Archive for Eating IN

The Latest on Earth Eats

July 5, 2012 Eating IN No comments

I’ve recently gotten back into writing for Earth Eats, and in the past couple weeks I’ve done two news pieces and one recipe. Here are the latest:

Hold the Dressing? Not So Fast
A new study says our bodies don’t readily absorb nutrients from veggies, like beta-carotene and lycopene, without a little fat.

Midwestern Drought Threatens Crops, Food Prices
With corn prices up about 27 percent in the past month and no sign of rain in Midwestern states, dry weather could force food prices across the country to rise.

Carrots and Beets Served the Danish Way
Smørrebrød, Danish open-faced sandwiches, feature oven-roasted beets and carrots purchased from an area farmers market.

Huevos Rancheros Casserole

December 22, 2011 Eating IN No comments
Huevos Rancheros Casserole

I tend to invent the best recipes when I have limited ingredients. When I really have to scrounge around and search for things to put together, that’s when I come up with awesome and delicious ideas!

This week, I’ve been cleaning out the cabinets and fridge in preparation for going home over the holidays, and I came up with this recipe on the fly. I recently visited a Mexican-American friend in Chicago, and she served me real huevos rancheros for breakfast one morning. This dish isn’t quite the same—I prefer scrambled to fried eggs, I didn’t have any rice, and I didn’t have avocado or guacamole. But you can always alter the recipe to fit what you have at home—it’s a flexible, cheap dish.

Huevos Rancheros Casserole

Huevos Rancheros Casserole

Ingredients:

  • 2 Tbsp oil
  • 6 eggs
  • 2 cans of pinto beans (or refried beans)
  • 1/2 cup medium chunky salsa
  • 6 small corn tortillas
  • 1/2 cup shredded Mexican cheese
  • Salt and pepper

Method:

 

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
  2. Whisk the eggs with a bit of water and a dash of salt and pepper until they are well mixed.
  3. Heat up the oil in a large frying pan, and when the pan is hot pour the egg mixture in to make scrambled eggs.
  4. In a separate bowl, combine the pinto beans with the salsa.
  5. Now you want to layer the ingredients. Start with a thin layer of beans (about half) in the bottom of a small casserole dish, then place 3 corn tortillas on top. Place a layer of eggs, then spread a final layer of beans over the top and sprinkle cheese.
  6. Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes, or until warmed through.

I had enough for maybe 2 people to have dinner, or as a nice side dish for 4-5. This was simple, easy, and delicious!

For reference, here’s what real huevos rancheros look like:

 

Spicing Up a Simple Sugar Cookie

October 28, 2011 Eating IN No comments
IMG_5494

Hey everybody! After a long hiatus, it’s good to be back to food blogging. I’ve missed sharing my haphazard food experiments with you all, and hope to have many more to share now that I’m here again.

I was on the phone with a friend recently, and he was feeling down, so I offered to make and send him some cookies to cheer him up. I’m not sure he believed I’d actually do it – and it’s not been weeks since I made the offer – but today I finally buckled down to looking for something to make.

I didn’t have much in my kitchen this afternoon, so I looked up easy cookie recipes, and found this one on AllRecipes for Easy Sugar Cookies.

As usual, though, I couldn’t just leave this recipe as it was. The other day I had made a big batch of pumpkin puree, planning to do some sort of pumpkin bread or pumpkin pie, so I decided to use a bit of that and some pumpkin spice to “spice” up these cookies.

Har, har.

Anyway, I think these cookies turned out pretty well all-in-all. The flavor of pumpkin doesn’t overwhelm, but adds a touch of moistness that makes these cookies a delight to bite into. Plus, they’re easy to prepare, and take just 10 minutes to bake.

Easy Pumpkin Sugar Cookies

Prep time: 15 min

Cook time: 10 min

Servings: Makes 24 cookies

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup turbinado sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup pumpkin puree (link to pumpkin puree directions on EE?)
  • 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a small bowl, mix flour, baking soda, baking powder, and pumpkin pie spice.
  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. (I used a hand mixer.) Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually blend in the flour mixture, then stir in pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice until combined.
  3. Place heaping tablespoons of dough onto ungreased cookie sheet.
  4. Bake 10-12 minutes in a preheated oven, or until golden. I removed them immediately and allowed to cool on a plate.

