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In case anyone is confused, when folks say you should buy your spices at Hispanic markets this is what they're probably talking about. Ethnic groceries carry those ripoff little glass jars just like whitefolks groceries, and they're still a ripoff so beware. The El Cheapo stuff in the cellophane packets is usually in a whole different part of the supermarket. Sometimes even regular supermarkets will have a display of these, but they will definitely not keep it in the spice aisle. Look in the ethnic-foods aisle and on endcaps. This packet of cloves cost 99c. The quality is fine, but decant your purchases into jars and keep them in the freezer; they tend to go off quickly. One very cool thing about buying spices this way is that you can try a ton of new stuff without spending a lot of money -- different kinds of dried peppers and so on. This is how I discovered epazote, which is the mystery ingredient in Mexican beans that makes them taste Mexican and also prevents gas. Moving on, here's my version of a legendary poorfolks dish. It's an Irish potato-and-cabbage casserole and although this method is nontraditional and would probably cause many Irish grannies to roll over in their graves, it's also loving excellent. Colcannon Slice up some green cabbage as if you were making coleslaw. Chop an onion. Fry together in a big skillet, over medium-high heat in the grease of your choice. Butter, bacon grease and chicken fat are all delicious. I wouldn't use olive oil, and please don't use margarine ever. The cabbage is done when it's wilted and starting to brown the slightest bit. Meanwhile, peel, slice and boil some russet potatoes and when they're done mash them with a little milk. Salt and pepper, then stir the mash into the cabbage and onion mixture and mix thoroughly. Spread in a pan and run it under the broiler to get crispy. You can also put cheese on top, and if you have sausages those are good too. Even crappy breakfast sausages, which are often on sale, are good in this application. Enjoy!
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Jan 2, 2012 21:36
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spite house posted:In case anyone is confused, when folks say you should buy your spices at Hispanic markets this is what they're probably talking about. Do this, but don't buy pre-ground spices. The same amount of unground cloves will cost the same and will taste much better if ground immediately before use.
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Jan 2, 2012 21:39
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Iron Chef Ricola posted:Do this, but don't buy pre-ground spices. The same amount of unground cloves will cost the same and will taste much better if ground immediately before use.
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Jan 2, 2012 21:40
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spite house posted:Alas, I lack a spice grinder and my husband swears he can taste the residue if I use the coffee grinder. You're right, though. You can grab a $5 mortar & pestle at the same grocery stores. I agree that the coffee will taste spicy if you do it in the same grinder as the spices.
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Jan 2, 2012 21:42
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Iron Chef Ricola posted:You can grab a $5 mortar & pestle at the same grocery stores. I agree that the coffee will taste spicy if you do it in the same grinder as the spices. Spicy coffee is amazing though! Sometimes I'll chuck a peppercorn or two or a couple allspice berries into the grinder when making coffee, and it's loving delightful.  
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Jan 2, 2012 21:51
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PopeCrunch posted:Spicy coffee is amazing though! Sometimes I'll chuck a peppercorn or two or a couple allspice berries into the grinder when making coffee, and it's loving delightful. Yes, but making fenugreek coffee by accident is much less exciting.
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Jan 2, 2012 22:01
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Iron Chef Ricola posted:Yes, but making fenugreek coffee by accident is much less exciting.
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Jan 2, 2012 22:04
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This is a great thread! Thanks for all the suggestions everyone, me and the other half are going back on a £25 a week food budget this year (haven't done this since our undergrad years) and there's some great ideas here. I know lots of people have mentioned roasting a whole chicken and using all the bits. Seriously, that's the best tip of all. If you make extra vegies and gravy you can have bubble & squeak the next day, which is the food of gods. Then we use the stock to make risotto with squid tubes and a small amount of german imitation chorizo that we get for cheap from Lidl. Has anyone mentioned squid tubes? They're cheap as poo poo but I can't think of anything else to do with them apart from risotto or battering and frying them. Another cheap fish in the UK is coley. You can often get it cut into blocks and frozen. This (or probably any fish) is really nice floured and shallow fried, and served with lentils cooked with onions, lemon or lime juice, curry powder or paste, and mango chutney to taste. As others have said, get all pastes, powders and chutneys from a local ethnic supermarket and they're a million times cheaper.
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Jan 2, 2012 22:14
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A good tip I found in the coffee thread is grind up a couple spoonfuls of rice to clean out your coffee grinder, it will also absorb any oils. I've ground up spices a number of times and the rice cleans it out nicely.
