"You can cut food costs by eating more meals at home and by making sure they feature some of the healthiest foods from your supermarket -- foods like whole grains, vegetables, and beans."
Elaine Magee, MPH, RD

Categories

Past Posts

Find Flavorful Fun Fermenting Food!

Home-pickled stuff practically glows with an aura of creativity, vitality, and productivity!

Home-pickled stuff practically glows with an aura of creativity, vitality, and productivity!

Traditional Cultures Can Show Developed World How To Preserve Food — “These are traditional methods which some households still practice across the country to save on wasting precious food.” – Marianne de Nazareth

One reason to pickle foods at home is to make foods last longer.  Sometimes you will find an exceptionally low price on vegetables in season, or someone might give you a big bag of produce from their garden, and you’ll have so much that you can’t eat it all before it starts to go bad.  When you make pickled vegetables you can enjoy them for weeks!

Pickling (also called brining, or corning, resulting in pickles, relish, piccalilli, chutney, achar, giardiniera, …) not only makes food last longer, but also adds interesting flavor and texture variations to otherwise familiar foods you may be getting bored with, and actually increases the nutritional value of foods.

You can pickle just about any vegetable. There are hundreds of variations, but the most basic recipe is  salt + water + vegetables.  Sauerkraut and kimchee are made this way. You can also pickle carrots or other vegetables without vinegar, using kosher salt, water, and spices. Other versions of pickled foods involve vinegar, or vinegar and sugar.

Try it out!  People have been pickling food for 4,000 years. You don’t need special appliances or expensive ingredients. In fact, the whole point of pickling is to save money and have good, healthy food to eat for a long time.

“Pickled vegetables make great snacks and hors d’oeuvres. They look beautiful on a platter. They’re also good with a sandwich or with cottage cheese, a quick and easy way to make vegetables part of your lunch.” – Martha Rose Shulman

Refrigerator Pickles: Cauliflower, Carrots, Cukes, You Name It — from FoodNetwork.com

Carrots, Radishes, Broccoli, Squash, Green Tomatoes… Refrigerator Pickles – Posts on FoodInJars.com

Pickling Tips and Recipes from The Old Farmer’s Almanac

YUNOMAKEPICKLES

 

Share

Poor Man’s Risotto, or… Ris-OAT-o!

It cooks quickly and costs next to nutthin’ – I’m talkin’ ’bout SAVORY OATS.   The basic approach, as illustrated in this video by Matt Dellapina (or Matt of the Pina), is simple and adaptable to accommodate whatever you have on hand, whether an egg, some leftover bits of vegetables or maybe leftover beef stew, any kind of cheese including dried Parmesan, peanut butter, and so on, and so forth, et cetera, et cetera.   (I like to cook MY oatmeal with canned sardines. Mmmmmm… stick-to-yo-ribs!)

Delicious, nutritious, and cheap as all get out — savory oats.  Give it a try.

Yes, it’s otherwise called oat risotto.  You can use steel-cut oats if you want, but old-fashioned rolled oats cook quicker and cost a lot less.  So use old-fashioned rolled oats, even in the recipes that call for steel-cut oats.  Yeah, we can do that!  Culinary Anarchy, Baby!

Use soy sauce, ginger, and onion for an Asian Oat Risotto.

Oatmeal with Peas and Bacon will cost ya’ 15 cents or less for a hearty breakfast. Beats the old egg mc’sumpthin at the moldy arches, don’t it?

Cook your oatmeal with mushrooms and kale in chicken broth, and you’ll have a complete lunch or dinner in one pan.

When you try Savory Butternut Squash Oatmeal you may find that the delicious and healthful meal you’re having reminds you of something from a fancy restaurant.

 

 

Share

Italian Seasoning

It’s not that I’m singling out Italian seasoning as the only important seasoning, it’s just that I see Italian seasoning on sale for a dollar or less fairly often, in lots of stores, including dollar stores. It’s one of the most common, and least expensive, herb mixtures you can find.