–

I sent half the cookies to my friend, and took half over to Occupy Bloomington at People’s Park. A guy there tried one and gave me a high-five, so I guess they turned out okay! I figure the people occupying are probably more in need of staples than sweets, but maybe nobody’s donating treats, and everybody needs something special once in awhile.

Woodstone oven eggs a different way

January 9, 2011 Eating IN No comments
Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top of the eggs, but leave some of the beautiful yolks showing for presentation.

A few weeks back, Earth Eats did a podcast with Chef Orr’s recipe for Woodstone Oven Eggs.  I didn’t have all the ingredients for his version, and I’ve never been a big artichoke person, so I decided to modify it and make it my own way.  I love doing this with recipes, and I think it’s a necessary skill for anyone who prepares their own food.  It helps reduce waste, and that’s happily sustainable.

I’m going to try and walk through the steps I took in changing up this recipe.  Hopefully, it will help people who are less comfortable with cooking to take that leap from rigid recipe following to improvisation.

Here are the ingredients Chef Orr recommends, followed by my substitutions:

  • 1 pound local Italian-style sausage [I used 2 apple chicken sausages made by Lou's Famous Sausage, diced]
  • 1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon chili flakes [Same]
  • 1 tablespoon each: rosemary and thyme, chopped [I used the fresh thyme from my Aerogarden, no rosemary]
  • 3 tomatoes, roughly chopped [10 Tbsp of canned crushed tomatoes]
  • 1/2 yellow pepper, roughly chopped
  • 1/2 red pepper, roughly chopped
  • 1 can artichoke bottoms, diced [1 stalk broccoli, chopped]
  • 1 cup tomato juice [2 Tbsp water added to get more juice from crushed tomatoes]
  • 4 red skin potatoes, quartered and cooked just tender [2 red potatoes, skins on]
  • 4 Yukon gold potatoes, quartered and cooked just tender
  • kosher salt and black pepper [Same]
  • 12 farm-fresh eggs [5 Indiana eggs from pastured chickens]
  • 1/2 cup cheese of choice, grated (a mixture of Parmesan and Gruyere is nice) [1/4 cup Parmesan]

I also added in a few extra ingredients to make it my own:

  • 1/4 red onion, diced
  • 1 leek, sliced into discs
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil

As you can see, I made quite a few changes to the ingredients!  The potato, eggs, cheese, sausage, and herbs were the only items that stayed the same.  But the overall idea behind the dish—a casserole of veggies topped with whole, oven-baked eggs—was unchanged.

The cooking process was delightfully simple.  I chopped up the potatoes, onions, leeks, and sausage (which is pre-cooked), and tossed those around in a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil, until the onions were translucent and the potatoes softened.

I added the crushed tomatoes and water, and sprinkled chili flakes and fresh thyme into the pan, and tossed to coat the veggies.  I covered this mixture, letting it simmer for about 10 more minutes to allow the potatoes to get cooked through and the flavors to combine.

Add the broccoli once the potatoes have cooked through and are soft, and allow this combination to simmer for just 5 minutes more. You don’t want the broccoli to get overcooked, as it will also have time to roast in the oven.  Use the extra tablespoon of olive oil to grease your pan, then add the vegetable mixture.

Crack the eggs into a separate bowl, then carefully (without breaking the yolk) pour them over the top of the vegetables.  I pushed around my veggies to make little pockets so the yolks would sit just where I wanted them.

Top it off with some parmesan cheese, or another grated variety of your choice. I didn’t have a woodstone oven on hand, so I heated my oven to about 375 F.  I like my eggs well-done, so I cooked this for about 20 minutes.  For runnier eggs, use less time or a lower temperature.  Since all the other ingredients are cooked beforehand, you don’t have to worry about doneness for anything but the eggs.

This is a great recipe for experimentation and improvisation. Try this out with whatever veggies you have in your fridge, try different cheese. I think it would be great with some pureed squash of the butternut or pumpkin variety, spiced with grated nutmeg.  Bacon would be a nice substitute for sausage–but meat’s not necessary.  This can easily be altered to be vegetarian.

