Dear Bon Appetit,
Surely you are totally insane. Ice cream maker? Potato masher? Juicer? Cardboard cake rounds?
Here is a tip, Bon Appetit: if there is a cheap and easy substitute for something (i.e. dried beans=pie weights, should one ever need pie weights, or saucepan+metal bowl=double boiler), it is not a kitchen essential. Additionally, why would you recommend two tools for the same job (microplane grater & zester)? Also, no one uses basters, ever, and interestingly enough, anything heavy will serve as a meat mallet. I use my fists. And unless you're serving ten or more people on a regular basis, a square cake pan lined with foil makes a handy roasting pan. It fits a five-pound chicken or roast. I can tell you from experience.
All told, the number of kitchen "essentials" I do not own? Thirty-one. Thirty-one. And I do more cooking than most people I know. I know that we're talking about a "well-stocked" kitchen here, for someone who has a particular interest in cooking, but seriously, Bon Appetit. Get real.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The Overstocked Kitchen
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Frugal Spice Rack
After some interest in my DIY spice rack, I thought I'd explain what I've done to solve the spice-storage problem in a small kitchen. I've created a frugal, infinitely customizable, and extremely effective little DIY spice rack with very little effort and not much money.
Hanging things on walls is a classic space-saving technique, and it's also really nice, if you're a cook, to have your herbs and spices ready to hand. I keep all my regular-use ingredients (oils, vinegars, salts, etc.) in a convenient stoveside cabinet, but it doesn't have space for a ton of spice bottles, and who wants to rummage around amongst all those bottles anyway? (Also, spice bottles are pretty irritating in and of themselves: if you want to measure, you have to pull off the little plastic shaker top, which often puts up a fight.) So I started looking for spice racks to mount on the wall, and just didn't like the offerings: most of them are either faux-rustic or scary stainless steel monstrosities, and neither would look right in my kitchen. And while I was looking, I encountered the idea of a magnetic spice rack.
The problems with most commercial magnetic spice racks are two:
1) The tins have clear lids. Herbs and spices lose their flavor more quickly when they are exposed to light, so this kind of storage is a bad idea. It's not so bad when you're keeping your clear bottles in a cabinet, but when you keep them out, you shorten their lifespan and increase the probability of having to throw out and replace old spices.
2) They almost invariably have the wrong number of tins. For the kind that's just a magnetic bar, that's not a big deal, but an empty tin or no tin in the kind of magnetic spice rack that has a specific seat for each tin is liable to drive a certain type of person (uh, me) totally crazy.
3) They're expensive. They can run $40 for a rack to hold 12 tins, and I have more than 12 spices and may acquire more.
4) The tins often come pre-labeled with ridiculous things like "burger seasoning" or "tabasco garlic salt" or something else I'll never actually own. Sometimes they include the corresponding spices, which just creates waste.
But the concept, I realized, is easily duplicated and improved upon if you do it yourself. You buy tins (without clear lids), you stick magnets to the tins, you fill the magnet-tins up with spices, label them, and stick them on the refrigerator (I'm using the side of my refrigerator facing my countertops). This gives you the power to customize your spice rack and saves you money. A 12-tin magnetic rack can run you $35-50; my DIY solution costs about $30-$35 for 20 tins.
A tin is cheap: a 4-ouncer, big enough to hold most to all of the contents a regulation-size spice bottle (depending on what exactly the contents are), is $.71 at Specialty Bottle. I actually bought mine in a batch of 20 from Etsy's "supplies" category, because the shipping was cheaper. Twenty tins plus shipping cost me $26. I already had craft magnets and glue, but they're quite reasonable, too (like $1.29 for a pack of 8 when I bought them, and I bet you can get them cheaper), and can be found in almost any craft store (might be cheaper at a hardware store). You need a pretty powerful magnet: mine are 3/4" in diameter and pretty thick. I started with one magnet per tin, but find that two, spaced across the tin, work better.
