How the hell do you cook barley?!!

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.

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.

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!

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.  

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:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

Comments

[Dana]

You are so right about taking so many things for granted about food, including our knowledge about it! My husband had never had a fresh green bean until he met me, they were always frozen. And he still thinks he hates peas because all his mom would serve were canned peas and he hated the mushy texture. Whenever I use the fresh ones, I point them out and he is amazed by how much he likes them.

[TNLocavore]

The only reason Marcus liked the dish his mom served is because you couldn't taste the peas. He is sometimes amazed by how many vegetables he loves that he never would have thought he'd like. We're conquering brussels sprouts this year!

[The Frugal Hostess]

Great post - what the hell even *is* barley? :)

[Kate at Serendipity]

These posts are amazing. Thank you for all this information, especially the data you gave in the first post of this series. I'm looking forward to the rest of them.

As a Belgian Locavore, I have access to different things than you do. But the principle is the same, and the results are too. I live in an apartment, so don't have much room to grow food. That means that I've gotten to know the local producers. I love that.

I'm looking forward to reading more of the authors in this series. THANK YOU ALL.

[maybelles mom]

I love the idea of barley and the use of turkey feet; both are great ways to get the most for your money. And, I also agree about missing the sweet forbiddens. I am starting to get there too.

[TNLocavore]

Frugal Hostess - exactly! Whole grains & dried beans scare a lot of people. What the heck do you do with them?

[TNLocavore]

Kate - thank you! It's been pretty eye-opening. I'm not blind to the issue of hunger - we have too many soup kitchens, missions and food pantries around here for me to not be aware but having to account for everything is very wearing and stressful. I can't imagine how stressful it would be if messing up meant I wouldn't have money to eat for a day or two.

[Kristen]

Haha...velveeta! I agree, we take for granted what we know about healthy foods! Great job with the challenge! I'd be interested in trying it next time!!

[TNLocavore]

Kristen - please do join us! It's been very interesting to do.