Savory Sunday

I’ve decided to offer a bonus for my faithful fans – a double post day! My first Sunday post will be a book review. My second post will be Savory Sunday where I explore classic recipes but put my own frugal twist on them. That way anyone can enjoy fine dining no matter their budget.

When I married my mother gave me a copy of The Joy of Cooking. However, once I looked through the book I realized that it would not work with our budget or our dietary plans. It relied a lot on vegetables, spices, lean cuts of meat and those are not in our plan.

However, I did not get rid of the book since we don’t get rid of anything, preferring instead to make piles and piles of crap stacked everywhere and covered with dusty sheets. That how we like it! So yesterday I was looking for a heavy book to use in making more floor pressed cheese and I ran across this volume. I decided that adapting these classic recipes with frugality in mind would be a wonderful way to share my inventive culinary skills with my legions of fans.

Therefore, following will be the original recipe and in parenthesis will be my frugal substitution.

Blue Cheese Spread with Walnuts

8 ounces cream cheese, softened (homemade cream cheese - $0.20)

¼ cup crumbled Blue Cheese (pressed cheese sitting for two weeks in humid bathroom to produce blue veins of mold - $0.35)

2 tbsp port (2 tablespoons of kefir water - $0.02)

1 tbsp chopped walnuts (1 tbsp crushed soap nuts - $0.10)

I mix the cream cheese and the crumbles of my homemade blue cheese and add some kefir water and soap nuts. Voila. A delicious spread for crockpot bread for only $0.67. Dan loved this though he did chip a tooth (again!) on a soap nut piece. Remember to only use used soap nuts as that way you’ve gotten two uses out of them!

Chipped Beef and Gravy

8 ounces sliced dried beef (I take the tube meat, make patties and put in crockpot with 2 cups of salt and leave on high for 2 days. Then they are dry and Christ-like since Jesus loved salt and therefore we eat a lot of it. We only use 2 ounces as that’s all we need to sustain us. Dan gets one ounce, I get ½ an ounce and the boys split the other ½ ounce. Tube Meat Patties - $0.15)

3 tablespoons of butter (we use lard because butter may contain GM foods. I tried to make our own butter but realized that lard is much better for us. We prefer lard. That’s our dietary plan. We use 2 cups of lard for this recipe. $0.30)

3 tbsp minced onion (I have a jar of garlic from when we were married so I just used a teaspoon of that. As long as you spoon out the slimy mold from the top it will be good as new. $0.05)

3 tbsp flour (I used my weevil-enhanced King Arthur flour. I first soak the flour in 2 cups of whey and a teaspoon of kefir water in order to soak the grains so they pass through our colon better. $0.10)

2 cups of milk (since we ran out of milk when I went to make this recipe I used diluted breast milk. Thomas doesn’t like to eat too much anyway and I don’t want to waste anything. Besides, breast milk is free!)

I left the tube meat patties in the crockpot. I added the lard and let it melt down. Then I added the garlic. I omitted the green peppers as I felt they weren’t needed. I let the garlic steep in the lard for ten minutes. Then I added the soaked grain flour and whisked until it was combined with the lard. I let it sit on high for 2 hours. Then I added the breast milk and whisked again until it was thick. It wasn’t as thick as I wanted at first so I added some of my homemade ricotta cheese to thicken up the sauce. Dan wondered what the black flecks were. I told him pepper (even though it’s the Devil’s spice as opposed to the Jesus-approved salt) though they were actually active weevils. For some reason he doesn’t like the crunch of weevils. I’ve told him that they add extra protein for free but he gets obstinate about some things. I usually just lie and hope he doesn’t notice them wiggling in his mouth. Total cost: $0.60. So far this week, this has been my most inexpensive recipe. I think it’s going to be a keeper.

Pita Salad

I was nervous about making this one as it had a lot of different ingredients, but I am a good steward of our resources so I knew I could adapt this to suit our tastes.

1 small cucumber (I used 1 spear of our lacto-fermented pickles. $0.05)

1 teaspoon salt (I used 1 cup of salt in honor of Jesus. $0.15)

½ head romaine lettuce (I used our coffeepot lettuce. 2 leaves were enough for our family. $0.01)

3 medium tomatoes (I used ¼ of a can of crushed tomatoes. $0.10)

6 scallions (I used a handful of chopped Dollar Store frozen onion. $0.10)

2/3 cup parsley (instead, I used some leaves off my spider plant that hangs in the living room. It was a little wilted so I cut it into strips. Free!)

1/3 cup cilantro (since the spider plant worked so well I used some of the grass outside the apartment building. It smelled fresh and clean. It was a little brown because that’s where the neighbor’s dog usually goes but I know it’s been well fertilized. Free!)

2 tbsp chopped mint (I chopped up an Altoid from Mystery Shopping and ground it into a powder. Free!)

I take all the above ingredients and put them in a large jar. I cover with whey and let sit for three weeks. When it bubbles I pour it into the blender and blend until smooth. Then I combine it with a teaspoon of melted lard ($0.02), lemon from one of my almost-empty deodorant lemons ($0.02), a teaspoon of dried and pulverized garlic powder ($0.01), a cup of salt ($0.15) and a few teaspoons of dried weevils (as we don’t keep pepper in the house). Then I toss all of that with:

2 pita pockets, torn in strips (I simply made crockpot bread and let it sit for 3 days until it was hard and crisp. Then I tore it in little bits after I scraped off the green parts. $0.10)

It’s a delicious summer salad and a welcome, fresh treat for the dead of winter. Total cost: $0.71. Since it’s the most expensive dish on the list I only make it twice a year. But it does yield enough for Dan to take to work for lunch and for the boys and I to graze on all day long. Plus, it has a lot of lacto-fermentation which makes me happy.

I look forward to sharing more recipes with you with my really original frugal tips! Next week: Chateaubriand, Charlotte Russe and Waldorf Salad.