Now, I'm a wee bit concerned, as I would be with any magnetic spice storage, that I'm accidentally going to pull the lid and not the rest of the tin off at some point, leading to an enormous, spicy mess, but using thick magnets here seems to be a plus: it gives your fingers a logical place to grip (between the tin and the fridge) that prevents spills. We'll see how this goes. If I run into trouble, I may recreate the idea with twistlug tins, which aren't available in a flat 4oz. size, but are available in a flat 3oz. size, which is just about as good (especially if you buy your spices from bulk suppliers and can buy exactly the amount you need).
Anyway, I'm pretty psyched about this solution. It's low-maintenance, adaptable, and frugal. With a little added attention (K is thinking he'll make cool images for the lids), it can be really great-looking, too.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Frugal Food: Late-to-work Chickpea Salad
This quick-and-dirty Late To Work Chickpea Salad is so named because...I was late to work this morning, and needed lunch! Here's what I did:
Hardboiled an egg while I washed my face, brushed my teeth, put on some makeup, etc. Strictly speaking, I coddle eggs, I don't boil them: I put an egg and some salt in cold water, crank the heat up, wait 'til it hits a boil (not long, if it's a teeny pot like the one I used for this purpose), turn the heat off and cover the pot with a plate (you may want to use a lid. I use a plate). You want to leave your egg about 13 minutes before shocking it with cold water, but the great thing about this method is that a few minutes' overcooking won't turn your egg to greenish rubber.
Once the egg was done, I dumped half a can of chickpeas (but rinsed them first) into a Tupperware. Then I hacked up half a cucumber into roughly chickpea-sized bits. Then I crumbled in a substantial slice of feta cheese. Then I laced the whole thing with soy sauce and shook it up. The feta sort of breaks down in the soy sauce and becomes a dressing. Then I sliced up the egg on top. The whole operation took maybe five minutes.
Costs:
1/2 can chickpeas: about $.80
half a cucumber: $.25 (I got them 2 for $1 at my supermarket the other day--slightly less than peak freshness, but still good)
about an ounce of feta: $.43 (I bought a pound for $6.99)
liberal dash of soy sauce: shall we say $.10?
one egg: about $.20--I can't actually remember what I paid for that dozen.
So, total cost of a big container full of healthy lunch deliciousness, packed with high-quality protein and fiber: $1.78. (It could be made even cheaper if you made the chickpeas from dried, but that would require more planning.)
Friday, March 21, 2008
Frugal Food: Edamame and Feta Salad
Knowing I was going out for drinks with K and some of his friends tonight and yet tired and not inclined to cook, I whipped up this little salad last night with what I had in the house. I cooked up some frozen edamame quickly (three to five minutes in boiling water is all it takes), crumbled in some feta cheese, and grilled a chicken sausage to slice in, too. If I'd had some leftover grilled chicken handy, that would have been perfect, as would some thin slices of red onion, but I used what I had. I topped the salad off with a tablespoon of vinaigrette from the container I keep in the fridge, and hey, presto: a tasty, nutritious afternoon snack that will keep me from having to buy (and eat) greasy bar food.
Process: Mix ingredients together. Eat.
Ingredients:
About a cup and a half of frozen edamame, blanched. I get the shelled kind--they're much cheaper, $1.29 for a bag at Whole Foods (Trader Joe's is always sold out). This is about a third to half the bag, so let's say $.60.
About an ounce of feta cheese. We'd just picked up a pound of feta at Kalustyan's: it was $7, so 1 oz would cost $.44.
One chicken sausage. This came from a pack of five that cost me $4 at Trader Joe's. Again, you could certainly do leftover grilled chicken here (I think it would be better, actually), but my version cost me $.80.
A tablespoon of vinaigrette. The price is too negligible to calculate, so I'll give a guesstimate of $.10. I make my own, and just keep it in the fridge for times like these.
So the grand total is $1.94. Pretty frugal, wouldn't you say? Again, in a perfect world, this salad would have thin slices of red onion, but even so, you're not exactly breaking the bank--especially because in a perfect world, it would have grilled chicken rather than chicken sausage, and that would be cheap enough to make up for the onion.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Valentine's Day: The Morning After
Valentine's Day chez English Major was a frugal success!
I stopped at Fairway on my way home and bought salad fixings (greens & grape tomatoes), some raw shrimp, half a dozen eggs, a baguette, a couple of lemons, and some groceries we needed for the house--some yogurt, some baby carrots, a couple of apples. I also bought some pasta in case our plan (make pasta from scratch!) was a failure. Total: $22.
