Keeping It Low

There’s a lot of advice on how to keep your food budget low: buy in bulk, watch for sales, use coupons, etc. Most of it is fine advice, and I do use some of it; but, I also don’t use a lot of it. So, how do I keep our food budget low while eating really great, sustainable foods if it’s not intensive couponing and vigilant watch on sale papers? Here’s what I do, what I don’t do, and why.

What I Do:

1. We don’t eat meat like Americans. As a country, we eat far, far too much meat.  So, instead Thadd and I elect to do vegetarian meals several nights a week, and rarely eat whole cuts of anything. We use meat in a dish, not as a dish. I take that savings and put it into buying local, sustainable meats; or, short of that (usually if I can’t get it for some reason), I’ll opt for organic. When you eat a lot less of it, it becomes reasonable to purchase.

2. We recognize the difference in food as sustenance, and food as indulgence.

Sustenance (albeit yummy sustenance), Kale & Grapefruit Quinoa salad with veggie frittata:

Indulgence, roasted orange-cranberry sauce with port:

This means that we eat a lot of meals that aren’t our “favorites,” but are just fine, filling, and fairly tasty. Too many people have come to believe that everything they eat must be their favorite food. Since our bodies are designed to like high-calorie foods the most (hey, years ago we needed all those calories!), this means expensive and crappy food is topping the American “wish list” right now.  I am not saying we eat tasteless goo or anything, but we do often eat simple, inexpensive meals because they’re healthy and it’s in our budget.

3. We buy frozen veggies. Fresh vegetable are nice, but when we can’t get veggies locally (and we can’t necessarily put up everything to survive on all winter, though someday we hope to do so), we often buy frozen. They’re typically cheaper–organic frozen is often less expensive than non-organic fresh–and they’re usually healthier. Frozen fruits and vegetables are typically picked when ripe and flash frozen, so they have more nutrients than their fresh, green-picked counterparts. Since frozen rarely cooks up like fresh, these often get used as part of entrees, instead of just as sides. If I am making miso chicken, I’ll  toss in a bunch of frozen spinach at the end, for example.

4. We eat soups and casseroles a few times a week.

If it’s soup, there’s usually some form of bread on the side, but not always.  I’ve had people say “oh, but my husband/wife/children won’t eat those! It’s meat and potatoes every night–so how can *I* save money?” Um..you can’t. Not if you still want to eat healthy. Look, here’s the truth, which I’ve said before hundreds of times here: people are spoiled and they need to get over it. A few mealtimes roll around and what’s on the table is a soup or casserole or go hungry, and the household will get the idea. Refusing to eat healthy, well-prepared, and flavorful foods just because they’d rather be eating something else is childish. I’d rather be a millionaire, but I can’t stop working just because I’d rather not. If it’s a spouse, well, I’m not going there–that’ll have to be figured out between the couple. If it’s the kids, then it’s time to pony up to the Parent Table and put your foot down.

5. Legumes are a main ingredient several times a week.

Beans, split peas, lentils…all great sources of lean protein that you can prepare a hundred different ways. And, even the organics are fairly inexpensive.

6. No processed or convenience  foods. Processed foods are expensive (even if they look cheap, just look at their cost-per-pound–it’s always higher than whole foods), and lack nutrients.

7. Meal planning. I harp on this here, I know, but it really is probably the #1 thing we do to keep our budget low. Eating spur-of-the-moment, as most people do, is a recipe for disaster. Good, fast, cheap: pick two (saying courtesy of Thadd, who I believe got it from the military folks he worked with). If you want good, healthy food fast, you’re going to pay through the nose for convenience food. If you want cheap food fast, you’re going to pay the price by eating empty calories. So, the other option is good and cheap, which means it’s not fast. Planning for this is the only way to make it work.

8. Shop at my local Amish & Mennonite stores. They have the best prices and quality of grains, spices, cheese, and a lot of the produce we use fresh. Spices are often 1/2 to 1/3 what they are at Kroger or FoodLion, and they have just as large a selection of organic spices. Same thing with grains. Plus, they’re local, and that puts dollars back into our community (and, they’re great people, who are happy to do special orders, etc.).

