End of the month meals

Yikes!  Four days to go before some money comes in.  I had about forty dollars to spend at the grocery store.  The menus were two days of Chinese rice noodles with  ground pork, seasonings and baby bok choy.  Just needed the bok choy. Checked the pantry and decided on ramen for Monday and Patty Melts on Tuesday.  Off to Trader Joe's.

The Chinese meal (really delicious) will serve two for 2 meals.  What else?   Ah, the ever popular ramen, but I  never just open a package.  First of all, for a meal we need two packages, which were in house.  There are grape tomatoes, ginger and carrots and a few leaves of spinach can be plucked out of the salad mix.  And!!!  I have  a few ounces of cubed roast pork in the freezer.  All the Asian spices we keep around like soy sauce, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar and Sichuan pepper corns.  It will be a feast and hey, we're big into a latish celebration of the Chinese New Year, right?  With leftover for lunch.

What next?  A small package of lean ground beef in the freezer.  Just enough for two burgers.  I bought cheddar cheese, and patty melts it is.  Found a can of baked beans.  Bought more grape tomatoes and some nitrite-free bacon (so good) and spent all told, with bread, cold cuts, more cheese, onion, bananas, etc. $34.00.  A little over $8 a day for two people.  Not bad.

The night before, I had been busy writing all day and had no plan for dinner.  A quick peek into the freezer.  Ah!  A bit, but not much frozen turkey white meat.  A turkey neck and a turkey backbone.  I made stock out of the latter, using carrot, celery, onion, bay leaf and salt and pepper.  I also had some frozen turkey gravy and a frozen pie crust.  Leftovers from Thanksgiving. Hmmm.  Can we do a turkey pot pie? 

Took the meat off the neck and back, and strained the stock.  In a pan, I browned more onion and carrots and the celery, then added the stock and cooked the veggies a bit.  When they were almost tender, in went the gravy.  Made a nice thick sauce, and I dumped the turkey into the pot, too.  After I cut it up, it seemed like more, a kind of miracle of the loaves and the turkey.  Added a handful of frozen peas.  So handy for impromptu cooking.

Lots of pepper and a bit of salt.  The gravy had been homemade and well seasoned.  I put the turkey/gravy/veggies mixture into a glass pie pan and laid the crust on top.  Crimped it and slashed a few holes.  Put the whole business into a 400 degree oven until the crust was golden brown and the gravy was bulbbling up thru the vents. 

We ate this with some fresh broccoli from the vegetable drawer and it was really delicious.  The moral of this story is that it pays to save leftovers, label and date them, and freeze.  Just like the pork that will go into the ramen.  A well-stocked pantry is a cook's best friend, and those bits and pieces of leftovers can become a meal.  

You can make a good fruit salad out of apples, oranges bananas and dried cranberries.  Add a squeeze of lemon juice and a sprinkle of sugar.   Of course berries or fresh pineapple will make it even better, but you can "make do."

"Making do" is something my parents who both survived the depression learned to do.  Not a bad idea for our times either.  

We gobbled the pot pie down before I could take a photo.  By the way, if you don't have a pie crust, mashed potatoes will do, either homemade or from a box.  Here's a photo with cut up pieces of pie crust if you have a dish too big for one crust.  Be creative. 

The Cheeseparer

Too Much Month Left At the End of the Money

Ten weeks of house guests can eat into the food budget.  Worse yet, when the quarterly months roll around, there are property taxes, health insurance, life insurance and newspaper (we read a lot of papers) bills to pay.  All this can lead to, well, diminished cash.  There are, of course, option:  credit cards and dipping into savings are two.  This only aggravates the problem.  We decided to make do on the ridiculously small amount of available cash.  It worked pretty well.  Coupons!  Remember coupons!  I had a $5 cat food coupon.  The kitties have to eat, too. 
The piggy bank, alas, had been raided the prior month.  There was, however, a treasure trove in the freezer.  Meat for a week, and then . . . mystery meat.  What might it be? 

We found out.  Create recipes and meals from what's on hand.  This is when a well-stocked pantry is your best friend.  There were turkey cutlets, which we gussied up with capers, white wine and lemon juice.  There was chicken which was made into a delicious salad.  A couple frozen pizzas, small ones.  Dr. Oetker's.  Have you tried Dr. Oetker's pizza?  Kind of pricey, but we buy it with coupons when it's on sale.  Very good and just right for two people for lunch or a light dinner.  

The garden  gave us fresh herbs, tomatoes and cukes.  Lots of salads and the wonderful appetizer, Insalata Caprese, with fresh mozzarella, basil, tomatoes, olive oil and salt and pepper.  This can be lunch if you have some bread.  Oh yes, the mozzarella was dirt cheap, made fresh in one of our local supermarkets and totally delicious. 
Yeast and flour?  Bake a loaf or two of bread.  So tasty. 
 We found a can of corned beef hash left from the winter stores.   We ate it with some found-at-the-back-of-the-fridge English muffins.  Even stale bread tastes o.k. toasted.

Walmart had wonderful big fresh heads of iceberg lettuce for $1.14.  They (and Trader Joe's) have cheap bananas, too.  Just because every meal is a scrounge doesn't mean you can skip fruit and veggies.  Of course you read the weekly fliers for bargains.  We even had some blueberries. 

We discovered the "mystery meat" was half a small round beef roast and two (count 'em, two) short ribs.  They made two wonderful meals when cooked up with onions, some oldish celery, two big freshly purchased carrots, and red wine and garlic. (Home grown).  I cooked them for hours.  Served with some barley that has been in the cupboard for ages.   Cucumber salad, natch! 

At the end of the week, the freezer was bare, really bare.
 I also made lemon-lime ice milk, because we had bags of lemons and limes.  Bought a small container of heavy cream and we had delicious desserts.  Again, a well-stocked pantry.              

Some money finally arrived, and we went shopping, because by now, there was really no food in the house, the canned soup having been consumed for lunch.  I could have eeked another meal with pasta, bacon and tomatoes, but that wasn't necessary.  Before winter comes, I'll stock up on some Spam and corned beef and canned soup.  You never know when a power failure will hit for a few days.  We have a gas stove, and can cook on the stove top, and a Weber kettle for grilling (and baking).  Our parents and grandparents knew how to "make do."  Do you?  

This was a busy summer and I haven't posted.   How do YOU "make do?"