Dec 4
I have been prompted to inform you all that the blog is on indefinite hold. I apologize for not saying so sooner, and I will post more as soon as I am able.
Thank you for your sincere and appealing readership. It has been incredibly satisfying to write for you all.
To be honest, I can’t exactly calculate what I spent on food last week. I mean, I can, but it would involve lots of measuring and probably some weighing, and it would certainly involve math. Though I do need to practice for the GRE (Shit! I need to practice for the GRE!) I’m not much in the habit of doing math. My math is more along the lines of “another half an onion” or “more cayenne pepper.” But, I am proud to say that save for a $10 supplemental fresh-veggie run, I’ve been able to live off of my combined first Costco and second commissary trips, which cost me $200 total and included booze, pet food, alcohol and most of what I need for Thanksgiving (which I’m not including in this project). I think other than those supplemental veggie runs, I’ll be able to live off of those staples for the next few weeks.
And now that I’m working outside of my apartment, I did something I’ve never done before: last night I made a week’s worth of lunches, so I’m not stuck downtown, starving and spending.
Nov 11
Before I move on to my budget saving tips, will you allow me a moment of self promotion? Thanks. As you can see from the image above, I’m having my annual Casserole Party in Kansas City on Monday. So if you’re in the KS or the MO I hope you’ll enter!
Now, onto more expensive things (the Casserole Party is free!), let’s talk about Costco. It’s hard to believe that I don’t have a Costco membership. In fact, my friend who took me to the big box store today (the same generous friend who took me the to the commissary a while back) was in shock over the fact that I hadn’t been to Costco in at least 10 years. I explained to her that living in New York, having a Costco membership is almost pointless if you don’t have a car. What one would save on groceries would be spent on cabs and car services needed to cart bulky items home. But when one moves to Kansas City and has a car (one spent only $600 on) a Costco membership just might be a worthy investment. Especially when you consider what I “discovered” today.
Without much success yet, I must admit…
A key part of this budget is planning well enough that your leftovers all get used. No room for waste. We’re doing well with that, but it can get a bit…boring. I had a minor brainstorm a few days ago and turned leftover brown rice into rather good rice pudding. That was cool. I felt smart. See? Look. Rice pudding.
Yes, it does rather look like a bowl of wet maggots. It's not. It's rice pudding. Food photography is hard and I am lazy.
And then it occurred to me that it was about as obvious a use of the leftovers as the potato scramble was, and that I’m just impossibly slow on the uptake. For an allegedly creative person, I have a hard time re-imagining leftover food as anything other than itself. That is, leftover beans and rice get served again as…beans and rice. You’d think I could at least make some tortillas and chop up some tomatoes and call them burritos, yeah?
That sounds like the title of a terrible self-help book, doesn’t it? It’s really just a summary of my life lately. Adam I have switched up our budgeting days, now now my fiscal week begins on Mondays, instead of Wednesdays. I have to admit, I’m not off to the best start considering I started a new job today and because I failed to pack a lunch or get up in time to make my own coffee and make myself pretty before going into my first office job in three years, I stopped off for a $2 cup of Joe (hey, it’s better than a $4 latte!) and spent $10 on Chinese take out for lunch (and that was the lunch special price! but I have some leftover for tomorrow). Luckily, I learned today that we get free coffee at the office and there’s even a pretty sizable snack stash in the kitchen in case I get desperate.
Still, working outside of the home is going to present a new spending challenge, especially since the publication is a start up and I’m making about a fifth of what I was making at the job I just left. I’ll just have to be really strict about making and taking my lunch. I can’t believe that ‘back in the day’ I was spending $10 a day on lunch in Midtown, in addition to a bagel and coffee every morning for breakfast… plus dinners out. I think I was working in the hell that was the middle of the island of Manhattan just so I could eat out! I now spend in one week what I used to spend in one day on food.
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Total spent so far: $12
Days to go: 6
You think I can do it?
Oct 27
I almost never take leftover restaurant potatoes home. I’m not sure why. I guess because they’re just…well…potatoes. It’s like bringing home what you don’t eat of the bread basket, you know? Fool! I’ve been a fool! At our celebratory It’s a Girl! lunch last week, our server brought us each an extra helping of garlic fries. See, at first the cook accidentally made us too few fries (which actually resulted in a healthier portion, and we would have been fine if she’d left it at that). To make it up to us, she made us a ton more. It seemed awfully wasteful to leave a full plate of garlic fries behind, so we took them home as a doggie bag.
