Frugal Cooking Never Tasted So Good

Absolutely wonderful recipes, simple and healthy and relatively inexpensive. BIG HINT OF THE DAY -- Don't buy expensive gourmet Italian olive oil in little bottles at the supermarket. I buy perfectly tasty and wholesome Australian olive oil cheaply in two-gallon metal jerrycans at an international foods store in a low-income ethnic neighborhood. For less than a quarter of what I was paying per ounce at the supermarket! So worth hoisting the heavy can!

Eggplant dip
1 large eggplant (79 cents per pound at my local supermarket)
Good handful fresh parsley ($1/bunch, I used half a bunch), minced
1/4 cup lemon juice (juice of one large lemon, or use bottled juice at $1.79/quart)
3 - 4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Prick the eggplant all over with a fork and place on a baking sheet. Roast for 30 to 40 minutes until soft. Let cool (you can put it on paper towels if it's dripping.) When cool enough to handle, cut it in half and scoop the flesh out, discarding the skin.

Chop the eggplant as finely as you can, or put chunks in the food processor and whirl it. Mix in the garlic and lemon juice. Slowly add the olive oil, stirring (or processing) continuously. Stir in the parsley and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Makes almost 2 cups of deliciously addictive eggplant dip, a wonderful accompaniment to hummus, olives, pita bread and vegetable sticks.

Jujeh Kebab (Persian chicken kebabs)
2 pounds boneless skinless chicken meat (I stocked up on chicken breasts on sale for $1.49/pound)
8 Roma tomatoes
2 onions, minced or grated
1 cup olive oil
1 Tablespoon turmeric
1 Tablespoon salt

Start at least 6 hours before (preferably the day before) by marinating the chicken. Mix the onion, olive oil, turmeric and salt together directly in whatever you'll marinate the meat in (I use a ziploc freezer bag). Cut the chicken into 1" chunks and add to the marinade, mixing to make sure every piece is coated. Marinate in the refrigerator, turning occasionally.

Grill or broil the chicken for 6 - 10 minutes per side. White meat cooks faster than dark meat. Pay close attention so the chicken gets cooked through but not dried out. Brush with marinade before cooking.

Roll the tomatoes in the marinade and grill or broil alongside the chicken, but on different skewers as they will cook faster.

Note: This is best charcoal-grilled on high heat, but can be broiled. If grilling, you must put the meat on skewers like traditional kebab. If broiling, you can just scatter the meat in a single layer on the broiler pan -- but it will be easier to turn them and to serve them if they are on skewers.

Serves 8, with accompaniments of Persian rice or pita bread, chopped cucumber and various fresh herbs, plain unsweetened yogurt, eggplant dip or slices of fried eggplant, pickles and olives.

crossposted to my own journal

I use to shy away from putting fresh vegetables in the freezer. You have to blanch them first, right? And then, there are lots of veggies you just can't freeze. It's a pain in the neck.

But then I visited my friend Susan in Detroit. She pulled ripe tomatoes off the plants in her backyard, rinsed them off, then tossed them straight into the freezer. What was she doing? Wouldn't that ruin them?

Sure, she explained, when they thawed they'd be all mushy and wilted. She couldn't use them in salads. But they'd be perfect in soups, chilis, casseroles -- anything that uses canned tomatoes. The skins would slip right off once they were thawed, with no need to blanch them first. Best of all, they'd taste like tomatoes fresh from the garden.

I've followed her example ever since. And I've branched out into freezing other veggies that you're "not supposed to" freeze, like celery, cabbage, and even potatoes. (Well, potatoes do still need some special treatment. But more on that later.) The thawed vegetables can't be used in a salad, but they're still very good when cooked.

For example, I get a bunch of celery almost every week. A sliced stalk of celery adds wonderful crunch to salads. But after a week, it's not so crunchy anymore. As soon as a stalk seems to be wilting, I'll wash up the entire bunch and chop it. The leaves and broad white ends go into the Broth Bag, a 1-gallon ziploc freezer bag that holds vegetables for chicken soup. The rest goes into its own freezer bag, tightly sealed with the air squeezed out. The next time I fry chopped onion for an omelet, stew or soup, I'll toss in some chopped celery straight from the freezer.

In fact, whenever I'm chopping an onion and tearing up already, I figure I might as well chop a couple of them. What I don't need goes into its own freezer bag.

Large cabbage leaves can be rinsed, dried, and frozen. Whenever you want to make cabbage rolls, now you have pre-wilted leaves, with no time-consuming blanching needed to make them soft enough to roll around the filling. Small or torn cabbage leaves can be chopped and frozen for soups and casseroles.

Potatoes are a little more difficult. Thawed raw potatoes aren't all that good even in soups. But if you cook them first, they're great! So every time I boil potatoes, even if I only need a couple, I boil up a whole pot full. (This is a more efficient way to use energy anyway.) Dice or mash the cooked potatoes and freeze them like that. Russet and gold potatoes freeze much better than red ones. The diced potatoes won't be any good in potato salad, but will be great additions to soups and stews. But best of all is having mashed potatoes ready to use in the freezer. Mix them with some cream cheese or cottage cheese before freezing for even better taste and texture.

There hasn't been much posted in this community yet. I know I'd love to learn more from the rest of you about how to save money and still eat fabulously.

How about jump-starting posts by having theme weeks?

Some themes I've thought of are:

• How to use up fresh vegetables before they go bad!


• Thrifty cooking for just one or two (most thrifty-cooking websites seem to be all about the big families)


• What are your suggestions for a thrifty meal that can be made quickly and easily, is healthy, and tastes great? OK, I'll grant you that corn flakes with bananas and milk does fit those requirements, kind of. But let's look at more traditional dinner menus. :-)


• What does "thrifty" mean to each of us? How much do you spend on groceries? On eating out?

Leave comments with more suggestions!

Name: Chicken Pilaf
Servings: 8
Time: 3 hours prep on the stove top or 12 hours prep in the crockpot, plus 1 hour cooking
Suggested accompaniments: a vinegary salad like 3-bean or cole slaw

( Read more... )

Last week I realized that 2 pounds of chicken thigh on the bone turns into just 1 pounds of cooked chicken meat.

I'd bought up about 7 pounds of chicken thighs (including bones and skin) for just $10, a real bargain. I simmered them all day in the crockpot with two quarts of water, salt, pepper, and a little sage. Then I picked the meat out and returned the bones, skin, and cooking liquid to the crockpot to simmer overnight with a sliced onion and some garlic. I divided the meat into 3 freezer-bags full and froze it. I strained, cooled, and de-fatted the broth (there was a LOT of fat) and used it in preparing dinner that evening.

I ended up with 3.5 pounds of chicken meat and a quart of broth. Now, the broth was ten times better than canned broth, and the meat is deliciously tender and flavorful.

But. What would that amount of precooked chicken meat and canned broth cost in the grocery store? Is the price difference worth the work that went into picking chicken meat out of hot broth? I don't know; I'm going to try to figure that out tomorrow when I go shopping. It may turn out to have been a bargain anyway! Still, I need to remember that the price of raw meat on the bone is not the same as the price of the finished product.

What has your experience been with sale costs vs. final net costs?