Importantly, I resisted the impulse to embellish, to say, "Oh, what we're doing isn't enough--I'll get some strawberries to macerate and eat with the cheesecake! I'll get an avocado to add to the salad! I'll get a bottle of lambic to drink with dessert!" No. No. What we're doing is fine. Keep walking.
We already had the cheesecake I made on Sunday in the fridge (another plus of that recipe: reheats like a dream), and we also already had flour, parsley, olive oil, butter, balsamic vinegar, mustard, and a bottle of white wine. Making pasta from scratch is intimidating-sounding but actually easy, and very, very, very delicious, especially when accompanied by a sauce that consists of butter, oil, garlic, lemon juice, white wine, and shrimp. And butter. And oil. And butter. (A tip from me to you: there was some butter in the sauce.)
Simple salad with the vinaigrette recipe I learned in my cooking class in France (I am not sharing the recipe, no, because even though it is the easiest thing ever, everyone thinks I am God's gift to salad when I make it, and there are some things a girl has to keep to herself) was a great side dish, and cheesecake, and wine...mmm, gluttony.
(K's present to me was a glamorous black-and-gold cigarette holder and a matching cigarette case full of beautiful Nat Sherman cigarettes in bright colors--fueling my semi-secret belief that I really am Holly Golightly.)
So there were no yachts and no diamonds, but we did something cool (pasta from scratch!), made ourselves a pretty decadent dinner, and went to bed happy. And I didn't shoot my budget all to hell. And what more, really, can one really ask?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Beans! Beans!
In my continuing quest for delicious, healthy, and cheap meals, I've been eating a lot more beans. Last night, I diced a couple of small onions, caramelized them in olive oil, added cumin, chili powder, and some minced garlic, and then dumped in a can of black beans (can juices and everything). I split the recipe between two small tupperwares, and K and I took it to work for an afternoon snack.
I got the recipe from Orangette, who also provided this awesome-looking doctored chickpea recipe, which I'm planning on making for lunch on Sunday. I appreciate how quick these recipes are--they're really "assembly" more than "cooking"--and how simple and healthy the results are. So in the interest of expanding my bean repertoire even further, I thought I'd ask my readers for further tips: what do you do with a can of beans?
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Discretionary Spending Budget for This Week: $0
I went to see Sweeney Todd tonight with K and a friend. Afterwards, we strolled over to Veniero's for coffee and desserts. It was a nice night, and cost me $24. I don't have any more discretionary money to spend until next Saturday, when I will spend $20 or less on brunch with a friend who's coming on an impromptu visit from the West Coast. I have plenty of money for food, and money for my laundry, and money for my Netflix autodraft, but no money at all for anything else. I mean, I have money—it's not like my checking account balance is $48 or anything—but I don't have money to spend.
This is essentially fine. I have enough for the necessities, and I can certainly socialize—just, at home. I have a bottle of wine and lots of tea and some beer and some frozen gingersnap dough in my house; I could easily have a friend over for a nice afternoon of chatting and Scrabble. I should actually make a couple of dates to do just that over the next couple of weeks, so that I don't feel like my inability to spend money is isolating me. That's a very good plan, actually, and I can think of several people I don't see enough whom I could invite over for such an afternoon. Ah, planning, light of my life, fire of my loins, etc., etc. It may not quite trip off the tongue, but it does wonders for the sanity. And the budget.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Frugal Food: The Virtues of Batch Cooking
So, I know that I've told you guys about batch cooking on more than one occasion. But seriously, seriously, batch cooking is awesome. Why? Here's why.