Here’s my recipe laid out all together with ingredients and method.

Woodstone oven eggs with broccoli and leeks

Ingredients:

  • 2 apple chicken sausages made by Lou’s Famous Sausage, diced
  • 1/4 red onion, diced
  • 1 leek, sliced into discs
  • 1 teaspoon chili flakes
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme from my Aerogarden, no rosemary
  • 10 Tbsp of canned crushed tomatoes
  • 1 stalk broccoli, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp water added to get more juice from crushed tomatoes
  • 2 red potatoes, skins on
  • kosher salt and black pepper
  • 5 Indiana eggs from pastured chickens
  • 1/4 cup Parmesan
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil

Method:

  1. Saute leeks, onion, sausages, and potatoes on medium heat for about 5-10 minutes, or until onions are translucent.
  2. Add tomato and water and simmer for another 10-15 minutes, covered, stirring occasionally.
  3. Add chili flakes and fresh thyme, and chopped broccoli, simmer covered for another 5 minutes.
  4. Season with salt and pepper.
  5. Pour this mixture into a greased casserole dish.
  6. Sprinkle half parmesan cheese on top.  Crack eggs in a separate dish, keeping yolks intact, and pour over the top of the vegetables in casserole dish.
  7. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese over top, bake in oven for 10-20 minutes, or until eggs are cooked to desirable hardness.

Home for the holidays (in Bloomington)

December 28, 2010 Eating IN 2 comments
That nice brown color is probably in part due to rubbing the skin with butter before baking.

I think I can safely say that I’m starting to think of Bloomington as my home. Though I’ve spent the good part of four years here as a college student, I never really felt part of the community back then—because I wasn’t. I spent the holidays at home with my family out West or back East. I rarely ventured off campus. I didn’t think much about local community issues, like where my food comes from or local industry or local history.

Recently, I’ve been trying to educate myself more about these things, and I’m learning more just by way of living here. For example, one of my part-time jobs is at Solution Tree, an educational publishing and professional development firm. The company is located in one of the Showers buildings, which I recently learned were built by the largest furniture maker in the country at the time (1920′s). The Showers Brothers manufactured 60% of furniture in the whole country. The neighborhood we live in, called the Near West Side, was historically the working-class area where furniture factory-workers lived.  The area was mostly controlled by the Showers company, and they built schools and created banks to help foster community and support the employees.

Now, I’ll freely admit that I probably should have known this already. But I’m glad to have learned it—I’m trying to learn more and constantly work to better myself. And part of that personal journey, for me, has centered around eating. Food is one of my many passions, and cooking good food is of maximal importance. But eating well means eating and consuming ethically. In a nutshell, that means trying to buy food sourced from small, local farms that have a minimal negative environmental impact.

Anyway, back to home.  This Christmas season, Eoban and I decided to spend our holiday in Bloomington.  We got our own Christmas tree, and decorated it with ornaments.  (Some handmade from old re-shaped vinyl 45′s.)

To celebrate the occasion, we had a 4-course Christmas day meal, with a turkey from Liberty Pastures as the centerpiece. The best part of this turkey was probably the trip we took to meet Jacob, the farm’s owner, and his family. He gave us a personalized tour of the operation and described how he went from being a cop in Los Angeles to a farmer in Bloomington. Liberty is just two years old, and right now they raise chickens, goats, and some turkeys in an environment as natural as possible. It sounds like a challenging situation to be in—but it’s something that Jacob is passionate about.

We got the last turkey he had, a small 8-pounder.  Probably a bit tiny for most Thanksgiving dinners but a perfect size for the two of us, and we still have plenty leftover.  Here it is before and after roasting.

I’d highly recommend heading to Liberty Pastures if you’re ever looking to buy local meat in Bloomington.  Jacob clearly loves having visitors at the farm.  He seemed to really enjoy giving us a tour, telling us about the farm, daily life, and his philosophy.  And it was comforting to know that our turkey was raised by a family who gave it the best life it could have, while it was around.

Here are a few more photos of the Christmas feast.  Alongside the turkey we had roasted garlic mashed potatoes with garlic from the Winter Market.