9. Shop with a list (which was made using our meal plan). Stick to that list.

10. We keep a pantry stocked with basics. This lets us throw something together on the night that nothing went right, and to purchase items either in bulk or when we caught them on sale at the store.

11. Eat leftovers.

We do this a lot. In fact, we do this almost every day, and it’s actually part of our meal plan. We make sure to cook enough several days a week for us to eat lunch from, so no buying lunch out.

12. Make your own beverages. If you just have to have that specialty coffee or tea, make it at home. Shop craigslist or FreeCycle if it requires special equipment.

13. Keep snacks readily available.

We keep nuts, yogurt, some veggies & hummus, and the like on hand to munch on. This keeps us from doing something dumb, like ordering pizza, if we get home late and need to wait for dinner.

14. I use my slow cooker several times a week.

There are few things in life more useful for saving us time and money than our slow cookers. I have a few cookbooks (though I want more), am a regular visiter at A Year of Slow Cooking, and often just throw stuff for soup in and call it good.  I love coming home to a good-smelling house and a yummy dinner.

15. Choose foods that will keep us fuller, longer.

Whole grains and protein are they key. In the morning, we usually eat fermented oats or steel-cut oats from the slow cooker. Sometimes, we do eggs and homemade toast. We don’t do pop-tarts, freezer waffles, or the like. Not only are those foods far more expensive than our options, but both of us would be hungry within an hour.

16. Store foods when they’re in-season.

Drying, freezing, canning. ‘Nuf said.

What I Don’t Do:

1. Use coupons. About 95% of the foods we eat never have coupons. The other 5% have them so rarely that buying a paper to get them isn’t worth it. If I happen to get a store coupon for something like $1/off fresh produce, I’ll obviously use it; but, generally the things that have coupons in my area are unhealthy and expensive.

2. Shop a bazillion stores to save 5 cents. Stores here are fairly far apart, so unless I happen to be going somewhere else in that direction, driving to more than 1 store rarely pays for itself in actual money saved, not to mention I don’t have hours upon hours to drive.  Since we get all our meat, eggs, and milk from farms, there’s rarely enough price difference to warrant driving around. I do shop at a local health food store (which is also where I pick up our milk share and chickens), and the Mennonite market, in addition to Kroger. The health food store I shop at not only because I am already there, but because in this very culture-deprived town, it’s the only place I can get a lot of the ingredients I use (red lentils, etc.). The Mennonite store is a stock-up for me, when I need grains, spices, and cheese (which we freeze).

3. Buy things because “they’re on sale,” and I “might need them later.” If it’s not on my list or on the “stock up” list (we keep one of these, and have a certain amount each week we spend to do this), I don’t buy it.

4. Keep a garden. I’d love to do this, and I think anyone who can, should. We did do some herbs and greens this year, but we just don’t have a reasonable place to put indoor pots (by which I mean, a place we can keep them that my cats won’t eat them). Since we live in a rental that has really poor soil and very limited sun, and we don’t want to invest a pile of cash in doing what it would take to set up a box garden since we’ll likely only be where we are a short-ish period of time, we do without the savings. The time it would take us to recoup our outlay means we probably wouldn’t, so for us, it’s not a great option.

What do you do to eat healthy on a budget?

 

 

 

Related Articles

• 10 Winter Dinners from the Slow Cooker Recipe Roundup (thekitchn.com)
• Chef Eric Akis gives slow cooker recipes a contemporary tweak (canada.com)
• Karen Kelly: Changing the Food Landscape, One Person at a Time: Part One (huffingtonpost.com)
• In Praise of Frozen Vegetables (theatlantic.com)

Tuesday Sick Blog & On The Menu

I am sick. Thadd is making dinner, because I have no interest in standing, let alone cooking. So, he’s making a Pumpkin Bisque Soup using a recipe from L’etoile’s Chef Mark. (I’ve had this recipe, and it’s pretty darn spectacular. I highly recommend you try it.) Thadd’s got a thing for soups. It’s something he does well. I want to post a picture of him in his red mohawk, standing in domesticated bliss over the stove stirring a pot of hot soup, but I am too sick and tired to get up and take a photo.