Over the course of two grocery trips (Trader Joe's and our neighborhood Associated), K and I spent just over $50 on groceries. Most, but not all of that went to our batch-cooking frenzy tonight (we also bought some seltzer, baking soda, flour and hand soap, for about $8, and two bags of turkey meatballs for about $5, which are already gone, because they are God's gift to lazy people). So let's say $40 worth of relevant groceries here. For that, we bought:
TJ's
Two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs
A pound and a quarter of ground turkey
A bag of baby greens
A loaf of rye bread
A box of instant cranberry oatmeal
A bag of frozen spinach
Four granny smith apples
Organic ketchup (I'm somewhat phobic about high-fructose corn syrup)
Associated
A bunch of parsley
Two bags of super-cheap but annoyingly tiny yellow onions
Four heads of garlic
Breadcrumbs
A pack of 2% string cheeses (Trader Joe's has them cheaper, but...I like Polly-O. They string in that satisfactory way. So sue me.)
Two packages of cremini mushrooms
A bunch of carrots
A little cup of fat-free Greek yogurt
And we already had...
Whole wheat English muffins (I use them for sandwiches, K uses the rye--but notably, we certainly could get through the whole week on one loaf for the two of us)
Eggs
Slivered almonds (they're optional in the chickpea dish, really, but we had them)
Milk, the dregs of a quart
Two 28-oz. cans of chickpeas
One 28-oz. can of crushed tomatoes
Two extra boneless, skinless chicken thighs
Olive oil
Dijon mustard
Half a block of smoked jack cheese
We put in about three hours of cooking tonight, and the fruits of our labor are:
Eight deliciously tender grilled chicken thighs for chicken sandwiches
One big double batch of a variation on this amazing Catalan chickpea recipe (we added spinach), to serve as a side dish with lunches and dinners
Four miniature turkey meatloaves, in my wonderful miniature loaf pans (Christmas present from K's parents), waiting to be cooked and split between the two of us.
So essentially, we've made lunch and dinner for the whole work week. In three hours. Three fun hours, during which we listened to podcasts of "This American Life" and hung out and liked each other.
Breakfasts will be the oatmeal and perhaps a hard-cooked egg, and for snacks there are string cheeses, leftover carrots, more hardboiled eggs, and apples. Further effort required is basically just assembly and packaging (the turkey meatloaves have the extra complication of "stick in oven for awhile").
There are two of us. For $40 and 3 hours we fed ourselves for nearly a work week. And, just as importantly, we removed a lot of the obstacles between us and cheap, healthy, delicious meals—I think that's a big problem for a lot of people, and certainly for me, the whole "Yes, but Pret a Manger is right next to my office and I don't have to wake up early to get a sandwich there" thing, but the "oh, actually, I can make a really yummy sandwich myself in five minutes and it doesn't cost me a dime" response is a very, very effective one.
Plus, I'm pretty stressed lately, and I always find knowing what I'm going to eat for the week takes a big load off my mind. What I'm really saying is, give batch-cooking a shot! It saves money, time, and stress. What's not to like?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
More Frugal Food: Southwest Chicken Salad
I was actually inspired to figure out this recipe when, last Friday, I picked up a salad much resembling this at Starbucks—I hadn't planned ahead for lunch, and I had money on a Starbucks card courtesy of my mom. I think I paid more than $5 for it. But I was disturbed by how easily and cheaply I could replicate it myself, and also by the lengthy list of unpronounceables rounding out the ingredient list. My version has none of them.
This one's going to be lunch for the week—the batch I've just whipped up should cover K and me for two lunches each, and then I'll do another batch Wednesday evening, for Thursday and Friday, with something different on Wednesday to break up the monotony (I find that three days in a row of the same lunch is just too much).
1 15-oz. can black beans ($.50—they were on sale)
1 15-oz. can corn kernels ($1.09—not on sale)
1 medium onion (I used a Vidalia because it was what I had) (about $.80)
4 boneless skinless chicken thighs (or, really, whatever chicken you've got lying around) (I paid about $4 for 8, so let's say $2)
1 container of nonfat Greek yogurt ($2)
Drain the beans and corn, rinse, and combine. Chop up the onion in a rough dice; throw that in with the other ingredients. Cook the chicken in your preferred method—I marinated mine in some Greek yogurt and mustard briefly, seasoned with salt, pepper, and oregano, and grilled them up in my cast-iron skillet. When I do it again towards the middle of the week, I'll add cumin to the marinade. Cut the chicken into slices and toss them in, too. Toss. Combine some mustard (or mustard powder, or wasabi, or whatever you think would taste good that has some bite) with the remainder of the yogurt. Add mixture to bowl. Salt and pepper to taste. Done! (I also added a splash of lime juice, just because it was in the fridge. I can't taste it, though.)
