Saturday, June 30, 2007

What, no numbers? (and no comment)

First, if anybody wanted to comment on this, I'm sorry, but I'm still trying to figure out how to enable the "comment" function with Blogger. sigh. I would love to read some comments, if only I could figure it out. (added: I just looked and now the Comments option is appearing at the bottom, so I guess I figured it out!)
No, I'm not tracking each week's $. My boyfriend isn't really participating in the experiment (he brought home a box of donuts the other day that was definately NOT in my imaginary budget). But, even if only one of is playing the game, I figure we're saving money.
Also, as I said at the beginning, I have lived on Food Stamps. I know it can be done. Rebecca Blood's blog proves it too. (I applaud her efforts at accounting for each teaspoon of salt and each 1/8 ouce of cumin, but I just don't care enough to do that.) My focus is just my own awareness, and sharing some recipes and cooking/budget tips.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Rice and Lentil Tacos!

Last night I tried a recipe from Rebecca Blood's blog: Rice and Lentils. Her version was pretty simple, and easy to add things too (like the four carrots). I used this a a filling for tacos (warmed corn tortillas) along with a bit of parmesean cheese and some Cholula brand hot sauce. I used a rice cooker to make it, so I was able to read "Square Foot Gardening" while the food was cooking.

Her blog is so much more detailed, that I almost gave up on mine. I'm keeping at it anyway. Its good practice for me.

I had the tacos with a salad. Our home grown lettuce is doing great, and we had our first yellow crookneck squash. I added a tomato from our weekly box. Its going to be a while until we get our own tomatos. I spent an hour yesterday wrestling our tomato plants into cages/frames. You're supposed to do this when the plants are small, not when they are sprawling all over and 3' tall. Better late than never. The first sprouts are coming up in the new garden bed. It seems too soon - maybe they're weeds? Its fun eating "free" food. Oh, and we harvested 3 plums from our ignored tree. The one I ate yesterday was possibly the best plum I've ever had. Maybe we need to move the trees to a sunnier place where they could thrive.

Recipe
Rice and Lentils
You can use this for any bits of vegetable you have on hand. It may seem like a lot of ingredients, but I just tossed in what I felt like.
1/2 C lentils (red and yellow lentils cook faster than brown or green ones), 1/2 C brown rice (or white), 2 C water, 1/4 onion, 4 carrots, 2 T butter or olive oil, 1/4 t cumin, 1/4 t chili powder, 1 T soy sauce, 2 cloves garlic
Grate the carrots and the onion and toss everything into the rice cooker (or a pot) except the soy sauce. If you're using a rice cooker, then turn it on and let it do its thing for 30 minutes or until it clicks off. If you're using a pot, bring it all to a boil, then down to a simmer, and cover, leaving it cook on the lowest heat for 20 minutes. Add the soy sauce when its all done.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

capering

Just some odds and ends here. I've been eating up leftovers, so I don't have any recipes for today. I did manage to fact-check (ie, I was in Safeway) some things from before. Capers work out to about 18¢ for a teaspoon, so I guess a rounded teaspoon of the little guys for my salade nicoise would be about 25¢. Olives cost more - maybe 50¢ needed for a salad.

I found a blog very similar to mine (she even gets her produce from Terra Firma Farm, too!):
http://www.rebeccablood.net/thriftyo/
...and she has a recipe for pickled carrots, so maybe I'll try that out and see how it works.

I managed to finish building, filling, and seeding my third raised vegetable bed yesterday. Basil, green beans, eggplant, raddishes and sunflowers are on their way (I hope). This bed is following the advice from the popular "Square Foot Gardening" book.

We all have our guilty pleasures for food. One of mine are the 10-pack bags of frozen burritos. $3.50 for ten of them means I have a quick and ready snack for work. In a few days I'm going to make up a batch of my own, and see how they compare for price, easy, and freezability. Either way, a 35¢ burrito is hard to beat.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

A Nice Salad

Green beans and small "new" potatoes are in season. They are plentiful at the farmers' markets, in our weekly produce box, and in our own garden. (I continued to be amazed that I'm able to eat food that we grew ourselves, which is probably a sad commentary on urban living.)

What do you make when you have green beans, potatoes, a tomato, one egg and some left over olives? It is Salade Nicoise. The great cuisines of the world take leftovers and odds and ends and give it a fancy name. Nice.

