Steak, broccoli, and mashed sweet potatoes

Simple, cheap, and something I make so often that it hardly seems worth mentioning... but one of the kids' favorites, so I really should.

It's just steak, broccoli, and mashed sweet potatoes with salt and butter. I usually get Top Sirloin when it's on sale but today I scored some skirt steak in the 50% off bin (I should have bought all of them to freeze! So not thinking!) and grilled it in a skillet with butter and onions, then after steaming the broccoli for 6 minutes I gave it a quick swirl in the amazing pan drippings to season it.

You make mashed sweet potatoes exactly like regular mashed potatoes; I like to mix in a dollop of sour cream when mashing, then serve with butter and salt.

This whole meal cost about seven dollars, and we have leftovers!

Having a hard time with groceries?

A friend turned me on to Angel Food Ministries; they provide very discounted food boxes, which you order online and are shipped to a distribution point where you can pick them up. You can also pay using SNAP, though that requires a phone call to your local distribution point. They offer several different packages, including specials which change seasonally; mostly healthy staples like raw meat and frozen vegetables. They also have a fresh fruit & veggies pack, and a shelf-stable pack with rice, beans, pasta, and canned goods. I haven't tried them yet, but my friend says the quality is just fine.

http://www.angelfoodministries.com/

I bought you a fish, but then I eated it.

One of the things I love about living in the Pacific Northwest is that occasionally, one of the major grocery chains will have whole fresh wild Pacific salmon for $5.99/lb. They'll even fillet it for you in the store.

WE EAT LIKE KINGS TONIGHT, CHILDREN!

What do I do with an entire 7-lb salmon? That's a lot of fish. If I roast the whole thing we'll be eating nothing but salmon for a week. So, I have them fillet it (and make sure to ask for the trimmings!) and then I go home and cut the fillets into approximately one-pound sections, and freeze all but one pound. Now I'm all set for about a month of salmon if we eat it once a week.

Put the trimmings in about 3 quarts of water in a deep pot along with:
one onion, quartered
one celery stalk, chopped
and one carrot, chopped

Simmer for 4-5 hours, strain, and discard the carcass and vegetables, reserving the broth.

Add to the broth:

Two cloves of garlic, minced
Two medium red potatoes, cubed
Two chopped carrots
4-6 chopped Roma tomatoes (or a can of diced tomatoes)
One bunch of kale, de-ribbed and chopped finely
A pinch of sage
A pinch of thyme
A pinch (add more if you like it spicy) of red chili flakes
Salt and pepper to taste

Simmer, covered, over medium heat for about 40 minutes.

In the meantime, season about a pound of salmon with salt, pepper, lemon juice if desired, and a pinch of dill. Bake skin-side up at 350° for about 20 minutes. Remove skin and use forks to pull the meat into bite-sized pieces, removing any bones. Add the fish to the soup right before serving.

Black bean soup with pork stock

So, if you were still wondering why you saved the bones from the short ribs, this is what you're going to do with them. Well, at least, this is what I do with them; you can do whatever you want!

Put the bones in a 3-quart saucepan with:

one whole onion, cut in quarters
one stalk of celery, coarsely chopped
one carrot, coarsely chopped
one teaspoon of salt
1 tsp Herbs de Provence

Add enough water to cover it all. Put a lid on and simmer for at least 4-6 hours to extract all the flavorful goodness. Since I know good and well you're not home all day, I recommend either getting a crockpot for this, or saving it for your day off. You can freeze the resulting stock, if desired.

Strain the stock (aka broth) and discard the bones and vegetables. Put stock back in the pan and add:

one clove of garlic, minced
one pound of black beans, soaked and rinsed
black pepper as desired

Top off with water to cover the beans by one inch, if necessary. Simmer on low heat for about an hour or until the beans are tender. Add salt to taste. Top with grated cheddar cheese and/or sour cream, and serve with fresh tomatoes.

Let's talk about beans.

Yesterday I promised a two-parter using the bones from the short ribs, but first I think I need to do a brief overview of cooking dry beans. It's simple, but most people don't know how to use them, so here we go:

Step 1. Cut a hole in the box Soak your beans in enough water to cover them by an inch, for no less than 8 and no more than 24 hours. I like to soak them overnight and cook them the next afternoon/evening.

Step 2. Drain and rinse the beans, and place them in a pot with enough water or broth to cover them by an inch. Do not add anything acidic to the beans, it prevents them from softening. You can add tomatoes, vinegar, etc. at the end after they are tender.

