Friday, October 28, 2011

Green Eggs and Ham

We're having ordinary eggs and ham tonight.  An 8 oz. ham steak is a wonderful thing to have in the fridge or freezer.  They are frequently on sale.  For the two of us, I just fry up the steak and scramble some eggs.  If you have more than two, chop up the ham (not too finely) and toss it in with the eggs.

To make the meal a little special, yesterday I made some bacon and cheddar muffins.  Took half to a housebound friend, and popped the rest into the freezer for tonight and the future.  We also have a "special" salad of tomatoes, avocado and artichoke hearts, all purchased on sale as was the ham, the cheddar and the bacon. 

Ocean State Job Lot, in the New England area, has a wonderful food section with  lots of cheap stuff like imported pasta, artichoke hearts, capers, ethnic foods and all sorts of delicacies.   We shop there often.   They even have white asparagus and great imported saurkraut at bargain prices.

We got our flu shots today.  Did you get yours yet?    Many of the drugstores and even Walmart  are offering them to walk-ins.  Getting the flu and spending time away from work is not what you want to do.  I know of several people who have been laid off because they got sick.  Give yourself every advantage and stay well.  That also means eating plenty of fruits and veggies.  I buy bags of frozen berries and thaw a few out every morning for my cereal or on top of cottage cheese.  That and a glass of o.j., and you're on  your way to  5 produce helpings.  You can always have a few cherry tomatoes and carrot sticks for lunch--maybe some items from the olive bar. 

Didn't mean to preach.  Don't you get weary from being preached at concerning your diet?  Some of the foods recommended for weight loss make be gag at the thought.  I am not really a tofu fan, although it is o.k. is soups and stir fry (if there is a bit of meat, too).  Soup is a great way to get some extra veggies.  So warming on a winter day.  We woke up to snow on the ground this morning, but my nasturtiums seemed unfazed.  Had already picked some  coleus to root indoors and the four o-clock seeds (from the old plants) to use next summer. 

The scrounger as well as the cheeseparer

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Whither the Poblanos?

I bopped into Shaw's Supermarket to pick up the on sale butternut squash, and decided to strafe by the International Foods.  There I found the Verde Sauce, and plucked a can from the shelf.  As expected, no poblanos.  Whither the poblanos, New England?

The curried butternut squash soup was totally 100% delicious, a vegetarian delight for meatless Monday dinner.  Yesterday I assembled my chicken enchilada ingredients.  Opened the Verde sauce and tipped the spoon into it.  Disappointment!  Sort of a metallic taste but not much true flavor.  Awfully thin, too.

Cheeseparer to the rescue.  I broiled my peppers: Anaheim, jalapeno and mystery, and peeled and seeded them.  Tasted the "mystery" pepper which the supermarket guy didn't recognize (New England, again) and didn't not know how hot it was.  It was hot, hot, hot, so I only used half.

Into my trusty Cuisinart went the so-so verde sauce, a big handful of fresh cilanro, the peppers, some  fresh from the garden dried oregano, and a pinch of cummin.  A judicious amount of salt and pepper.  Whirl away.

Tasted my concoction.  Spicy but flavorful, with some resonance, which the canned sauce alone lacked.  The enchiladas had the standard preparation.  Sauce in the bottom of the baking pan.  Stuffed with chicken, Mexican cheeses and a tablspoon of sauce. Rolled and placed in pan, and topped with remaining cheese and sauce.  Ran a little short of cheese and used a bit of Parmesan.  Cooking is an inexact art, except for baking.

Baked the enchiladas covered in foil for 35 minutes.  They were delish.  Served with refried beans from the can, just heated in a skillet, and a salad of tomatoes, lettuce and avocado.  A nice Mexican meal.

 The $4.50 chicken provided 6 main course servings plus a snack(leg) and a lunch (thigh).  I already had everything in the pantry except the green sauce.  Next time, I'll hope Whole Foods has tomatillos, or try MexGrocer.com for canned tomatillos.  Still don't know what that spicy yellow pepper was. Ideas?
Tonight is the rest of the meal, a duplicate of last night's.  Looking forward to it.

Keep a well-stocked pantry of provisions purchased when they are on sale.  Like the  99 cent refried beans and the grated Mexican cheese.  It can be used on other casseroles, too.  You can eat well and frugally.  Avocados and tomatoes were also on sale, as well the lettuce.  Hot peppers are cheap.

Cheeseparing to the max, even without poblanos.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

The Yin and the Yang of Home Cooking

 We all know (or should know) that eating at home is cheaper and also nutritionally sounder than eating out all the time.  Yet, why is it so hard to plan menus, shop and prepare the food?

If we had unlimited time, budget and calories, then no problemo.  But who does?  Anyone who has time and budget constraints and a desire not to increase in girth has some real juggling to do. 