The five or six olives I found last week hiding in the back of the fridge went in with a spoonful of capers. I suppose these things are luxuries, but I didn't buy them recently so I cant tell what they cost. A jar of capers lasts a long time (ours must be at least a year old, maybe more), and you only use a spoonful at a time, so I'm guessing the spoonful might have cost 25¢, and maybe the olives were another quarter. A can of tuna is $1.89, and makes two servings, so I think my salad came in at or near the $1.57 target, even with the boiled egg.

I made another version of the salad today, but with carrots and no tuna. We get a lot of carrots in our weekly box but I find it difficult to use them all up, so I'm getting "creative" (or desperate). The carrots added some nice color to the salad, and you can boil everything together.

Recipe
Nice Salad
1 lb new potatoes (small potatoes), 1 lb green beans, 1 tomato, a handful of olives, 1 t salt, 1/2 t pepper, 2 T olive oil, 1t capers, 3-4 carrots, 4 eggs, a bit of onion, 1 clove garlic, 1 can of tuna.
Bring 2 Qt salted water to a boil. Add potatoes and boil for 5 minutes, add the carrots for another 3 minutes, and then add the egg and the green beans for the last 5 minutes and everything will be done at the same time. Drain it all in a colander, and while its cooling down, crush a clove of garlic in a salad bowl, add olive oil, salt and pepper, capers and perhaps a slice or two of onion chopped small. Toss everything with chopped tomato and olives. Let it cool to room temperature, and top with tuna and the boiled egg.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Pie for Breakfast

Yup, today I finished the last slice of peach pie, along with some plain yogurt. Since the pie is $1.25 or so, and a serving of Pavel's Russian yogurt (made here in Oakland) is about 50¢, I'm a bit over budget. Oh well, it sure taste's good!!
The pizza from last night survived long enough for lunch, and I had it with some fresh garden salad -- as in, from MY garden. Lettuce, carrot, green beans (purple ones, too), radish and fresh herbs make a tasty summer salad. Tomorrow I might add some potatoes and half a can of tuna for a salad nicoise (about 75¢ for half a can of tuna).
A lot of people don't know that fruit and vegetable seeds (and strawberry plants) can be purchased with Food Stamps. A $2 pack of lettuce or radish seeds will yield a lot more than that in fresh produce. I've got three heads of lettuce waiting for the axe, er, table, and I've still got plenty of seeds left.
One doesn't need a huge yard to raise edible veggies; my friend I. grows lettuce, herbs and tomatoes on his downtown Oakland balcony.
We've got tomatoes, crookneck squash, pickling cucumbers, pumpkin, green and purple beans, potatoes, carrots, radish, watermelon, sweet peppers, and fresh herbs. A few of the tomatoes were purchased as plants; everything else was from seed. Some of the seeds we received for free in seed swaps with other gardeners.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Flat & Round

Three random foods from yesterday and today: tortillas, pancakes and pizza
I went shopping yesterday at Mi Pueblo. Its a Latino-oriented supermarket (as big as a Safeway or other major grocery store). For me, the big draw is fresh tortillas, made on the spot and still warm in the bag. A stack of 50 tortillas is $2.50, or 5¢ each. Their fresh guacamole is $4/lb, so a lunch of cheese, tortillas, guacamole and sour cream (Mexican Cream) comes out to about $1.
I made pancakes today (recipe below). Pancakes from scratch only takes about 60 seconds more than from a box, and they taste MUCH better. My boyf picked some lemons from a friend's tree so I was able to make "buttermilk" pancakes. You add lemon juice to milk to curdle it and give it the same acid Ph as buttermilk. The acid works with the baking soda to make fluffy pancakes, but this way you don't have to buy buttermilk (regular milk is less expensive). The lemonmilk pancakes taste just as good as buttermilk ones. Lemonmilk Pancakes with Strawberry Syrup costs $1 (two servings: milk 50¢, egg 25¢, flour, salt, sugar, baking soda and baking powder 50¢, strawberries 50¢, butter and syrup 25¢).
Tonight I'll make pizza. Since lunch and dinner were only $1 each, it is OK if the the pizza costs a bit more ($2).
Recipe
Pancakes (2 or 3 servings)
1 C flour, 1 T sugar, 1 t baking powder, 1 pinch salt, 1 egg, 1 C milk, 1 T melted butter or oil
(if you want to make "buttermilk" pancakes add 1 T lemon juice and use only 1/2 t baking powder and add 1/2 t baking soda)
Mix the egg, milk and butter (or oil) in a bowl. In another bowl mix the dry ingredients. Lightly mix the wet into the dry, and cook over medium heat.
Note: the batter can keep for a day or two in the fridge
Strawberry Sauce
5 - 8 strawberries, 1 t butter, 1 t maple syrup or sugar
Slice strawberries, add the butter and sweetner and cook in a small pan over low heat for 5 minutes.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Is it Soup, Yet?