Brussels sprouts with bacon and pomegranate seeds.

And finally, stuffing with locally baked sesame wheat bread (from the farmers market) that had gone incredibly rock-hard, veggie broth, heavy cream, and our secret ingredient, pureed winter squash.  Eoban doesn’t normally like stuffing, but he liked this one!!!  That made me feel like a super cook.

Here’s a plate showing off all the food at once.

Eoban took most of these photos, and most of them were taken with my new f2.0 35mm Canon lens. It was his Christmas present to me, and it rocks—I was honestly too hungry to take pictures of the Christmas meal, so I’m glad he recorded our efforts. I think they turned out beautifully.

Eoban and I aren’t sure about how long we’ll live in Bloomington. We know we eventually want to move somewhere bigger and more urban.  But for now, I want to make this town my home as much as I can.  It’s a good place to live.

Food Stamp Challenge Wrap-up

December 8, 2010 Eating IN No comments

I’ve been struggling with what to say about the food stamp challenge for the past couple weeks.  Not because the challenge was overwhelmingly difficult, but rather, because it was surprisingly doable.

Before I go further, I want to clarify that my week of eating on the average food stamp benefit amount bears no comparison to what it is like to live in poverty and actually use food stamps.  The idea of the challenge was to gain insight into what others experience, to reflect on my own spending on food, and to understand the costs behind eating healthy and local foods.  And I think I did gain a better understanding of these things, but that doesn’t mean I know anything about the experience people on food stamps go through.  It’s just not the same.

Those things considered, I did get a few things out of the challenge.

  1. Success! I made it through.  It took a bit of extra effort and time to budget, but as I became accustomed to the prices of ingredients, the calculations got easier and I got better at estimating prices.  I wouldn’t have done the challenge had I thought it impossible to complete, but I ended up surprised by how well I was eating.  I could have seconds, and thirds, and still had money left for snacks in the evening.
  2. My budget. As a recent college graduate working a few part time jobs on a pretty tight budget, the challenge helped show me the minimum I can spend on food.  This was actually empowering!  I realized that I could get by on less than $100/month for food, if necessary.  For me, that means I have room to go out to bars, or restaurants, or for drinks.  For other people, it’s not that easy—and that’s something I won’t forget.
  3. The price of things. On a personal level, it helped me to gain an acute awareness of the cost of foods.  A teaspoon of salt is less than a penny, while a tablespoon of vegetable oil is about 3 cents.  A slice of local Indiana bread is 15 cents, and a local, organic, free range egg is 17 cents.  Cheap Kroger cheddar is 25 cents per ounce, and local cheese can be up to 60 cents/oz.  (If not more.)  I realized I could afford to buy local produce (especially when pumpkins are 99 cents/each!) and free range eggs

Overall, I don’t think my experience can easily compare to what people in poverty face.  I have a pretty solid background in cooking, enough money to buy kitchen supplies and appliances, and a pretty good knowledge of nutrition.  And I didn’t learn what I know from school—most of it came from my mother, family, and friends, or was just self-taught.  It took time, the willingness to experiment, and more time!  And time is something that not everyone has.

I do believe that it’s possible for people on food stamps to be able to eat and prepare cheap, nutritious, and ethically-minded food.  But I’m not going to say that this justifies funding cuts to the program.  People on food stamps must have limited assets and a very limited income to qualify, and making their access to food a bigger challenge is not the answer.  I believe we need more funding for nutrition education and a continued increase to food stamp benefits as inflation rises and the economy remains unstable.  Fortunately, it looks like the food stamps program will not be cut, and congress will also add more funding and programs for child nutrition.

Finally, when I started the challenge, I expected healthy and local foods to be more expensive and therefore more challenging to include.  This was true, to a point—but I still think it would be possible to choose eggs and milk from local, ethically-minded farmers without breaking the bank.  And if it’s possible, I think it’s worth the effort.

As for health, I recently read an article about a nutrition professor who lost weight and improved his cholesterol by going on a “Twinkie diet.”  He managed to lose almost 30 lbs in two months eating mostly “convenience store food,” by simply maintaining his daily calories below a certain level.  The point was to prove that it doesn’t matter what you eat, but how much.  And by all external indications, it seems he was right.