He’s making it with a local wine, Cardinal Point’s Quattro,  which is a bit sweeter than is likely ideal; but, the wine’s got good flavor and body fora white, so it should work nicely anyway. It’s helping my sore throat, at any rate (what, we were going to let the bottle go bad?).  We’re also adding chicken sausage made by a guy we found in PA while visiting some friends. He hand-makes this wonderful, yummy chicken sausage, and Thadd needs protein. I’ll have to pick around it, because honestly I’ll be lucky if I can swallow the soup with my sore throat. Which sucks, because I love this sausage. And, as a final touch, I did get off my but and make whole wheat maple cornbread (which I also can’t eat) to go with it.

It should be an awesome meal. Now, if only I could eat most of it. I hate being sick.

At least I should be well enough to eat the crockpot haggis we’re making on Thursday. Right? Please tell me I’m right?

And, speaking of haggis, I haven’t put up an “On the Menu” in forever. Since I am sick and can’t talk without wanting to stick a fork in my eye, I figured I have the time.

Dinners:

Monday: Chickpea wet curry. I have no idea why I don’t make this more, because it’s spectacular. It’s a riot of Indian spices in your mouth. I recently got a spice mix from Penzy’s balled “balti” that I tossed in, and it worked beautifully. It’s also really frugal, and makes enough to feed an army.

Tuesday. Pumpkin Bisque. You read about this above. We love pumpkin soup.

Wednesday: Barbeque pulled chicken over rice. I work late, and this just gets tossed in the crockpot. All I have to do when I get home is throw on some rice and voila! Dinner. I put some veggies on the side, and the brown rice gives a lot of fiber.

Thursday: Haggis with parsnips and potatoes. Okay, it’s not real haggis. It’s the best we can do here in our quaint little part of the Southern US. Again, it’s a crockpot meal, because we’re both silly busy (and, have I mentioned that this woman is my hero, who has saved my not-eating-out life more times than I can count?). We are siding it with the traditional parsnips and potatoes, though. The lamb gets cut out because I am allergic, and replaced with that fabulous chicken sausage I raved about above.

Friday: Chicken Cacciatore. Yes, this is another slow cooker meal. I realize it looks like I never actually do any stove cooking, but I sweat I do. Just not this week. We’re trying to get some more leftovers into the freezer, so these large crockpot meals are perfect.

Saturday: Leftovers. We’ll clean out the refrigerator. Since we’re attending a local apple festival, we didn’t want to have to be home in time to cook. The preceding days should leave us with plenty.

Sunday: Goulash like Grandma Makes. This is not my healthiest meal. It’s made with white flour elbow noodles!! Why? One, because finding whole-wheat elbows around me is almost impossible, but mostly because this is one dish where the difference is actually huge and not necessarily leaning in favor of the whole-wheat. But, there’s lots of yummy grass-fed beef, and lycopene in the tomatoes.

Lunches:

Leftovers, for the most part.

Breakfasts:

Fermented oats, farm eggs, homemade bread, 9-grain fermented cereal, steel cut crockpotted oats.

What are you eating?

 

Preservation Frenzy

It’s that time of year. Harvest time. Squash, beets, potatoes, fruits, honey, and all kinds of other things are pouring in, so it’s time to put by for the winter.

Put by? Isn’t that just something old people and crazy survivalists do? No. If you want to eat well, eat local, and do it on a budget, you learn to “put by.”  There are some foods available in winter, and we’re luckier than some because here in VA, we have a season that often lets things grown right through winter. Unless, of course, you were here last year. Last year, we had more snow than many northern states, colder temperatures, and very few good ways to deal with it. Our stores shelves were stripped bare, and we were snowed in (even though we have a 4-wheel drive and are from MI) for a week at a time. The state simply doesn’t keep the equipment around to dig folks out in a hurry.