I think dried beans are probably the least expensive form of protein one can purchase. The problem with cooking beans is that they can take an hour or two, so they aren't a quick meal when you get home from work. The solutions are to pre-soak the beans and to make things ahead of time.
Put the beans in a pot at night and add water to about an inch above the top of the beans. By pre-soaking the beans over night, you'll be able to cook them the next day in much less time (30 to 45 minutes, instead of 2-3 hours). Yes, this means you have to plan a day ahead.
On Sunday I made Navy Bean soup. Navy beans are small white beans, and - since they are small - I think they cook a bit faster. I had been planning to make some soup for few days, and presoaked the beans on Wednesday. Things kept coming up, so I kept the uncooked, soaked beans in the fridge until I was finally ready. I had some past-their-prime carrots, and half an onion left over from Tuesday, sitting next to the beans.
Soup is a great way to use up sketchy looking or leftover vegetables (and bits of meat, for you carnivores). By the time they were chopped and cooked, you couldn't tell that the carrots weren't fresh. Maybe they lost a bit of vitamins, but they made good soup. The beans took as long to cook as it took me to chop the vegs, saute the onion (and garlic), add the carrots and kale and salt and pepper and a quart of stock. The stock was probably the most expensive thing. Total cost was $6.50 ($3 vegetable stock, $1 beans, $1 kale, $1 carrots, $.50 onion, garlic, salt, pepper and some fresh herbs from our planter box) and it made 5 generous portions. All you need is to add a slice or two of bread and maybe top with some shedded cheese and you have dinner for $1.57/serving. (Oh, and i froze half the soup in single-portion containers, so now I've got ready-to-go lunches.)

Monday, June 18, 2007

Farmers Markets - its Peachy!

We're lucky to have a bunch of different farmers markets in our area. Oakland had four or five that I know of, and Berkeley has even more. These markets are great for getting superfresh produce at reasonable prices.

Yesterday I went to the market at Jack London Square, on Oakland's waterfront. June is "stone fruits" month here -- apricots, nectarines, cherries and peaches. I bought some organic yellow peaches to make a pie (2 pounds for $5), plus a white peach to eat on the spot. A few minutes later I found a second organic peach seller and bought even more peaches. I also bought green beans ($1 for a 1 lb bag), curly kale (high in iron and minerals, and only $1), long skinny Moroccan cukumbers (to make tzatziki), and some yellow and green zucchini. My backpack was FULL. I probably spent too much on peaches, but everything else was innexpensive, so I splurged a little.

Is fresh peach pie something that makes sense on a Food Stamp budget? Well, it cost $6.90 (peaches $5, butter $1.40, and $.50 for salt, sugar, and flour), or $1/serving. If I'm careful with my other meals, then this is an affordable luxury. Pie might seem hard to make - and the first time it is - but after the third one you learn that you can make a pie from scratch in less time than it takes to go to the store and cook a frozen one.

Recipe
Peach Pie
Pastry Dough: 1-1/3 C butter, 1 tps salt, 1-1/3 C flour, 5 T ice water
Mix butter flour and salt (I use my food processor, but you can cut in the butter with a pastry blender or two knives) until it looks like coarse corn meal. Then add the water 1 tablespoon at a time and mix until it all forms a ball. Divide the ball in half, wrap the two clumps of dough in plastic wrap (or use old plastic bags, like I do) and refrigerate.
Filling: 2 C fresh fruit (peaches, cherries, apricots), 1/4 C sugar, 2 T flour, 1/4 C bran
Slice fruit into bite size pieces. (peeling is optional, I don't) and combine with other ingredients. Roll the cold dough out into two pie-sized diskes, put one in the bottom of a pie tin, dump the fruit filling in, and then cover with the other crust. Bake at 375 for about 25 to 30 minutes.
It really is "easy as pie".

Saturday, June 16, 2007

my friend Oatmeal

My budgeting is getting confused because people have been buying me food. Last night my friend Aaron treated a few of us to a nice dinner and beers at 21st Ammendment (a brewpub) in SF. It was great, and my part of the tip was equal to my whole day's food budget.

So, to balance that out, I've been extra-frugal. One of my favorite frugal breakfasts is oatmeal. When I lived in South Dakota I bought a 25lb bag of rolled oats (aka old fashioned oat) and ate oatmeal about four days a week. I really don't know why people buy "instant" oatmeal -- the regular kind only takes 3 minutes to cook, tastes better, is probably more nutritous, and costs less.

