Canned beans are cheap and good.  Dried beans are AT LEAST  two-thirds cheaper, [...]]]> If there is any food more economical and nutritious than dried beans, I don’t know what it is.  Oh, sure, there are plenty of other economical, nutritious foods, but I don’t think any of them is MORE economical and nutritious than dried beans.

Canned beans are cheap and good.  Dried beans are AT LEAST  two-thirds cheaper, and don’t have all that salt in them.

Beans are excellent for your health!

Beans are delicious!

Beans are super-cheap!

Beans are versatile!  Bean Pie!?  Lentil Cake??  Oh, Baby! YEAH!

Do you refrain from buying dried beans because you don’t know how to cook them?  Are you intimidated by the daunting task of putting a cup or two of dry beans into a bowl and soaking them in water overnight?  Well, stop it!  Geezie-Pete!  It’s easy!!  Fox, at SquawkFox.com, has Ten Reasons Soaking Dried Beans Can Change Your Life.

Cooked beans freeze well!  So you can cook a bunch and keep them in the freezer to eat any time, without having to soak them overnight… because they’re already cooked, right?

Lentils cook faster than other kinds of dried beans. Excellent food… definitely excellent food.

Pinto Beans Recipes

Black Beans seem to have special health benefits.

Garbanzo Beans are Chickpeas are Garbanzo Beans are amazingly versatile – make hummus, falafel, cook them with peanut butter and tomatoes!

Dried Lima Beans — Lima casserole, lima beans curry, lima bean and corn soup… and much, much more

Fava Beans “are great steamed and served with olive oil, salt, and lemon. They can also be added to soups and pastas, ground into purees, grilled, or enjoyed in artichoke risotto.”

Red Beans — it’s difficult to even say “red beans” without saying “rice”

Adzuki Beans, “The Mercedes of beans” — “The most yang of beans”

Mung Beans,  can be sprouted, but don’t have to be.

Navy Beans are tried and true!

Kidney Beans “are not only available throughout the year; they are an excellent and inexpensive form of protein.”

MORE MORE MORE BEANS!

Pickle some eggs and you’ll have easily portable, high-quality protein ready to go any time!  It’s awfully simple.  Hard boil the eggs, peel them, let them cool, boil the vinegar with whatever spices or flavorings you like (I like to add beet juice).  Quick, easy, simple, cheap, good food ready to go, on [...]]]>

Pickle some eggs and you’ll have easily portable, high-quality protein ready to go any time!  It’s awfully simple.  Hard boil the eggs, peel them, let them cool, boil the vinegar with whatever spices or flavorings you like (I like to add beet juice).  Quick, easy, simple, cheap, good food ready to go, on hand whenever you want it.

Some useful web links for information, recipes, etc.:

General information about pickled eggs, including advice about storing in refrigerator, even though pickled eggs have been around longer than refrigeration. This informative article also advises to start with eggs that are 2 or 3 weeks old.  Eggs too fresh are nearly impossible to peel once they are hard-boiled!

Pickled Eggs with Ginger, Beetroot Pickled Eggs, and British Pub Pickled Eggs

Safety tips, what to do to help peel the eggs, and several recipes (including Pineapple Pickled Eggs!) from National Center for Home Food Preparation.

Halloween is coming… try these Pickled Dragon Eggs!

Hot and Spicy Pickled Eggs

Sweet Pickled Eggs — a 5 star recipe at AllRecipes.com

How Clarence got his crazy lust for things pickled and invented Eggs From Hell — Idaho, that is.

If you’re just not going to eat liver no matter [...]]]> Even though liver has enormous health benefits, and even though it’s extremely affordable, some people will just not like it.  OK.  People like different things.  Me?  I like food that’s delicious and nutritious and doesn’t cost much money.  Liver is one of those kinds of foods.

If you’re just not going to eat liver no matter what, that’s cool.   I hope you like some of the other ideas I suggest.

If you do like liver, or are willing to try it, check this out:

One of my favorite ways to prepare liver is to make chopped liver.  The name is the basic recipe.  Cook liver, chop it.  Variations?  Infinite!  I like to eat it as a spread on bread or as a dip with crackers.

