Someday A Goat

Gradually getting back on track

We're coming off of a difficult 6 months of house repairs, topped off with some really expensive vet bills in the past few weeks. To say that our regular routine of cooking at home and other frugal habits have been disrupted is an understatement. We're slowly getting back into cooking at home, but with the constrained budget it hasn't been very fun. Plus I'm way behind on making staples like chicken stock and other basics that enable us to cook really tasty meals without a ton of work. I've let more coupons expire in the past 6 months than I ever have before, and the pantry is rather bare. I've got a stack of receipts still to be entered into the price book. It will be a while before we are back up to speed.

In the past week, I have been so inspired by Kris's series on Cheap, Healthy, Good about feeding her fiance for a week on $25. The series included the intro, a summary on each of the 7 days, and a wrap-up. I've always loved her site, but this series blows it out of the water -- funny, informative without massive length, and just plain good. There's no way we could do $25 a week right now, but I certainly have been thinking harder about not only the cost, but also the nutritional content of what we're serving.

It also made me think a lot about my grandmother, who fed a family of six kids on an extremely meager budget, and the challenges facing budget-strapped families today that are trying to provide as much nutrition as possible. My grandmother had the benefit of living in a small rural town where they knew local farmers and she worked in food service at the school and probably had much better access to inexpensive nutritious food than a family living in the suburbs with a laid-off breadwinner.

Cheap anniversary, tasty dinner

We went to New Orleans to celebrate our third anniversary at Jazz Fest, but our actual anniversary in May fell about a week after we returned and we wanted to celebrate inexpensively. The dinner we made was extremely tasty and also extremely cheap for the quality of the ingredients.

One of our favorite stores in Atlanta is a little deli and provisions shop, Star Provisions. It is attached to one of the finest restaurants in the Southeast, and as they put it, it's like having access to the pantry and walk-in cooler of the restaurant. Cheeses, meats, breads, spices, cookware -- the variety of items is almost intoxicating. They also have a local farm stand during the growing season.

 

The funny thing is that it is often the most frugal option for us. We can buy bulk spices in bulk and save significantly over even a cheap grocery store. I'm sure we could find bulk prices at other stores that beat these, but when it's so much cheaper than pre-packaged goods from the grocery store, and the quality is so high, why go cheaper? A few cents is not worth it in this case. Some of our recent bulk purchases (and I don't mean large quantities by bulk, we only buy what we can reasonably use) include bay leaves, peppercorns and lentils.

 

The total cost of our meal was approximately $17.78, excluding alcohol. Normally we would have had wine with dinner for an occasion like this, but we classed it up this time with Coors Light cans. The $0.60 we spend per can was much more manageable than all but the cheapest wines. And in our house, cheap without quality is a last-ditch option.

Menu

Pork tenderloin sandwiches with farm-fresh tomatoes and sauteed onions on baguettes, and salad. Prosciutto for an appetizer, and strawberries with balsamic vinaigrette for dessert.

We had lovely prosciutto to start, with plain buttered baguette slices. A little fleur de sel (fancy sea salt) and fresh ground pepper enhanced the meat quite well. Going simple with your dishes is one of the easiest ways to save money and still enjoy expensive ingredients. The most expensive parts of the meal were the prosciutto and the strawberries, and both were so good that they were worth every penny.

While my husband prepared dinner, I portioned out the bay leaves and lentils that he had bought at the store that day.

Unfortunately, when I went to portion out the lentils, I managed to spill them EVERYWHERE. You know you have a good marriage when lentils are scattering all over the kitchen in the middle of dinner preparation and all you can both do is laugh.

With the oven preheated to 350F, the foil pouch with leftover pork tenderloin was put in the oven to warm up. My husband sauteed the onions in a cast-iron pan, with salt and pepper and a little butter, on medium low. After the meat was nice and warm, he toasted the bread in the oven, after brushing just the top half with butter before toasting.

The sandwiches were simple -- pork, topped with farm-fresh tomatoes (uncooked) and sauteed onions. They were heavenly.