These days I use whole "steel cut" oats. They take longer to cook (30 minutes), but I like the texture and the extra nuttiness. One way to speed up the cooking is to put them and the water in the pan at night - the oats will soak up some water and cook in 15-20 minutes. The other way to save time is to cook four servings, eat one, and put the rest in the fridge. You can microwave the other servings in 2 minutes, and it tastes just as good (maybe even better). It turns into a semisoft lump in the fridge, so just cut off the ammount you want and nuke it.

Part of the fun of oatmeal is what you add in. I've put my favorites at the end of the recipe. Plain, the oatmeal will cost about $0.35 to $0.75/serving. With the extras, you should still come out under a buck.

Recipe
Oatmeal
1 cup steel cut oats
4 cups water
1 tsp salt
Salt the water, and bring to a boil. Add the oats while stirring (to keep them from clumping into a blob). Turn the heat down a bit at a time, and stir every couple of minutes. As the oats cook, they get thicker. As they get thicker, you may need to lower the heat to prevent them from boiling over. If they get too thick, add a tablespoon of water (as needed).
When its done to your liking, add in:
butter or peanut butter (it really needs some fat to balance the carbs)
jam, raisins, dried cherries, or chopped fresh fruit
yogurt, milk, buttermilk (these make it creamy)
chopped walnuts
sugar (especially brown sugar), honey or maple syrup

Friday, June 15, 2007

Treasure Hunt - We Cleaned the Fridge

Yesterday I had an apointment in San Francisco, and met my friend Jeremy for lunch. I bought a ready-made salad (Salad Nicoise, $3.99) at Trader Joes, which pretty much shot my whole food budget for the day. So dinner was "clean the fridge and make a salad."

Paul helped, and we threw out a lot of stuff. Our fridge, like our home, tends to get filled with interesting things. Things we sometimes forget we have. We're packrats, and we clutter. We discovered a whole lot of cheeses, i combined 2 jars of rasberry jam into one, and 3 jars of pickles into one. i washed all the shelves. for the first time in months i can see the back of the fridge. Lost food is lost money.

The salad was some fancy olives, a zuchini, part of a tomato left over from last week (but still good!), 1/4 onion, 1/2 pickle (saved in the same container as the tomato), olive oil, fresh peas, pepper, salt, and a head of red lettuce. It was really hot yesterday (91 degrees) and so all the salty stuff in the salad tasted good because it was replenishing all the salts I'd sweated out. Definately an on-budget meal.

Some of the produce came from Terra Firma Farm, a local organic farm. Its a CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture), which means we subscribe, just like a magazine or newspaper. It cost us $52/month and we get a whole box of fresh produce-- stuff picked on Tuesday is in our box on Wednesday, and you can't get much fresher than that unless you grow it yourself or live next to a farm.

This week, since its June, we got a mini watermellon, garlic, peaches, strawberries, string peas, zuchini, and two ears of corn. Pretty good for $13, and none of this stuff requires cooking, except the corn. (see "recipe" below).

Recipe:
Corn on the cob: microwave 2 ears, still in the husk, for 3 minutes, let sit for another five minutes, shuck, add butter, salt and pepper and eat.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Introduction - Eating Well on a Limited Budget

Well, this is my first attempt at blogging, so please bear with me as I learn what works.

I was inspired by a recent TV newscast where some politician attempted to prove that the current Food Stamps allocation is insufficient. Back in the 90's I was on Food Stamps for a few months and I fared pretty well. (At the end of six months I had about $50 left over.) I wanted to see if I could still do that today, while eating well.

Currently, a single adult can receive the maximum of $155/month, or about $1.75 per meal per day. Since I'm living with my boyfriend, the maximum ammount we could receive would be $284, or about $1.57/meal.

Here's the link to the USDA chart if you want to see how much your family could receive.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/faqs.htm#25

We earn too much to qualify for Food Stamps, but I wanted to see how close we could keep to that $1.57/meal budget, without sacrificing our food choices. We prefer to eat locally produced, organic foods. We're vegetarians (except I sometimes eat fish), and we're both big guys who enjoy our food, so this will be an interesting challenge.

Finally, I'm probably not going to get into the politics of food policy, poverty, or other issues that don't relate to our weekly food buying and prep. Those comments are welcome, but that's not my focus. What I hope to do here is record my daily menu, costs, and perhaps some recipe sharing and tips to help people eat well on a limited budget.