rebecca's pocket

Week 5 - Wednesday - 31 days

We spend most of today getting ready to leave tomorrow. There is work to finish and loose ends to tie up. I have to take the cats to the vet. There's a lot of laundry. I have a long list that I worry will never get finished in time. One of the things I want to do is to clear out the refrigerator before we leave.

Lunch today is Tex-Mex Chili from way back in Week 2 via my freezer. I warm the last of the cornbread in the oven, we have it with butter.

Dinner is just as easy as lunch was: I stir-fry the last of the sugar snap peas in olive oil and garlic, and add a little fresh oregano from the plant on my deck before I serve it. For the main course, I just warm up the rest of the White Beans with Rosemary—and then freeze what's left for a lunch when we get back. We use the remaining lettuce for a crisp romaine salad. I finished up a bottle of wine last night, so tonight I drink a beer with dinner, and it's quite good. After months of sampling Jesse's various beers, I think I may finally be developing a taste for the stuff.

Week 5 - Tuesday - New Ways with Old Favorites

I'm still experimenting with my Summer Tea recipe. The latest version is 2 parts green tea, 2 parts mint, 1 part lemongrass. I mixed this up a couple of weeks ago, but haven't had a chance to try it until today. I decant some to try before I put it in the refrigerator to chill.

I think it's good, but Jesse thinks it's so minty that the green tea taste is obscured. Next time (and it will be weeks before I get through this batch of mix) I'll try 2 parts green tea, 1 1/2 parts mint, and 1 part lemongrass and see how that comes out. Whether or not it is too minty (and I'm not convinced) it really is a refreshing summer drink.

Week 5 - Monday - Memorial Day

I try strawberry pancakes this morning, and they are quite good. I use the pancake mix again, adding about half my strawberries to it.

I slice the rest of them and put them on top. The pancakes are both moister and sweeter from the strawberries inside, and the fresh berries on top add a nice burst of flavor with every bite.

I've never added fruit to my pancakes before, opting usually for the classic butter-and-maple-syrup treatment. Next time I'll chop them smaller—about the size of a small blueberry. I think they'll cook more evenly that way, and of course the flavor will be better distributed. But I'll definitely add strawberries again.

Week 4 - Sunday - Four Weeks and a Decision

I'm pretty excited about brunch this morning. I've devised a clever plan, and I can't wait to see how it turned out. Last week I noticed that the tempeh package insert recommended marinating it, and then frying it in sesame oil until crisp. I'm not going to use sesame oil for that, at least not this week—it's too expensive. But it does give me an idea.

Last night, after dinner, I mixed together 1/4 cup of soy sauce and 1 TB of maple syrup, cut a package of tempeh into strips, and marinated it overnight. My idea is to create a salty-sweet flavored tempeh, and then to fry the strips to see if it's at all bacon-like.

Week 4 - Saturday - This Time with Theming

I've been avoiding this breakfast, mainly because of the accounting I fear it will require, but this morning I cave in: I make pancakes with the Whole Grain Pancake Mix I put together before I started this project.

The pancake mix is from King Arthur, of course—go to Recipes - Pancakes & Waffles - Homemade Whole Grain Pancake Mix. When I cost it all out, I discover that it's surprisingly affordable: $0.41 for a cup of the mix, plus an egg, some yogurt, and milk. The mix contains lots of oats, which creates a satisfying, chewy texture that I really like. Cooking it couldn't be easier: combine the pancake mix, an egg, and buttermilk (or yogurt and milk, which is what I use), let it sit for 15 minutes, and then cook the cakes. I omit the orange juice, because I rarely have any around.

Week 4 - Friday - The Best Laid Plans

I wanted to make beans tonight, but once again reality intruded. Friends of ours had a baby just about a month ago, and Jesse called me to say they had all—mom, dad, baby, and big sister—shown up after work to say hi. The baby jackets I knitted for them weren't quite ready when the baby arrived, and I haven't seen them since, so I dashed down to the office to deliver my gifts before the baby gets big enough to drive a car.

I came home and started scanning my menu lists for the upcoming week to see what quick dinner I could substitute for the one I had planned. Yes, I make menu lists. Because I'm not one of those intuitive cooks who can just look at a set of ingredients and say "Squash fritters!" I always sit down to think out just how I'm going to use what came in my box each week. Planning this way also allows me to go the store only once a week to buy everything I'm going to need.

