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Cooking on a (shoe string) budget
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It's got about 10 speeds. Top of the line. Just got sharp new blades for it a month ago, too.
There is a grocery store not far from me that sells rotisserie chickens for $6 a piece. Toward the end of the day if there are any left they go half price, so every so often I'll swing by and if there are any left I'll buy a few, take them home, debone them, and basically do the exact same thing you do. Sure, it's been sitting under a heat lamp for hours, but you cannot beat $3 for an entire precooked chicken.
There's a significant difference in quality between a locally raised chicken that's been frozen for maybe a week or two vs a bag of chicken parts that's been sitting in a freezer for months. I'll take the fresher chicken any time. But if budget is the main concern, then yeah that will usually be cheaper. It won't taste as good though.
You'll probably also get less chicken then you think with the frozen bags. Look for the words "Contains up to 10% salt solution", yeah you're buying salt water.
We are talking about budget aren't we, yes?
If money is no object then organic, locally raised, free range, best-of-everything chicken will be better. But that's irrelevant if you want to save money. I always have a big bag of the cheap chicken in the freezer, and you'd need better taste buds than I have to taste the difference when it is in a curry. The brand I buy does not have salt water in it, btw.
Forgive me for not being a gourmand.
I live in Washington state. High quality meat isn't expensive, especially if you buy local (and know who the best local provider is, like I do). I'm beginning to think it's pretty easy for me to eat like a rich man on a poor man's budget.
It is!
Outstanding! Portuguese Green Soup:
1 lb of a spicy sausage, such as chorizo or andouille
1.5 lb potatoes (baby red or yukon gold prefered)
1 lb kale (or collard greens)
1 yellow onion
3 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper flakes
~5 cups chicken broth
Olive oil
Salt and pepper for taste
Blender
Large pot
Flat wooden spoon or spatula
Ladle
Begin preparing vegetables: strip the thick, fibrous center stem out of kale or collards and discard. Give the remaining usable leaf a rough chop.
Wash potatoes. Slice into rounds or half-rounds about .5 inches thick.
Dice onions. Mince garlic. Slice sausage into rounds also about .5 inches thick.
In large pot, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add garlic, red pepper flakes, and onions. Saute 'till onions are translucent. Next, add chopped greens and stir in oil until wilted. Next, add sausage rounds and cook for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Finally, add sliced potatoes and chicken broth along with a pinch of salt and pepper. Raise heat to bring broth up to a simmer until potatoes are soft and easily penetrated by a fork (about 20 minutes).
Once potatoes are soft, use a ladle to transfer approx 2 cups worth of soup into your blender. Make sure you transfer only broth, greens and potatoes into the blender; leave all sausage in the pot. Pulse until greens and potatoes are smoothly blended before pouring the contents back into the pot. Stir this thick, green broth into the rest of your soup until it's evenly thickened throughout.
Serve with French bread (I've been thinking about trying it over rice at some point like a gumbo). This green, spicy soup pairs easily with any cheap lager, hefeweizen or white wine, which ought to help you continue to feel like you're eating like a rich man on a poor man's budget.
In all honesty, 200$ is hardly a poor man's budget in my book. I live in Toronto, which has pretty expensive food all around, and yet I comfortably eat below 200$ a month without even trying. And that's with eating meat every single day, and eating red meat regularly. And other people tell me I shop at an expensive grocery store...
No reason to turn to a vegetarian diet unless you want to, you can easily afford meat. Plus, meat allows for some quick meals. You make a big batch of rice at the start of the week, and then you can just thaw some meat and cook it in 15 minutes when you need to eat. A little bit of salad on the side and you've got a complete meal.
$200 in a good month, Tycho. Typically it's more like $120-$150.
And don't forget, Washington has a sales tax. So I factor that into the cost of my foods.
Certain kinds of foods are, last I checked. Regardless, I'm not cutting meat out of my diet. It's just not something that's going to happen, and no one is going to convince me otherwise. I'm not trying to make it the center-piece of any given dish, but I need the protein. Like, desperately.
Obviously you can eat however you want. All I'm saying is that you asked for ways to eat inexpensively, and I'm telling you that I find that the best way to save money on food is to go for cheaper sources of protein, which means rice and beans. If you can get full eating on $150 a month by using meat as your main source of protein, go ahead. I find it difficult to do that because for $1, I can either buy 1 pound of meat or half a pound of dry rice and half a pound of dry beans, which turns into way more than a pound, cooked. I eat much more protein for the same amount of money by cutting meat out of my diet.