Score! Total score.
I cooked them up in a scramble. Eggs, garlic fries, and a bit of parmesan. (And left a few whole ones on the side, just because.)
So. Damn. Good.
Yeah. A scramble made with leftover potatoes either from a restaurant or a home-cooked meal. Not so much a revelation, hunh? So am I the last one to figure this out, or what?
Oct 26
It’s the first day of the last week of my job (hooray!) and I’m feeling a little uninspired and a lot exhausted, so I’m going to keep this short. My brevity can also be attributed to the fact that I’m feeling guilty, as I cooked a total of zero times while I was in New York. Though I did not keep track of my spending, it’s a very safe bet that I went way over budget, especially considering two of my meals were $25 each (but they were both very worth it).
The bright side of this, of course, are the small changes I see in myself since starting this project. Usually when feeling stressed, overworked, sad or just plain tired, I go out to eat. Sometimes I just want food that’s prepared by someone else and, honestly, I like being waited on. I like to sit down at a table and have delicious food placed in front of me. But lately—except on special occasions, like meals out with friends while traveling—the price tag isn’t worth it. Now that I’m away from the craziness that is New York City and back to my slow-as-molasses lifestyle in Kansas City, eating out tonight just isn’t an option. You know what that means? It’s time to get started on those pig parts (especially since I’m soon to be unemployed)! Hopefully by the end of this week I’ll be back with some harrowing tales of pork hock and, if you’re lucky, heart.
It’s time I got around to telling you about the second half of my visit to Chicago, culminating in a meal at that temple of pork and beer, the Publican, on West Fulton Market. I say “temple” without reservation (though they do take them) or irony (though I brought mine), for what do my people’s religious observances offer that this restaurant does not? Seriousness? Check. Graciousness? Check. Uplift, even transcendence? Check. Cheek-by-jowl seating? Check. Unlimited bread? Double-check.
But first to the matters preceding.
City Farm, Chicago
The answer, today anyway, is pickles.
I put up three quarts of pickled green cherry tomatoes:
There's something vaguely gruesome about pickling, isn't there?
And two and a half quarts of pickled green tomato wedges:
That half-filled jar bugs me. If only I'd sliced a few more tomatoes!
I (sort of, more or less) followed a recipe in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Besides leaving out all kinds of spicy peppers that I don’t care for (sorry, Billy), and upping the garlic a bit, I also opted to put the pickling spices directly into the pickling liquid, rather than tie it up in cheesecloth and remove it before jarring. I think the spices look pretty floating around in the jar, don’t you?
I’m making fried green tomatoes as a side dish for dinner tonight (to serve with: lentil mung bean dal, brown rice, raita, and sauteed kale with garlic). That will leave a whole lot of tomatoes still. Some have already ripened nicely while they sat in paper bags in the sun porch, waiting for me to have time to do something with them, so I think the bulk of what’s left will be allowed to ripen. It’ll be nice to still be eating tomatoes from the garden as the weather gets colder. I doubt I’ll make any more pickles. Maybe some chutney… Maybe we’ll just develop a fried green tomato habit…
As you may or may not know, about a year ago, I published a cassserole cookbook. And for the past five years I’ve been hosting a casserole competition in Brooklyn. Last night, the Fifth Annual Casserole Party descended on Brooklyn Label in Greenpoint where probably too much cheese was consumed (wait—there’s no such thing as too much cheese… anyway).
Many of the contestants went all out for their dishes; when it comes to cooking contests—especially in Brooklyn—you have to, if you want to win. But one theme I heard repeated throughout the night (and not just by those who earn the favor of the judges) was that casseroles are supposed to be cheap. In fact, casseroles were created to be a cheap way to feed lots of people. As I wrote in the introduction to Casserole Crazy:
After the Great Depression and up until the end of World War II, one-dish meals that could be made on the cheap were a necessity for many families surviving on rations, canned goods, bread, and very little meat. Mixing dry bread crumbs with beef or chicken, broth and a canned vegetable was a way to make a family’s meat ration feed more people and last longer.
Casseroles served the same purpose for my family when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. But at some point (and I’ll take a little bit of the credit, or the blame, for this), casseroles became fashionable and, in turn, more expensive to make. Just have a look at the list of last night’s winners for proof. While I loved the duck confit casserole and the fried chicken dinner with kale bechamel, in general, I love just as much my five-dollar tuna and macaroni concoctions.
What do you think? Do confits and caviar help boost the image of casserole or just make us tuna noodle chefs look bad?
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