's got new cornmeal and sweet Fall broccoli will appear in a few weeks.

    September is the month I really focus on getting a lot of foods preserved and put up for the coming winter.  I don't have air conditioning in my kitchen and although I do have to attempt some canning in August, standing over a steaming kettle is not my favorite thing to do when it's blazing out.  I end up freezing a lot of tomatoes whole and dealing with them when it's a little cooler.

    My favorite way to use those tomatoes that are piling up in the freezer is in Roasted Tomato Sauce.  It's a great way to take a mountain of produce and reduce it into a concentrated sauce that's my favorite pasta sauce in the whole world.  I pressure can mine but it also freezes well.  The long cooking concentrates the flavors and caramelizes all the wonderful sugars in this sauce.  My husband has been known to can it himself because he says if I do it, I end up eating half of it before it's even canned.  

    Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to run Office Depot for some (cough, cough) office supplies. I hear the binder clips are on sale and everyone can always use more binder clips, right?

    Roasted Tomato Sauce

    First off - you need to understand that this recipe is very flexible.  None of these quantities are set in stone.  If you have tons of red peppers, use them!  If you want a sauce with a lot of garlic flavor, add lots of extra garlic.  You're also going to need to be flexible with time.  If you start out with frozen tomatoes, it will obviously take longer.  If I have a lot of tomatoes, as the sauce cooks down, I add in more frozen tomatoes to make more sauce.  This slows down the cooking process as well.

    Heat your oven to 425 degrees.  I take a large baking or roasting pan and fill it full of tomatoes. Some of these are fresh and some of them are tomatoes that I threw in the freezer to deal with later.  I added three onions that were peeled and quartered, a few sweet red peppers that I seeded and cut in half, four Big Bomb hot peppers that were seeded and approximately 25 cloves of garlic - separate the cloves but you don't need to peel these.  Then drizzle on 1/4 cup of olive oil.  Put it in the oven.

    This batch contained 10 pounds of tomatoes:
     

    IMG_3166

    I couldn't fit all the tomatoes in at the start so I added them as the sauce cooked down.  I usually stir this sauce about every 30 minutes.  After a couple of hours, the sauce looks like this:

    IMG_3167

    As you can see, the skins are getting very brown.  Keep stirring every 30 minutes.  This sauce is going to reduce quite a bit.  Those ten pounds of tomatoes and other vegetables ended up reducing to about five cups once it's been pureed.  When it's done, it will look like this:

    IMG_3170

    As you can see, there's very little juice in the bottom of the pan.  I cooked the above pan of sauce for 4 1/2 hours.  Let the pan cool for about 30 minutes or until you can handle it without burning yourself.  You want to put it all through a food mill on the finest setting.  This will take all the seeds and skins out of your sauce and puree all the vegetables together.  Once you've put it through the food mill, make sure to stir the sauce thoroughly.  If you don't have a food mill, you could use a fine sieve and press it through. 

    The sauce you've just made is very concentrated.  For two servings of pasta, we usually use around a 1/4 cup of sauce, diluted with pasta water.  

    Now that you have this stuff, what do you do with it?

    • Toss with pasta and some of the pasta water to thin it out a bit and serve.
    • Saute some eggplant, red peppers and zucchini until done.  Add sauce and thin with pasta water.
    • Thin it out with a little bit of milk or cream.
    • Thin it out with red wine and add some more herbs to it.
    • Soak some diced, sun-dried tomatoes (I use ones I've marinated before drying) in a half cup of hot whole milk.  Puree in the blender and add to roasted tomato sauce.
    • Puree it with a little bit of canned tomato and use it as a pizza sauce.  Or just thin with a little bit of water and use as a pizza sauce.

    I pressure can my sauce in quarter pint jars.  This is not a tested recipe so I don't recommend following my example but I follow the recipe for pressure canning meat sauce in the Ball Blue Book.  This sauce cooks down so much that freezing is much simpler to do.  I just tend to have stuffed freezers this time of year so I can it to save room.

    For printable recipe, click here!

    Posted at 08:21 PM in backyard harvest, frugal, peppers, preserving, recipes, tomatoes | | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

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    July 19, 2009

    Really Inauthentic Okonomiyaki

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    When you've spent several hours in the garden in ninety degree weather, the last thing you're going to worry about is whether or not the recipe you're making is "true" to a particular cuisine.  You want something quick to make, something that uses up a decent amount of produce, something reasonably healthy and something that tastes great.

    Heidi Swanson's Japanese Pizza recipe fits the bill perfectly.  No - it's not a traditional recipe for okonomiyaki but it's quick and really tasty.  It's also perfect for using up odds and ends of vegetables from the garden.  I've subbed in kohlrabi, turnip, beets and zucchini and it's all been tasty.  We've gotten in the habit of eating this at least once a week and we've yet to get tired of it.