If you're using very lean chicken (i.e. breasts or "tenders"), I would add a splash of olive oil to the dressing, for balance and satiety's sake, but I used thighs, so they take care of themselves (aside from being deliciously tender and very absorbent of other flavors).
I expect this to make four lunches, which works out to a per-serving cost of about $1.60. Not too shabby for an easy, tasty, healthy lunch. It certainly beats Starbucks's price.
Like all of my recipes, this one is endlessly adaptable, so tell me if you hit on any particularly tasty variations!
Frugal Food: Lentil Soup with Goat Cheese
We had this for dinner last night: it's cheap, delicious, healthy, and doesn't take more than half an hour to put together from start to finish. I recommend it highly.
Pick over and rinse a bag of lentils. Bring 7 cups water to a boil in a big saucepan, add the lentils, and boil for twenty minutes. Chop up a big white or yellow onion. At about the fifteen-minute mark on the boiling, start sauteeing the onion in a smidge of olive oil, with two pinches of salt. Do this in the big pot that will eventually hold all the soup. When the onion is tender and translucent, dump in one 28-oz. can of crushed tomatoes, the (drained) lentils, and two cups water or stock (I used stock; water is obviously more frugal). Bring the soup up to a simmer and add half a bag of frozen spinach (or any other leafy green: kale, chard, whatever). Bring the soup up to a simmer again and adjust the seasoning to taste: I added lots of black pepper, some cumin, and some salt.
Top with some chunks of goat cheese (optional, obviously: you could also use yogurt, or a drizzle of olive oil, or a poached egg). They melt slightly and are super-delicious, and also bolster the fillingness of the soup (the cheese adds protein and fat—an egg would do the exact same thing for much less money).
The lentils cost $.99, the onion cost about $.80, the tomatoes cost $1.29, the stock cost $2.29, and half a bag of spinach cost about $1.20. An 8-oz. package of goat cheese cost $4; we used about a third of it on two servings, so let's say the whole thing, if you want to go there.
The total of the ingredients (including the optional stock and cheese) is $10.57. This provides six generous main-course servings, and, especially with the cheese, is really filling (also, somewhat obviously, really good for you), so the cost per serving of the "deluxe" version is $1.75. The pared-down version (or even substituting bullion for prepared stock and an egg for the cheese) is much cheaper.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
On Paying for Quality: An Example of How Cheap is Not the Same as Frugal
There is an actual, physical hole in the sole of my shoe. Meaning, when I put my foot down, my actual foot (enstockinged, but still) touches the actual ground. Which is very cold.
My shoes cost $24 and I bought them about three months ago. Perhaps next time I should pay more than $24.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Frugal Food: Lentils with Chorizo
At my supermarket (bless it!), lentils cost $.89 per pound. A pound of lentils is a lot of lentils. That means lentil dishes are super-cheap. They're also really healthy and great comfort food for the winter.
So I made up this delicious, semi-spicy lentil stew with chorizo last weekend, and it's been lunch all week. Delicious.
Ingredients
1 lb lentils ($.89)
1 medium white onion (about $.75)
2 big cans (28 oz, I think) of crushed tomatoes (about $3)
1 bottle wine (optional! mine was a gift, but you can get a perfectly decent bottle for $7. And I used white, because I had it, and it's tasty, but I might go with a red next time)
2 bullion cubes (about $.50--but you might want to go with canned broth if you didn't use wine)
5 links chorizo (or whatever sausage you like) (about $4)
Dice one onion. Sweat it in some olive oil (you could add garlic, too, but we were out) until the onions start getting translucent. Dump in a can of crushed tomatoes. (You could use two cans if you're not using wine--more tasty liquids for the lentils to suck up.) Spice to taste: I used chili powder, cumin, and oregano. And lots of salt and pepper. Let simmer for 5-10 minutes. Rinse your lentils, pick out any nasty bits, and add them to the pot. Cover, let simmer over low heat. Check on the lentils every forty-five minutes or so. If they've sucked up all the liquid in the pot, give them more. I used a bottle of white wine that was kicking around my fridge, and then moved on to bullion cubes dissolved in water. (If you use wine, cook uncovered for awhile, so you don't retain the alcoholic burn.) You might want to use real broth/stock if you're not using wine, because the flavor's better. When the lentils have been simmering for about two hours, brown your sausage of choice briefly in a skillet (you just want to get some color on it, not cook it all the way through) and toss it in with the lentils. If it's pre-cooked, just slice it and dump it in.