Nutritious, delicious, easy and cheap. What is it, chopped liver?!

A fine delicacy with tremendous health benefits, cheap to buy, quick and easy to prepare, liver is often shunned, disrespected and even taunted with untrue rumors  disparaging it’s healthful properties as food.

(It seems that many myth-informed, otherwise nutrition-knowledgeable folks have come to believe that liver accumulates and stores toxins  – THE LIVER DOES NOT STORE TOXINS. It’s not like a coffee filter. That’s not how it works.)

There are other ways to cook liver, of course, maybe the way people think of it most is fried liver and onions.  Chopped liver, and it’s variations liverwurst, braunschweiger, and liver pate are awfully popular, too.

You can use any kind of liver: chicken, pork, calf, beef,  heck, if you’ve got ducks and big fish, you can use their livers if you want to.

And you can add anything your heart desires.  I always like to put onions in there.  Some kind of fat – traditionally chicken fat, for some people –  or oil, or even mayonnaise, or kefir cheese – whatever floats your boat.  I like to add herbs:  parsley is good, basil is awesome.

Cook, chop, add stuff, smush with a fork or something.  That’s it.

Want to see some REAL recipes?

Pâte de foie de poulet avec Cognac (Pureed Chicken Livers with Cognac)

Chopped Chicken Livers  (5-star recipe at FoodNetwork.com)

Old Country Chopped Liver at Epicurious.com

Stacy’s Grandma Dorothy’s chopped liver

5-Minute VIDEO: How to Make Chopped Liver

My sister gave me a huge bag of apples that she picked from a tree growing as part of the landscaping at her condo.  My mother has recently been giving me more peaches than I can eat before they go bad. [...]]]>

If you stock up, you gotta store it and keep it from going bad.

My sister gave me a huge bag of apples that she picked from a tree growing as part of the landscaping at her condo.  My mother has recently been giving me more peaches than I can eat before they go bad.  Mulberries grow like crazy around here, in a suburban setting.  I find lots of peppermint and lemon balm and other herbs growing as weeds.  Sometimes food is on sale at exceptionally low prices, far lower than normal.

What do you do when you have more food than you can consume in a short time? How can you take advantage of seasonal abundance, free gifts of food, and unusually low sale prices and manage to keep that food to eat later in the year?

Food preservation.  Doing stuff to food so it won’t spoil. Yes, processing.  Processing at home.  (Actually, ALL food preparation is some kind of processing, after all.) It’s what folks call “putting food by.”

Freezing, canning, dehydrating, or even just careful storage under the right conditions of humidity and temperature are ways to keep food good to eat for a long time.

What did I do with all those apples?

That's a lot of apples.

First I cut them up a little and removed the cores. Then I cooked them.

Big ol' pot of apples, huh?

When I thought they tasted good, I canned them.

Now they will last as long as I want them!

Now I can keep them in my pantry and I don’t have to use up any freezer space for them.  (Too bad I burned them a little.  I like them anyway.  I’d recommend watching a little more carefully, though.  But hey, I’m NOT going to waste them.  I’m going to enjoy them!)

Last fall somebody gave me one of those giveaway-at-work turkey coupons.  Last year my freezer was largely taken over by mucho pounds of apples. (Not a problem this time!)  So to keep that turkey – it was a BIG one! – I canned that!  The hardest part was finding a big enough jar.

Hahahaha… I crack me up.  No, I cut up the turkey meat and canned it in quart jars and pint jars.

Pressure canning works for meat, too!

So, more than six months later, I can still enjoy that free turkey!

What about all those peaches Mom gave me?   I wisely asked for a food dehydrator last time somebody asked me what I wanted for my birthday.  I sliced and dried those peaches, and now I can use them any time I want them, add them to breads or food bars, or take them with me when I go hiking.  You can dry all kinds of fruit – it’s easy!

8 peaches in one quart jar!