Week 4 - Thursday - Summer Supper

I love eating international foods, because when I eat and especially when I cook from other cultures, I feel I'm engaging with them in an intimate way. What people eat tells you so much about their everyday lives: their social status, their climate, what foods are available in their area, how they spend their time—and it tells you how, over time, those factors shaped their understanding of food, their approach to a meal. Food, for me, is one way to understand other people's lives.

I feel the same way about my own culture's regional cuisine. In Passionate Vegetarian, Crescent Dragonwagon describes a summer dinner of the Southern United States: a pan of cornbread and a variety of vegetable dishes to accompany. I can see this meal. China dishes are laid out on a big dining room table, each filled with a different vegetable, all of them surrounding a big pan of cornbread. I love the idea of mothers and grandmothers gathering produce from their backyard gardens, and then preparing it in the afternoon, sometimes simply, sometimes elaborately, always different from the night before. It's a small, perfect example of what people have done in every culture, in every time: gathering what is available, and then turning it into a delectable meal.

Week 4 - Wednesday - Spring

Dear Everyone in Maine: I apologize in advance for the delicious meals I'm going to be able to make with this box of summer produce.

Isn't this something? In looking through my cookbooks for ideas, though, I realize that it's going to be a little harder than it looks—many of these summer squash recipes call for a nice, ripe tomato, and we're weeks out from that. I can hear you now: "Oh, boo hoo hoo". You're right. I'll manage. I put the basil in a cup of water on the counter and cover it with a plastic bag, and put everything but the onion into the crisper.

Week 4 - Tuesday - Your Health!

When I was at the store last time, I did some price checking. I was a little dismayed to see that my homemade muelsi (oatmeal, wheat flakes, dried cranberries, dried pears), at $3.85 a pound, is slightly more expensive than the least expensive ("unsweetened") bulk muesli (baby cut oatmeal, wheat flakes, dates, walnuts) at the Rainbow, which is only $3.77 a pound. I have some this morning, and I can say with some pride that mine tastes better. The walnuts are a very nice touch in the store-bought, but I can easily add those to mine. It's not always about price—it can be about flavor.

I also check on the price of a loaf of bread. The King Arthur recipe, last week came to $3.43. The cheapest loaf of organic whole wheat bread I can find at the store is $3.19. Now, obviously there are cheaper loaves you can make—this one included 4 TB (.50) worth of butter. The organic whole wheat flour cost me $2.03, and so a less luxurious loaf might save you .50 to .75. Unless you really enjoy making bread (I do) or you're really struggling, the tradeoff in your time for a pre-made loaf probably isn't worth it—as long as you buy the cheapest loaf.

Week 4 - Monday - How Local?

I finally make it to the store today. I spend some time in the produce department considering fruit. Blueberries and cherries are, for some reason, incredibly expensive ($6 and $4 a pound respectively.) Apples are all in the $1.30 - $1.60 range, always the best buy in fruit. Nectarines are pretty expensive, as I would expect during this time of year. But peaches—and they look pretty good, I pick one up and sniff it—are only $2.60 a pound! I start to buy some, but then I put them back. Peaches are a summer fruit to me, and despite the price it just seems too early to buy them. I wish I had noticed where they were grown.

So I walk over to the apples and start thinking about which variety to buy. Granny Smiths, new this week, are the cheapest. But I notice that they are from Washington State. In fact, looking at the source of the apples, all of them are from Washington State—except for the Galas, which are from Chile! I'm not trying to eat only local foods, but between my CSA, eating seasonally, and the foods available at the Rainbow, I believe I mostly do that without trying. Today I learn that's a reasonable assumption, but to really read the labels.

Week 3 - Summary

» Budget goal—$74.00
» CSA cost per week—$12.50
» Food costs including CSA share—$51.16
» Average Per Person Daily Food Cost—$4.78
» Total—Under budget -$7.15

Week 3 - Sunday - Routines and Rituals

Do you have food routines? That's not quite the word I want though. It's hard to find one that hits just the right note. Routine sounds so boring, and I'm talking about something everyone looks forward to. Ritual sounds a little too...serious. Custom sounds like it's the practice of my people. But I think you must know what I mean. Do you have foods on certain days, or foods that are signifiers in your household?

Week 3 - Saturday - Mixed Results

Today is a day of moderate success. I start the day with a Cherry Crisp. Fresh fruit is such a treat that I usually just eat it as is. But we have that ice cream, and it's nice to have a treat on the weekend, so Cherry Crisp it is.

I start with a Martha Stewart recipe but it seems overly complex, so I turn instead to the best basic cookbook anyone could ever own, How to Cook Everything. Of course there's a basic, non-hysterical recipe for Apple Crisp [pdf] there, so I use that instead.