I still think I’d rather eat a variety of fresh and local food.  Part of that involves my own peace of mind.  I want to know that my food is sourced from sustainable growers, and produced ethically.  Food is a huge part of my daily life—it would be wrong to choose factory farm eggs over cage free ones.  And ideally, I would just raise my own hens.  (Hopefully one day I will!)  The other reason I’d prefer fresh food is that it tastes better.  Don’t get me wrong—my weakness for chocolate covered peanut butter cups sometimes wins out.  But I cook my own food because I like the variety.  It’s empowering.  And it eliminates the discomfort of not knowing.

I could go on for pages with my growing philosophy about this country’s rampant overconsumption, but I think I’ll stop here for now in favor of some semblance of brevity.

tl;dr – It was possible for me to eat on food stamp prices if you know how to cook food from scratch, but there is little leeway for mistakes and people shouldn’t have those limitations on food.  Because food is, and should be, a human right.

Prepping for a road trip – Wednesday update

October 28, 2010 Eating IN One comment

Tomorrow, we leave for New Orleans and the Voodoo Experience (a music festival featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Muse!) around 7pm, so this will probably be my last update until next week.  Yes, that’s right – I was crazy enough to do a food stamps challenge on the week I’m driving for 13 hours from Bloomington, IN to New Orleans, LA.  It’s been a long day, so this post will be a short one.

This afternoon, I felt a little ambitious and made three things: Pumpkin Zucchini Bread, Garlic Hummus, and Chocolate Pudding.  Well, the pudding wasn’t really cooking since it was from a mix.  All three things were amazing, and they’re going to help tide us over through the long road trip down south.

Today, I ate:
Lunch: Lentil stew, coffee with milk and sugar
Snack: 1/2 serving hummus and chips (tasting as I made it), chocolate pudding (from a mix)
Dinner: 1/2 apple, slice zucchini bread, 1 serving hummus, lentil stew, and coffee with milk and sugar

I didn’t realize I liked coffee this much, but it’s definitely been factored into my daily spending on the challenge.  I spent $3.32 and had $1.19 left over.

Tomorrow, I’ll be hanging out with the Earth Eats team and taking photos of a pie taste-testing event.  Natalie DeWitt, another blogger and fantastic baker, is making 4 different pie recipes this evening so they can be put to the test!

I’m pretty excited, but more than a little disappointed that I won’t be able to sample the pies.  (One of the rules of the challenge is no free food.)  Alas, I’ll have to trust the results of the test and do my own baking!

Burnt Toast Tuesday

October 27, 2010 Eating IN 2 comments
pbj_toast

It’s Tuesday evening, and I’m pretty worn out after a long day of working, cooking, and budgeting.

On normal weeks, I try to not spend much on food.  Really, I do!  I’ve always thought of myself as a budget cook.  But I’ve never had to bother actually calculating every cent out.  And now that I’m doing it, I realize that it’s a pain!  It’s time consuming, and you end up making disappointing decisions.

For example, today I planned out a hummus recipe.  It’s based on the one I posted a month or so ago, and will be great for our upcoming road trip to New Orleans this Thursday and Friday.  However, my original recipe calls for sundried tomatoes and fresh basil—that was something I couldn’t afford on our current budget, so we just didn’t include it.

Another obstacle is burnt toast.  That’s right—when making the PB&J sandwich featured at the top of the post, I accidentally over-toasted my bread.  Rather than start over and waste 30 cents, I had a very crunchy snack.

But what if I burned a whole recipe by leaving it in the oven too long?  For someone on food stamps, that could mean going without.  And I imagine that’s not easy to face, especially when you have kids to feed.

Today was a weird day.  I woke up early to take the car to the dealership, and they gave me a ride directly to work.  I forgot my pre-packaged lunch made Sunday night, so I ended up waiting until 5pm to eat.

That’s actually pretty normal for me.  Some days, I just don’t get hungry till dinnertime, and I eat most of my daily food between 5pm and midnight.  That’s fine with me—though I’m often told it’s an unhealthy choice.