If you want to make sure you can eat local, healthy food, and if you want to do it without having to make a choice between your mortgage/rent and eating, preserving is the easiest way. This year, we’re doing as much cold-storage as possible. Here in VA, there often isn’t a good way to do a cellar. We live on rock. So, we store hard vegetables and squashes in our bathroom:

Yes, I said bathroom. This room isn’t heated and isn’t exactly well-insulated. It’s our half-bath, and in the winter it’s not used much. We keep the door closed, so it stays very cool, which is perfect for squashes, beets, cabbage, apples, potatoes, and the like. It’s not 100% perfect, but it’s enough. This is just the beginning of our store. The space will be full by next week, and I’m going to hang some things, as well.

Some things, as pointed out by Sharon Astyk in her book “Independence Days,” are fine in a cool house. Our house is cool whether we want it to be or not most of the winter (historic home, undersized heat pump, and a rental so we can’t do much about it). Fortunately, we tend to like it cool, so it doesn’t bother us. And, it lets us store some thing right inside:

These are just a few of the local, organic pumpkins we’ve got stored. They work great in the house because they do double duty as food (they’re amazing roasted, pureed, or steamed) and fall/Halloween decor! That’s also some of our local garlic, which actually needs to go into our hanging basket.

For the stuff that can’t be stored as-is in cold storage or the house, there’s drying, freezing, canning, salting, and lacto-fermenting.  We have a fairly large store of grains like oat groats, rolled oats, millet, quinoa, etc. (all frozen for 14 days before going in the pantry, because it helps them keep longer), beans and the like. But, we do like some fruits and veggies, too. For that, we often freeze (which, for us, is actually more energy-efficient than canning because we have an appallingly inefficient electric stove), lacto-ferment, and dehydrate.

Watermelon and limes. The watermelon are local, the limes are not (though they are organic). I assuage my guilt about this because we eat few things that aren’t local, and trade has always been an integral part of civilizations. I just pick my trade items carefully. Okay, fine, I just like limes.

We don’t do a ton of dehydrating, though. It’s just not great for a lot of things, and the humidity is so high here that it’s hard to do many foods. Our primary choices are lacto-fermenting, freezing, and cellaring. In the next few weeks, I’ll be putting up more posts, including some how-to stuff and maybe video, about those, too.

What are you doing to get ready for winter?

Related Articles

• Preserving Your Summer Bounty (thegreenists.com)
• Jam-packing memories into a jar (canada.com)
• Eating Local and Organic By the Seasons (ecosalon.com)
• Beet Basics (lifescript.com)

Monday Healthy Eating

Plan your lunches.

Step away from the deli, get out of the drive-thru line, and put down that processed frozen lunch entree. Lunches are incredibly easy meals to plan, and doing so will save you calories and money while gaining nutrition and flavor.

Your lunch options will depend on your lunch facilities, so take a minute to think about it: do you have  access to a refrigerator? A microwave? Toaster oven?  Can you use a cooler if no refrigerator is available, or store a hot-bag or thermos? Once you’ve got that figured out, the rest is pretty easy.

Make a list of foods you like that fit those needs. Obviously, if you are completely without the ability to keep items cold at all (and aren’t allowed a cooler), your options are the most limited; but, their are still options. Nut butters sandwiches or wraps, fruit, nuts, baked goods,  and many more foods keep just fine for several hours without refrigeration. If you can’t heat things up and can’t carry a thermos or warm bag, you can still take many things that are great cold.

Some of my favorite lunches, not including leftovers:

• Black bean burger wraps (pictured). I make up bean patties and toss them in the freezer, so I can just pull one out and crumble it into a wrap with whatever toppings I feel like!
• Home made hot pockets, stuffed with everything from fresh fruit to turkey and swiss with fig jam, from meatloaf to mac and cheese! The crust recipe I use is below, adapted from this recipe in Vegetarian Magazine.
• Miso chicken & shitake soup.
• Boiled egg, sliced with heirloom tomatoes.
• Pineapple tuna salad on baby spinach.
• Miso noodles, with shredded chicken (canned works fine) and some veggies.

