Winter is the Time for Cheap Eats

Along with snow, cold temperatures, icy roads and sidewalks, wet boots and mittens, winter offers possibilities for eating on the cheap.

First there is soup, made-from-scratch soup: pea soup, bean soup, lentil soup, chicken and noodle soup. Soup with sausage, soup with cabbage. Dark chili, white chili. Yum! Don't stop there, think of hearty stew! Nourish yourself and your family.

Beef stew, pork stew, goulash, coq au vin, and my god, there's pot roast! And ribs! When meat is on sale, stock up, especially the BOGOs. The Russian dish, bigos, is a winter dream as is the Russian soup, Shtshi. (google it!) Those Russkies know a thing or three about hearty winter fare.

Most of these dishes make a big pot or casserole and won't break the bank if you consider the number of portions and the fact that all you need is maybe a salad and some homemade bread. If you feel lazy, make biscuits out of Bisquick. Be creative. Corn bread is great with chili. Find the 300 year old recipe with no white flour and no sugar. It rocks!

Shop the specials! The photo is Boeuf Bourgignon, AKA Burgundy Beef, an excellent and reasonable choice for a dinner party. I cut up a roast that was on sale instead of buying the more expensive cut of meat. A dish for 8 cost about $20.00 including the wine. I only needed noodles (cheap) and a salad (red leaf lettuce and home made dressing) to complete the meal. Dessert was a home made mocha cake that I only had to buy a small bar of chocolate and some yogurt to make. Look around the pantry and use what is on hand.

Appetizer was bacon-wrapped breadsticks, another cost-paring choice. We have noticed that the burgundy cheese balls coated with almonds are almost always cheaper than anything else at the cheese counter. They're tasty, too.

Eating well is the best revenge. Cook from scratch. Less salt, less chemicals and better taste.

The Cheeseparer

Teach Frugality

Seen on the web:

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/01/12/2009-money-moves-teach-people-to-bake-bread/

I bake a no-knead food processor bread that requires only a bit of measuring and a thermometer for the warm water. It rises, it bakes and you eat. Makes two loaves. In the rare instance, that it becomes stale/hard you can make French toast or bread crumbs or croutons. Waste not, want not.

The Cheeseparer

The Ham Bone, Symbol of Eternity

Is it weird to blog a ham bone? Not the dance, but the real thing? The photo shows the ham bone just beginning to cook in the pot of bean soup. This is a frugal meal. Note large sprinkling of black pepper. Zowza!

We had a ham for Christmas instead of the prime rib roast beef that we usually cook. Actually, it was half a ham. Cost $14.00 instead of the $40+ dollars the beef would have set us back.
2 main meals for 3 people, then a few sandwiches, then ham for breakfast. After a few days, there was a big meaty bone and I removed enough for a ham and broccoli casserole--made with a cheese sauce and quite yummy.

Cooked the ham bone with some pea beans, lots of onion, garlic, some carrot and celery and a little fat (my bad!) and broth I'd saved from the baking of the ham. Add more chicken broth and a few springs of fresh rosemary and some dried thyme from the garden. Lots of black pepper. Yum! Cut the meat off the bone (ate some in the process) and had so much I put some aside for ham and eggs (2 meals as things evolved) and back went the chopped ham into the soup.

Died and gone to heaven. 8 servings, plus two breakfasts, and the casserole still to come. 4 servings there. Have we lost count? That $14 just keeps on giving. Double zowsa!

I think I've counted 32 servings here, folks. I've also got a good ham, potato and broccoli casserole recipe, but since we are in quasi-diet mode, I'll skip the potatoes.

So living it up with the ham has been a cheeseparing activity.

A wag once described eternity as "two people and a ham." My mom never saw the humor in that. She thought two people and a ham was great.

As ever,

The Cheeseparer

Couponing

Today's Boston Globe had beaucoup coupon sections in the Sunday supplements, but out of 4 sections, I only glommed on to 10 - 12 coupons. Most of them are not for food. Lots of vitamins and health "stuff," cosmetics, weird things I would never buy. And the food coupons are invariably for the most processed of foods. No one ever has $1 off on a bag of carrots, although I did have one tomato coupon this fall.

Sometimes you find canned soup or cleaning products, and some paper and plastic. Yogurt is often available by coupon. Haven't seen cat food for ages. It's not on sale either, but we did buy 24 cans and get $1 off on Fancy Feast. Such a deal. One kitty is diabetic and we try to buy cat food without glutins. It's weird standing in the cat food aisle looking for specific flavors (each with its own color). Kitty doesn't care.

The best deals, food-wise, are the BOGOs. Buy One Get One in retail parlance. Chickens and pork tenderloin are particiularly coveted, but just about anything I regularly buy is welcome. Of course bottles of Tabasco would be useless. We are entering a 5 Tabasco bottle marriage. That's a lot of years.

Most weeks I'm too lazy to shop the 3-5 supermarkets and cherry pick specials. I stay with my main store and bop into the others if I'm driving by or in the neighborhood.

We had a half-ham over Christmas and the bone with plenty of meat clinging to it will be utilized for bean soup this week. From scratch with the soaking of the beans. I add lots of onion, and some garlic and carrots. Always yummy. Don't forget the herbs.

Some recipes call for a Parmesan Cheese rind, but that implies that you buy a big mother of a Parmesan Cheese, not exactly a frugal purchase. (See Photo).

The Cheeseparer, paring away