    Serves 1-2

    2 cups shredded vegetables, (I used 1 3/4 cup cabbage and 1/4 cup grated carrot)
    1 cup leeks, chopped (wash these suckers well)
    2 cloves garlic, minced
    2/3 cup white whole wheat flour
    1/4 teaspoon salt
    1 teaspoon tamari
    2 eggs, beaten
    1 tablespoon olive oil

    Dipping Sauce - mix together:
    1 tablespoon siracha (this makes a very spice sauce so add to taste)
    2 tablespoons mayonnaise

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    Combine the vegetables in a bowl. Toss the vegetables with the flour until they're all covered with a dusting of flour.  Add salt and tamari to the egg and stir the egg mixture into the vegetables.  Mix until everything is evenly coated.  

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    Heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat and add olive oil.  Spoon the cabbage mixture into the pan and using a spatula, press it into a round pancake shape, making it as flat as you can.  Cook 5 to 7 minutes - you want it to turn a nice brown color.  To flip, slide out onto a plate.  Put another plate on top of that plate and flip over.  Add a little more oil to pan, let heat for 20-30 seconds and slide the pancake back into the skillet.  Let cook another 5-7 minutes.  Cut into wedges and serve hot with dipping sauce.

    The only non-local ingredients in the above meal is the tamari, the siracha, the flour and olive oil.  The mayo was actually made with olive oil and local eggs.  This week has once again been full of local eating.  Last night, we had a group of friends over and we all shared pizza made with local tomatoes and vegetables, heirloom tomato salad and brown sugar peach ice cream made with local milk and eggs and local peaches.  Breakfasts are usually local eggs made some way and a bowl of local fruit, usually peaches.  Lunches are either leftovers or salads made from leftover bread, tomatoes and whatever local produce needs to be used.  To be honest, I can't imagine not using local ingredients this time of year.  Not only do you get to support your neighbors, but it's just good food. 

    Posted at 10:20 PM in easy, frugal, leftovers, One Local Summer, recipes | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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    June 12, 2009

    Friday Link Love

    Hungry for Change - this is the blog associated with Food Inc., the new movie coming out tomorrow that goes head to head with the food industry.  Right now it's only playing in NYC, LA and San Francisco but hopefully it will pick up steam and move on to other cities.  When it comes out on video, I plan to have a screening at our house! 

    The 20th healthiest foods under $1

    A great article at Salon.com - Can we afford to eat ethically?

    This has been around for a while but I discovered it when I read the above article and there's some great information here - Rebecca's Pocket: The Organic Thrifty Food Challenge

    One Dollar Diet Project - very thought provoking blog

    My friend Jeff has a great blog called EatWisconsin.  He's got lots of restaurant reviews and information on all kinds of local food products for you Cheeseheads! 

    Posted at 08:49 AM in frugal, links | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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    March 23, 2009

    Ga Nuong or Vietnamese Grilled Chicken

    I'm still trying to buy as much local meat as we can afford but our budget won't allow for as much as we'd like.  We're eating a lot more vegetarian dishes but those can be expensive in the winter.  One way we're trying to save money is by only buying chicken or pork(we never buy CAFO beef) when it's on manager's special.  This usually means you have to use it that day or freeze it which is never an issue for us because we have two chest freezers.  Last Friday, I went to Ingles and we were able to pick up seven 5 lb packs of boneless chicken breasts for $2.99 each.   $23 for 35 pounds of chicken which works out to around 67 cents a pound.  I rationalize this CAFO purchase by hoping that both the store and producers lose money on me - you don't need to tell me how dumb that logic is.  Chicken breasts aren't my favorite but they're really quick and easy for salads and such.  We also have several packages of chicken thighs we got for 45 cents a pound.  I LOVE chicken thighs.  It's a much juicer cut of meat and I think it grills amazingly well.  Kim from A Mighty Appetite posted this recipe a while ago and it intrigued me but for some weird reason, I never got around to making it.  The recipe includes fish sauce which is one of those ingredients that I never feel entirely confident using because it...well, smells kind of gross.  You'd think by now I'd learn how awesome stuff using this always turns out.  This recipe is a keeper.  I think some tinkering is in order (a little more lime juice and maybe add some garlic) but this makes a really lovely, easy dish.  I served it with a green salad with a Asian-style vinaigrette(rice wine vinegar, canola oil, garlic, fresh ginger and enough sugar to make it slightly sweet).