There are all kinds of things you can use to fill out your lunch, too. Roasted almonds (which release leptin,  the “full” hormone) sliced fruit, a side salad, homemade granola and yogurt…you get the idea. The list is endless, you just need to add a bit of creativity.

Planning your lunches for the week will help keep you on the healthy-eating track, and it’ll make you the envy of the office!

Hot Pocket Crust Recipe

• 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt
• 4 Tbs. cold butter or trans-fat free margarine (or soy margarine)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1 Tbs. apple cider or white wine vinegar

Get the mixing directions here, and while you’re at it, you should really try the empanadas. They’re amazing.

It’s Personal!

I love these personal frittatas. Farm fresh eggs, local greens and tomatoes,  fresh milk, and grated Parmesan. They’re also incredibly impressive coming out of the oven, and don’t take much to prepare to perfection. Did I mention they freeze well? What’s not to love?

There’s no set recipe, and I change them up a lot depending on the ingredients I have to hand and the seasons; but, the basics are:

-A small, personal tart pan

-Baking spray

-2 farm fresh eggs

-2-3 tbs. fresh milk, cream, or sour cream.

-Salt, pepper, ground mustard, cayenne. Other spices, like thyme, basil, oregano, etc. can also be added to compliment your fillings.

- Fillings of your choice. Meats should be cooked.

-2 tbs. hard cheese, finely grated (I like Parmesan or Sharp Cheddar)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray pan liberally with baking spray and place pan on cookie sheet,  then spoon in about 4 tbs. filling ingredients. In separate bowl, beat together eggs, cream, and a pinch of each spice with a whisk. Stir in all but 1 tsp. of your cheese, and pour into tart pan. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top of egg mixture, and place tart pan (still on the cookie tray) into oven. Bake for 25 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into center. Allow to cool completely in tart pan, then gently run a butter knife around the edge of the frittata and remove from pan.

You’re likely to be seeing more “individual” foods here, as Thadd’s back in school and needs things he can toss into a cooler and I have clients that need something they can carry to work easily. If you’ve got favorite “individual” foods, share with us! Or, if there’s something you’d like to see, just ask and I’ll see what I can do!

The Market This Week

Fun stuff we got at the Charlottesville Market today: (aside from all our usual yummy veggies and meats from various farmers):

-Garlic from Roundabout. We were so happy to see Meagan from Roundabout back at the market, since they’d been absent for the beginning of the season. There is nothing, and I meant nothing, like Roundabout Garlic. It’ll ruin you for any other garlic. We got 2 lbs. We’ll be getting much, much more for storage over the next year. You should do the same. They also have wonderful heirloom tomatoes, tomatillos (which we also got), and more. Stop by, and tell Meagan hello!

-Sgt. Pepper’s Berry Balsamic Band marmalade from Mass a’Peel. This stuff is fabulous, as are all the varieties we tried today.  It’ll go with a lot of things: chicken, cheese (which we’re pairing it with later this week–more on that below), bread and butter, and probably a few other things I’m neglecting to mention. But what we’re really excited about pairing it with are the scones Thadd’s just decided to bake. Yum.

-Matcha latte and matcha cookies from Blue Forest Bakery.  This is a wonderful, local bakery specializing in Japanese breads like anpan. Recently, they added the wonderful cookies, and the latte was really refreshing.

-Caramont “The Old Green Mountain Round” goat cheese. If you’ve not had it, you should try it. It’s amazing. Actually, all their cheeses are beautifully crafted.

-Night Sky Farm’s 4-pack of chevre. This is another great farmstead dairy & cheese maker. We love their peppered chevre. We love everything else, too, but the peppered chevre has a special place in my stomach…er, heart.

The produce was great this week. Tomatoes are coming in, as is corn, squash (patty pan, yellow, zucchini, etc.), greens, potatoes, herbs like basil and dill. All told, it was a great day at the market.

How Do You Know Shawn’s Happy?