Take your lentils off the heat just before they hit the texture you like. Mine cooked about 3 hours. The result is a delicious, slightly spicy, very filling frugal meal that gets better as it sits in the fridge all week.
We've gotten six lunches out of this so far. And we've still got lentils in the fridge! So let's say we'll get 8 servings out of it--the cost would be less than $2/serving with the wine (I estimated the price at $7, just because I'd be perfectly happy to use a $7 bottle of wine when making this again).
Monday, November 26, 2007
More No-Knead Bread: Very Frugal Food Indeed!
Those who like the kitchen but are scared of intimidating new cooking milestones (like me!) should check out this new no-knead bread recipe from the Times's Dining & Wine section. You can keep the batch of dough in the fridge and pull out bits as needed for baking. How perfect is that for the frugal meal-planner? And it promises a crusty loaf, which is exactly what I like.
It just might be manna from heaven.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
The Christmas Box
I'm itching to get going on my Christmas boxes. I'll be buying individual gifts for my parents, my sister, K, and a couple of friends, but for most people, I'll be putting together little smorgasbords of Christmasy delight, packed up in cute miniature Chinese-takeout boxes for all of their portable Christmas sweet-eating needs. And I'm hoping to do the whole shebang for $100.
I know I'll be including:
- homemade peanut butter cups
- Chez Panisse gingersnaps
- pralined almonds (and maybe hazelnuts too)
- English Toffee
And I'm thinking about adding biscotti (for those who prefer more subtlety in their sweets) and peppermint bark, but I haven't picked recipes yet. Two advantages here: 1) because I want a wide variety, I won't have to make very much of each recipe. At the most, I'll be doubling them, but I won't be doing quadruple batches, which are always unwieldy. 2) There are exactly three new pieces of kitchen equipment I am going to need for all these recipes: a candy thermometer (my mom might have one I can borrow), a chocolate thermometer, and a mini-muffin tin (see previous parenthetical).
I'm headed to Pearl River for miniature Chinese takeout boxes. They're four for a dollar. I'll probably get 32, for $8, and I'll try to pick up some cellophane or tissue paper there too, for under $10. Budget another $25, tops, for new kitchen tools, and I'm left with about a quite-satisfactory $60 ($10-$15 per recipe) for the purchasing of ingredients. I should definitely be able to do it on that. I'll make my own gift tags, or just label the boxes. This project will provide gifts for coworkers, friends, and less-immediate relatives, and if I do do it for $100, the cost will be $3.13 per gift. And I think the gifts are quite satisfactory ones, too, especially if I do a little decoration of the boxes.
The project will officially kick off this Sunday, when I'll be back from Chicago. Hopefully, I'll get to Pearl River then for the boxes, and the fun can begin. (Because it's food, I can't work too far ahead of schedule, but I can certainly begin the making of lists and assembling of ingredients.)
Monday, October 29, 2007
Frugal Food: How to Break Down a Chicken
I hit a frugal food milestone last night: I bought a whole chicken and broke it down, for the first time ever. It's in my fridge, soaking in buttermilk, and tonight, K and I are going to pan-fry that sucker.
Breaking down your chicken yourself is frugal for two reasons: you save money on the chicken meat, and you get something extra: the carcass. From a chicken carcass (or two), you can make delicious homemade stock. I think I'll wait until I have two carcasses, and make a really intense stock for chicken soup. Maybe I'll even save the schmaltz (chicken fat skimmed off the stock) & make matzoh balls! There's nothing better for when the weather starts to change, and if you're making stock from carcasses you've already got sitting in the freezer and some schmaltz you just skimmed off the stock, all you really need is a box of matzoh meal (cheap!), some parsley (cheap!), and an onion (cheap!). I'm looking forward to it.