Even though we ate a good number of strawberries before dessert (some of the best either of us has had), we enjoyed a nice plate of strawberries drizzled with balsamic for dessert. Perfect end to a lovely meal. One of the best parts of the evening? He wouldn't let me balance the checkbook. There are some occasions where chores like that just have to wait.

A friend of mine has an anniversary tradition that fits with a frugal lifestyle. Each year, they each spend about $20 to $25 on a gift for the other, but only within the traditional themes, such as paper for first anniversary, wood for fifth, bronze for eighth. I think this is a great idea, adaptable for any budget.

Total food cost: $17.78

$4.08    proscuitto -- ate about half (total $8.16 for 0.375 lb)

$3.00    4 mini baguettes

$4.00    local farm strawberries

$3.00    local farm green leaf lettuce

$0.35    local farm tomatoes (approx 6) $3.00 total -- used not even half of one

$0.30    half an onion leftover - at our common price this spring of $0.99/lb, I'd be surprised if half of a small onion cost more than $0.30

$2.50    The pork tenderloin was bought in early April half-off at Kroger and frozen for just this sort of occasion. We thoroughly enjoyed it the night before in the oven, and the leftover are what we used for the sandwiches. The tenderloin cost a total of $5.11 ($1.99/lb), so we'll say that $2.50 was the meat cost for this dinner of sandwiches.

$0.55    Teriyaki marinade -- the garlic probably only added pennies, let's say $0.05. We paid $0.17 per ounce for the teriyaki, and probably used 2-3 ounces, so $0.50 is a nice round guess. Other spices were used in the marinade, but it would add minimal cost.

Please note that this doesn't include electricity costs, nor does it account for the bit of butter, parmesan and balsamic used in cooking and garnishing. If you had to buy an entire bottle of balsamic vinaigrette (we mix our own) or a chunk of parmesan cheese, cost of replicating the meal might be much higher.

Collards and pork hocks

This post is from Thankful's husband A, who loves to cook.

Despite basically spending all but the first two years of my life in Atlanta, I never really ate collard greens, a classic southern staple.

With age I have come to appreciate many dishes that would have sent me running for the hills had I seen them anywhere near my family’s kitchen. I really got fired up about collards after a New Year’s Day party a few years back. The hostess, my friend’s mother, had prepared some fantastic greens and I decided it was time to try my hand at them myself. As luck would have it, my first effort was a remarkable success, giving me a somewhat deceptive culinary ego boost.

Future attempts did not go as well, one of the problems I encountered while trying to develop a recipe was the lack of details in most of the recipes I found online. Each pretty much said boil some hocks or pork neck bones and toss in your greens. Voila! Yeah, not so much.

The vast majority of greens I have been served were prepared horribly. I can count on one hand the restaurants at which I have enjoyed greens. They’ve been bitter, gritty, scummy, cooked beyond all reason and any combination of the above.  Where to start? After all, I’m not trying to make them edible, I’m trying to make them great.

The constant in any recipe is pork. Being quite the fan of pork bbq, I decided smoked hocks were my choice. Who doesn’t like a little smoky flavor? Rather than just tossing a hock in boiling water and letting it fall to pieces, I opt for a slow simmer to make a thick, full-bodied stock. This will take several hours, so it’s worth doing a large batch. After cooking, then cooling in an ice bath, I separate the stock  into pint- or quart-sized containers and freeze them for future use. This allows me to whip up a batch rather quickly on a hectic weekday. You could also use chicken stock if you wanted, but would you really want to?

 

I typically use 2-3 hocks, a few stalks of celery, a medium onion (quartered), a few cloves of garlic, half a tablespoon of black peppercorns and a bay leaf or two, then cover the hocks a few inches over the top with cold water. Put them on the stove on high and keep an eye on the pot, you DO NOT want this to come to a boil. Once you see bubbles about the size of a pencil eraser, turn the stove down to medium low and maintain that level of heat. After about 15 minutes, use a strainer or a spoon to skim the scummy grey layer on top, but don’t stir the pot. Let the stock simmer for as long as 3 hours, skimming every 30 to 45 minutes.