Step 3. Add any seasonings you like (that are not acidic) and simmer over medium-low heat for 1-3 hours, or until the beans are tender. Cooking time depends tremendously on your altitude and what type of beans you use, so allow ample time. Don't be afraid of overcooking them; most beans hold up very well to long cooktimes.

If you live at a very high altitude, you may not be able to cook most types of dry beans without a pressure cooker.

The many uses of pork shoulder

This is a two-parter. Today I'm making smoked pork short ribs, AKA "country ribs", which are usually (but not always) shoulder cuts, which means they are fatty and absolutely delicious when slow-cooked. They're also REALLY cheap. Since I'm not parboiling these, and I'm slow-cooking them in my grill (you can use an oven if you don't have a grill) I'm brining them not only to season them, but also to keep them from getting dried out.

I've never actually measured my brine recipe before, but I did this time. Just for you.

For about 4 lbs of short ribs use:

2 cups water
1-1/2 cups ice
2 TBSP salt
1 TBSP sugar
1 TBSP apple cider vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/8 tsp chipotle or cayenne powder
1/8 tsp black pepper

Mix together until the salt and sugar dissolves, add the ice and pour over the pork ribs (move them around a bit to make sure the brine solution gets in there). Refrigerate for at least an hour. I usually let mine soak for about 3 hours.

If you're using a grill, you'll want to start the coals about an hour before you're ready to put the ribs on. I use a Char-Griller without the sidecar, and have had great slow-smoked results just by getting a nice bed of coals going, then putting some green apple, cherry, or apricot branches on top of the coals, putting the meat on the top rack, and then closing and entirely damping down the grill.

If you're using an oven, preheat it to 200°. When your grill/oven is ready, put the ribs in, uncovered, and bake for about 4 hours. Serve with the condiment and side dish of your choice (I like Texas-style BBQ sauce and corn on the cob), and when you're done, collect the bones and put them in the fridge! You'll need them for tomorrow's dinner.

Speaking of which, you're going to want to get a pound of dry black beans soaking right now. I'll talk about that a little more in my next post.

Summer sandwich

This is a great way to use up leftover grilled steak... my little piranhas usually devour it, though, so I end up making a steak just for this purpose.

Top sirloin or other tender cut of steak, seasoned with salt and pepper and grilled medium-rare

Slice the steak thinly and drizzle it with Caesar or Italian salad dressing

Slice and toast a baguette

Butter the baguette

Pile meat on the baguette

Top with sliced tomato

Nom!

Indian cooking

I recently realized that there are no Indian restaurants in my vicinity. Not that I can afford to eat out regularly, but every once in a while I have a craving, and this time I discovered that it could not possibly be filled in any reasonable way. In the meantime, I have a friend in Arizona who regularly brags about the power of her Chicken Vindaloo, which was making me mildly insane.

So I started looking up Indian recipes.

The amazing thing about Indian food (not actually that amazing when you think about it) is that it's incredibly economical. Unlike many other varieties of Old World cooking, the basic ingredients tend to be dirt-cheap, once you have the required panoply of spices.

I already have almost all the spices. I was Spice Queen, after all...

So here are my first two recipes. I would just link you to the online recipes I started with, but I am never content to just use a recipe untinkered-with, so I altered then significantly.

Chicken Vindaloo

2 TBSP butter
1 teaspoon turmeric seeds
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds

2 teaspoons garam masala
1 chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 TBSP fresh chopped ginger
1 whole chopped serrano pepper
2 tsp salt (or to taste)
3 TBSP flour, preferably chickpea but wheat will do

2 1/2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar

4 fresh diced tomatoes (or 1 16-oz can)
6-8 skinless boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
6 small potatoes, peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces

Melt the butter in a deep saute pan over medium-high heat, and add the first 6 ingredients. Saute until the seeds crackle.
Add the next 7 ingredients and cook until onions are brown on the edges, and translucent.

Add the vinegar.

Dump everything but the chicken, potatoes, and tomatoes into a food processor or blender and blend until smooth. Pour over the raw chicken, stir, let marinate in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

Add all the ingredients into deep saute pan, cover, simmer 40 minutes. Serve with basmati rice and naan.