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Jan 3, 2012 06:47
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I live in Leeds, UK so some of this may be quite locally-based, but over the past two years I've managed to cut my food bill down from upwards of £50 a week to roughly £20 (and that includes household bits such as washing up liquid, loo roll etc.) That feeds myself for a full week and my boyfriend for 3 days of the week, and we eat very well.
That pretty much covers my approach to buying food - then its down to learning some culinary basics (as all the previous posters have mentioned, baking your own bread etc etc.) If you have an Ingredient you don't know what to do with, use a website such as the BBC Food one (https://www.bbc.co.uk/food) to search for something to make. This also works if you're bored out of your mind making the same stuff every week!
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Jan 3, 2012 10:47
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Odrade posted:Another cheap fish in the UK is coley.
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Jan 4, 2012 00:41
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1 lb. burger 1 can mushroom soup (Campbell's was good. Store brand was bad. YMMV) seasonings (I use garlic and rosemary, but you ould try just putting steak spice or pepper) Make burger into palm, sized patties, fry. Alternatively, cook like you would for a taco. Remove burger from pan. Put can of soup in pan, fill empty can half way with water. Dump that in, too. Add seasonings. Blend soup and water with fork or whisk. Simmer at medium heat. Stir. Reduce heat. Add burger. Cover. Stir occasionally. Allow 10-15 minutes for flavours to merge and soup to thicken. I suggest serving over mashed taters or rice. e: cheap way to stretch the burger further is to add 2 eggs and crushed soda crackers or cornflakes. Whatever it is the kids use these days. Hellwuzzat fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jan 4, 2012 |
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Jan 4, 2012 02:41
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There are a number of things to do to keep your costs down. One of the principal ones is to keep a notebook of items you generally buy, rice, flour, chicken, hotdogs, onions, bread...basic commodities stuff, and beside them have columns of general costs in the stores you go to. I keep mine in a pocket address book and that lets me keep the foods sort of alphabetized. If you go to a store and run across a deal or an impulse item that you hadn't planned on buying but you can stock up on you can check to see, a) is it really as good a deal as you think, b) can you buy it somewhere else cheaper, and c) have you ever bought it before. The second thing, this sort of thing gives you a planning tool to plot out your shopping. Some stores have better meat, some have better veggies, some have better prices on canned goods. With this you can actually figure out where to go for what you need, and if you are going to the good meat store, you can check to see what else is cheaper there, and you can figure out if going across town to the other store, or to another city to get cheaper prices on other stuff is worth the gas, time and hassle. $.03 per lb difference may not be worth driving 20 miles unless you are planning something else. The other thing to remember is time is money. The time you spend saving money should be worth what you saved. If it takes you an hour to save a buck that is a poor rate of return on your work. If you spend $5.00 to avoid 5 minutes of work that is not the best return either
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Jan 4, 2012 02:44
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Time can be money, but only if it's realistic that you'd be earning something with the time you saved. If like so many today you're underemployed and can't get more hours or overtime or make money at another job, then "saving" time by using canned soups, driving instead of walking/biking to the store, etc. is a false economy. Cheapfood talk - SPROUTS! Sprouts are nutritious, tasty... and ridiculously expensive at the grocery store. gently caress that - grow your own! You can buy premade sprouting kits for not much money, or more sensibly forego paying $20 for a plastic tray & a small packet of seeds and use a mason jar, a bit of mesh, and buy seeds in bulk. Alfalfa's the usual sprout choice, but it can be a bit expensive to get big bags of it right off. On a trial basis, try sprouting wheat/corn/someotherseed that you pick up at a bulk/hippie grocery - a pound of that won't be more than two bucks or so, and still will make a shitload of sprouts for sandwiches and the like. There's tons of free info on sprouting on the web, so I won't get into it in this post. Two things though: 1) - Cook all bean sprouts unless you are sure you don't need to! - for example, all kidney-family beans definitely should be cooked, soy probably should, and mung bean sprouts don't need to be cooked but see the next point; 2) - Consumption of raw sprouts can and has killed people due to contamination of the seeds! - yes, those lovely limp alfalfa sprouts sitting on the salad bar are potentially deadly, because even small amounts of pathogens on the dry seeds can, in the wet sprouting environment, multiply to dangerous levels. The best way to ensure you don't get sick from contaminated sprouts is to cook them. If you must eat raw sprouts, at least make sure you get the seeds from a reputable source (note that while "organic" and "certified pathogen-free" seeds sources might help reduce the risk, they cannot ensure the seeds are wholly safe) and treat the seeds with hydrogen peroxide. It's still no guarantee, though, so if you die don't come running to me. Neophyte fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Jan 4, 2012 |
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Jan 4, 2012 05:34
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Harminoff posted:Here is something that I've been making a lot recently. Seems like a variation of what I make 1 can cream of mushroom (gently caress the haters, I like it  )1lb Ground Beef 2c canned mixed veggies 1/2 Onion 1-2c rice Cook rice and veggies. Saute Onion, brown hamburger, drain. Mix in Cream of mushroom soup and ~1/4c water to thin the soup. Serve over rice and veggies.