Week 3 - Friday - Experimental, with an Emergency Pickling Question

I don't have the car today, so I spend the time usually alloted for marketing on making bread and trying my hand at refrigerator pickles.

The bread is the Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread from King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. I mix up the ingredients and put the dough aside to raise in a bowl, then turn my attention to the pickles.

One of my commenters suggested pickling all those extra carrots, and that's a very good idea. Pickling, like cheesemaking and canning and drying and fermenting is just a way of turning an over-abundance of fresh food into something that will last. In this case, I won't be processing the jars, so we'll have to keep them refrigerated—but it sounds like fun, and I'm willing to give it a try.

Week 3 - Thursday - This is Dedicated

Today, I blew it.

Breakfast was fine. We both had coffee and nothing else. Lunch was a small salad and the rest of Tuesday's Fassoulia Fourno. (And I have to tell you—it was delicious. I marvelled at the flavor with every bite.) I unthawed Week 1's Tex Mex Chili and we had a small bowl of that for dinner.

So where did I go wrong? Today was Jesse's birthday.

Week 3 - Wednesday - The Real Cost of Frugality

What are the real costs of eating cheaply? I've talked a little about time and specialized equipment, but there are other considerations that are so basic as to be almost invisible. One of them is kitchen equipment. The figures in the Thrifty Food Plan are based on one important assumption: "All meals and snacks are purchased at stores and prepared at home."

I have a few nice pots and pans, but for the most part I don't have a spectacularly equipped kitchen. However, through the years I have accumulated the things I need to cook the way I do.

Week 3 - Tuesday - Cold Again

Cold, another 2-sweater day. For those of you who have always thought San Francisco would be a nice place to live, keep in mind that I live in the sunniest and warmest part of town—and this weather is not so unusual.

For breakfast, I have muesli & yogurt—twice. I'm always so hungry after I work out. Jesse is hungry, too, and eats the peanuts I sent with him earlier in the week. They are so satisfying that he doesn't have room for the leftover Chilaquiles—he just eats the salad and apple for lunch. I, on the other hand, am famished again by lunchtime. I eat a large portion of the leftover Chilaquiles, finish off the salad greens and Raspberry Vinaigrette, and have an apple. Then I'm too full.

Week 3 - Monday - Improvisation

Since I cook from scratch, people automatically ask about the time it takes. But what I do requires some equipment that you may not yet have in your own home.

I buy oils, grains, beans, yeast, dried fruit, pasta, and many other items in bulk. That means that I scoop them out of a large store bin into a bottle, jar or bag, before I buy it. Some people use the plastic bags the co-op provides for that purpose, and at home, some keep their dry goods in that same plastic bag. I have learned not to do that.

Our last apartment had an uninsulated pantry, designed with a little space between the boards to allow for air circulation. I think it was designed for cool storage, though in the summer (in the Mission District) it was a heater.

Week 2 Summary

» Budget goal—$74.00
» CSA cost per week—$12.50
» Food costs including CSA share—$48.16
» Average Per Person Daily Food Cost—4.33
» Total—Under budget -$13.34
Continue reading entry »
 [ 05.14.07 ]

Week 2 - Sunday - Day of Rest

I've been looking forward to this brunch for 4 days. I start by pre-heating the oven and cleaning and slicing the entire pint of strawberries I received on Wednesday. Sliced, I put them into a bowl and add 1 1/2 tsp of sugar. If you like them very sweet, use 1 TB instead.

Next, I mix the ingredients for whole wheat biscuits. I make mine square, by the way. The edict on biscuit-making is to handle the dough as little as possible. Instead of rolling-cutting-rolling-cutting I just roll out the dough once, pat to make the edges square-ish, and then cut straight lines with a knife. I like the biscuits best unsweetened, but you could certainly add 1 or 2 TB of sugar to the dough if you prefer.

Week 2 - Saturday - That's entertainment

This morning I decide on something new: Huevos Rancheros. They're easy—why haven't I tried this before?

The cilantro is on its last legs. I spend most of my cooking time sorting through to pick out the nasty bits. Then I pop it in the food processor with half a large can of Muir Glen diced tomatoes and the fresh red onion from my box, and buzz it until it's salsa. You could add a fresh chili or some dried red chili flakes if you wanted it to be hot. I decide to leave it as is.

Then I grate 5 ounces of thawed Monterey Jack cheese, warm 6 tortillas and the leftover refried beans in the microwave, and scramble some eggs. Stack and serve.