Saag Aloo:

A 16-oz bag of frozen spinach (fresh is fine, just more expensive)
2 cloves chopped garlic
About 2 TBSP fresh ginger, chopped
One chopped onion
One chopped Serrano pepper (with seeds)
Four medium potatoes, cubed
1 teaspoon turmeric
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon plain yogurt
salt

Cube the potatoes and parboil (about 10 minutes) with the turmeric and some salt.

Melt 2 TBSP butter in a pan and add the ginger, onions, serrano, and garlic. Saute on med-hi heat until the onions start to brown. Add the spinach and heat thoroughly. Briefly process in food processor or blender (if you don't have one, chop everything really finely before you start, then dump it into a bowl to free the pan for the next step)

Melt the other 2 TBSP of butter in your pan, add cumin seeds and heat until they start to crackle, then return your spinach mixture to the pan and add the garam masala, coriander and ground cumin.

Drain the potatoes and add them to the spinach mixture. If it's too thick to simmer without scorching, add a bit of water, but not enough to make it soupy. Salt to taste and simmer for 20 minutes or so.

Stir in the yogurt and serve it with naan or basmati rice. Or both.

The toaster oven diet

All right.

In my quest to drop the last of my leftover unhappy-marriage pudge, I have changed everything about my entire life. Well, pretty much. I enjoy my food, but it's completely different food. Few starches, minimal refined foods, almost no sweets, and I keep alcohol to a minimum. I walk for at least an hour every day, and once a week I hike for 2-3 hours.

For the last month or so I have been on what I call the "Bucket Guy" diet; for those who don't know the story of Bucket Guy (my spirit guide), the condensed version is that when I worked at Rejuvenation he appeared to me one day, carrying a bucket of beautiful old lighting that had been painted over, and looking for replacements. I suggested he have them restored instead, and he replied "Nah, I don't want to deal with it". This phrase was then repeated numerous times in response to almost every suggestion I made and every question I answered, and he finally departed my store for Home Depot. Full of hate and rage, I went upstairs to the break room and fumed at my co-workers for a few minutes about him, after which one guy said "Sounds like you don't want to deal with it".

And then I was enlightened.

Anyway, the Bucket Guy Diet is what happens when you know you have to eat, but you just don't give a flying fuck. You don't want to deal with it. Most people end up on this diet at some time in their life when they're either newly in love or newly heartbroken... you know the feeling. It's the diet where you get to the point where you just can't ignore your rumbling belly anymore, so you eat the first thing you find in the fridge or cabinet that doesn't need much prep but sounds like you have a possibility of actually swallowing it. People on this diet tend to live on a lot of crackers and peanut butter, or yogurt and cereal. Tinned fish and protein shakes have gone a long way for me.

Coincidentally, a very good friend of mine was also on this diet at the same time, and we were talking about how it is, while effective, sadly unsustainable. Eventually, if I keep living on tinned fish and protein shakes, my body is going to rebel in some very unpleasant ways, so I've devised an even better diet that still allows me to not really think about what I'm eating at all. My friend and I refined it over the course of a six-mile hike; we call it the Toaster Oven Diet.

Here's what this consists of.

You have three food groups; the fish group, the asparagus group, and the millet group.

You have a little container of cooked millet in the fridge at all times. Examples of things that fall into the millet group would be brown rice, quinoa, barley... you get the gist.

You put a little butter or grease in the bottom of a small baking pan, and on top of that you'll arrange some fish and asparagus, and a scoop of millet. Season with salt and pepper and maybe some lemon juice and garlic powder, then put it in the toaster oven and cook it for 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees. Then, you eat it. It's that simple!

A few other members of the fish food group are chicken, ham, and beef. These may require longer cooking times, so use your best judgment.

If your representative of the asparagus group is spinach or another leafy green, you should toss it in at the very end because it only needs a couple of minutes.

I find that I can cook a double portion of this in the morning, then have it for lunch as well as breakfast, and it's so easy that no matter how little I could give a crap about nutrition or my physical well-being that day, I can still eat in a way that is most likely not going to result in any severe nutritional deficiencies.

Happy heartbreak!

The funny thing about gumbo

You can't just make a little bit of gumbo. It's impossible; I've tried, and the smallest amount of gumbo I've ever been able to make is eight quarts. You add a little of one thing, a little of something else, and before you know it, you have two or three gallons of gumbo simmering.