At this point you have some options. You could just add spices and throw in your greens, but I don’t recommend it. The stock you have just made should be loaded with flavor and gelatin, and the greens would be overwhelmed. I suggest straining the stock and returning a pint to a quart to the pot, possibly along with one of the hocks for good measure. Let the rest of the stock cool, then portion it out and freeze.

Ice Bath: To cool stock, don’t just place in the fridge while still warm, which will drastically change the temperature conditions inside. Instead, place bowl of stock in a slightly larger bowl, with a layer of ice between, until cooled down.

A’s Collard Greens

• Salt – Start with a quarter cup for a large stock pot
• 1-2 onions, whatever kind you like
• 1 HEAD of garlic – that’s right, a whole head
• 1-2 tbs paprika
• 1-2 tsp chili powder
• 1 tbs whole black peppercorns
• 1-2 tsp cayenne
• 1-2 tsp mustard powder
• 2-3 bay leaves
• ½ to a whole lemon OR approximately ¼ c apple cider vinegar – you can also use a combination of the two. I find one of these two to be important to countering the bitterness in a lot of greens.

That’s pretty much it – you can add any spices you choose, chives are a good addition as is oregano and basil. I will use fresh cayenne peppers, jalapeños or even habaneros when I can get them. Add all the seasoning to the pot, add water and bring to a boil for 20-30 minutes.

While the pot boils, prep the greens. Pre-cut and washed greens have become a common sight in my local grocery and will save some time and effort. To go the fresh route, get ready to do some washing. Greens are often quite sandy, so a good soak in a sink full of salty water will help take that off and take care of any bugs that might be in residence. Drain and give the greens another good rinse, you don’t want to miss any dirt and sand.

Next, remove the large veins that run down the center of the leaves, they don’t cook evenly and aren’t particularly tasty. Hold the leaf at the base of the vein and pull the leaf down. It should tear away from the vein fairly easily. Then tear the leaves into smaller pieces.

Before adding greens to the pot, you will want to taste the cooking liquid. It should be a level or two spicier and saltier than you want the greens to end up. Basically, it should taste like a grossly over-seasoned soup. If not, you will need to adjust the spices accordingly. I like it to be a little less salty than sea water and spicy enough to get your tongue tingling.  

You are now ready to boil some greens. Throw them in the pot a few handfuls at a time and when they have wilted down, add a little more. Let them boil on medium to med-high for 30 to 45 minutes. Drain greens with a slotted spoon, serve and enjoy!

Check out other blogger's take on Fearless Fridays and find more info about the series at Home Ec 101.

My office has toilet-flushing gremlins

Every so often, a toilet in the 3-stall restroom on my office's floor gets possessed by flushing gremlins. The toilet will flush constantly, for hours on end, until someone comes and fixes it. I've never seen toilets do this, yet these gremlins attack our little bathroom every few months.

On an environmental scale, it makes me sad, especially since my region has had ongoing water problems for years. As a matter of pure money, I can't imagine that it benefits our property management's bottom line at all. I wonder if their inability to provide functional plumbing has any affect on our lease rates?

Along the same lines, our office HVAC system is screwy. Since I spent a good amount of time editing a commercial real estate trade magazine, I know that providing consistent temperatures and a comfortable environment is notoriously hard in multi-office buildings, especially in buildings below the Class A level. Thermostats often control space in another office, and particularly if the building is older and has been fitted out repeatedly for different configurations of offices, the HVAC system loses all semblance of logic. Barring redoing the entire duct work, there's really not a solution. That's not even really a solution from a property owner's perspective, because even if all that money is spent redoing duct work, your tenant could up and leave at the end of a lease.

But what is ridiculous is that not only is the HVAC system turned off on the weekends, which is pretty common for the size and type of building, they turn it off at night. I can't possibly imagine how that is an efficient and money-saving strategy because not only are most employees who work in the building miserable on a daily basis, it has to take more energy to bring temperatures back up to bearable in the dead of winter. Sounds like they need to start reading some PF blogs :-)

It got me to thinking -- what are some of the small things we do on a regular basis that might be saving us money? Could any of them be shooting us in the foot?