Week 2 - Friday - How to cook beans - 3 time-saving techniques

It's cold again. The fog doesn't lift until well into the afternoon. This is a typical San Francisco Spring. Heck, it happens from time to time during the summer, even here on the sunny side of town. Looking at a new home listing for a condominium up the street, I'm amused to read that in the Summer, residents here enjoy "warm nights". It's a lie. With the exception of the few 90-degree-and-above days we get each year, nights here are, without exception, cool. It's nice to get a break after a very hot day, but when I travel back East I always remember how much I love walking into a summer evening without a coat.

It's so cold inside the apartment that eventually I put on a second sweater and turn on the heat.

I've decided to make something simple tonight: refried beans. They're not authentic—I think Mexicans use black beans. But they're the kind I used to make when I lived in Seattle, and it's been a while since I've had them. The recipe will be easy to adjust to include my imaginary friend.

Week 2 - Thursday - Home alone

Jesse leaves today for an unexpected business trip. We get up at 5:30 so I can drive him to the airport, and I fix some oatmeal.

I grew up eating mostly cold cereal. Sometimes we would have oatmeal or even eggs, but usually we just pulled down the box of our current favorite and that was breakfast. The best was the Variety Pack, which always included 9 good cereals and one Special K, which my mom got stuck eating. It was just fun to open up those little boxes every morning. As I recall, there were perforations on the box along the back that were designed for pulling back the edges, cutting the inner lining, and turning the box into a little bowl! Can I be remembering that right? I don't think we were ever allowed to try that, or maybe only once. It sounds like the kind of thing maybe Dad would have overseen on a Saturday morning, but I might just be imagining the whole thing.

Week 2 - Wednesday - More Accounting

I've discovered the biggest drawback of this project: accounting for my time and expenses. Somehow I seem to spend every extra minute of every day adding things to my spreadsheet, making corrections, rethinking some part of my accounting method. I'm sure I'm using the most inefficient method ever invented to track things—and somehow, no matter how many times I'm at the store, I forget to mark down the price of one item. In poring over my spreadsheet making adjustments, and adding the last prices to the last items, I found my initial figures to be significantly wrong! I'm still under budget—but by $3.20, not $8.54, as I originally thought. (My Week 1 summary is here.)

Since the original intent was to simply document what we eat and see what it adds up to, I'm faced with a decision. Shall I continue to just cook like I normally do and see where I land? Or do I need to make some adjustments to make sure that I come in under budget?

Week 2 - Tuesday - Pantry

Because I still have a little price-checking to do, last week I didn't account for the cost of the herbs and spices I already own. Few people have a completely bare cupboard, of course, and if you've cooked anything at all from scratch you likely have salt and pepper and a few herbs lying around.

It's been very difficult to even come up with accurate weights for these items.
My scale weighs to the ounce, so when the needle moves just a little, it's hard to know if I'm looking at 1/8 of an ounce , or 1/16. In a couple of cases, the needle didn't seem to move at all. I've assigned a weight of 1/8 of an ounce to those items. I've collected nearly all the costs for last week now and the cost of my pantry items comes to about $27!

Week 2 - Monday - Summer Tea

All at once it has become hot. You may have heard that San Francisco is foggy all summer long, and most of it is. But here on the hill it gets hot; today it is 89.

I spend the day writing, working on this website, and trying to keep the apartment cool. We have East and West facing windows, and the apartment is laid out so that there is no way to create a cross-breeze from one end to the other. My technique for keeping us cool is a combination of blocking sun and moving whatever cool air exists into and around the house. It's a delicate thing, standing in front of a window trying to decide if the air is still cool enough to risk letting the sun shine in. And it takes constant attention. Is the air on this side of the house warm yet? What about now? What about now? And this side. Still hot?

Week 1 Summary

» Budget goal—$74.00
» CSA cost per week—$12.50
» Food costs including CSA share—$70.80
» Average Per Person Daily Food Cost—5.06
» Total—Under budget - $3.20

Week 1 - Sunday - Day of Reckoning

Our brunch this morning is good: a grapefruit, 3 scrambled eggs, toast, and Greek-style potatoes. I use a recipe from an old Cook's Illustrated—two potatoes, two cloves of garlic, the lemon juice left over from Thursday night's risotto, and some fresh oregano snipped from the plant on the back deck.