At Chez Cheeseparer, we have all these limits, plus we love food.  If you “ate to live” there would be one less ball to juggle.  Here’s how we go about it the process of shopping and cooking.

First, I pore over the weekly specials in the flyer of the stores where I shop most.  This helps with menu planning and money saving, because you can center your menu around the produce and meat sale items.  This week, for example, whole chickens and chicken breasts were on sale, as well as cranberries, all varieties of squash, pears and apples.  Oh yes, and avocados. 

Southern Cornbread
Puerto Rican Rice and Beans - yum!
I decided to roast a chicken on Sunday, and save the leftover for chicken enchiladas on Tuesday.  On Monday, we’ll have curried butternut squash soup.   Maybe on Wednesday, too.  An omelet on Thursday and I can scrounge in the pantry (always well stocked) on Friday.  Keep your eye on the calendar for nights where time is short (for us that’s Monday) or you’ll be eating out.  None of the my selections are complicated, and they are all tasty.  A cinch, right?

Wrong!  The store has no poblano peppers for the verde sauce for the enchiladas.  I make some substitutions but when I arrive in the Mexican aisle there are neither canned tomatillos and nor verde sauce.  I will have to go to another store.  On Tuesday, I’ll be in Wellesley and can stop by Whole Foods which will likely have poblanos, maybe even tomatillos and/or some canned tomatillos or sauce.  By now, I am mentally committed to enchiladas verde, one of my faves in the world of Mexican food. 

Tomorrow we will trek to Walmart before my soup coupons expires.  They sell for $1.50 per can what everyone else sells for $2.38.  Plus I can save 25 cents off per can with the coupon.  We had an expiring coupon for cat food at Petco today, too.  Thisbe is diabetic and has to eat “Atkins for kitties” food, low on carbs, high on protein.  I jump through hoops to get it.  

So what we have this week is a shopping time suck, a decent budget and moderate calories.  I have done pretty well, and we have replenished the pantry after a) Hurricane Irene and b) a two-week vacation.  The larder was pretty bare when we got home.   

Tonight we are eating the pictured meal, Puerto Rican rice and beans and homemade Southerns corn bread with stone ground corn meal, no white flour, no sugar.  So good, so healthy. No problems with that meal except I almost burnt the beans.  Did not set the timer, always a mistake.  A portable kitchen time can save you endless headaches and burnt food.

Eat hearty and well,

The Cheeseparer 
 

Thursday, October 20, 2011

The Ultimate Tuna Noodle Casserole

Tuna noodle casserole is a homey thing.  When I was in college,  a group of friends would all pitch in 50 cents and someone would buy a package of noodles,  a couple cans of tuna and a can of peas.  It probably wasn't very good, definitely NOT gourmet, but we liked it anyhow.

Chez Cheeseparer, we still like it, and the basic ingredients still apply, but we've added a few touches to make the whole business super tasty.  The following recipe is for 3/4 pound of noodles.  I usually use thick or medium. 

Brown 1/3 cup diced onions and 1/3 cup red or green pepper in one T. butter or oil.  If you don't have fresh pepper, I have successfully substituted dried pepper flakes, maybe a tablespoon.  When the veggies are soft, add one  T. flour and stir well. Let cook for a minute or two.  Add  3/4 cup milk (2% is fine) and cook and stir until the mixture begins to thicken.  Add 1/4 cup cream (heavy or half-and-half or whatever).  Cook until thick and then add 2 cans packed-in-olive-oil drained tuna, broken up.  Cook and stir some more, then add 3/4 cup frozen peas, thawed.  Add salt and freshly ground pepper to taste and a small pinch of cayenne.  Each ingredient adds a bit of resonance.  Check seasoning and if the sauce is too thick, thin with a bit of milk or cream.

Cook noodles according to package directions (make sure to add salt) until done, but they will cook some more, so they should not be overdone. Drain. 

Put drained noodles into a greased 2  qt. casserole, and stir in the tuna sauce, mixing well.  Sprinkle crushed potato chips on top the casserole, covering thoroughly.  This really adds to the whole.  If you are (horrors!) out of chips, use 3/4 cup buttered panko crumbs.  You can also mix chips and crumbs if you don't have quite enough of each.

Put this into a 350 degree oven  for about half an hour.  Serve with a green salad and a green veg.  We like both broccoli and green beans with this.  Serves 4-6 depending on appetites.  Two people can enjoy a second dinner and maybe even lunch.  It just gets better every day. 

I always buy the Italian tuna packed in in olive oil, but the cheap kind probably works as well.  The cans have shrunk and now only have 5 ounces instead of 6.  Boo!  If you are feeling extrvagant, you could use 3 cans.  We make do with two.

