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. |
Spring is here! Wednesday, March 12, 2003
My last couple trips to the farmer's market have been joyous ones. Asparagus is seemingly grown by
every vendor, as are strawberries. Trite as it is to say it, Spring has sprung, and lots of yummy things
are growing.
But today's visit was extra joyous. Either I was running late or he was running early, but the vendor from Capricious goat cheese was there, just barely, concurrent with my visit. Their aged goat cheese is fantastic; just ask the American Cheese Society, who awarded it Best of Show at their most recent annual judging. So anyway, I picked up a bunch of asparagus, some salted almonds, and of course some cheese (some of which I shared with my co-workers; I'm always eager to go trawling for new converts) to go with my lunch, a chicken breast I had bought from home (the results of a practice session with breaking down a chicken, as learned in my Home Butchery class and described at Obsession). I even brined the chicken, a dangerous feat since I did it that morning and had to carry a container full of salty water and chicken breast in my bag. I was very careful with it. With stuff this yummy, you merely have to assemble it correctly. I steamed my asparagus in the microwave (a little too much; I'm still learning the vagaries of cooking in these appliances), and laid the chicken breast on the oft-used George Foreman grill at work (not just used by me, either; its predilection for making nicely toasted sandwiches is its most popular aspect). That got the chicken well cooked, with attractive grill lines running along the surface. I piled the steamed asparagus in the middle of my plate, tossed in some salted almonds, bedecked it with slivers of the Capricious cheese, and finally cut the chicken breast into slices and laid them on top, keeping them in the same order they came off the breast. A co-worker had to ask: did you deliberately cut the breast so that each piece had a grill line right in the middle? You'd think they would know by now. You may notice that my cost reportage has dwindled. This is an absent-mindedness born of having more income, of course, but a lot of times these days, lunch consists of "what's left over in my fridge and what can I do with it" often well past the time when I could tell you what I paid for those items. But here are some from today:
Asparagus: $1
Expensive just for lunch, but there's a lot of lunches hidden in those numbers.
Steak Lunch Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Steak for lunch might not seem like I'm eating cheaply, but in fact they were leftover tidbits
from our dinner Sunday night, a trial run for a dish I want to do this coming weekend. I trimmed our
strip steaks down to manageable sizes for the dinner, but was loath to discard the little tips. What better
way to not waste them then to serve them for lunch two days later.
Astonishingly, I bought my green beans at the Safeway near my work. I grimaced the whole time, and I even tried stopping by Rainbow Grocery, which has a mediocre produce section at best but at least isn't a big mega-chain getting their produce from heaven knows where. Who would think that a grocery store, even a San Francisco co-op, would be closed at 9:00am on a Tuesday? Don't granola-heads have to shop before work, too? Safeway green beans aside, lunch came off deliciosly. I got the George Foreman grill at work nice and hot, and placed the steak points (which I first festooned with salt) onto the grill. The green beans I steamed in the microwave, and I also brought in some slices of stale bread which went into the toaster oven (my co-workers haven't yet noticed my ability to use every cooking appliance on the counter; usually there's a bustle of us queued up for any given device). I tossed the green beans with more salt, as well as some more of my chard-ginger-shallot relish which I've been rationing out over the last few days, and voila! Plating was simple; I piled the green beans in the middle of the plate, keeping a 1-2" border around the edge, laid my two steak bits (somewhat overcooked: medium and not crimson rare) on top, and laid my two slices of toast on the side (not opposite each other as I normally do, but one leaning against the other).
Of course, I wasn't able to muster any sauce. I thought about it a bit on my way to work, and realized
that I should have made some sort of cold butter to bring in, but hindsight is twenty-twenty. It would've
gone great with the green beans, too. Next time. Random Snips Sunday, March 09, 2003
In my continuing efforts to use up all the chard I bought last week, I made a simple salad of
shredded chard, tossing it with oil and a spoonful of the ginger, shallot, and chard stem relish
I had made the night before. I added some broiled asparagus, and garnished it with hard-boiled egg, the rest of the julienned
Gruyere from the previous day's lunch, and two slices of toasted bread. It came out well, just
a nice simple salad. But that was the effective end of the chard; while I didn't use all the rest of it
for the salad, I just figured it wouldn't keep much longer.
But the chard-stem relish has been great. I topped a beef tamale ( $2 at the farmer's market) with it the next day, and Melissa stirred some into her rice for dinner the other night. I have not yet tried the pickled lemons which I made with the rest of the liquid. Perhaps some time in the next couple of days I'll try one and see just how tart they are. If they're too tart, they might work well mixed into something creamy, the theory being that the dairy will blunt the harshness a bit.
Finally, a note on beef goo. I made the glace de viande from a second oxtail stock, and it's a very
weird substance. By the time you've reduced it so much ( a fair amount of stock netted me about 1 Tb
of the glace), the bubbles that form over the heat look
like the alien burpings of a primeval swamp. And it clings to every surface it touches with a ferocity
that rivals Super Glue. Still, I'm eager to use some in a sauce some time soon to see how it came out.
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