Under the Wire

Yes, I didn't get back right away with the numbers.  But I blame the holidays. A good thing to blame, I think.  It was a quiet holiday week.  I just figured after the past few weeks of stress and depression about having losing the job and having no money, I should relax, just a little.  Played computer games mostly, aside from the job search, of course.  Though the prospects out there dropped over the holidays for a bit because, yuo know, it was the holidays.  New year now.  Hoping the possibilities rise up again.  Not filling out an application or sending out my resume everyday makes me nervous.

Have a possible lead for a new job though!  Waiting for the THIRD interview.  I think that's something positive, I got through the first two.  Here's hoping, crossing fingers.  Until they say yes, though, the search must go on!

As for the feeding ourselves on food stamp numbers, that first week, we did do it.  Including the occasional breakfasts of oatmeal, some small easy meals like mac and cheese and a package of Jello, we managed to do the first week just under $44.  And some of the meals, like the chulent, easily carried on into the next.

Having said all that, the experiment has been ruined by the holidays.  We were given the gift of free fruit from Dan's mother and free meat in the form of a sizable gift card from some of our gaming friends (I hate them, I really do, because they make me want to cry. . . no not really. . . .damn them and thank you) and so we did do some indulgence buying and enjoyed it.  And I just stopped looking at the numbers since I wanted to just relax.

Now, being back on track and giving it consideration, I don't know that I want to do it anymore.  I mean, yes, by neccessity I have to live on a budget.  But pricing out every little detail of a home cooked meal?  I'd rather just tell you it was delicious.  I'm living on a budget, and occasionally I'll remark on it.  But detailing my life so precisely in concerns to money, it just makes me feel more caged and I don't like it.  And if I don't like it then I don't do it, usually.

This blog is meant to be a way to be free and relaxed while I express myself by writing.  So just going to keep doing that.

Chulent and Cassoulet

We got a little stewy this week.  Big, hearty one pot meals to feed us several days over. 



All in one pot before the long hours of slow cooking



Early yesterday morning, Dan took a turn, reached into his Jewish roots and made chulent.  The basic chulent is a long cooked stew containing meat, beans and barley.  The meat for it this time around was that rump roast we bought last week.  After browning it on all sides, he simply threw it into the crockpot with all the veggies and herbs and turned it on to cook all day.  Sometime in the afternoon, he added the beans and then later the barley.  He even threw in some red cabbage this time to make it more nutritionally balanced.  Heh, well maybe not so much.  But it didn't hurt it!



Breakfast!



So I had a big plate for dinner and I woke up wanting more so I ate some for breakfast.  I love this stuff.  Rich, slow cooked pots of stuff where all the flavors have had time to really come out and come together.  It's hard to say no to those.  This batch was actually a little more tomatoey then he's done in the past.  But that didn't hurt it any either.  It'll feed us several meals for sure.  Haven't done the math yet.  But will get to it before the end of the night.

Normally, we eat chulent with kishka when we make it.  As if beans and barley weren't enough, kishka is more carbo loading goodness in the essential form of a big dumpling - matzo meal, rendered fat and spices traditionally stuffed into a beef intestine.  It's like a big, seasoned matzo ball sausage.  The next time we get one, and we will get one, I'll talk more about it.

Earlier in the week, I'd mentioned that I had also made a cassoulet.  Cassoulet is heaven.  Another one pot meal, it's from southern France and mainly consists of beans and meat. Variation on theme really this week.  And it does vary!  It's amazing how different such basic ingredients can become totally different meals.

Ingredients for a cassoulet will vary, but traditionally, the bean will be the white bean (haricot blanc), the meats would be any combination of duck or goose, pork rind, pork, pork sausage, and mutton.  It is then further enriched with the flavors of some simple herbs, classic mirepoix, garlic and tomato.  You have another slow cooked meal that will feed an army and have them asking for more.

Mine was a variation on the theme, of course.  The meats used were half a chicken and some locally produced smoked sausage and bacon.  And I used the same dry bean mix, Dan used for the chulent instead of the traditional white bean.  Had a little bit of everything, lima, kidney, black-eyed peas, lentils, split peas, etc.  Towards the end it was covered with bread crumbs and then tossed back into the oven until those formed a browned, crunchy top.  When all is said and done we ended up with a bean filled pot of smoky goodness.  Those sausages and bacon. . . .*drools*

So, two big pots of food that we have been and will continue to eat throughout the rest of the week, with some other smaller meals made to help break up the delicious monoteny.  Costwise, the cassoulet turned out to be a whole $8.06, and we got about 6 meals out of it so that's $1.34 a portion.  I haven't done the numbers on the chulent yet, but I'll get to it before tonight.  Tonight marks the completion of one week!  So we'll do the math and see if we went over the $44+ we said we'd try to live on.