• If it's yellow, let it mellow. Last year, in the midst of serious drought restrictions and the possibility of water rates going up, we went pretty hardcore with this old hippy saying. I now have to remind myself when we have guests that there's a time and place for everything. I could see this going haywire, however, if you end up with too much TP in the toilet when you finally do flush and end up having to call a plumber in for an expensive repair. I try to be conscious of the amount of toilet paper used, and will readily flush if it looks like there's too much in there.

• We line-dry probably about 25% of our clothes, and have for years. It really makes items like jeans last much longer, and I find that I like the stiffness that clothes get when they've been line-dried. I've also lost a few shirts to one of our cats, who likes to climb the drying rack. If it were a favorite or expensive blouse, I could wipe out my annual savings by having to replace clothes. The sooner I get the clothes folded, the less likely this is to happen.

• We do a good amount of bulk cooking, and it only saves us money if we actually take the time to portion out the food and vacuum-seal it. This doesn't always happen, unfortunately. It's like leftovers, sometimes it's stupidly hard to do the easiest things. I try to plan a little bit better with the timing, we most often let food go to waste when we finish cooking late at night and just don't have the energy.

• Install a programmable thermostat is wise advice often given to those looking to save money. No problems there! We have one already. That isn't programmed. We've lived in the house for 1.5 years, and still haven't programmed the thermostat. Why? No one knows. I'll spend hours updating my price book, but don't program the thermostat. And I know exactly where the manual is. In some ways, I'm just as bad as my office property managers and their toilets.

Cookfest 2008: oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

My mom always made oatmeal cookies while I was growing up, with the lovely twist of using chocolate chips instead of raisins. Mmmm. Chocolate chips. Since I'm already done making these cookies, typing out the words is making me want to head into the kitchen to snag one.

Best part? The recipe is on the inside of the lid of Quaker Old-fashioned oats container. Imagine my surprise a couple of years ago when I asked my mom for her oh-so-fabulous oatmeal cookie recipe, and she admitted it was from the Quaker container. I asked, "But what if it's changed?" Her reply: Honey, just like learning to fold fitted sheets, perfecting some things only comes with practice, and no amount of advice is going to replace that.

So practice I did. I've found that one of the keys to good cookies is refrigerating the dough for at least 4 hours or so before baking. My mom always did this, and I hated it as a child, because it meant longer until the cookies. It really does make a difference, though.

I'm still working on the timing with the convection oven. The best batch came out after 11 minutes. I'm going to have to start an excel chart to keep track of how long it takes my oven to cook certain things, because you cannot see through the window on the oven, and I open it way too much.

Update 2:18 pm -- I brought in probably about 20-25 cookies into work this morning, saving just a few for the pantry at home, and they are ALL gone. My coworkers likey!

Cookfest 2008 main

Cookfest 2008: eggplant, green bean and zucchini pasta sauce

The Pioneer Woman Cooks has been one of my greatest finds in the past couple of weeks. Ree had a great eggplant pasta sauce two weeks ago, so I made that on Saturday night. One of the things I love about Ree's site is her step-by-step pictures and very explicit instructions and tips. So easy to follow.

I only bought one eggplant last week when it was on sale, and I had also picked up a zucchini and some green beans, so instead of the three eggplants called for in the recipe, I just chopped up the zucchini and a large handful of green beans.

The pasta sauce turned out great, and half went into the freezer, and half came to work with me this morning. I'll have enough for two portions--today I'm going to toast some of the no-knead bread with cheddar cheese and spoon the reheated sauce on to it. The bread has been sitting on my desk, calling my name. I'll be having lunch early today. 