Easy: I’m cooking or otherwise puttering in the kitchen!  I’ve been dehydrating cantaloupe, freezing bananas and melon (this is a great way to save seasonal produce for smoothies!), preparing to ferment sour pickles, and I forget what else. Fortunately, I did remember to take pictures of some of the putterings to remind me:

Above: Hummus. If you’ve never made it, you should. It’s easy, inexpensive, tasty, and healthy. It takes few ingredients (chickpeas, garlic, tahini, EVOO, and lemon juice) to start, then you can add anything you want to flavor it, from paprika to sundried tomatoes. It’s the perfect dip for all those summer veggies, or a great spread for sandwiches. Below: I don’t have a glass pitcher that won’t crack if I dump boiling water into it, so I make a strong quart of  tea, then dilute it into a larger pitcher for iced tea. We’re from the North, so we don’t quite get the whole “Sweet tea” thing. We drink it with little or no sugar and some lemon.

Above: Okay, let’s face it. There’s almost no way to make certain things look good on film, no matter how good they taste in real life: pot roast, curry, and this dish–Thai Peanut Sauce with Shrimp–are great examples. Drab photo aside, it was delicious. A bit spicy, a lot depth (umami!) from fish and soy sauces, with a bright bite from sarachi and lime.  I served it over noodles, and sided it with a cucumber-tomato salad. Thadd made himself sick on it, which is always an indicator that it was a great dinner.  Below: summer is a time for salads. We toss all kinds of stuff into our salads, including the mango and pecans you see below. They complimented the fresh, local goat cheese and spinach perfectly. A good salad needs little in the way of dressing, so I just drizzled some EVOO and balsamic over it, and sprinkled it with a bit of sea salt.

Below: Two recipes that have been featured here. First, the Mojo Pork Loin from my last post. Second, the three-potato salad that was my most popular recipe at the Growing Power seminar at Lynchburg Grows in March. These dishes work well together, and make a great barbecue menu!

This week, more puttering! I hope to get up some photos of the pickling process, as well as some of the dehydrating I am currently doing. Are you puttering?

Grilled Mojo Pork Loin Recipe

You can buy mojo-marinaded pork loin, but it’s expensive. The ingredients to make the marinade are probably things many of you already have in your kitchen, and making it yourself means you get to skip all the junk that’s usually in store-bought marinades.

Mojo Marinade

-Garlic, minced. I used about 5 cloves

-Juice from 3 oranges  (or about 1/2 c. from a jug, if you’ve got it)

-1 medium white or yellow onion, chopped

- Juice from 5-7 limes, pluse zest from 1. Or, 1/2 c. from concentrate and zest from 1 lime.

- 1/2 tsp. cumin

-3 tbs. fresh oregano, chopped (or about 1 tsp. dried)

- 1/2 tsp. lemon pepper (or, 1/2 tsp. ground pepper and zest of 2 lemons)

- 1/2 tsp.  freshly ground black pepper (use this in addition to above seasoning)

- 1 tsp. ground sea or kosher salt

- 1 c. oil. EVOO or canola.

-Hot sauce, chili sauce, or adobo sauce, to taste (if desired).

Toss everything in a blender and puree.That’s it!

This is great on chicken, fish, and especially pork. We did a loin on the grill, and it was spectacular.

Batch Cooking

It’s hot. Well, actually, it’s not hot for the first time in a couple of weeks, which is where the idea for this post originated.  One of the biggest problems with doing a lot of cooking in the summer can be that cooking heats up your house when you’re trying to keep it cool. Electricity isn’t cheap, nor is it environmentally friendly to just adjust the thermostat to compensate for the heat in the kitchen. So, what’s a girl to do?

There are several answers to this, including using the grill (which we do), crockpotting (which we do), and eating cold meals (which we do). Those solutions, however, don’t answer the need to do things like make staples, like bread and stock.  The best answer I’ve found to that dilemma is batch cooking, which is what I am doing today. Batch cooking is essentially just making several meals or staples all at once, then storing them until later.

Batch cooking takes a bit of organization, but can save you a mint. For example, it’s been 90+ degrees out with high humidity for a while now, and so if we didn’t batch cook, we’d have either had to buy bread or bake it and heat the house up. Instead, we baked a bunch and froze it, then looked at the weather to find a day we could bake again (Thadd’ll be doing this tonight). This saves us the cost of buying bread or cooling the house.

