I stopped buying pre-made breadcrumbs not right after Alice Waters told me to make my own (via her book The Art of Simple Food) but when I stopped (mostly) eating wheat/grain products that aren’t fermented or soaked. The whole wheat panko we used to buy came in a plastic container and didn’t really get used much anyway. Now, I throw the heels of our Alvarado St. Sourdough Sprouted Grain (double whammy) sandwich bread into a waxed paper bag. Last night was the first time I actually remembered that I had that bag of heels on the top of the fridge and also had a distinct use for tasty breadcrumbs.

Two heels made plenty of crumbs for a 1/2lb of fish (which is just the right amount of fish for two people, another reason not to balk that the high cost of sustainable fish per pound- you don’t need very much)

I used our sauerkraut pounder, the instructions I’ve seen say to use the food processor, but that was too dish-intensive for something supposed to be simple. You could also use an empty bottle. I have  seen recipes that advise for bread to not be totally stale, which mine was…it turned out fine. If you can’t use actually stale bread, than what’s the point?

As neat as I think the breadcrumb resourcefulness was, I think this post is really just way to get in a word (at last) about my love for the waxed paper bag. It is a great alternative to plastic, which, for many foods, performs better due it’s ability to keep out moisture but allow the food to breathe, especially important for bread and cheese. A good ziplock, plastic wrap, or aluminum foil alternative. I highly recommend getting a pack of these compostable, handsome, handy items.

                          

I added more to this one- oyster mushrooms fresh from the market and a little meat. Sauteed all the fillings, letting the onions get dark and sweet on their own first, then the mushrooms, chard stems, and the slices of meat (I am being generic, because it was a gift and it is called a “beef stick” and I just don’t know what else to call it)- adding a bit more olive oil at this point- and lastly the rough chopped chard (I actually just turn the pan off and then add the greens so as not to cook them down too much). Then all that goes into six beaten eggs along with salt and pepper and more olive oil (also garlic, but I left it out on this one)

Scrape all the bits into the eggs, mix together and then heat the pan again and add it all. This is the part that is key to me, departing from Alice’s instructions. I just let it set and then when it seems like the bottom is done (like you can lift it with the rubber spatula) but the top is still liquidy I put it under the broiler flame and it gets this beautiful delicate bubbly browned slightly crispy layer that clearly defies description. Many recipes tell you to invert the whole thing onto a plate and then cook the other side. I can’t imagine that being successful, and I also have never seen a picture of one cooked this way so I don’t know that it would look nice or have nearly such a unique and pleasing texture as the top flame method

This technique may not work with electric ovens- I don’t know. When I turn my oven on there is a flame in the broiler section, I put it under a medium flame, not the full broiler heat. I think you can also just put it in the oven close to the top as long as it heats from there. All better choices than this ridiculous flip.

                          

We had banked on having leftovers for many days after attending two Thanksgiving dinners (the strategy in visiting different families) and doggie bags from restaurant trips over the weekend when no one felt like cooking. We forgot to factor in how quickly those leftovers would disappear when we had days of people over around lunch time. So the only goods found ourselves with come Monday were two halves of two different turkey carcasses and some gravy that ran out of something to be put on.

Yet again my Alice Waters cookbook came through on a lovely soup, rich enough to fill you up on those first December days and too rich to make more than once a year. The reason for the richness is obvious when soup cools sort of becomes a solid turkey fat jello mold…but just heat it up, forget what you saw, and it’s back to a lovely filling broth. (For that gravy I just roasted some potatoes I needed to use and just ate those in a bowl of gravy waiting for the stock to cook…it was pretty medieval feeling)

Since the carcasses had been really picked over, I didn’t have any meat to fill up the broth with so I went with two of her variations of a Turkey and Kale soup. I added a bit (1/8lb) of pancetta and some cups of cooked brown rice. Even though we have beautiful chard in the garden I decided to buy a bunch of kale since I think it holds up better for a soup we have been eating for three days already (I’d say one or two more to go). I kept the pieces big so they would slurp up like wide noodles.

The turkey bits cooked in 3 quarts of water with some vegetables and herbs for the standard stock time of about two hours. I never really count this cooking time since it doesn’t have to be dealt with. Then I just fried up the pancetta and added carrots, onion, and celery and sauteed that for a while until it was all tender enough for soup. The broth is then strained into the veggie pot, add the kale and the cooked rice.

(This picture is well before these were done, they cooked up into a lovely browned tender mess)

A note: Alice calls to parboil the kale which I find unnecessary. She lives here in the East Bay so I wish she took it upon herself to be a bit more water conscious on some of these techniques. If something asks me to use extra water I usually just figure out another way. We’ve only have two good rains since April or something. Deciding to just add the kale straight to the soup made me wonder if there are any low-water-use cookbooks out there, and if not there should be.

So, this is a great way to use all that Thursday bird, even if all the meat is gone. I would note to make sure no stuffing is attached, I ended up composting one back piece that had too much bread in it.

                          

This is the tortilla soup from my oft used and recommended Alice Waters Cookbook “The Art of Simple Food.” We’ve been feeling the pull to be a bit more carnivorous the last few days- many vegan meals have come out of our kitchen recently for a number of reasons; meat and other animal products make meals more expensive and we just don’t buy cheap meat, we have been cutting back on dairy just for our general wellbeing, and its honestly felt rather unnecessary in terms of flavor, nourishment, and what we ask of animals/workers/land to go through for sources of protein. So we’ve really cut back more and more. But I’ve always appreciated having flexibility and variety as a part of my eating habits- so I made plans for something with chicken.