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Jan 4, 2012 16:11
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Hellwuzzat posted:1 lb. burger Wreckus posted:Seems like a variation of what I make Please avoid all of these hotdish-like approaches to food. It's not the great depression anymore, you can throw away your Betty Crocker food ration books now; the war's over.
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Jan 4, 2012 18:14
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Would flavoring and cooking lentils using a Boston baked beans recipe be weird/bad, either in terms of flavors not going together or cooking time needed? I have a big bag of lentils and I am tired of daal.
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Jan 4, 2012 18:15
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Lentils take WAY less time to cook than beans do, so keep that in mind. They'll be fine otherwise.
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Jan 4, 2012 18:17
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Ms. Manchair posted:Leeds Advice I miss you dangit  I absolutely love the Kirkgate market, although before I got the hang of pure Yorkshire dialect I walked away from there with 30 bananas for a quid due to me misunderstanding the seller... I shop at the ethnic grocery stores in Hyde Park and Burley. Actually, there's stuff like that all over the UK. I got an enormous bag of chickpeas, like 2 kilos, for £3. Yeah you have to soak and boil them, but that beats a piddly little bag from Sainsbury's.
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Jan 4, 2012 18:32
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Wreckus posted:1 can cream of mushroom (gently caress the haters, I like it What are they actually asking for here? Cream of mushroom soup comes up in a lot of recipes, but due to some food allergies I can't just buy a can of Campbell's. I try to just add milk or something but it's never the same.
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Jan 4, 2012 18:42
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Grok posted:What are they actually asking for here? Cream of mushroom soup comes up in a lot of recipes, but due to some food allergies I can't just buy a can of Campbell's. I try to just add milk or something but it's never the same. You shouldn't buy canned soup anyways, it's a waste of your money as has been established in this thread multiple times. You don't have to buy $5-$30/lb mushrooms, get the cheapo guys and make several loving quarts of soup for a pittance using stock you make yourself. This is multiple meals by itself, or a component in other meals, without enough sodium to replenish the ocean/preservatives/lovely flavor. Do you have flour, water, salt. and yeast (all crazy cheap)? Make some bread to go with the soup. When you buy those in gredients--which are all in large amounts, way more than what you need for one loaf- you can make bread for the next month. Or you can just blow all that money on maybe 6 cans of flavorless
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Jan 4, 2012 19:46
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Grok posted:What are they actually asking for here? Cream of mushroom soup comes up in a lot of recipes, but due to some food allergies I can't just buy a can of Campbell's. I try to just add milk or something but it's never the same. I found this recipe: http://tammysrecipes.com/homemade_cream_chicken_soup and while it seems pretty ingredient - intensive, I think it really equates to a simple white sauce (flour, milk) with a savory flavor profile (salt, pepper, chicken stock, and onions/garlic). It seems to be the cheap quick replacement for a béchamel in many gratin type dishes - that green bean casserole at every potluck is nothing more than a no-frills gratin. My cheap meals: Baked potato (microwave for a few minutes, then finish in the oven for that good flavor) Weird vegetables: cabbage, brussel sprouts, and turnips and the like aren't super popular, but they are cheap and taste pretty good if you cook them properly Bacon-Garlic Rice: Dice a slice or two of bacon. Render it until there's a film of bacon grease in your saucepan, then add half a diced onion and cook it with the bacon til everything is crispy. Pour in 1 cup of rice and toast that for a bit in the onion/bacon goodness. Then, add your water and 1 or 2 unpeeled cloves of garlic. Once your rice is cooked, pick up the garlic with tongs (or your fingers) and mush it out of its peels into the rice, and throw the peels away. Mush the garlic into the rice. Salt and pepper to taste. and finally, BRAISE EVERYTHING. Cheap meat, tough vegetables, whatever - brown it in some fat til crispy, then cook on slow with a bunch of stock, wine or beer, and you'll have a delicious tender meal or (with more liquid) great stew.