(This is actually a bit of a simplification; it's not bare protein that you want, it's the required amino acids + enough of whatever makes you feel full, which doesn't necessarily have to be "protein." As long as you get enough protein each day and all the amino acids, the goal should be to eat enough to feel full, not to load up on more protein [unless you're weightlifting or something?]).
Again, though, if you can work meat into your diet as anything other than "special happy time" food, then congratulations, because you've beat the traditional "poor person" diet which usually focuses on getting meat in there, at best, as cheap parts used to flavor beans while they cook or as special dishes on the holidays. Whether you've beat the diet by being resourceful or by just spending more depends on how you do it, I suppose, although I'd be interested in seeing a food budget that leads to as many calories as a rice/beans/vegetables diet for the same price. I'm not disputing that you can probably put together meat-focused dishes for cheap: I'm just saying that it's not going to be enough food, or more accurately that it could be much more food. And for me at least, I eat massive quantities of food because that's just how it is, and if I ate that much meat I would have to spend more.
I never said organic free range, I just said locally raised. I can get a whole locally raised fryer for under $1/lb when they're on sale. That's not gourmet. At all. It's just local and fresher than the 5 lb bag of breasts/thighs that have been sitting in the freezer for months.
It's like two large air masses of stupid colliding and forming a tornado of idiocy, devastating all logic in its path.
Do you have a recipe for the Kimchi?
You have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.
I'm a stagehand. My job is very physically intensive. I have to, at minimum, maintain a certain level of muscular capability in order to effectively execute the duties related to my occupation. The protein beans provide simply isn't enough. Meat can't not be a part of my diet, period.
That being said, I do use vegetables as my dietary baseline, and go from there. The meat is the icing on the cake. But I can't eat a cake without icing. I just can't.
EDIT: That recipe for Portuguese Green Soup was fucking delicious, Sammy. It's a huge hit with my household. Keep 'em coming.
Fried Rice
- 4 cups water
- 1 cup diced meat or .25lb ground meat browned
- 1 1/4 cups of chopped leftover veggies (or frozen peas and diced baby carrots, whatever's in the house)
- 2.5 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 eggs
- soy sauce to taste
- sesame oil, to taste (optional)
Flat wooden spoon or spatula
Large skillet or Wok
Heat skillet/wok to medium-high. Pour in oil, then stir in veggies; cook about 30 seconds. Crack in eggs, stirring quickly to scramble eggs with vegetables. Stir in cooked rice. Shake in soy sauce, and toss rice to coat. Drizzle with sesame oil, and toss again.
The idea is just to use leftovers to make a substantial meal that can be stretched out for days or used as part of the following days' meals. I've never followed a recipe clearly. I just looked at what I had and liked together and tossed it into the skillet/wok. I'd use bacon, scallions, onions, ground beef, leftover chicken, etc... And feel free to make adjustments to the meat/veggie/rice ratio!
Another great food to add is rotisserie chicken from grocery stores. I'm not sure what's available in the DC area but the Harris Teeter and Food Lion in the south always has them at a great price and if you catch it closer to the sell date, they're usually on sale. Once home, cut all meat/skin from the bones and store it in the fridge/freezer depending on you needs. If you have time, toss the leftover bits (bones and such) into a pot of water that barely covers it and cook it on high, setting it to simmer once it hit the boiling stage. Add some garlic and onions and let it simmer for roughly 2 hours half-covered and you're good to go with some chicken stock! You can freeze it for about 6 months.
Last tip is that a lot of ethnic groceries tend to be cheaper when it comes to meat & produce in general. I lived right by the Asian market here and would buy a cart's worth for less than $20.
I'm very glad. Let's see, cheap and not too difficult to learn over the Internet...
In that spice collection you mentioned earlier, do you have each of the following?
Paprika
Turmeric
Ground Mace
Ground Ginger
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
Coriander
Nutmeg
Cumin
Cayenne Pepper
(My guess is that at this point, lonelyahava already knows that dish I'm thinking of)
Yes
No
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes Yes Yes
Maybe?
Until you happen to have that on hand, try this instead:
Apple Honey Mustard Braised Porkchops
4 porkchops, bone in
1 yellow onion
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons dijon or brown mustard
~1 cup unsweetened apple juice
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon thyme
salt and pepper to taste
Large frying pan or skillet
Slice up the onion and set aside. Trim excess fat off chops and pat them dry with a paper towel. Lightly salt and pepper each side.
In large frying pan or skillet, warm about 3/4 tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat and add a generous pat of butter. Swirl it around in the pan as it melts and avoid burning. Once butter is completely melted and pan coated, raise heat to medium high and add pork chops. Sear each side for about 45 seconds to a minute: you want them to cook in the pan just long enough that the outside of the chop has begun to cook (and hopefully browned a little bit) but they should be visible raw through the center. Remove chops from pan and set them aside for now.