     

    Grilled Chicken(Ga Nuong)
    From "Into the Vietnamese Kitchen" by Andrea Nguyen

    Ingredients
    1/4 teaspoon granulated sugar
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
    1 tablespoon fish sauce
    1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
    2 tablespoons Canola or other neutral oil
    2 3/4 pounds chicken thighs, skin and extra fat removed

    Method
    In a bowl large enough to accommodate the chicken, combine all ingredients except the chicken and mix well. Add chicken and use your fingers to massage marinade into the meat, distributing the seasonings as evenly as possible. Marinate at room temperature for at least 30 minutes, or cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours     (Note from Kristina - I also am going to try a longer marination time).

    Prepare a medium-hot charcoal fire or preheat a gas grill to medium.

    Place chicken on grill rack and cook, turning every five minutes, until browned on both sides, with clear juices. If necessary, transfer meat to a 400-degree oven to finish cooking. You are looking for an internal temperature of approximately 165 degrees.

    Posted at 09:31 PM in chickens, frugal | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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    February 19, 2009

    Slow, Low, Wet and Long

    One of the ways we're trying to save money is by using cuts of meat that are a little off the beaten path.  Everyone can cook steaks, chicken breasts, pork chops and lamb chops.  But try to find information on lesser known cuts of meat, like lamb ribs and you'll find a lot less information out there.  Lamb is one of the few types of meat that I feel comfortable buying in the grocery store.  Americans eat less than a pound a year of lamb so there's very little incentive for commercial producers to up production using things like CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation).  Granted, I still like to buy as much as I can locally so I stay on the lookout for inexpensive cuts like lamb ribs from places like Laurel Creek Farms but if I see a good buy on lamb at the supermarket, I'll pick it up.  A lot of these cuts of meat benefit from cooking a long time over very low heat with some liquid in the pan.  This takes a normally very tough cut of meat and makes it so tender it almost falls off the bone.

    One of my favorite blogs is Farmgirl Fare.  Susan lives on a 240 acre farm in Missouri.  She's a baker so you can find all kinds of amazing bread recipes on her site. She and her husband also raise sheep so out of necessity, she's got several yummy sounding lamb recipes.  The one I tried today was Susan's Slow Cooked Dutch Oven Lamb Shanks.  I made a few adjustments but stayed fairly close to the recipe.

    Susan's Slow Cooked Dutch Oven Lamb

    1/4 cup olive oil
    6 garlic cloves, chopped
    3 yellow onions, peeled and thickly sliced
    1.5 pounds lamb shanks
    1 cup red wine (I used Shiraz)
    2 Tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
    1/4 cup chopped fresh flat leaf Italian parsley
    6 medium frozen tomatoes - chopped up 
    salt & pepper

    Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Sprinkle lamb shanks with salt and and pepper and then brown on all sides (in batches if necessary), using tongs to turn the pieces.  Remove lamb and set aside.

    Add onions to Dutch oven and cook, stirring frequently, until soft and starting to brown, about 5 to 7 minutes.  Make a well in the center of the onions and add the garlic. Cook, stirring so that all the garlic touches the bottom of the pot, 1 to 2 minutes. Mix garlic with onions.  Stir in 1/2 cup of the wine, bring to a boil and stir up any brown bits on the bottom of the pot.  Stir in the rosemary and parsley.  Move onions to the side and set the lamb roasts on the bottom of the pot. Cover the meat with some of the onions.  Scatter the frozen tomatoes over the meat and pour on the remaining 1/2 cup of red wine.  Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground pepper.

    Put on the lid and set the pot in the oven. Cook for 2-1/2 to 3 hours (or longer), stirring everything around after the first and second hours. If the meat hasn't already fallen off the bone, it should easily come away with a fork. Mix everything together and serve with mashed potatoe, egg noodles or fresh bread.

    I served mine with egg noodles.  This was fabulous.  Lamb has to be one of the best smelling meats you can cook and when you add the onions, garlic and wine.... well, just get ready to be driven out of your mind with hunger.  I would make a few changes to it though.  I would add more rosemary and parsley - in fact, I might rub the shanks down with extra rosemary, sea salt and pepper the day before I cooked them, just to give them more flavor.  I would also add even more tomatoes and onions.  Lamb fat is a beautiful thing and it flavors food in an amazing way.  Adding more vegetables would stretch the number of servings as well, making it even less expensive per serving.  I also would make this the day before I wanted to serve it.  I would cook it longer in order to render out as much fat as possible.  I would try cooking it longer too.  Make sure you strain out the juices and let them sit in a fat strainer for a brief period of time.  This reduces the greasiness of the dish quite a bit.

    This was so good it's going into regular rotation on our dinner menu.  It's easy, I can already tell you that leftovers will hold well and it tastes great.

    Posted at 08:43 PM in frugal, links, recipes | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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