Eating Well Cheaply |
| When I first started this blog, it was because I had just been laid off, and wanted my savings to last as long as possible. So I undertook this project, trying to stretch
leftovers in creative new ways. Just reheating was a cop-out. But now I'm re-employed, so it'll have to be a bit different. The cheap meals will more likely be lunches from now on, but
I still intend to keep up my old habits. More money for the expensive dinner parties we like to throw!
A note on costs: in general, I don't keep track of how much things like flour, sugar, salt, and so forth cost. When I list costs, it's usually just the items I had to buy specifically for that meal. Not always, though. If I buy a bunch of some type of fruit, and use a couple pieces here, a couple pieces there, I'll try and fill in the per-fruit cost or an estimate. Also, I usually just list costs for the first time I buy something. After that point, it counts as leftovers, since I've paid the price for it for some other dish, and the fact that I get to re-use it is a bonus. |
Eating Out Cheaply Friday, January 10, 2003
San Francisco's Dine About Town program kicks off this
weekend, and runs until the end of the month. This is a great way to enjoy some of SF's nicer restaurants
for a very reasonable price: $20 for a lunch prix fixe, $30 for a dinner prix fixe. Proceeds go to the Meals
on Wheels program. Be sure and
check out the details for the restaurant(s) you want to go to, as different restaurants participate
on different days, some do lunch but not dinner or vice versa, and some explicitly require you to
mention Dine About Town when you reserve.
Oh, and you have to pay with Visa. And wine and tip are not included.
We're booked for bacar and the
Acme Chophouse and will probably add one more before we're done. Bye Bye Beans Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Well, Melissa and I did manage to finish off the Boston baked beans, but I am still awash with cornbread.
So whereas yesterday's lunch was Yankee Bruschetta, today's was Yankee Panzanella. Or Fennel and Orange Bread Salad. Take your pick.
I turned the rest of the cornbread into croutons, dicing it into large cubes and toasting them until they were dry. I picked up some fennel
and orange and some salad greens, as well as a shallot, from the grocery store as I left the office. I made
the vinaigrette when I got home, using orange zest and the aforementioned shallot.
This morning, I got up early (which I really only do for food-related things), and sliced my orange
into little wedges, and packed my lunch. I stopped by the farmer's market on the way in, but unfortunately
I beat the Capricious seller to the market; he wasn't there yet, so I had to do without their fantastic
aged goat cheese.
When it was time to eat my lunch, I took the container with the croutons, and stirred in a little vinaigrette. Then I chopped the fennel into small batons. I would've cut them that morning, but I couldn't remember if fennel oxidizes. Anyway, I took one of our plates, ringed it with the marinated cornbread croutons, and placed some greens in the middle (which I first tossed with more of the vinaigrette in their container). Then I laid out slices of the prosciutto salami, which we still have from the Derrick Bought Too Much Prosciutto Salami saga, laying them into a ring on the salad heap. Interspersed with that, I laid the orange wedges. Finally, I made a small heap of fennel batons on the top, and drizzled more of the vinaigrette on top, making sure to end up with a dollop of the shallots sitting on top of the fennel. My co-workers think I'm insane. But it was a beautiful presentation, and I wish I had already bought my camera so I could take pictures. Never fear, though. I suspect one will soon be coming. It was a bit of a drag bringing 4 containers of food and a fennel plant to work, but the results were worth it. I do wish I had gotten some goat cheese; I brought in a cheese plane to do shavings of the cheese over the salad.
Costs (I'm getting worse about keeping receipts for these things now that I'm employed, so these are approximate): Yankee Bruschetta Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Today's lunch was the next installment of Derrick Made Too Much Cornbread and Baked Beans. Melissa
and I have been chowing down on these for a few days, but we only finished off the beans today and
there's still a boatload of cornbread. So okay. Maybe I made just enough Baked Beans.