In same pan, saute onion until just before they become transluscent. Add pork chops back into pan and then add the apple juice until the chops are about 3/4 submerged in the juice. Then add mustard, honey, rosemary and thyme. When juice begins to bubble, reduce heat down to a low simmer. Stir frequently, especially at first. Honey's slow to dissolve in apple juice, even when warm, so you have to help it along.
Once juice has cooked off to the point where the chops are about 1/2 submerged, flip 'em over and cook the other side. Continue stirring occasionally.
Continue cooking down juice until chops are around 1/4 submerged or less. The apple honey mustard sauce should be thicker now -- almost like a gravy. Plate a green vegetable and a starch that'll soak up the excess gravy. Rice, couscous, mashed potatoes all work. Even a baked potato or a slice of French bread will do in a pinch.
This method of cooking -- using a dry heat to sear and then finishing the dish with a lower, wet heat in a mild acid like apple juice -- is known as braising. Once you've mastered this technique, you ought to be able to cook several of the more famous dishes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Necessity Chicken
2-3 chicken breasts
1-2 bell peppers (I like green, and they're usually the cheapest, but color's certainly up to you)
1-2 heads of broccoli (optional- fine without, but the broccoli is a nice touch if you can swing it)
12oz rice (any variety is fine. I've had some success with using boxed pilaf, but bagged white/brown will do fine)
1/4-1/2 cup teriyaki sauce (you can manufacture something that tastes close enough with soy sauce and sugar, though, or just go with straight soy sauce if you like that flavor in itself. The measurement is variable because some people like a stronger sauce flavor but others just want a hint of it)
2 tbsp butter (or olive oil, if you want something a little healthier)
Frying pan (or two)
Sauce pot (or two)
Large pot (you're going to be cooking all that rice in it, then adding the other stuff to it. Use an appropriate size)
Two or three spoons, for mixing
Whatever kind of knife you feel comfortable with. You'll be cubing chicken and chopping vegetables.
1. Cut the chicken into one-inch cubes (or therabouts) and toss it in the frying pan on medium heat. Cook until chicken has that excellent "cooked chicken" color all the way through in the biggest piece, or gets a little brown on the outside. You know at what point chicken is cooked, I'm sure.
2. Chop the pepper(s) up. You'll want them to be a little smaller than the chicken pieces, probably. Remember to remove the seeds after you cut into the pepper the first time. Throw the pepper pieces in a second pan (or pot) with the butter or olive oil (butter might give you a better flavor, but olive oil is a little healthier. This one's up to you). Throw it on medium heat and cook until those peppers start to lose some of their natural color (but don't burn them). If you like them crunchier and more pepper-y, cook them for less time. If you're making broccoli, boil or steam it at this point in the game (spicing as desired. I use garlic powder sometimes). I wouldn't throw it in there raw.
3. Cook your rice in the big pot. When it's done, add the peppers/broccoli, then the chicken, then the sauce (mixing it up thoroughly in between additions to the pot). Continue to stir that pot full of deliciousness over low/medium heat for another five minutes or so to let that sauce get good and mixed. I occasionally throw some garlic powder in there, but I LOVE garlic powder, so that might just be a me thing.
I don't usually serve anything with this, because it's got most of the hallmarks of a full meal in there. It will serve three people pretty comfortably with some leftovers. It's pretty good, even cold, on subsequent days. It's also very filling- this stuff sits in your stomach like concrete (and I mean that in a positive way, weirdly). I imagine you could add other vegetables to this and it would turn out fine (corn would probably work, and/or carrots). The genesis of this dinner was when I was in college and we had the kind of snowstorm that prevents you from going anywhere, and we were dangerously low on foodstuffs. We used what we had in the house, thus the name. Thank god, in a house full of guys, one of us (not me) was the son of a chef.
This thread has been packed with useful information, so I thought I'd share something in thanks for all the cool stuff I've learned.
GT: FootlongKaPow
I really want to do the thing where you make a food on one day, freeze it, and eat chunks of it for the rest of the week, and soup seems to do that. With this recipe, I didn't cook the vegetables at all, but instead put them into 4 plastic containers that I poured the rest of the cooled soup into. I then saved the last step of poaching the vegetables for 30 minutes for when I actually wanted to heat and eat the soup; don't know if that made a difference. Potatoes don't take to freezing really well but I thought they did fine as long as I didn't cook them beforehand.
I then combined the spare celery and carrots with lettuce and some sandwich tomato I had around to make a salad, which kind of solves the problem of if you buy vegetables for anything other than a salad, they'll go bad within the week
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.