Math

So it's been a couple days, because, you know, living on eggplant lasagna and crappy chicken salad mostly.  AND I did get the opportunity to do some staging for possible job prospects so I've been out of the house.  But today we have a cassoulet in the oven working and I thought that I'd take the time while I let it cook in the oven to talk about the math.  Where do I get my cost numbers.  It's pretty simple really, it just takes a little time and effort.  And excel spreadsheets!

Left side is the grocery list, right side is the recipe breakdowns.  I'm enjoying doing it.  I'm using the skills I have that no one's ever let me use in the kitchen because for god knows what reason, even though I tell them I know how to do it, they would never trust me to break down a recipe cost.  It's another one of those "you're just a line cook" things.  And for some reason, there's this thought that line cooks don't know or want to do math or paperwork.  Well, bah. WTH?  Did you not understand my background and experience when you read my resume?  I'm a college educated, degree holding, experienced designer with an architectural background.  That's not just being an artist, that's math up the wazoo!  I can add and subtract, do fractions, percentages and measurements like whoa.  I know how to break a pound into ounces.  And I know how to use a spreadsheet and I know how to read an invoice.  And if I want to get really particular, I taught myself algebra in 8th grade, I had advanced honors courses in Trig and Calculus in high school and college.  So I think I can divide the cost of a pound of celery by 16 just fine.  Easy math.  Thanks.

Okay, that was perhaps a touch of venting today. Hehe.

Eggplant Lasagna & Stocking Up

Yesterday was all about cooking in bulk.  For two reasons.  One, so I don't have to cook everyday and every meal and two, to use scraps.  The first project was eggplant lasagna.  Still thinking veggie meals.  Have a few planned to help balance out our already mentioned recent meat overabundance.  Eggplant is a great vegetable to use as a substitute for meat in many recipes.  It can be roasted, baked, fried and stewed.  Dan makes a mean ratatouille with it and I like to use it with tofu to make a vegetarian Filipino adobo.

For the lasagna, the eggplant was sliced into half inch rounds and then was quickly browned with the barest of oil just coating the pan.  Eggplant loves to absorb oil and since I didn't want to use alot and have my lasagna be too oily, I just put in enough to coat the saute pan.  Then it was simply one of the layers in the baking pan along with pre-cooked lasagna noodles, ricotta mixed with egg, mozzerella cheese and tomato sauce. 

The tomato sauce was just a store bought jar.  Frankly, it's too sweet of a sauce but we're going on the 'beggars can't be choosers' mentality on this one.  I tend to be a label reader too.  So at the very least I pay attention to whether or not the sauce I buy is full of ingredients I can understand and facts like the carbohydrate type and sodium content.

Covered in foil, the lasagna was baked in a preheated 375 degree oven for 30 minutes, then the foil was removed and more cheese was layered on top and it was put back into the oven until the cheese was browned to my liking.  We've cut the pan of yummy lasagna into 8 portions, which will be eaten for various meals over the week.  That's 4 meals for each of us assuming we share equally.  Total cost is $7.39. that's $0.92 per portion.  Better believe it!

So I also made some chicken stock.  One of the things culinary school taught me is that it's always good to make your own chicken stock.  There are some decent BROTHS out there in the market.  I personally like to go to Whole Foods for broth when I need to.  And still would even on the extreme budget we're on.  Sounds crazy, right?  I mean, it's Whole Foods.  They are a huge promoter of selling healthy and organic and environmentally conscious products, which I like, but they tend to be on the pricey side.  Tend to be.  They have a few products that are worth going there for because, surprisingly, they're cheaper than anywhere else.  One of those things is their 365 Everday Organic Broth.  I always get the low sodium.  And it is cheaper than any other broth I've seen at a regular grocery store, it's lower in sodium, it's organic understandable ingredients and it tastes good.  But I've digressed.