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Jan 5, 2012 00:13
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Salad is super cheap and it wouldn't hurt anyone to eat a salad every day. I like to throw in a hard boiled egg and maybe some chopped ham. Marzetti dressing is the poo poo.
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Jan 5, 2012 00:59
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Grok posted:What are they actually asking for here? Cream of mushroom soup comes up in a lot of recipes, but due to some food allergies I can't just buy a can of Campbell's. I try to just add milk or something but it's never the same. The basic gist of it is taking some diced onion/shallot, softening them in butter or oil, and then putting in your mushrooms until they've given up all their water and it's evaporated. At this point the mushrooms will be able to start to brown and get flavourful. Then you add some stock (or the mushroom-soaking water if you used dried mushrooms), let it simmer down to very little liquid, add a splash of brandy if you want, and then add cream or milk to the desired consistency. From there you can make lots of modifications. You can add garlic or other "hard" diced vegetables (i.e. carrot or celery, not broccoli which tastes bad if it cooks too long) with the onion, spices with the stock or cream, a bit of sour cream, parmesan, whatever floats your boat. You won't be able to treat it exactly like a can of Campbell's in other "recipes" but if you brown some beef in same pan you're going to make the soup, set the beef aside and then add it back in when the soup is ready you'll end up with a (very) basic stroganoff.
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Jan 5, 2012 02:10
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indoflaven posted:Salad is super cheap and it wouldn't hurt anyone to eat a salad every day. I like to throw in a hard boiled egg and maybe some chopped ham. Marzetti dressing is the poo poo. Depends. Here, any lettuce that's not iceberg crap is about 2$ a head. Or, you could spend 1$ to get the same in spinach or broccoli and make weird salads topped with cooked and chilled lentils, grated carrots (super cheap) and pickled onion slices. Cold, blanched broccoli with toppings is the best type of salad mmmmm.
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Jan 5, 2012 17:14
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Horrible Smutbeast posted:Depends. Here, any lettuce that's not iceberg crap is about 2$ a head. Or, you could spend 1$ to get the same in spinach or broccoli and make weird salads topped with cooked and chilled lentils, grated carrots (super cheap) and pickled onion slices. That reminds me. This is a recipe for romanesco broccoli, but it works well with regular or tenderstem too. Roast your broccoli tossed in some olive oil for 10-20 minutes, until stems just tender and florets slightly crisp. While the broccoli is roasting, toast some flaked almonds in the same oven until golden brown. Mix flaked toasted almonds in a food processor (I use the smoothie attachment to my immersion blender, which is ideal), with some good olive oil, some lemon juice, a clove of garlic, and S&P. pour dressing over broccoli. Really delicious.
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Jan 5, 2012 18:05
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Not sure if this has been posted or not yet, but red beans and rice with smoked ham hocks is absolutley amazing, easy to make and can feed 4 people 2 meals each for about 4-6 dollars, especially if you have a lot of the basic foods laying around. I make it about 2-3 times a month and it give my wife and me leftovers all week long. Super easy to make, very filling and most importanly extremely tasty. Also like a lot of people have said ethnic markets rocks, my local mexican meat market carries chicken leg quarters for 50cents a pound on wensday. Also backing organ meat, cheek, tongue, liver, heart are all very cheap, easy to cook, delicious and very nuturious to boot. I would recomend organ meat any day of the week over traditonal cuts of meat. Rythe fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Jan 5, 2012 |
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Jan 5, 2012 18:07
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indoflaven posted:Marzetti dressing is the poo poo. At my house we've been eating a lot of polenta since I figured out that 1. you can make it with regular cornmeal, 2. you don't have to stir it constantly and 3. if you add the boiling water to the cornmeal instead of vice versa it doesn't get lumpy. And of course, it is dirt cheap. My cheater, bastardized, heretical polenta is not as good as the stirred-for-an-eternity coarse-grind variety, but it's fine. You make it by mixing up two cups of cornmeal with a hefty pinch of salt in the bottom of a big heavy saucepan, boiling six cups of water in a kettle and then whisking the water into the cornmeal over medium-low heat. When water is all incorporated, turn the heat down as low as it'll go. The polenta should only blorp every minute or so. Stir every so often but you don't have to be neurotic about it. It'll thicken up right away but it needs to cook for at least half an hour before it'll taste like anything, and the more butter you can afford to put in, the better. I like stewed greens (kale/collards/mustard or turnip greens) on my polenta, with ham in them if I bought the big giant ham on sale. (Buy the big giant ham on sale, if you eat meat. You can get dozens of meals out of one of those suckers.) spite house fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Jan 6, 2012 |
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Jan 6, 2012 01:21
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This thread is so helpful! After gouging the hell out of my wallet and blowing my diet to hell last semester (eating in the cafeteria or grabbing bagels for two meals a day, eating pizza or take out sandwiches for dinner), I'm committed to getting back on track cooking. One of the best things I've found so far is to buy bulk packages of meat, portion, and freeze it. For example this week I bought 5lbs of chicken thighs - got them home, pulled the skin off (1lb of skin) and discarded it, then weighed them out. I kept half the package out for this week and froze the other half in two roughly equal containers to eat next week. Total cost of $5.00. Out of that I made baked chicken thighs on Monday night, cooking ALL of the meat I didn't freeze. We ate three of the thighs between two people (sides are your friend, we all eat too much meat anyway) and set aside two for the next day. Then I made chicken chili from the left over chicken, dried white beans, a can of diced tomatoes and a can of green chilies. Cost breakdown for the chili was about $6.00 total. We ate it for three days (lunch or dinner everyday, not both) and I froze about a quart of it for next week/the week after.