Anyway, I definitely did an amateurish job on my chicken: the skin doesn't really match the chicken parts, and I think I cut through a joint on one of the drumsticks instead of cleanly dislocating it from the thigh. The breasts are definitely smaller than they should be; I didn't do a great job of cutting them off the ribcage.
But with practice, I'll get better, which means I'll be getting an even better value for my chicken dollar. And I like knowing where my food comes from. Also, of course, the longer a bird stays whole, the fresher it is.
There are a ton of online resources for learning to break down chickens. Alton Brown gives a very helpful demonstration about halfway through this clip, and Chowhound offers this video tutorial. I prefer Alton's method; he teaches you to remove the wishbone instead of just cutting through it.
Happy butchery!
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Pot Lucky
The party went really well--I think everyone enjoyed themselves. I certainly did. And the pot luck idea was really fun--a great chance for people to ooh and aah over each other's cooking. I made a big tray of deviled eggs (with scallions and chili powder), a pot of frijoles (with a smoked ham hock), and frozen margaritas. K made delicious, gooey brownies.
The extra-special benefit here is leftovers. Yesterday, I grabbed three deviled egg halves for breakfast this morning, and brought half of the leftover pepper-onion-cheddar quiche for lunch. Dinner was more deviled eggs and some tortilla chips with spinach-artichoke dip. Today, breakfast was a piece of coffee cake, and lunch will be the rest of the quiche. I also froze individual portions of the leftovers from the big, deliciously crusty macaroni and cheese with broccoli, edamame, and peas: there are five or six foil packets of the stuff in my freezer, and I'll have one for dinner tonight.
Speaking of quiche, I only just figured this out: quiche is seriously frugal food. You buy a frozen pie shell, which I would (I do make pie crust myself, but I've got none of the appropriate tools in my own kitchen--neither food processor nor pastry cutter--and would probably not want to do the whole routine on a Tuesday), here is how you make quiche: you throw leftover whatever in a blind-baked pie shell, you pour milk and eggs on top, you bake, you eat. Voila! C'est marveilleux, non? I'm definitely going to get a couple of frozen pie shells for my freezer. They generally cost less than $4 for a package of two, so it's a very low-cost dish.
In fact, I'm hoping the leftovers from the party will last us all week. I think it's a serious possibility, and that would make me and my very broke boyfriend two very happy campers.
Point is: pot lucks are great! Creativity, cooking, variety, leftovers! I'd almost like to make it a monthly affair (rotating, of course, so the leftovers-bounty and the cleaning-burden are shared).
Saturday, October 13, 2007
New York on the Cheap: The Crocodile Lounge
I spent two evenings this past week at the Crocodile Lounge. I never return to a bar that fast. And, okay, the fact that I left a bag of tupperwares there did have something to do with it, but not everything, because I didn't have to stay for two beers. But I did. Because seven bucks (including tip) buys you a beer and a personal pizza.
Oh, yes. That's right. With every beer, you get a ticket entitling you to one free personal pizza. Which isn't as bad as you would expect from a free pizza. In fact, it's quite tasty, especially if you eat it right out of the oven, when the pan burns your fingertips and the molten, gushy cheese scalds the roof of your mouth. Delicious. For seven dollars, you get dinner and beer!
Even better, go for Happy Hour (weekdays, 4-6), and get beer for $3, well cocktails for $4. Still with free pizza.
I wouldn't plug the great deal if it weren't such a great bar. It's laid-back and unpretentious and has Skee-Ball in the back room. And the music is great. And, at 14th between 1st & 2nd Avenues, it's close to the excellent and extremely free people-watching in Union Square. Which is how I wound up my Friday evening (well, that, a cigarette, a cute boy, and a $2.99 bag of Trader Joe's chocolate-covered pretzels). I recommend it.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Ours is a Star-Crossed Love, DiorShow Ultimate
I have fallen in love with a mascara. It is DiorShow Ultimate. It is the perfect mascara. I go to Sephora to visit it, to try it on and bat my lashes at myself in the mirrors. It costs $23.