Chicken stock!  Make it!  Why?  It's economical and easy.  It uses scraps, in this case the raw bones from whole chickens I'd used previously in the week and had stored in the freezer.  You get to control the sodium content, meaning there's none added to it to begin with.  You can add what you want later when you use it to cook.  The bones provide gelatin, something lacking in most store bought broths.   Gelatin gives homemade stocks a mouth feel to your soups and sauces that you can't get from a broth.  In general, you just know what you put in it.  All that's in a basic stock - chicken bones and pieces like chicken wings, carrots, celery, onion, peppercorn, bay leaf, thyme parsley and alot of water.  Throw it all in a big pot and let it simmer for a minimum 3 hours.  I ended up with 3 quarts of reduced stock, useable in the future.

And then there was the bonus.  As I was pulling the chicken carcasses out of the pot last night to strain the stock, I noticed all the little bits of meat still on the bones.  Now granted, most of the flavor has been pulled out of them, but I needed to try anyway.  So, after I had strained the stock and put it back on the stove to reduce (something I do just so it doesn't take up as much storage space), I sat down and picked all the meat off the bones.  I then made a simple chicken salad out of it adding mayo, mustard, honey, celery and S&P.  I admit, it's not phenomenal.  In fact, I'd just call it edible.  People who like canned tuna or chicken, I bet they'd love it.  But, like I said, edible and once again we go back to the "beggars can't be choosers" mentality.  Going to have to acronym-ize that.  "BCBC".

And extra bonus!  Dan came home from work last night with two boxes of FREE CRACKERS!  It was kismet.  So we have stock stocked away and chicken salad to fill out the week with little snacks and meals as well, all at a total cost of $3.15.

We add in the sausage, eggs and rice we had for breakfast, and the leftover refried beans and tortilla chips we had for lunch and the total cost for the day was $12.90.  But remember!  A couple meals for a couple days!

First meal - Chips and Guac

I've been craving guacamole for a few weeks now.  But seeing $2.00 avocados that weren't anywhere close to ripe at Jewel made me balk.  We'd been going to Jewel the last few months because they were having a special offer to collect stamps to get some decent new non-stick pans for a penny.  I couldn't say no to that.  A penny!  Well, we got our wonderful new stir-fry pan and we love it.  But now that it's acquired, good-bye Jewel, at least, for now, we're headed back to Tony's.  My hope was that Tony's would be having avocados on sale, but they didn't.  But I couldn't hold out anymore.  Must.  have.  GUAC!

Half the price though and as always they had tons of ripe avocados from which to choose.  The other great thing about Tony's.  Locally produced tortillas and tortilla chips.  So two avocados and a bag of chips into the cart and into my belly last night!

Simple dinner, really.  And vegetarian.  A plus since I feel we've been eating way too much meat lately.  Guacamole and chips with refried beans.  Homemade.

For the refried beans you will need 6oz of dried beans.  It really doesn't matter what kind.  Red, white, black.  They all make a delicious refried bean.  For this particular night I used cranberry beans.  And I didn't soak them.  You don't have to soak them. Soaking them pretty much just shrinks the cooking time.  But since I was cooking this for the same day, I just threw them into a pot, filled that pot with maybe 5 times more water then beans, a little salt and then let them boil until soft.  Keeping enough water with the beans so that they were just covered, I then took the stick blender and blended them into a chunky mash.  You can blend it as smooth as you want.  I like some chunks though.  I then heated a saute pan, melted a tablespoon of butter in it, tossed in the bean mash and stirred it while giving it a quick fry.  I had to add a little water to get the proper consistancy and then gave it a taste to see if it needed more salt.  This by the way made much more refried beans then we needed, so half of it ended up in the fridge for later use.

Here's what was in the guacamole -
2 avocados
Half a plum tomato
2 oz of onion
Half a jalapeno, seeded
Half a lime
salt&pepper

The avocados were cut in half, the pit thrown out and then the meat spooned out into a bowl.  The onion and tomato were small diced, the jalapeno finely chopped and tossed in and then the half a lime was squeezed of its juice into the bowl.  Salt and pepper to taste and then smashed and mixed altogether with a fork.  The other half of the tomato was diced and with a chopped green onion, they were used as garnish.  And the other leftover veggie halves and pieces were stored for later use in another recipe later on in the week.

So there we have it.  On each plate, 3oz of tortilla chips, a portion of refried beans, half the guacamole garnished with tomato, green onion and a 2oz dollop of sourcream.  It's a fairly hearty meal for one.

I'm actually a little afraid to see what the calorie count is.  One plate alone is really enough for two people.  But we made two plates. Heh.  We may have to work on the whole portioning thing.  Having said that, this was our first meal under the "Food Stamp Plan".