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Jan 6, 2012 01:51
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Fenchurch posted:pulled the skin off (1lb of skin) and discarded it
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Jan 6, 2012 01:54
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spite house posted:Oooh! Oooh! Don't do this! Render the fat out and save it! Potatoes fried in chicken fat are to die for and the cracklings are awesome too. I knew someone would say that! I'm just too well indoctrinated from being raised in the fatfree! 80's. At least I use real butter?
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Jan 6, 2012 01:56
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spite house posted:Wait, people buy salad dressing? I made dressing from scratch until I tried Marzetti. It tastes like homemade.
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Jan 6, 2012 02:07
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For dessert: Pudding Pudding has five ingredients and takes 15 minutes. Milk, sugar, cornstarch, salt, vanilla. If you want other flavours, have dark chocolate or peppermint extract or almond extract or butterscotch chips or peanut butter chips or whatever the gently caress on hand. 3c milk (I used a mix of whole and 2% because there were only 1.5 cups of whole left) 1/2 c sugar 1/4 c cornstarch 1/8 tsp salt (or a couple grinds because gently caress measuring salt) 1 tsp vanilla (or whatever looks good because gently caress measuring vanilla) Set up a makeshift double broiler. I used a pan and a stainless steel bowl that fit on top of it. Get an inch or two of water heating. It should be at a gentle simmer when you put the bowl on top of it. Whisk together sugar, cornstarsh, and salt. Pour in milk whisking the whole time. Try not to spill the goddamn pudding while putting it on top of the pan of now-hopefully-simmering water. I stir neurotically, but it's really not that big of a deal. Stir it a bit with your whisk until it thickens. When you dip a spoon in, and it doesn't all immediately slide off, you're good. I cooked for another five minutes after this point, 'cause I like my pudding THICK. This whole process should take < 15 minutes from mixing dry ingredients to thickening. Start stirring in flavourings if you're using things that need to melt. I crunched up 6oz of 68% dark chocolate baking chips and mixed those pieces in, stirring constantly until it was all one color. Take it off the heat and add whatever extract you want. I added some vanilla extract to my chocolate pudding, because it gives it more depth of flavor. I'm sure you could do chocolate peppermint or chocolate orange or vanilla almond or even possibly use a touch of liqueur to flavor it. Experiment. It's your drat pudding. Stick that bitch in the fridge and ignore it. At a half-hour, it will be starting to set and still nice and warm and your fiancee will eat half of it. Overnight it will thicken into the most rich, delicious, thick, gloopy amazing pudding you ever had. If you want to avoid pudding skin, smooth some plastic wrap right on top of the pudding to keep air away. That's a lot of words for 15 minutes of work and some waiting, but it really doesn't take long. In the name of all that is good and holy, home made pudding is so much better than box, but I don't need to tell that to this thread. It's not even all that bad for you made from real ingredients. I still remember when I learned pudding could be made from scratch. I was in college. Don't be me, kids. Learn to make real pudding now.