Buying fresh herbs at the store drives me nuts. Sometimes I can keep them fresh for a week or so by wrapping the stems in a wet paper towel and putting all of it in a plastic bag in the crisper (witness the cilantro, which is still going strong!). Fresh basil, I am told, is best kept at room temperature in a glass of water, like a bouquet—but in very hot weather I find that method leads to some rot. If I'm very focused, I can get through half a bunch of fresh herbs, sometimes more, before it goes bad. But as often as not I end up throwing at least a third into the compost bin before I can use it all.

I tried to grow parsley last year, but it never really got big enough for me to harvest. I'm going to try again this year:unless I make tabbouleh, parsley is one herb I never ever can use enough of in a store-sized bunch. It's a pleasure to go to the back porch and harvest a bit of fresh (and "free") food. Not free, of course, because I paid for the plant and the pot and the monthly fertilizer. But I'm not counting it into my food costs: that's why I have it, to avoid buying an expensive little bundle of green only to throw away a sodden bundle of black in two weeks time.

Week 1 - Saturday - Food Factory

Brunch this morning is Sesame Waffles with butter and a (warmed) ounce of maple syrup, the best grapefruit I've ever had, and an extra pot of coffee.

Before this weekend, the best grapefruit always came from my CSA; it was always better than anything I could pick up from the store. But the Rainbow is carrying Rio Grapefruit this week—the only kind they have—and it puts every other grapefruit in the shade. My husband, who grew up in Florida, agrees.

Week 1 - Friday - The Great Green Tea Disaster

I usually do my shopping on Fridays. Today I have a printout of every ingredient I've used so far this week, and every one I plan to use next week. I also have a shopping list.

I start with the spices. Rainbow sells herbs and spices in bulk and I'm curious to find out just how much I've been saving by buying only the amount I want, and not paying for the little jar it comes in. An inexplicable array of items are available only in non-organic forms. Organic cardomom pods are available, but bay leaves are not. Organic rosemary and thyme are available, but not sage. Cayenne? Organic. Chipotle (at $125/pound!), not. I can only imagine the cost of organic Chipotle powder.

Week 1 - Thursday - Accounting

One of the attractions of an English degree was that there were no math requirements. Unfortunately, as an adult, I keep on taking up projects that require extensive calculation. Dear Elementary School teachers: You were right. I do use math every day, and I'm sorry I didn't believe you.

I'm working today on defining a system that will accurately account for my actual food costs, plus take into account the outlay that would be necessary if I were starting from a truly empty kitchen. I've decided to account for anything I can buy in bulk for just the amount I use: theoretically, I could go down to the store and buy just one cup of any of those items. So, if I were a very precise shopper, my outlay wouldn't necessarily differ from my consumption.

On the other hand, there are items that I simply couldn't buy in the small quantity I need. For example, I have a big block of mozzerella cheese I bought some time ago. I buy block cheese when it's on sale (and it's never organic, by the way) and then cut it into 8oz portions and freeze them. Whenever I need cheese, I just thaw out a portion and grate it up. You wouldn't do this with a fine cheese, of course, but it works well for anything that will be cooked or melted.

Week 1 - Wednesday - Terra Firma Farms

Wednesday is the day Terra Firma Farms delivers boxes of fresh produce to my neighborhood. At about half past noon, I go to the other side of the hill to pick mine up. It's a little like Christmas every week, this opening up a box to see what's inside, and I look forward to it. This week I find sugar snap peas, a big bunch of asparagus, salad mix, a pint of cherries, and—oh, goodie—a nice bunch of carrots.

This box of produce will the center of my meal planning for the next week. It's hard to cook this way, at least it is for me. I'm not the kind of cook who can just toss some things into a pan and deliver a delicious meal from whatever is at hand. I'm more of a recipe follower, though I drive my husband crazy with my practice of regarding recipes as sets of suggestions more than anything else. Continue reading entry »
/ (7) Comments / [ 05.02.07 ]

Week 1 - Tuesday - Convenience Food

Today is relatively easy. Besides coffee, I have two warmed-up corn muffins for breakfast. Jesse rarely eats breakfast, so I usually send 1/2 cup of peanuts with him when I pack his lunch in case he gets hungry mid-morning, and I do that today. I also pack a cup of last night's chili, a corn muffin, and a shredded carrot salad: 1 carrot, shredded, and 1 TB of white wine vinegar. You may like it better with a little less vinegar, so start with 1 tsp and add until it tastes good to you. I will have the same thing for lunch.

Tonight I try a new recipe for dinner, and I couldn't be more pleased. It's one I found a few weeks ago when searching the Web for "carrot" "recipe", so desperate have I been to use up the backlog in my crisper.