Gumbo is incredible, because with just a little money you can make this dish a delicacy; delicious, filling, and possibly the most nutritious one-dish meal money can buy. I want to share my recipe and my love of gumbo with everyone, but the trouble is, I don't HAVE a recipe; gumbo isn't a recipe as much as it is a process of love and intuition! But I'm going to try, because I believe that if you know the very basics of what goes into it, you will be able to make your own savory stew that will be unique as a fingerprint, warm, nurturing, and perfect.

2 TBSP chicken fat, bacon grease, or lard
1 yellow onion
4 cloves garlic
2 TBSP flour
32 oz chicken broth
32 oz diced tomatoes
16 oz cut okra (frozen is fine)
1 cup black eyed peas
1 cup frozen or fresh lima beans
1 cup cut corn
1 lb catfish, salmon, or cod
2 links Andouille sausage
1 lb shelled shrimp
1 bunch collard greens or kale
2 medium carrots
2 medium potatoes
1 green or red bell pepper
1 TBSP red chili flakes (adjust to taste)
2 tsp Herbes de Provence, or basil, thyme, or pretty much whatever you have on hand
1 tsp black pepper
Salt to taste

Thoroughly cook the sausages in the grease; set aside to cool. Chop the onion and cook it in the grease until translucent; add the flour and brown slightly. Pour the broth in all at once and stir, then add the tomatoes. Chop and add everything but the fish and shrimp, add a bit of water if needed, and simmer it for 2-3 hours until tender. Add the shrimp and fish and simmer for 30 more minutes. Serve over "dirty" rice, which is just rice (I prefer brown) seasoned with a bit of garlic powder, paprika, black pepper, and thyme.

Modify all the ingredients at will, but don't leave out the okra, or it's not gumbo!

I made this on Saturday, and I'm just finishing off a bowl of leftovers for lunch. It still hasn't lost it's charm, and if anything is even more delicious on the third day. It also freezes well (which is a good thing, considering how much of it I have...)

The comfort of posole

Tonight, instead of the usual Friday night roast, I decided that my body and my soul need posole.

It's one of my favorite foods; pork shoulder simmered with onions and hominy for hours until it's fall-apart tender, served over shredded fresh cabbage with lime juice and cilantro. I can eat it until I'm bursting, and live on a pot of it for a week without becoming tired of it. Best of all, it's more than delicious; it's nutritious, comforting, and cheap.

I started with a 4-lb pork shoulder roast that was already in my freezer, and put it in a large stockpot with water to cover it, and a quart of broth I also had in my freezer. The broth is wholly optional, as this flavorful cut of meat will make its own stock as it simmers. A whole onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, and about 1/2 cup of ground red chilies went into the pot, as well as a couple of tablespoons of marjoram (sometimes sold as Mexican oregano) and a couple of juniper berries. Then the whole thing simmered with the lid on for about six hours, until the meat was falling apart, and I added salt to taste and a couple of cans of white hominy. Honestly, dried posole corn is best, but I would have had to think about it yesterday, then soak it with lime overnight and degerm it by hand... which always leaves my thumbs sore after hours of picking the germ off the posole. Tonight, it was all about the canned hominy, and I am perfectly happy with that!

The posole was red and greasy, almost done and smelling irresistibly good, when I realized I needed to make a store run for sour cream and hominy, as well as a couple of other crucial ingredients; limes and cilantro. I am making gumbo for a party tomorrow night, so I figured it would be a good time to snag the ingredients for that as well. I already have a few things (lima beans, canned tomatoes) so it wasn't a huge shopping trip. From my receipt:

2 cans hominy
Frozen okra
Black eyed peas
Catfish nuggets
Italian sausage (hot)
Raw shrimp
collard greens
Sour cream
Green cabbage
Green onions
Cilantro
2 limes
Cabernet Sauvignon (of the cheapest variety... I'm out of box wine)

My total grocery bill, wine and everything, was $30.12, which is pretty excellent for enough food to keep a family of 5 fed for about four days. The stuff I already had on hand, the pork roast and other gumbo ingredients like rice and tomatoes, came to about $10.

I've got the hominy in there simmering with the rest of the posole for an hour or so to merge the flavors; when it's ready, I'll ladle it over shredded cabbage, with minced cilantro and green onions, a spoonful of sour cream, and a wedge of lime.

Simple red posole:

4-lb pork shoulder roast
8 quarts of water
1 onion, minced
2 tablespoons dried marjoram
6 tablespoons red chili powder (paprika), mild or hot depending on taste
4 cloves of garlic
2 juniper berries (optional)
2 32-oz cans of hominy
Salt to taste

Simmer pork with other ingredients for 4-6 hours, until falling apart.
Using two forks, pull meat into smaller chunks.
Add hominy and simmer another hour.