Cookfest 2008 main

Cookfest 2008: no-knead bread

I'm using the no-knead bread recipe from The New York Times, familiar to many bloggers, via Smitten Kitchen. Cannot wait to see how it turns out. I used to make bread relatively often growing up, don't know why I stopped. The dough is downstairs in the utility room rising, and I'll leave it be until about 4 pm tomorrow, when I'll cook it. The recipe recommends at least 14 hours rising, and with a start time of about 5:30, I'll be wellll past that. Maybe I should make it in the morning? We're going to visit family, it might be nice to bring along. Hmm, we'll see how ambitious I feel in the morning...

Update 11/17/08: I ended up letting the bread rise until about 5ish on Sunday, so that's about 24 hours rising. I can see why everyone is all about this bread. It's delicious. Since we have a convection oven, timing is often a little off from recipes. I did the minimum 15 minutes uncovered at the end of the recipe, and it could have used at least 5 minutes more. I might even start making this weekly, because it's not a lot of work, just a couple of steps separated by long periods of waiting. And in the case of bread rising, procrastination pays. For once.

Cookfest 2008 main

Cookfest 2008: chicken stock

We're getting very low on chicken stock, and Publix had the forethought to go ahead and offer me whole chickens at 99c a pound, so $4.07 later, I'm well on my way. I happened to have everything else needed for stock on hand, so that's my only immediate cost. It's not the best sale I've seen, but definitely nice since I need stock anyhow.

I do have a chicken down in the deep freeze, but I didn't think to take it out on Friday, and I like to always have at least one chicken on hand. I actually bought two birds, one for the stock, and the other to add to the deep freeze.

I expect that I'll yield a good amount of stock, chicken for the soup later, and shredded chicken to freeze. I'm also trying something new with this batch -- I froze the carcass of a rotisserie chicken from a while back, and I've put it in the stock along with the raw chicken in hopes of getting a bit of extra heartiness. As our stockpot is woefully small, it's pretty crowded in there. I'm thinking about removing the carcass about halfway through. The whole point is to get stock from this, after all. (By the way, don't believe anyone who tells you a 20-quart stock pot is not essential for the registry. No one bought it for us, but it would have been very well used.)

Mastering Soups & Stews from William-Sonoma * has been a frequent reference for me, and it is the reason that I started making stock back in 2006, I couldn't be happier that I make all of our stock. 

Here's the stock after the initial heat-up, the first 30-minute simmer and first skim. I like to skim well, but I've gotten pretty good about only removing fat and the grayish gelatin after much practice. What I would really like is a cast-iron trivet to hold the meat down, my colander and cooking twine method has been working for years, but is less than ideal. I also like to use a bread & butter plate next to the bowl for skimming refuse, where I can rest the spoon. I also make sure to have a paper towel on hand while skimming--if you don't wipe up spills on the cooktop right away, it can start smoking and burn. This stuff is pretty messy.

Update 7:37 pm -- Removing the rotisserie chicken carcass was a bust, but since the components had shrunk some with cooking for about an hour and a half, re-setting the colander pushed the contents down some. I know you're not supposed to disturb stock while it's cooking, but I had to try.

Update 11/17/08 -- The rotisserie carcass really lent a rich flavor to this stock. On Saturday night, I strained the stock while my husband shredded the chicken, both went into the fridge overnight. We had enough shredded chicken for soup Saturday night, and three vacuum-sealed packages for future dinners. We had more stock than I thought we would, and that went into ice cube trays and a silicone muffin pan--the stuff is so potent we'll only need to use small amounts. 

Cookfest 2008 Main

*Please note that this is an affiliate link, which means that if you click through on the link to Amazon, I'll get a little bit of a referrel fee if you end up buying something. There will be no extra charge to you, and it will help support the site.

Cookfest 2008

So my husband had a cookfest of sorts yesterday, with smoked spareribs, collard greens, cheddar jalapeno cornbread, atomic buffalo turds (jalapeno and cream cheese, wrapped in bacon and smoked), toasted pumpkin seeds and coleslaw. His brother and a good friend were both in town for a wedding, so they came over for some grub in the afternoon -- my husband did prep on Thursday night and woke up earlier than I did to start cooking. I think he might have been cooking when I got into the shower yesterday to get ready for work, but I was probably still asleep and dreaming.