So, the food for the day was:
Dinner: Lentil stew and a PB&J sandwich
Late evening meal: Crustless quiche, and a slice of toast with honey…
Late snack: Coffee with milk/artificial sweetener
For a total cost of $2.78, which is $1.72 under budget.

The main reason I was able to stay so far under budget was my fast for the majority of the day.  Probably not the healthiest or most satisfying choice—tomorrow, I will remember to bring my lunch in to work.

No new recipes for today, as I ate things I’ve already posted recipes for in the past.  Took a photo of some cups I bought from Sweet Repeats, a thrift store I discovered today.  4 for just $.50!  Not a bad deal, and I think they’ll be good for food photography.

Pumpkin Monday

October 26, 2010 Eating IN 2 comments
IMG_4977

I’m doing a series for Earth Eats (a healthy food-focused podcast and blog produced in southern Indiana) called “five pumpkin-focused recipes for anything but pie.”  And this week, I’m kicking things off with a pumpkiny budget recipe that also fits in with the food stamps challenge I’m doing.  (It’s been a very busy week for me and food!)

I wanted to make a creamy pumpkin soup, but most recipes call for heavy cream while all we had was skim milk.  So, in a stroke of inspiration, I decided to substitute some of the regular coconut milk in our fridge for cream.  It’s a vegan source of fat, and adds a creamy, thick texture to the soup.

Coconut milk is not, by any means, a completely healthy alternative.  It’s very high in saturated fat.  But a little bit goes a long way, and it’s a conscientious alternative to milk or cream.  Plus, you don’t have to worry about boiling and curdling the cream!  Coconut milk keeps its consistency at boiling temperatures.

Coconut pumpkin soup (vegan!)

Ingredients:

  • 1 red onion, finely chopped
  • 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • 2 tsp vegetable bullion
  • 2-3 cups pumpkin puree
  • 1 cup coconut milk
  • 1 Tbsp sugar

Method:

  1. Saute the vegetable oil and chopped onion on medium high until the onions are soft and translucent.
  2. Add 2 cups water and vegetable bullion (or 2 cups vegetable broth.)
  3. Add the pumpkin puree and coconut milk, stir to combine.  (I used my new food processor to puree the pumpkin, but you could use canned if you wanted.)  Heat this mixture to a boil, then lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

We enjoyed this soup with a garnish of coconut milk, fresh cilantro, and sweet toasted pumpkin seeds.  The soup was served with sliced, toasted whole wheat bread.

The soup alone costed a total of $2.93 to prepare.  It yields 4 large servings, with a very roughly estimated 400 calories each.  We ate 2 servings, plus 2 slices of whole wheat bread each, for a total cost of $1.53 for dinner for two.  With a budget of $5, we were way under, leaving a total of $4.91, or $2.46/person, to spend on any extra snacks.  Good for people like us who don’t eat breakfast:)

My overall food for the day was:

  • Lunch – black beans and caramelized corn with rice
  • Snack – some pumpkin seeds and 1 slice toast with PB&J
  • Dinner – pumpkin soup with 2 slices of toast, and broccoli stir fried with leftover black bean mixture
  • Late night snack – an apple, some cheddar cheese, and a little bit of extra lentil stew
  • Small cup of coffee with milk/sugar

My total spending today was $4.04 (leaving about $.46 leftover) and I’m actually very full this evening.  Eoban and I also each had a beer, which of course wasn’t included because alcohol can’t be purchased with food stamps.

I probably should have had more vegetables and fruit, but otherwise this seems like a pretty healthy diet – and it’s nearly vegan and fully vegetarian.  So far, so good!  I’m looking forward to cooking a crustless quiche for tomorrow’s dinner.

Planning for the challenge—lunch for the week!

October 25, 2010 Eating IN 7 comments
IMG_4974

Eoban and I decided to both do the food stamp challenge this week.  For the rules and a quick background on the challenge, see my recent post.

Basically, we have to live on $4.50/person/day for three days this week, and $3.70/person/day for two days.

Since we both lead busy lives, we decided to make two bulk meals on Sunday to prepare for the rest of the week.  Those dishes are black beans and caramelized corn with rice, and a hearty lentil stew.  Recipes follow at the bottom of the page.