Serve over:

Green cabbage, chopped finely

Garnish with:

White or green chopped onion
Minced cilantro
Sour cream
Lime wedge
Radish

Food fighting

You know, people really want there to be "good" foods and "bad" foods. I think it must be rooted in an intense need to have an enemy, to demonize something. The reality is that humans are the rats of the primate world; we can extract nutrition from a stunning array of foods, even from what is basically garbage. We are highly adaptive omnivores who can not only survive, but thrive on a wide variety of diets. People hate this for some reason; psychologically, we need boundaries. We need rules. We need "good calories" and "bad calories". Even when a researcher comes along and tries to tell us, "Wait, no; that's not how it works", we insist on twisting his meaning to support our diet religions. We demonized meat and fat ten years ago, and now we demonize grain. Listen; it's simple. Eat a wide variety of whole fresh food, and go outside to play. Your body might not like some foods that other people's bodies like; and that's OK. That doesn't make you wrong and them right, or you right and them wrong. Just eat something else. And, GO PLAY.

The economy of tuna fish

One of my childhood comfort foods is spaghetti with tuna sauce. It sounds a little weird, I suppose; it's just white sauce, the same recipe as you find on a box of corn starch, with a drained can of tuna mixed in, served over spaghetti. My version has some shredded cheddar added as well; it's basically a stovetop tuna casserole. My kids love it, and it's one of those fast, cheap and easy fallback dinners I can make when I don't have much time and didn't plan ahead.

Something odd I've been noticing about tuna fish for the last several years is that the store brand is invariably superior in flavor and consistency to the more expensive name brands. I cannot for the life of me come up with an explanation for this... it really doesn't make any sense. For them to be the same quality could make sense; many different brands are the same product, packed in the same facility, with different labels slapped on. But in the case of tuna, the difference in quality, as well as price, is so remarkable as to defy explanation. If you buy solid white albacore, the cheaper store brand is typically a large firm chunk of fish in a can, with a bit of clear broth or oil, while the name brand version will be a smallish hunk or two swimming in a morass of fish mush. If you buy the chunk light tuna, the store brand is usually, as implied by the name, chunks of fish in water or oil that can be drained off, while the name brand is a can of swampy pulp that can't effectively be separated from the liquid it's packed in.

I have no idea what the deal is. I just pay my 85 cents and dump it into a pan of white sauce.

Soaking the beans

My boyfriend and I are making dinner tonight for a friend of his who just had a baby... this will be my first time seeing the new babe and I'm so excited! We still have to go shopping, but the red beans are already soaking; ideally I should have put them in water last night, but we don't have to be there until 5 so they have enough time to plump up and get ready for cooking.

I even eat when the kids aren't here

I will freely admit that I am a person who loves cooking for other people, and I don't really feel the same spark when I'm cooking for myself alone. I share custody of my kids with their dads, which means that half the week, I have minimal incentive to cook a proper meal unless my boyfriend comes over... and even then, much of the time we content ourselves with leftovers and snacks. When I'm on my own, my eating patterns are erratic; breakfast may be steak tartare, dinner may be peanut butter toast, all eaten whenever I get hungry, without concern for mealtimes or the nutrition pyramid.

When I'm alone, anything that can be cooked in the toaster oven is my friend. One of my favorite easy meals is nothing more than a bunch of brussels sprouts and a piece of bacon. I halve the sprouts and put them in a small baking pan, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and then lay the bacon on top. It goes in the toaster oven at 400 for 20 minutes; I take it out and toss it a bit halfway through to make sure everything gets a nice coating of bacon grease.

I also like to add a sweet potato to the equation; I'll roast 3 or 4 at once and have them in the fridge, ready to go. They're simple to roast; 45 minutes at 350, then let them cool and they'll slip right out of their skins. Chopped into large bite-sized chunks and roasted with the bacon and brussels sprouts, sweet potato takes on a creamy, caramelized flavor. Sprinkle with a bit of shredded parmesan cheese and it's a filling meal, or it would make a pretty side dish with or without the bacon.

Gratuitous Chicken Shot

My contribution to last night's dinner with "The Ladies":

(We are not very ladylike. There was a lot of tearing of flesh with bare hands.)