The precise mix of herbs in Italian seasoning varies from brand to brand, but I don’t think that matters a whole lot. It’s usually heavy on oregano and basil, with some combination of basil, oregano, majoram and thyme thrown in. Sometimes  you’ll find sage or rosemary included, too.

In addition to the health benefits of the herbs themselves, they add an extra dimension of flavor to lots of dishes, increasing people’s interest and satisfaction in the food without adding any extra salt, or fat, or calories.

I like to put Italian seasoning in an easy, quick homemade tomato sauce to use like marinara sauce, on spaghetti or other pasta or noodles, or in chili or tomato soup. Soften chopped onions in a little oil in a big pot, add canned tomatoes and the seasoning. Cook all that for about 10 or 15 minutes and you’ll have a classic, terrific, healthy, delicious and really inexpensive all-purpose red sauce.

“I’ll not shy from the blessed truth:
You can make an awesomely good pasta sauce
in just barely more time than it takes to heat up a jar of pre-made.
Add to that the fact that yours will be cheaper.”
James P. DeWan

For a nice variation of flavor in dishes where you use flour or bread crumbs to coat foods before you cook them, like fried liver or “oven-fried” baked chicken, add Italian seasoning to the coating mix before you coat the food in it.

Add Italian seasoning to homemade meatballs or meatloaf, too. Not necessarily every time you make them, but sometimes. It’s a nice change of taste. You can use ground beef or ground turkey for the meat loaf. Saute chopped onion and bell pepper and garlic in a little oil. Let that cool a bit and then combine that with the ground meat, an egg, bread crumbs, Italian seasoning, and a little tomato sauce. Mix it up with your hands (the most fun part!), form it into loaves. Then bake it in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes, during which you can cook some green vegetables and vacuum the living room. Ta-daaaa!

Share

Homemade Flour Tortillas

It's easy.

It’s easy.

I just made a pound of whole wheat tortillas for about 50 cents.  It was easy.  It’ll be even easier next time because I’ll have more experience.

I used white whole wheat flour, and it worked just fine.  Not much to it, really. The basic idea is describable in one sentence:   Add a little water and fat to some flour, roll a piece of dough thin and flat, and cook it on a hot surface for a minute.

I used this recipe from Kristin Van Dyken at TasteOfHome.com. Kristin describes it in more exquisite detail, using seven sentences and the measurements of four ingredients.  Still pretty simple.

The one part that does require a little art is the rolling of the dough.  It’s just that if you want pretty circles, you have to have technique for this part.  If you just want some food to eat, well, they don’t have to be real pretty…

Rolling out the dough might take a little practice.

Rolling out the dough might take a little practice.

Chef John at AllRecipes.com has a nice VIDEO: HOW TO MAKE HOMEMADE FLOUR TORTILLAS.  He uses a tortilla press, so you can see how that works, too.

I was happy with my tortillas, even though maybe you can tell I don’t have a lot of experience with these things. You can see good step-by-step pictures of the process by Melly, who IS an expert with homemade tortillas, at MexicoInMyKitchen.com.

Everyone seems to agree that a little practice will get you where you want to go so that you will be able to easily and quickly knock out a stack of delicious tortillas for a couple of two-bitses any time you want.

Share

It’s Easy to Pan-Sear Fish

Stephen Gibbs, of HandsOnGourmet.com event caterers, shows how to pan-sear fish:

Once you get the basic technique, everything is easy.

Kalyn Denny uses frozen Tilapia from Costco to make Sauteed Tilapia with Parmesan Crust. She has step-by-step instructions and a recipe on her website, KalynsKitchen.com.

You can use butter instead of oil, if you like.   This works well with Sauteed Whiting with Parsley and Lemon.

Add greens and a whole grain side and you’ll have a tremendous healthy meal – for instance:  Pan-Seared Pollack with Sauteed Mustard Greens and Bulgar Wheat Salad.

Share