I had some pre-soaked black beans in the fridge so I decided to base my recipe search there. I’m trying to get into the habit of throwing a cup of beans in a bowl full of water as soon as I remember to, regardless of what I am thinking about cooking next. After 5 or 6 hours I drain and put the soaked beans in a Nancy’s yogurt container and keep it in the fridge until I come up with a use for them. That way the prospect of using my bulk dried beans doesn’t become such a time commitment right when I need to be getting a meal together and I’ve taken advantage of a dirt cheap protein source.

Far from dirt cheap, the chicken in this soup was the most expensive ingredient. Though the recipe only calls for one chicken breast,and this is precisely why soup is so cost effective. A whole organic free-range chicken breast (with bone and skin on) was a little over 6 bucks. Other uses of this might have required on breast per person, relying on the chicken as the center of the meal which would be way more than I would want to spend on one dinner. The soup lets you spread that 6 dollars over four or five meals. I think we had two dinners (that is dinner for two twice) and three lunches.

To the recipe we added bok choy from the garden and this was also a great way to use our giant and not so awesome (mealy) tomatoes.

best flavors: lime (not in recipe), chipotle chile, anahiem pepper

Last week’s soup (I am detecting a trend) was a testament to the thrifty potential of the combination of soup, a garden, and bulk dried beans. I can’t really come up with a per meal cost for this soup, it was so nominal. Only major cost was the chicken stock- $2.50 for one quart.

Squash and corn from the garden:

(sad garden note however, is that this is the only corn we got from garden- monocrops in the home garden are not easy)

So three cheers for soup, timely for our global economic collapse and just in time for fall! (At least for parts of the country who experiences cold in the fall, apparently this is when the East Bay finally gets summer)

                          

There are a lot of discussions about this out there about this.

Apparently when Alice Waters said to skim off scum she also meant mold? I think being specific about something so out of the ordinary in cooking would have been helpful.

The germaphobe in me said to throw away the batch. Such a waste. Apparently it’s just like cheese and the rest was fine.  I really should have used the weight to keep the cabbage “anaerobic” under to brine to prevent this, but it is totally normal. A little research really goes a long way. I will try this again soon and not be so quick to give up.

                          

My first check up on my jar of not so briny cabbage (prepared using the Farmer John’s recipe) found a sweet and salty sort of dry mixture that tasted nice, but clearly wasn’t fermenting.

Since it seemed like it needed a boost to really get going, I decided to go more with the Alice Waters’ version and add some “brine” and cover it with a towel.

So I let it go like this for a few more days. Well…get ready scientists out there, we have some exciting results ahead…

MOLD!

Alice instructed to “remove any scum that may appear on the surface of the brine” and then taste. Well…I can’t imagine that this is what she meant, so I’m just letting this one go. This is terribly sad. I don’t know if this happened because it wasn’t sealed or because I omitted the part (still using the influence of the Farmer John version) with the weight on the cabbage keeping it below the brine.

We’re really disappointed, but hope to repeat the process being a little more careful. If anyone has any specifics tips, or have used either recipes referenced, pleased feel free to share your thoughts.

                          

For the most part the best food for you, whole foods (grains, beans, vegetables etc) are affordable. There is much discussion about this- clearly there are some highly processed, crappy food out there that is cheaper and easier, and maybe in the short term more satisfying than whole foods. But even just considering whole cost of health problems whole/healthier foods are cheaper. And I firmly believe, with the right knowledge on where to buy and how to cook, healthy with end up cheap.

Fresh, local vegetables direct from the farmer is the way to go. You are eating well and spending so little. But, I think it’s fair to say that most people don’t know how to cook vegetables in enough ways to keep them interesting and delicious. Also, there may be things in season that you have very little familiarity with. Or you may want to cook something in particular and find it not in season and not available. Also, if you are like me (or thankfully, were) and confounded or even turned off a bit by veggies or primarily veggie  based meals.

So these books have gotten me to a place where I understand the veggies I have on hand and can think of a variety of ways to prepare them.

A lot of the blogs and sites I’ve found on eating well on the cheap aren’t so helpful to me (which motivates me of course, because it’s my favorite topic). And even though I love the Get Rich Slowly blog, I think two posts he has up on this topic are almost irresponsible. This 16 ways to Eat Healthy While Keeping it Cheap really should be taken down, or just put somewhere else with the title “how to body build while on a college budget” or something. The first two tips (which could really just be one) is switch to water. Yes, good, of course. Some of the others like eating eggs, tuna in a can, and taking a multi vitamin are fine (you can get line caught tuna, but it isn’t something your should eat everyday). But these aren’t exactly the cornerstones of a cheap and health diet. Most notably because he eats frozen vegetables as a rule. I just really hope GRS takes this down because it’s simply isn’t good advice.

Some of the other posts there on food and eating are fine, but I think the concept is much simpler that these discussions admit. To cut and paste the quote of 2008 on food from Michael Pollan’s newest book:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

So what about this?:

• start with fresh local veggies: get a range from leafy greens to solid squashes. Have a list of what you will always have on hand like onions, garlic, and green- then go with what looks good and inspires you.
• then stock up on a variety of beans and other legumes (like lentils)
• Also have a good stock of a variety of grains from the instant pastas to the more lengthy rices then to flours that you can use to make breads, crusts, tortillas etc from scratch.
• Then fit in more complex protein sources. I eat a good variety of fish. I will buy a whole chicken to make stock to keep on hand and then have the stewed meat for a few other meals. Only grass-fed beef and only this and other meats occasionally.
• Avoid buying items that are “one use”. Make sure any packaged (including bulk) goods are able to be stretched over many meals. Figuring what packaged items you can manage to do homemade is a great adventure, from cookies to yogurt, bread to sauerkraut.
• Indulge in treats like a nice cheese, wine, desserts etc. Just keep them special by limiting. Start shopping by meal then fill in.

Bulk is beautiful!