Post-Roast Mayhem (AKA The Day After)

So, although I didn't post about it, yesterday was Roast Night. I made a chicken. No, wait; I was going to make a chicken. And you know what? I totally screwed up and forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer the night before. In fact, I forgot about it until about 2:30 in the afternoon, and then I thought I could defrost it in the sink under running water.

I was wrong.

But I'll give you my roast chicken recipe anyway, because it's really easy. Easier than pork shoulder, even. Here's what you do:

Preheat your oven to 450°F.

Sprinkle salt and pepper all over your defrosted chicken carcass, inside and out. I go for about a 5-lb bird.

Stick that sucker in a baking pan, breast up. On a rack if you have one. Don't put anything in it, and don't bother tying the legs. I mean, you can, but nobody's going to care, they're just going to stuff it in they moufs. Plus, not tying the legs = more crispytastic salty skin area. When I make this I almost never even eat any of the meat because my kids all think the skin is gross, so I eat all the skin off while I'm carving it and then I'm full. True story.

Roast it for one hour. Pull it out, let it cool while you prepare the vegetable dish (which if you are anything like me you probably forgot to start earlier), and then carve and serve it. I serve mine most often with rice and steamed broccoli, and then the drippings go right on the rice with a bit of butter and salt.  If your chicken is larger than 5 lbs, add 10 minutes of roasting time per lb.

But my story yesterday ended in me going to the store and buying a pre-roasted chicken, on sale for $5. I was actually going to buy an uncooked one but they didn't have any uncooked ones because they had roasted them all for this sale, I guess. I don't like the pre-cooked ones as much as roasting my own because at that particular store they are doused in an obscene and ridiculous amount of paprika, but they are generally about the same price. I bought it anyway and the kids liked it just fine, and then the remnants (including the bones off our plates) went into a stew pot today. Here's what that goes like:

The morning after Roast Night, pull all the meat off the bones and refrigerate it. Put the remaining carcass in a pot with a couple of quarts of water and a pinch of (wait for it) Herbes de Provence. Simmer until about 5:00pm, then strain, discard bones and carcass slurry, and add 1/2 chopped onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 chopped carrot, 1 stalk of chopped celery, a bit of black pepper, and salt to taste. Now is when you decide whether you want potatoes, barley, or noodles: if you want potatoes or barley, add one large diced potato or 1/2 cup pearl barley now. If you want noodles, wait. Simmer for one hour.

After an hour, chop and add the leftover meat you put in the fridge earlier, and 1 cup noodles of your choice if desired (we're fond of spirals). Simmer for ten more minutes and serve.

Lazy Friday dinner

I like making roasts. A roast is the kind of dinner that is usually cheap and pretty, and gives my kids the impression that I cook special fancy meals for them. I especially like to make roasts on Friday, because by Friday I'm so tired I can't think, and this way I don't really have to deal with anything.

My meat selection process for the Friday roast goes like so:

1. Is it cheap?
2. ...actually, I only have one criterion.

So I was at the store yesterday and I picked up an assortment of supplements for my kitchen. From my receipt:

Tiny chocolate bars (for the kids' lunches)
10" flour tortillas
1 gallon whole  milk
2 cans orange juice concentrate
1/2 gallon chocolate  milk
1 qt half & half
2 lb brick of cheddar
2 loaves of bread (I do bake bread, but this was on sale)
5 lbs of carrots
3 lbs Braeburn apples
1 lb broccoli
A box of wine 
2 whole chickens

and of course, the star of today's story... 

...a 2.3lb pork shoulder blade roast. This roast cost three dollars and eighty-five cents, which is pretty kickass for meat to feed a family of four plus one itinerant boyfriend. My total grocery bill was about $60 total, which is pretty good for a week. Although of course I forgot butter.

I put the chickens in the freezer, and left the pork roast in the fridge for tonight's dinner. This recipe won't work so well with a leaner pork roast; it really requires the fabulous fatty marbling of the shoulder roast. Pork shoulder is pure roast gold! Often avoided because of its fat content, it's delicious, almost always very inexpensive, and virtually foolproof. Do not fear the shoulder.