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Jan 6, 2012 04:30
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I just got my 16 quart stock pot the other day and made a giant batch of bolognese sauce from scratch tonight. It is full of veggies and meat and tasted absolutely delicious. I portioned it all out in baggies to go in the freezer. Including what we ate tonight, I got 15 batches. They ended up costing me around $2.36 each. Add some noodles and maybe some bread and there's dinner for less than 5 bucks.
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Jan 6, 2012 04:36
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snailshell posted:Would flavoring and cooking lentils using a Boston baked beans recipe be weird/bad, either in terms of flavors not going together or cooking time needed? I have a big bag of lentils and I am tired of daal. A long-long time ago when I lived in another country they ate lentils and rice with every meal except breakfast and sometimes we ate rice then too. It is filling, cheap, and as I have been told time and time again, it is a complete protein. It is just so gedamned boring. On the other hand there are indian lentil dishes that I've had that make me think I've caught my head on fire, so there are options, I just don't like cooking lentils, is all. Try it! the worst thing that will happen is that it will cook into a puree and you will have to add more cumin and red pepper and serve it over rice. again
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Jan 6, 2012 05:29
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Fenchurch posted:I knew someone would say that! I'm just too well indoctrinated from being raised in the fatfree! 80's. At least I use real butter? I don't like chicken skin but I definitely leave it on while cooking. It really eliminates the need for adding outside moisture to the chicken, and you can put all kinds of seasoning under there. I remove it right before eating - it just seems wrong to pull it off and then have to marinate and brine your chicken five ways from Friday just to keep it from drying out when it comes with its own basting layer already. Also, I don't mean to derail, but a lot of studies have found that a low-fat diet is not a super effective way to keep weight down - if you're interested check W&W, they have tons of resources. But yeah chicken skin grosses me out on its own but pan fry some skin-on, bone-in chicken pieces with some peppers, onions and olive oil and deglaze with a little white wine and mmmmmmm. edit: lentil flavorings: my favorite flavor combo was oregano and tomato paste. Get the tomato paste in the tube, it's more expensive but you don't waste any.
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Jan 6, 2012 05:32
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One of the drawbacks of buying bulk to get the cheaper price is that the bulk stuff tends to go stale from exposure to air, and the weevils, flour beetles and mice get into it. One solution is to go beg the 4 gallon frosting buckets from the local bakery or nearest cafeteria, or do what I do and save plastic screw top juice bottles, peanut jars, and soda bottles. Especially the soda bottles. Rinse them out well (no-one likes peanut buttery or vinegary dry milk, for example) and dry them well and whatever will pour in will pour out again. I like the Langers square 1/2 gallon jugs and the plastic coca cola bottles the best. They are sturdy and they stack well, travel well, handle well, and as long as you don't puncture them by accident they are waterproof. Oh, and they are food grade and free, too, which makes them way better than tupperware.
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Jan 6, 2012 05:41
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Beep Street posted:I used to turn my nose up at reduced sticker food but now I feel ripped off paying full price for meat. I also get plenty of reduced veg as well, I got a massive bag of carrots for 32p in Co-op yesterday and they should keep for a few weeks. @Rule 303: I do the same thing with (screw top) wine bottles, liquor bottles, soda bottles, and those large gallon-sized mustard bottles from work. The large mouths of the mustard bottles let me store things like pasta, which would be tricky to get into a narrow necked wine bottle! Mind you, I don't buy wine, liquor, or soda all that frequently. But when I do, I feel like, "I paid for this bottle, so I may as well get all the use out of it that I can!" dino. fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Jan 6, 2012 |
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Jan 6, 2012 16:50
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Odrade posted:I know lots of people have mentioned roasting a whole chicken and using all the bits. Seriously, that's the best tip of all. If you make extra vegies and gravy you can have bubble & squeak the next day, which is the food of gods. What is a bubble & squeak pie? A Terry Pratchett book told me about it, and google confirmed it was real, but what goes in it? How do you make it squeak? I am very serious. I've discovered that holiday time was a good time to buy discounted meats. We got an enormous ham for an okay price (never bought one before, didn't know what the price range was) and it lasted forever. Fried ham and eggs in the morning, ham sandwich for lunch, ham in my fried rice, rinse and repeat. We've finally used the ham bone this week, and oh my god, the bean soup was great. Also, there is too much of it and I am beaned out, so freezing it tonight is a go.
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Jan 6, 2012 17:12
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| # ? May 1, 2024 04:38 |
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re: spices Something I figured out a little too late in life is that bulk spices are much cheaper than the stuff in jars. The local food coop has a pretty good selection.
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#
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Jan 6, 2012 18:00
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