The thing is, I have two perfectly good mascaras--a Rimmel my mother got in a gift bag somewhere, and a better one, from MAC (source of the vast majority of my good makeup). But the DiorShow has them both beat by a mile. It's the holy grail of makeup: you look better without looking like you're wearing makeup at all.
It's just--this is so blatantly something I do not need. At all. Beautiful eyelashes are not a need. No matter what Cosmo tells you. On the other hand, they are a want, and want is a force not to be discounted.
Just when I think I've got myself talked out of this purchase--on grounds of obvious wastefulness, of $23-plus-tax-is-$25-more-for-the-savings-account--want flares up again.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Victory at the Greenmarket
Brothers and sisters, I have come to tell you that it's true: farmer's markets are a great way to save money. The best part is, they're also a great way to feel tremendously luxurious, to take pleasure in your purchases and in your food and cooking.
On Saturday, after brunch with a friend at a local tea room (!), we walked back to my apartment, picked up K, and set out for the Union Square Greenmarket. O bliss! O joy! It was a beautiful day, and the produce was cheap. We got a big bunch of basil for $1, two Kirby cucumbers for another $1, four ears of sweet corn for another $1, four perfectly ripe organic tomatoes for about $2, three beautiful apples (two Macoun, one Fuji) for $1.50, four white peaches for $3, and the best red onion I've ever tasted for $.75. We also splurged, spending $4 on a pound of heirloom tomatoes (nearly the last of the season) and $8 on a little round of a cheese that can best be described as a sheep's-milk Camembert. The cheesemaker sampled me a bite of the Feta, and I was going to go with that (to put on top of the tomatoes for dinner), but once he sampled me the softer cheese, I was hooked, and went with that one instead.
And then, on our way out, there was a special on raspberries and blackberries: 3 boxes for $5! We split the deal with our friend, and took home two boxes of tiny, iridescently sweet raspberries for $3. Glorious.
Dinner was the heirloom tomatoes with thin slivers of red onion (plus sea salt & balsamic vinegar) and the sheep cheese with half of a baguette we picked up at the adjacent Whole Foods for $1.79. Lunch today is a salad of Kirby cucumbers, tomato, red onion (and we've still only used half of it!), and sweet corn kernels. Dinner tonight will be tomatoes with feta (just the grocery-store kind, which I have a chunk of in my fridge), onions, and basil & the rest of the baguette, and dessert will be white peaches. Lunch tomorrow will be a salad of sweet corn & baby spinach. And then, perhaps, we'll be done with our greenmarket bounty.
All this for about $15 apiece! I'm going to look really seriously at making the greenmarket a Saturday tradition, and trying to eat for at least the first half of the week on the produce I buy. Problem is that I'm not very good with your cold-weather vegetables, your squashes and root veggies. But I think the frugality (not to mention the tastiness and eco-friendliness) they dangle like a carrot in front of me (mmm, carrots!) might just be enough to get me trying.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Consolation Prize
So, K bought an iPhone. He's wanted one since...well, since before they were invented. It's his Dream Gadget. And with the price drop, he couldn't resist. He didn't take it out of the box, though, because before he could get his sticky fingers on his new toy, he had to make sure he could get out of his half-up Sprint contract.
Which he couldn't. He argued that an increase in text message prices was a materially adverse change that voided the contract, but the retention specialist with whom he was on the phone for forty minutes held firm, arguing that because his text message package was a separate element and not an integral part of his contracted services, the change didn't void the contract. Now he's trying to decide whether to pay the contract cancellation fee ($200) and gleefully rip open the shrinkwrap, or return the beloved object and settle for the 10% discount on his bill plus bumped-up text messaging package the retention specialist offered.
I know what I'd do—stick with my contract, then buy the phone next summer—but that's because electronics aren't a big priority with me. I use a two-year-old phone the size of a double compact (the fat mirrored kind, with a brush inside) with no bells and whistles but a useless camera function, and it doesn't bother me. And I know how it can be, wanting something only to have it moved slightly out of your reach. And I sort of want him to have it—he'd enjoy it so much, and I'd get to poke around with it...
Still, though, for me personally, frugality would win out—I just couldn't stomach paying that fee, and the discount would serve as a consolation prize.