To prep the roast, I rustled the following out of the fridge:

1/4 of an onion
7-8 cloves of garlic
6 fairly stunted carrots
2 small potatoes
3 smallish turnips

I chopped all these into 1-1/2" chunks (approximately) and placed them in the bottom of a 3-quart Dutch oven,  then poured about 1/4 cup of wine over them (ha! You were judging my box wine, weren't you?) before sprinkling them with salt and laying the roast on top. I drizzled another couple of tablespoons of wine over the roast, then sprinkled it with salt, pepper, and herbes de provence (you will notice that I use these a LOT. This is my "I'm too tired to think and I need a glass of box wine" go-to seasoning) and put it, uncovered, in a preheated 350 degree oven for an hour and a half. After about an hour, I'll look at it, baste it with the juices in the bottom of the pan, and cover it. After I pull it out, I'll let it sit for half an hour and then pull the meat off the bone with a fork and serve it on plates with the root vegetables, all drizzled with a bit of the delicious meat and veggie juices; easy peasy!

Rescued by lentils

I was in the final stretch of tonight's dinner; the garbanzo beans I'd soaked for 24 hours were simmering away on the stove with onions, garlic, and herbs, and I had just started the barley to go with them when I gave them a stir and noticed a dark fleck that didn't look like a thyme leaf. A creeping tingle climbed my spine as I captured the speck with a spoon, moving under the light to get a better look. Oh barf! It was one of those tiny, vile brown beetles that infest dry goods. CRAP.

I had to think on my feet. "Hey," I said to the kids in a casual voice, "The chickpeas are taking longer than I expected so I'm going to make French lentil soup instead".

I wasn't concerned about them being grossed out as much as I wanted to avoid the inevitable stampede and sideshow gawking that happens when I tell them I've discovered vermin.

I'm not a hippie or a vegetarian; I'm just broke, and I have learned from long experience with being broke to make the most of the cheapest food I can get. Furthermore, the only thing French about the lentil soup recipe I was rapidly inventing in my head was the label on the tiny, green lentils I'd purchased just a couple days before.

Here's what I came up with:

Mince 1/4 of a white or yellow onion and saute it in a teaspoon of oil or butter

Add:

1 carrot, grated
2 cloves garlic, chopped
4 cups broth (I used pork stock)

Bring to a boil and add one cup of lentils. Reduce heat and simmer until tender.

Add:

A pinch of Herbes de Provence
1/4 cup of minced ham
1 14-oz can of diced tomatoes

In a separate pan, scald 1/2 cup of cream, then stir it into the soup. Add salt and pepper to taste, then serve. I served it over barley:

Bring to a boil:

1 cup water
1/2 tsp salt

Add:

1/2 cup barley
1 TBSP toasted amaranth seeds

Reduce heat, cover, and simmer undisturbed for 1/2 hour or until tender.

I thought it was excellent! Two kids pronounced it delicious, and one refused to eat it at all. Relative success, I guess.

My pantry list

This is a fairly disorganized list (made with the assistance of my helpful boyfriend) of the actual items that I consider necessary for the day to day operation of my own kitchen. It's noteworthy to know that I'm cooking for a family of four; one person could half or quarter the quantities and still be superbly well-stocked. Later, I'm going to pare this list down into two sub-lists; There will be a "Bare Bones Basics" list and an "I Can't Afford To Eat" list.

PANTRY STAPLES

Yeast – 4 oz (activated)

Corn Starch – 12 oz

Baking Powder – small container

Baking Soda – 1 box (plus for cleaning)

Real Vanilla – 8 oz

Orange Oil

Lemon Oil

Brown Sugar – 2 lbs

Flour – Wheat or white (all purpose) 10 lbs

Cornmeal – 5 lbs

Oatmeal – 3 lbs

Rice (short grain brown, black rice) - 4 lbs

Beans, Dry (3 kinds, pinto, white, black, etc – 2 lbs of each)

Split Peas – 2 lbs

Lentils – 2 lbs

Brewer's Yeast – 1 lb

Barley – 1 lb

Garbanzo Beans – 1 lb

Sugar – 10 lbs

Quinoa – 2 lbs

Almonds – 1 lb

Salt – cheapest/sea/not iodized table salt (if you have limited access to seafood, buy iodized salt)

Lard – 1 lb

Olive Oil – 1 pint extra virgin

Canola (or any veg oil) – 1 qt

Tea (a lot!)