I also dried mulberries when they were plentiful weeks ago.  When Aldi has pineapples on sale for $1.50 or less I get a bunch of them and dry some of those. I dried mint and lemon balm I found growing wild, too.

Wild mint, rosemary and Thai basil from my sister, and wild chives.

You don’t even have to have a dehydrator for a lot of stuff you can dry.  You can dry mushrooms and herbs in your oven on the lowest setting.  You can let some herbs just dry in the air, on a board.

I freeze a lot of food, too.  Right now my freezer has lots of wild blackberries and mulberries and black raspberries from crazy, escaped mulberry trees and raspberry canes that just grow in vacant lots around here.  I captured the wily berries and have imprisoned them in my freezer!   Bwahahahahah!

You can freeze, can, or dry tomatoes and tomato products.  Good to know right about this time of year when you may receive more tomatoes than you know what to do with!

I already wrote about how you can freeze fresh ginger root – remember?  Just freeze it, and take it out to slice or grate when you need it, and put the rest back in the freezer for next time.  That way you don’t have to use powdered ginger, and the fresh ginger won’t go bad on you.

If you’re canning, whether hot water bath canning, or pressure canning, ABSOLUTELY be certain to use known, tested, proven, approved recipes and FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS EXACTLY.   Huh?  ME?  say “follow the directions”???!!!   Yeah, I know, weird.  But canning is not something to fool around with.  Canning done properly is an excellent way to preserve nutritious goodness for a long, long time.  Canning done carelessly is a way to horrors, pain, and death. So do it right, if you’re going to do it.

And guess what?  What?  Preserving food is actually very, very chic right now! That’s right, it’s “green” and it’s “local”  and it’s trendy and you’ll be hot stuff with the cool kids when you whip out your jar of homemade marinara sauce. Oooooooh!  Cool!

"They don't taste like kale!"

Just wash some fresh kale, or collard greens or other greens, cut them into chip-size pieces, give them a very light coating of [...]]]> Versatile, portable, and easy, healthful kale chips might be a way for people who don’t normally like leafy greens to enjoy the healthful benefits of these nutritional treasures.

"They don't taste like kale!"

Just wash some fresh kale, or collard greens or other greens, cut them into chip-size pieces, give them a very light coating of oil either in a bowl or in a bag, then spread them on a sheet pan and bake them for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees, until they are crispy.

There are so many good things to say about kale chips, or collard green chips, it’s hard to know what’s most important.  It’s easy to take them along on trips to the fair, where it might otherwise be awkward to take some cooked leafy greens.  They make a snack like potato chips but they’re awfully good for you. And people who don’t really like leafy greens taste them and say “Wow, these don’t even taste like kale!  I like these!  I could eat these!” Maybe that’s the most important thing of all, then.  If they are a way to enjoy leafy greens and you wouldn’t otherwise eat kale, then this could be a great new way to get healthy.

Of course, I love kale anyway, and for me this is just one more way to enjoy them!

The part about how easy it is to take them along for lunch when I go out and about, though….  I think that’s pretty darn cool, as well.

Kale Chips —  pretty awesome, huh?

Recipes:

Roasted Kale Chips with Sea Salt and Vinegar

Jason, the chip man, is happy — with gorgeous pics.

Decorate your table with an arrangement of green chips!

Mustard green chips

Collard green chips in food dehydrator Tastes “…surprisingly like I remember dorritos taste.”

VIDEO:  Little kid LIKES ‘em!

I usually make bread about once a week – I keep half of it out for immediate use, and I freeze half of it to use halfway through the week after I eat the first half.  That way I have [...]]]> Good, cheap, homemade bread sometimes goes stale quicker than storebought bread because it’s made without preservatives.

I usually make bread about once a week – I keep half of it out for immediate use, and I freeze half of it to use halfway through the week after I eat the first half.  That way I have nice fresh bread all week.

But sometimes you’ll have bread that goes stale, anyway.  Any kind of grain product, bread in any form, whether loaves, slices, buns, crackers, muffins, corn chips, biscuits, old tortillas, stale pastries and cookies  –  et cetera, et cetera, and so on, and so forth —  can still be used in many different, delicious ways.