Eoban and I don’t really eat breakfast.  We just don’t leave ourselves time in the morning, and neither of us really gets hungry till 11 or 12.  So we only have to account for two meals a day.  That means the week’s budget (for both of us) is as follows:

Monday-Wednesday—$4 lunch, $5 dinner
Thursday-Friday—$3 lunch, $4.40 dinner
For a grand total of $41.80.

Instead of breaking the meals down day by day, we gave ourselves a total of $18 to spend on all our lunches.  This ended up being broken into two meals, a black bean/corn dish and a lentil stew, each $9.

These are great budget meals.  The recipes are simple, easy to make in bulk, and very cheap.  I decided to keep most of the price information alongside the recipes.  However, we ended up with a total savings of $7.20 on the lunches, giving us an extra $1.44 per day to spend on other snacks or goodies.  (Or, about $0.72/person/day extra.)

We plan to alternate these lunches day by day.  Eoban and I both work through lunch, so it’s nice to have something to bring in and microwave for a warm meal during the day.  We’ll each get to have each item five times, so we’ll have a bit of variety through the week.

Lunch Recipe #1: Gentle Lentil Stew

Ingredients:

  • 3 lbs dry green lentils
  • 3 carrots
  • 3 celery stalks
  • 1/2 large sweet potato
  • 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • 6 tsp vegetable bullion
  • 4 small white onions

Method:

  1. Fry the onions on medium heat in the oil until caramelized and soft.  Add 24 cups of water and all the lentils.  Bring water to a boil, then simmer.
  2. Slice carrots, celery, and potato into bite sized chunks.  Add these to the mixture along with the bullion.
  3. Simmer for about 1 hour or until lentils and vegetables are soft.  If you overcook the lentils, they become mushy and stick together, and the outcome is less attractive.  But it tastes the same either way.
  4. Salt to taste, then enjoy a big bowl of lentil stew.

This comes out to a total cost of $7.23, and makes about 12 very large bowls.  (At around 500 calories max per bowl/serving.)  That comes out to about $0.61 per bowl, and leaves us with plenty of leftovers.

Lunch recipe #2: Black beans and caramelized corn

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb dry black beans
  • 2 cans corn
  • 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • 4 small white onions
  • 1/2 lb dry rice
  • 3 tsp salt
  • 1 Tbsp hot sauce
  • Other spices to taste (cayenne, ground red pepper, chili powder)

Method:

  1. In a rice cooker, combine 2 cups uncooked rice with 2 1/3 cups water.  Set to cook.  (Or, of course, you can cook the rice with the method of your choice.)
  2. Cook chopped onions in oil, on medium, until onions are caramelized and translucent.  Add cans of corn, with liquid, until corn is also caramelized.
  3. Meanwhile, prepare the beans by either soaking overnight or using the quick soak method.  1 lb dry black beans is about equivalent to 4-5 cups cooked beans.  Boil beans for 1-2 hours, until cooked through.
  4. Add beans to corn and onion mixture, season to taste.  I added a bit of chili powder, cayenne pepper, and some hot sauce.

The total cost was $3.57 for 5 large servings of this meal.  That comes out to $0.71 per serving.  Again, I’d roughly estimate about 500 calories per serving.

I plan to post photos of both lunches over the next few days.  Photos in this post are by Eoban Binder.

Reflections on the challenge: So far, it’s been a huge pain budgeting items, but not too hard to make cheap meals once I take the time to plan them.  The thing is, this budget doesn’t leave any room for eating out (not an option with food stamps), or for candy or ice cream. I also have a well-stocked kitchen full of spices and various types of oil.  Someone on food stamps might not have the luxury of spending $8 on peanut oil, or $4 on a new spice, if they’re struggling from week to week.  And bland food is a lot less fun.

I’ve been factoring in every cent, including oil and salt and spices as best I can.  Eoban and I decided not to include alcohol in the challenge budget, because food stamps don’t cover it.  But obviously, that’s a luxury we might not otherwise be able to afford.

I’d like to try to include more fruits and veggies in the next few days, so I think my leftover snack budget will go towards things like bananas and apples.  I’ve been thinking about seeing if I have room in the budget for a bit of hummus and chips that we could take on the road to New Orleans, so that’s something to think about as well.

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