4 (16 oz) cans of tomato sauce

4 (16 oz) cans of diced tomatoes

4 (16 oz) cans of crushed tomatoes

6 cans tuna – solid white, packed in water

White Vinegar – 1 gal

Apple Cider Vinegar – 1 quart

Balsalmic  Vinegar

Rice Wine

Red Wine

Applesauce -2 jars

Oat Bran - 1 lb

Grits - 1 lb

Cocoa powder - 6 oz

Spaghetti – 4 lbs

Other shaped pasta – 4 lbs

Honey  - 1 lb

Soy Sauce or Tamari – 1 pint

Refried Beans – 2 16 oz cans

Peanut Butter – 2 jars

Maple Syrup (good stuff) 1 quart

Tinned Fish (Kippers, sardines, oysters, whatever) – 6 cans

Green Chiles – 1 can diced

Spaghetti Sauce -  2 cans

Tomato Soup – 2 cans

Cream of Soup (any kind) – 4 cans

Beef/Chicken/Veg Broth - 2 Cans

Jam – 3 jars

Pickles – 2 jars

Ramen 10 packs

Dried Cranberries or Raisins 4 lbs
Popcorn – 2 lbs

FROZEN

Corn – 1 bag

Peas – 1 bag

Hamburger – 4 lbs

Steak – 4 lbs

Chicken – 2 whole

Ham – 2 lbs

Sausage (Italian, Bratwurst, whatever) – 2 lbs

Red or Yellow Peppers – 1 lb

Okra, Collard Greens, Lima Beans, Green Beans –  1 bag each

Pork Chops – 6 @

Frozen Berries – 10 lbs by the end of summer

Peaches or Apricots – 5 lbs

SPICES

Onion Powder

Garlic Powder

Red Pepper Flakes

Dried Basil

Dried Oregano

Sage

Marjoram

Cinnamon

Nutmeg, ground

Cloves

Coriander

Turmeric

Cardamom

Curry Powder

Thyme

Rosemary

Cumin

Paprika

Ground Ginger

Fennel Seed

Caraway Seed
Herbes de Provence

FRESH REFRIGERATED

Milk 2% or whole - .5 gal

Butter – 1 lb

Yogurt - .5 gal unsweetened, honey, or plain

Heavy Cream – 1 pt

Med Cheddar – 2 lbs

Eggs – 1 doz

Onions

Potatoes

Carrots

Garlic

Cabbage

Corn Tortillas – 1 doz

Flour Tortillas – 1 doz

CONDIMENTS

Mayo – 1 qt

Dijon Mustard

Sweet Relish

Caesar Salad Dressing

Lemon Juice

Delicious Chili Paste

Hard Cheese for Grating

Olives

Sweet Chicken Sauce

Miso

Sriracha

Tapatio

Tahini

Anchovy Paste

I wanted to call it Pantry Raid

... but apparently that was a putative cable TV show a few years ago and the blog name is taken. Oh well!

The idea behind this blog really comes from a simple question asked by my friend Cori; "What do I need to keep in my kitchen? Because I can cook, but it seems like I never have what I need, and then what should be a simple grocery store stop ends up being an epic ordeal".

That got me thinking. Most of my contemporaries came from families with working parents, and home-ec hasn't been taught in most schools in 30 years. So, where are people supposed to be learning the basic skills of running a kitchen and preparing meals from scratch? Trial and error? The internet? I thought I'd write up a little list of pantry basics to give to my friends, but even as I got started I wondered how most people would make sense of it. My "Pantry basics" list has four different kinds of dry beans on it. I always have staple food in my pantry that allows me to make a healthy, delicious basic meal without going to the store, but unless you know some basic elements of meal preparation and nutrition, it might look like a jumble of confusing, inedible esoterica.

My boyfriend came up with the idea of keeping a meal diary, which will track not only my grocery purchases but also my meal preparation, including the basic recipes I use, so you can actually see what I make with the food I suggest you buy. My goal in stocking my pantry (and hopefully helping you stock yours) is to have everything I need on-hand to allow me to pick up nothing more than a few fresh items at the store, and come home and prepare a complete meal... or, when times are tight, to be able to make palatable meals from the staple food I have in stock. Like almost everyone I know, I work full-time. I have kids. All of us have to be able to do this without spending half the day in our kitchens.

Finally, I want to acknowledge something that most home-and-kitchen-centered books and magazines seem to ignore; we're broke. Almost everyone I know is operating on a tight budget, and we can't afford to spend our grocery money on grapeseed oil, even if it IS the best thing EVER on salad. We don't care, and we don't want to try to care; we want to eat. I want to help you to eat, and eat well, while spending less money on food.