My intent today was to make a sandwich from the cornbread with the beans as filling. The cornbread, while not quite stale, is definitely not crying to be eaten as is, so the plan was to toast it. But as I actually started prepping the assembly at work, I reaized that I'd have to use a tiny amount of beans to ensure that they did not splurt in a wide circle when I bit into the sandwich. And that that tiny amount would be overwhelmed by my cake-like cornbread slices. So I made a new dish: Yankee Bruschetta. I sliced the cornbread pieces between the top and bottom, and then toasted them in the office toaster oven. I reheated the beans in the microwave, and then heaped some onto each cornbread slice. (Note that the cornbread was Northern style, and the baked beans were actually Boston baked beans; that's why it's Yankee Bruschetta and not Southern Bruschetta). The whole dish came out quite nicely, though if I were making it for a dinner party, I might try and include some crisp fruit or vegetable. Don't know what exactly, but maybe little cubes of pickled apple or something. To plate them, I simply arranged the bruschetti in a square on the plate, with all of them touching. A couple of my co-workers have commented on my efforts to nicely plate dishes which are, in essence, just for myself. My theory is that if I take the time to do it just for myself, doing pretty things for other people will be more second nature, and that I'll be able to move beyond the obvious kinds of platings into more interesting presentations.
I'm having fun with my afternoon snack. Melissa left me a pear yesterday, and I took in an apple
today (my dad brought us a bunch). Today I cut each apple half on a slight bias, and then when I set them out on a plate,
I fanned them slightly, so I had this gorgeous circle of apple slices. Maybe that was actually when
someone commented on my efforts to plate things that are for my own enjoyment. I love having
a chef's knife at work. Le weekend Monday, January 06, 2003
Rather than do separate posts for each day, I thought I'd summarize the weekend's cheap eating efforts.
Saturday I made a stir-fry. We kept meaning to do more of these when I was unemployed, but somehow we never did. But since I bought myself a new chef's knife for a "getting a job" present, I was eager to prepare a dish which required a lot of chopping. We did a shrimp stir-fry, with a myriad of vegetables which Melissa had bought earlier in the week, and an orange-chile sauce I got from one of my cookbooks. I was quite happy with how it came out, but I definitely learned that mushrooms need to be sautéed on their own before being tossed in, as they seep so much moisture that it cools off the pan too much and causes the rest of the food to stew. My presentation idea was obvious: I love the sight of stir-fry on a big mound of fluffy white rice. Only we were out of rice, which I discovered at the last moment, so I used egg noodles. Ah well. The wine was equally obvious. Orange, spice, shrimp. I walked in to the wine shop and asked to see their Gewürtzraminers. Not a Fetzer Echo Ridge this time, I ended up with a Bollenberg Gewürtzraminer 2000 from Alsace. It was yummy. Signature lychee notes, good acidity. Much better than our last Gewurz.
Costs (approximate): Sunday night we did roast chicken with braised celery and a sage-ginger cornbread. This was good, but I was most pleased with my chicken economy. The butcher had included the giblets (I usually forget to ask, and they usually forget to do it), and so while the chicken roasted I turned the giblets into a simple stock, and then thickened that with a roux and stirred in some mustard to create a nice sauce. I was happy to have exploited so much of the bird. The chicken will form the basis of lunches for a couple of days, and of course the bones will go towards stock later this week. For this, we dug out some more wines from our days as members of Ridge's Advanced Tasting Program, where you get bottles of limited wine. We actually ended up opening two bottles, since the first one reeked of cork taint. A textbook case. The wine was a Late Picked Zinfandel called "Nervo" and featured a whopping 15.9% alcohol. Melissa and I polished off a half-bottle each, as is now customary, but we were reeling for the rest of the night. Melissa made me drink a bunch of water to help prevent a blistering hangover. Not the best impression to make three days into a new job. Other than the alcohol and cork taint, the wine was stunning. Hard to describe, but it evoked warm figs and plums with spices of various kinds. Another fantastic Ridge bottling.
Costs (approximate):
Chicken: $6 While we ate dinner and pickled ourselves with the wine, I made Boston baked beans from a recent recipe in Cook's Illustrated. If you have even the slightest interest in baked beans, run out and buy the issue. They were delicous, and they keep (and improve) for 3-4 days. My idea was to have them available for lunch for a few days, but at our current rate of consumption, we'll see how long they last. Be forewarned, however. They take 5-6 hours from start to finish (I set an alarm to wake myself up when necessary; they finished at 2 in the morning).
Which brings us to lunch today, the likely playground for my cheap eating tactics. I brought in
a half-breast from the chicken, some cornbread, and some beans, plus an orange and pear Melissa left for me. While I didn't realize it at the
time, my new company is well-provisioned for someone like me. There's a cutting board, a chef's knife
(stamped and serrated, but still), a bread knife, real plates, glasses, and cutlery, a toaster and
microwave, and even a dishwasher. |