Total cost per person - $1.88

Yep, need more awareness on the portioning.

$53.11

Yes, I know.  It's not $44, the magic number that we are suppose to feed ourselves on each week.  But the hope is that the $53 worth of groceries we purchased today will stretch us for more than a week.  And we can use some of the items to carry over into the following weeks.  Like we won't be using the whole box of pasta in one night.  Or the bag of tortilla chips.  And that rump roast.  That'll get cooked and feed us a few meals on its own. Yes, a rump roast.

What?!  Beef!  Pricey!

Not so much.  Sales and knowing where to shop.  Is it a Prime Angus cut?  No, of course not.  And since it isn't, what do we do with it?  We braise it, slow and long.  And it will be delicious.

As for price, there's a great advantage to living in Chicago.  Variety.  Culturally and economically.  That lemon that costs $1.00 at the big box brand name grocery store, costs $0.50 at the local chain grocery store marketing to a more hispanic crowd.  It was actually $0.25 a piece this week.  Yay, sale.   That rump roast that's $6.50/lb at the big box. . . .$1.99/lb at the local.  Also on sale.  Is it a good piece of meat, you might ask.  Well being a professional cook by trade, do you think I would buy bad meat?  Yes, I have seen bad product at some of these local chains.  Today we saw some corned beef selling for $1.69/lb.  But it was also double wrapped in plastic wrap because the vaccuum packing wasn't vaccuumed anymore.  Yep, definately did not buy that.

For the most part, the products sold at the small chain are of decent quality.  They just don't have the same type of overhead the huge chain stores do.  They don't have the variety that the huge chains do.  But really, do you need to have the choice of 10 different corn flake cereals in one place?  Also, catering to a more ethnic demographic, these smaller stores can buy things like the produce their shoppers tend to want in much more bulk.  At Jewel they have a small pan of jalapenos on the shelf.  At Tony's Finer Foods there's a box of them big enough to sleep in!

Chicago being the diverse city that it is, there are also alot of local producers of things.  And they don't charge the huge prices that some brand name, higher quality products do at more fashionable markets.  But I guarantee you there is so much quality put into what they make.  Polish butchers that smoke their own kielbasas.   Korean markets that make their own kim chee.  Or how about Arabic bakers that make delicious, fresh pita daily.  I know a place that I fell in love with and I can't ever buy pita anywhere else now.  At the very least, not the ones at the chain grocer.  Because not only is it soft and fresh and tasty, it's only $1.00 for 8-10 pieces, depending on the size you get.  So much better than that $2.50 for 6 mass produced, preservative laden, fluffy circles you get at the big box.

Where ever you live, don't be afraid to see what those smaller shops have.  Explore a little beyond the very convenient big box grocery store in your area.  I'm not talking about places all the way across town.  Though if you hear people say good things, it might be worth a trip one day.  Far travel means time and more money spent on gas.  But there may be that place you pass all the time that you just never went into before because the giant store has everything in one big place.  Maybe you have a certain concentration of ethnic population nearby that has stores that cater to them.  You should check it out.  They might have something awfully delicious and awfully well priced.

The Food Stamp Challenge!

Yep, I've applied for food stamps.  Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), for those who need to know.  Hate the idea.  Hate it.  I want to be the person feeding the hungry, not the hungry person.  But I've crossed to the other side out of necessity.  We pray that necessity doesn't last too long.

I am a single person, with no money in the bank, now receiving unemployment, with rent, utilities, and medical bills to pay.  In a couple weeks, if things don't look up, I will be applying for federal assistance to help pay the utilities. . . . .hate it!  So, given these circumstances, they did the math and I get to try and feed myself on $3.15/day provided by the state government.

I accept the challenge!

Now, admittedly we are not starting from scratch.  I do have some things in ye olde pantry including basic sundries like oil, flour, sugar, salt and spices.  Rice, beans and potatoes.  And a whole chicken, some sausage and garlic and onions.  So not starting from scratch.  I go on the assumption that people in a similar situation such as I are not starting with a totally empty cupboard.  But any future grocery shopping will be based on $3.15/day per person.  That would include my boyfriend who lives with me, so a total of $6.30/day.  That's $44.10/week.  Ouch.  That's just  a little more than half of what we usually spend, and that was also on the assumption that I got at least one free meal a day at work.  Perks of working in a restaurant.

Okay.  $44/week for two.  Can we live a cheap and relatively nutritious diet on that?  We're about to find out.