Throwing away stale bread = throwing away food = throwing away money.

There are plenty of recipes that specifically require stale bread.  If you don’t have a lot at one time, you can put pieces of stale or dried out bread in a bag in the freezer and accumulate it, the same way you accumulate vegetable trimmings.  In fact, you could use those veg scraps to make stock to use with stale bread for delicious dressing.

10 Smart Ways to Use Stale Bread http://green.yahoo.com/blog/daily_green_cheapskate/30/10-smart-ways-to-reuse-stale-bread.html

Stale bread is wonderful! http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/19/the-wonders-of-stale-bread/

Real gazpacho uses stale bread: http://www.spain-recipes.com/gazpacho-recipes.html

French toast: http://baking.about.com/od/frenchtoast/a/allabout.htm

Croutons: http://www.barryfarm.com/How_tos/how_to_croutons.htm

Cheese Fondue:  http://www.ehow.com/about_4615288_cheese-fondue.html

French onion soup: http://hairstylelounge.sheknows.com/articles/807476/how-to-make-the-best-french-onion-soup

Stuffing http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2317598/how_to_use_stale_bread_for_low_cost.html?cat=22

Oyster dressing: http://www.recipepuppy.com/?similiar=74773

Bread pudding: http://www.joyofbaking.com/BreadPudding.html

Bread crumbs: http://www.barryfarm.com/How_tos/how_to_crumbs.htm

Tortilla soup (calls for stale tortillas, but you could use other stale bread) http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/chicken-tortilla-soup-v/Detail.aspx

Tuscan Summer Bread Salad  http://italianfood.about.com/od/primivari/r/blr0106.htm

New England Pan Pie http://www.cooks.com/rec/story/128/#U

As you see, you can chop up some old, dry bread and put it in just about anything you’re cooking, really.

I love rice, but don’t want it the same way day after day. Here’s a fun way to prepare rice a different way. Make noodles out of it!

Rice and water  are all the ingredients in these rice noodles.  The same stuff is used for the chips, but then I [...]]]>

I love rice, but don’t want it the same way day after day. Here’s a fun way to prepare rice a different way. Make noodles out of it!

Rice and water  are all the ingredients in these rice noodles.  The same stuff is used for the chips, but then I put various seasonings on top.

This was just my third try at making rice noodles. I think I finally came up with a pretty cool way to do it. It’s simple, easy, quick, cheap and there’s nothing in these but whole grain. I used brown rice, but any kind of rice will work.

This is fun to play around with.  The next time I’m going to do it with black sweet rice!

I played around with variations based on these recipes before I thought of trying to make the noodles in my oven:

Making Fresh Rice Noodles (in layers) at AsiaRecipe.com

Instructive VIDEO: Homemade Kway Teo, at iFood.tv

Here’s how I did it.  My contribution to this is the steaming of the noodle batter in my oven, on a big tray, rather than doing it in a steamer:

Soak a cup of rice in a cup of water overnight or longer.   Put the soaked rice with the water into a blender and mix, grind, blend or puree for about 30 seconds or so until it turns into a pretty smooth liquid.

Put a pot of water on the stove to boil.   I used a roasting pan, but anything that will fit in the oven along with the pan of rice batter will work.

Turn the oven on and set the temperature to 275° F.

Oil a sheet pan (cookie sheet). Pour the rice batter onto the pan and spread it uniformly over the pan. This layer of rice glop should be pretty thin, especially if you’re going make crackers (chips?) with it.

Put the pot of boiling water on the bottom shelf of the oven, and put the pan of rice batter on a shelf above that.

Cook for 8 minutes, or until the top of the rice batter is dry to the touch and the edge of the rice noodle sheet starts to pull away from the edges.

With a little help from a rubber spatula, peel the sheet of noodle material away from the pan.