With an early football game today, and no plans for tonight, I'm having a cookfest of my own. I'll be doing some bulk cooking with dishes that will last us a while, and blogging about it as I go. On the slate for tonight:

• chicken stock
• no-knead bread
• eggplant and zucchini pasta sauce
• oatmeal chocolate chip cookies
• chicken tortilla soup

Wow, that's kind of daunting listed out like that. The bread and stock are already underway, but I have a lot yet to do.

Update 11/17/08: Well, I got so busy cooking that I didn't finish posting, and the light wasn't good enough for decent photos. I don't think I've ever cooked so much in a weekend. Both last night and Saturday night, I didn't wrap things up until about 11:30 pm. But the dishes and kitchen are all clean. Well, not the floors. But whatever.

Everything was pretty much a success. We just had plain chicken soup Saturday night, I was too tired and it was too late to do the chicken tortilla soup. I did use a liberal amount of cheddar and some large croutons I had made the week before, warming the bowl in the oven a few minutes before eating. So much protein, so much flavor. 

Since I had the Kitchen Aid mixer out, my husband decided to try the pasta maker attachment and make egg noodles. It didn't go too well--we had a lot of trouble with the noodles sticking together. We're going to try rolling them out and doing it the old-fashioned way tonight.

Back in the kitchen

The past three months have been a whirlwind of starting this site, keeping the checkbook balanced and the bank account in the black, not to mention my day job. While talking to my mom on the phone last week, I realized that it had literally been months since I had fixed dinner, and I couldn't honestly remember the last time I cooked something from a recipe.

My husband is definitely much more of a cook than I am, but I had been making progress up until this year. Right before we were married in 2006, I left my job and didn't end up starting at my new one until 11 months later, which left me with LOTS of time to start trying recipes. I perfected a few, got into a rut, and once the holidays hit last year, I had a whirlwind of weddings, family events and various other projects.

Last night was my first night back in the kitchen. With the last wedding of the year two weekends ago, it's like a whole new world of time has opened up. My husband didn't seem all that interested in two of my standby recipes (he's probably still sick of them from late 2006), so I browsed through my "recipes to try" tag in Google Reader, and found one that seemed pretty simple.

Parmesan chicken

Kevin at Closet Cooking covers a wide range of cooking styles, and this recipe looked like an easy alternative to my baked Parmesan chicken. The chicken turned out very tasty, but I had some definite presentation problems. Namely, the breading did NOT stick to the chicken. I almost gave up before eating, standing in front of the stove, glaring at the Parmesan-encrusted mess of a pan. I scraped the breading off the pan and on to the chicken, and was pleasantly surprised with the result. I'll definitely try this one again.

I kept pretty close to the recipe, although I didn't make the salad as a side, as I would have needed to buy additional ingredients, and I wanted to keep it inexpensive. After I pounded the chicken breasts, I brined them in water, salt and half a lemon's juice. I added garlic and onion powder to the bread crumbs. Some reasons why the crumb might not have stuck:

• I patted the breasts dry and seasoned with pepper in between the brine and the flour. I didn't want the coating to be entirely flour, but it may have needed some moisture on the surface at this stage. The flour seemed to stick fine, though.
• I used panko bread crumbs--we've had the package for quite some time now, but it doesn't seem to go bad. Packaging without expiration dates drives me crazy. The relatively larger panko crumbs may have been part of the problem, although I did try to reduce the size before coating the chicken.
• I know the temperature of the egg can make a big difference in baking, but I have no idea if a cold egg can result in a difference in result in pan-frying.
• I used a microplane grater on fresh Parmesan cheese. My grater, depending on how you hold the cheese, often results in much longer pieces of parmesan than you would find in the green Kraft package. (Side note: grating hard cheeses is much easier when the cheese is cold.)
• We don't use non-stick pans, and I used olive oil to fry. My husband has had problems with straight olive oil resulting in food stuck on the pan, so next time I might try adding in a little vegetable oil or maybe some butter. 
• Husbands that clean the parmesan-encrusted mess of a pan are super cool.

Any other thoughts?