Really, all you need to batch cook is a meal plan, a weather forecast (if it’s summer and this is a concern), and a few hours.  We do our meal plans two weeks out, then check the forecast to see what day(s) we can cook with the house open. If we can’t find a cool enough day, we do it at night.  We will cook a few meals that hold over well, make our soup stocks, and do any baking. Then, everything goes in the refrigerator or freezer for later. It’s good to do things that can be used in many different ways, too, so here’s what we’re doing:

Mojo pork loin. This will be dinner tonight (sided with three-potato salad), and make sandwiches for the rest of the week.

Southern BBQ Chicken. This is tomorrow’s dinner to use up leftover burger buns, and for lunches this week. The rest will be frozen for use at a later date.

Chicken stock. Made from recent meals of roasted chicken, any remaining meat was taken from the bone and frozen for use in soups or as lunch meat. The stock will be used for lentil soup later this week.

Vegetable stock. Leftover veggie scraps make the best stock, and this one has asparagus, mushrooms, onion, garlic, and a bunch of other things I’ve been saving in a baggie in the freezer. This will get frozen in quart containers to be used at a later date.

Bread. Thadd will be baking our whole-wheat sandwich bread tonight, with several loaves going in the freezer. I think he’s also making a dessert bread.

Muffins. Since we’ll have the oven on, I’ll be making breakfast muffins. Some will get frozen so I can grab them later, and some will be left out for me to munch on this week. It’s a good use of oven time and electricity.

Most of this is happening in the background of my day. The chicken is crockpotting, the pork is marinating for the grill tonight, and the stocks are simmering on the stove. Batch cooking like this is easy to do while you’re home on your day or evening off, especially with a slow cooker or two.  You can cook a chicken in the slow cooker, debone it, then make stock in the cooker. The meat gets used in as lunch meat (we grind ours with pickle and spices), and if you’ve got enough in a casserole (mac and cheese, for example) or in a soup (white & black bean white chili!).

Cooking this way means a lower electric bill, great meals ready to go, and less risk of us spending way too much money on crappy food eating out!

Food Photos!

I’d like to think you come here for my wit and food politics, but we all know you’re here for the food. Since I’ve been a bit light on food porn these last weeks, I’m going to throw a bunch at you today to catch up!

Above: You all know we eat from local sources as much as possible, and I just found a new source for amazing chicken: Davis Creek Farms. Their 100% pastured, free-range, better-than-organic chickens are slaughtered on the farm by the family, and they’re delicious. The bird above came trussed just as you see it–ready for roasting. His prices, which was about $3.40/lb for whole birds, are totally worth it for the flavor and the good farming practices. The carcass will, of course, go into stock later this week.  Below: These freshly-dug potatoes and carrots were roasted with Herbs de Provence for a wonderful side dish. Fresh potatoes have a richness that store-bought just can’t match, because store-bought potatoes are stored in warehouses just above freezing. These temperatures change the starches in the potatoes, rendering them less creamy and muting the flavor. The baby carrots tasted like carrots, not like sugar. Yum! The leftovers will be mixed with beets and beet greens in a homemade chicken stock base for a wonderful soup. The carrot tops will be used in pesto (thanks to the farm for this idea!).

Below: Falafel is hard to come by in this area, and we’ve been craving it. I finally had time to whip up a batch a few days ago:

Below: Summer brings cold fare to the table, in part because I tend to lose my appetite in the heat. For lunches, I’ve really gotten into savory smoothies, which are essentially gazpacho every day! They’re healthy, full of vitamins and fiber, and fill me up while cooling me down. I side them with some protein (usually an egg, cheese, and/or nuts), and it’s a light, filling lunch that is also full of what I need to keep up my active lifestyle.

Now that market season is here and our CSA has started, we’re looking forward to a lot of produce and a lot of new recipes. We’ll also be doing, as usual, a lot of preservation via canning, freezing, and drying. All this means lots of new pics, so if you’re just here for the food porn, you’ve got something to look forward to. If you’re here for the politics, don’t worry, that’s coming, too!