Now you can cut the sheet into noodles. Voila!  Presto!  You’ve got rice noodles.  You can use these noodles in stir fry, or other way you would use rice noodles bought from a store.  They’ll keep a few days in a plastic container in the refrigerator.   I don’t know how they would be if you let them dry — give it a try and let me know!

To make rice crakers (rice chips?)  just cut the noodle sheet into squares, triangles or whatever shapes and sizes you want if you want.  Take the pan of water out of the oven and turn it up to 350° F.  Wet the top of the chip shapes with water and sprinkle on whatever flavor/seasonings you like.  I like sesame seeds, or garlic, or salt, or Italian seasoning, or a drop of soy sauce.. whatever you like, alone or in combinations.

Bake the chips for 20 minutes, or until they are crispy.  OK, now you have rice chips.

Nothin’ to it, really.

Of course, “rice noodle” covers a LOT of territory.  Just as there are many, many ways to make bread of many varieties, so are there many ways to make rice noodles of many varieties.  Some of them use rice flour, rather than the whole rice grain I used for my noodles.    So go ahead, play with your food! Try different things, eat your mistakes, learn as you go, have fun and enjoy life.

Check out these videos:

“Funnel cake” technique, dripping batter into boiling water.

Steaming big rice noodle sheets in Vietnam.

Grandma Lau’s chow fun noodles, using a wok as a steamer.

Making chee cheong fun (rice noodle rolls) with shrimp, sausage and onion.

]]> http://realcheapfood.com/?feed=rss2&p=1062 0 http://realcheapfood.com/?p=1033 http://realcheapfood.com/?p=1033#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:25:40 +0000 matthew http://realcheapfood.com/?p=1033 Frozen veggie burgers cost way, way more than real meat in the grocery store. Some of them don’t taste very good, many of them have long and complicated lists of ingredients, and they may even contain harmful chemicals!

It’s easy to make your own high-health, great tasting veggie burgers (with complete protein!) for about one third [...]]]> Frozen veggie burgers cost way, way more than real meat in the grocery store. Some of them don’t taste very good, many of them have long and complicated lists of ingredients, and they may even contain harmful chemicals!

It’s easy to make your own high-health, great tasting veggie burgers (with complete protein!) for about one third the cost of cheap, fatty hamburger. You’ll save a TON of money over buying industrially processed, “all natural” veggie burgers.  There’s not much work involved, and you’ll know exactly what’s in your food.

This is one of those dishes that does not require exact measurements, or even a particular list of ingredients.  You make what you want, using what you have.  However you do it, it’s the right way.

I had on hand some cooked quinoa, some sprouted adzuki beans, and some mung bean sprouts.  When I was thinking about something to make, I thought maybe I could combine these with eggs.  That would be good.  I could have done that. You could do that.

But I decided not to use eggs this time, and tried grinding a couple of tablespoons of flaxseed to use as a binder instead of the egg.  It worked perfectly.  So these patties are vegan (even though I’m not vegan).  There are only 4 ingredients (not counting the tablespoon of olive oil I used to cook them).

1  1/4 cup sprouted adzuki beans

1  1/4 cup cooked quinoa

1  1/2cup mung bean sprouts

2 Tablespoons ground flaxseed

An analysis provided by NutritionData.com says that these patties contain complete protein, meaning they have  ”all the essential amino acids in the proper proportions.”  NutritionData.com also says “This food is very low in Saturated Fat, Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Protein, Folate, Magnesium, Phosphorus and Copper, and a very good source of Manganese.”

“Veggie burger” really covers a lot of territory.  There are an infinite number of ways to combine vegetable materials into patty form and cook them.  Falafel is a kind of veggie burger, after all.  I do concede that it’s easier to say “veggie burger” than “another one of a million ways to make patties out of vegetables.”

You’ll find dozens of great veggie burger recipes at about.com.

There’s a five-star rated recipe for Morgan’s Veggie Patties in Guy Fieri’s corner of FoodNetwork.com.

Remember what I said about falafel?  In the “Ultimate Veggie Burger Recipe” from the book, Super Natural Cooking, the author says to “Turn the patty into the bun and stuff that with all sorts of good stuff.“