This recipe calls for a basic white sauce which is butter and flour in equal quantities and milk.  You should know how to make this and any cookbook can offer more details.  Do not use canned soup--it won't be anywhere near as good.   Avoid processed foods whenever possible.  This is not to suggest you catch your own tuna and make your own noodles, although the result would certainly be very toothsome. 

 Tonight I am making a peasant fave, Puerto Rican rice and beans.  Yum! 

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Must Have Been Bedbugs

An Welcome Guest Just About Everywhere
Yesterday as I was dropping off the must-be-dry-cleaned vacation clothes, about  a dozen HUGE plastic garbage bags sat on the floor of the dry cleaners.  The clerk told me these bags all had to be sorted and another employee was coming in to help.  I noticed there were gym shorts and t-shirts and similar clothing items on the counter--stuff one would not ordinarily send to the cleaners and this is definitely a cleaners--the only thing they launder is shirts.


The pile was so huge that I wondered if we dumped out all the chests, closets, etc. if we would have that much stuff.  The clerk also said they had towels in there.  My writer's mind tried to devise all sorts of scenarios for leaving every piece of fabric that you own at the dry cleaners and after some really bizarre speculation, it came to me.


These folks must have bedbugs!  I mean, what else could it be?  The clerk was somewhat mum about the reason for this large dumping of everything into the bags and bringing them in.  Maybe he knew and didn't want to say. 


Of course now I'm not too keen on having our stuff in the same room at the bed buggy stuff.    I mean, what if they decide to, well, to migrate? 

It was really weird.   When I go in to pick up our clothes, maybe I will ask.  Don't expect to get an answer.


We had our own disaster, no, not the washing machine but the basement fridge.  It must have crapped out while we were gone.  The cat sitter didn't notice, nor did S.O. when he put the meat in the freezer compartment.  When I went to grab the orange juice yesterday, there was a totally disgusting smell and all the meat ($25) we bought on sale last week was rotten.  An event to break a cheeseparer's heart.  I told Significant Other that we would have to eat five vegetarian meals to make up for it.  He agreed, and the first meal will be a Spanish soup of cabbage and white beans.  Sounds good.

This is so aggravating.  I think we were so  sick that no one noticed.  A head cold can make you really dense and stupid.   Hoping no more appliance incidents mar the fall.  The fridge was at least 25 years old, but not to notice!  I mean really.  The  lemons were all rotten!  Big Clue!  


I harvested the seed from the Four O'Clocks to plant next year.  It's always great getting free plants.  They did great this year, and provided lots of late season color.  The garden is still pretty with the cleomes, morning glories, and regular flowers blooming.  We're eating the last cucumber from 2 plants that were amazing in the fecundity.   


The good stuff and the bad stuff all evens out, somehow.  But I am still exercised about the  ruined meat. 


Yours in Frugality. 

The Cheeseparer


                                

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Frozen Leftovers Save Your Life

Due to Hurricane Irene, we had a bare freezer, but not for long.  I stocked up on a bit of meat, a couple frozen pizzas, and some frozen fruit.  Oh yeah, ice cream.  I also stuck a few homemade items, dinner for two into the freezer that we didn't eat.  Then we went off to Spain and Portugal for two weeks.  


Ham What Am
 Came home with bad colds, really bad colds, and did not feel like a) shopping b)  cooking or c) much of anything.  Imagine my delight  when I found some frozen Swedish meatballs, pork chops, and even some yummy chicken breasts with  a sauce of Apple Jack and apples.  Died and gone to heaven.  We had a goodly stock of canned peas and I did make it to the store for salad fixins'.  This has been a life saver.   We don't really even feel like going out and hacking, coughing and blowing our collective noses.   

Getting a big better now.   Spain and Portugal were . . . how do I say . . . worth catching a bad cold for.     We had not expected such thoroughly modern countries, with good roads, good plumbing, good infrastructure.   And the food!  Those Spanish hams can't be beat.  Wonderful inexpensive white wines.  A dish of olives at almost every meal.  The food was relatively cheap, at least where we ate.  Museums were also cheap.  At the Prado in Madrid, they wouldn't accept our senior ID's because we didn't belong to the European Union.  Alas!   

I will have more later on cheeseparing while traveling, that discusses more than taking the soap and the shampoo.    The paradores in Spain all had weird grape-scented toiletries that smelled like grape gum, the kind that drove my husband batshit when the kids were little.  I didn't take any of that.    We also noticed the breakfast buffets had cereal like cocoa puffs.  Hmmm.  I saw adults eating it.   The world is a strange and wonderful place. 


More Anon.     And I'll tell you about the most BIZARRE sight today at the dry cleaners.     A mystery inside an enigma.  I 'm  still trying to puzzle it out.                                               


The Cheeseparer, back at last with traveler's tales.