Chicken Soup for the Pocketbook

Chickens were .99 cents a pound, so I grabbed one for the freezer.  It's turn arrived last night.  I cut out the backbone, rubbed it with some spices (onion powder, granulated garlic, cumin and paprika with generous salt and pepper,)  and I browned the skin side  in oil in a cast iron   skillet.  Tossed in a quartered onion and put the skillet to bake at 350 degrees along with a casserole with carrots and parsnips and more onion with butter, oil and a little chicken broth.  Salt and pepper, natch.  The chicken cost $3.54 and half of it was left due to ingesting a large salad with lettuce, cucumber, tomato, avocado and ranch dressing topped with dill.  


So. . . chicken soup!  I took the meat off the bones this morning and cooked the bones with carrot, onion, celery tops and a bay leaf.  When it came time to make the soup, I sauteed onion, carrot and celery, and then added the broth and some extra broth from the fridge.  Cooked the veggies, then added peas and the already cooked leftover veg from last night, chopped chicken, some dry mushrooms soaked in hot water and their liquid, the "jus" from the skillet last night with all those tasty spices in it, and some leftover rice that I'd defrosted.  More salt and pepper.  A little more water.  Taste until just right.  


Made that kick-ass salad again and served up the soup with  toasted English muffins.   Very toothsome.  And there's leftovers!    Six servings of high-quality protein for .59 cents per person.  Can't beat that.  And all those wonderful vegetables.  Last night I had saved some leftover  rum glaze for a cake and we heated it up and poured it over ice cream.  Died and gone to heaven.   
The Boston Globe now always offers two meals, one using leftovers from the first.  This is just smart and of course, frugal and tasty and time-saving and even delicious.  That's a lot to like.  I could have made chicken fritters or something Mexican.  Leftovers are versatile.
Yours ever in frugality and downright cheapness. 


The Cheeseparer

Don't Cry Over Sour Milk---Make Waffles

This morning the milk was sour, and I quickly changed dinner plans to use the rest for waffles.  A combo of milk and orange juice and some orange rind will go into the waffles.  I make the waffles with low-fat Bisquick.  Can't tell the difference and I am such a picky person.


I serve the waffles with orange sauce.  When I'm in a hurry, the sauce is made with mandarin oranges, but tonight I'll make it from scratch.  I have a blood orange with the peel partly gone and some clementines.  Use what you have and save. 


Here is the sauce recipe. It's also good on pancakes and French toast. 


Orange Sauce: 

1 Tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar (or a little less)
1/4 t. salt 
1 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons of grated orange rind
2 tablespoons butter
1 orange, sectioned


Sour Cream or cottage cheese. 


Combine cornstarch, sugar and salt in saucepan.  Blend in orange juice gradually; add orange rind.  
Cook over medium heat until mixture comes to  boil, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat and add butter and orange secions; heat. 
Serve over hot crisp waffles spread with sour cream or cottage cheese.  

A slice or two of crisp bacon would not be amiss.  Great for Sunday Supper. 


This recipe is from (I think) the Chicago Tribune in days of yore.  I made it right away, and the kids liked it too, always a plus.  When I served it to my parents, my  mother announced in a big huff, "I am not putting cottage cheese on waffles!"  Hey ma, don't knock it t'il you've tried it!  Talk about a generation gap. 

Last week's chocolate pecan pie.  No, the crust isn't burnt, it's chocolate.

You can basically clone the recipe and use strawberries, blueberries or (Yum!!) a combo.  Sometimes you cook with the food you have.  Or make pancakes.  It usually works out well. 

Call me The Cheeseparer

Supermarket Sticker Shock

This morning's Boston Globe heralded the bad news that anyone who has shopped for produce already knew.  Prices are up!  Lettuce and tomatoes are outtasight!  


Rising Food Prices  


You may want to consider making slaw or carrot salad for a while.  Vitamin C is in cabbage and potatoes and orange juice is still a good buy.  I always loved the carrot salad with raisins and canned pineapple.  Root vegetables are still reasonable, i.e. carrots, rutabagas, turnips (yech!)  potatoes and parsnips (yum!).  Carrot soup is delicious, so think outside the box.  Lettuce is a quick crop and should be back in the stores at a reasonable price in a few weeks. 


Oh!  Did I say "cool weather crop"?  Now is the time to think GARDEN!  You can do lettuce, peas, and spinach while the temperatures are still cool.  Of course February is waaayy to early in New England.  We had more snow last night.  But consider. 


Soup and stews are an excellent way to cook cheaper.  Chicken and dumplings anyone?  Our supermarket had whole chickens for 99 cents a pound.  Consider eggs and the main dishes of frittata, omelet and strata.  Some wonderful soups use cabbage as an ingredient.  Look up the Yakisoba recipe on prior posts.  Onions, Carrots and Cabbage, all cheap.  And use one pork chop instead of two.  


There are always ways to economize, and with oil and food prices rising and the instability (understatement) in the Middle East, it may be time to hunker down.  Again.  


Read your supermarket flyer and plan a week's menus around the sales.  But you already do this, don't you?  Make  your own muffins.  So easy.  Spend the weekend cooking and baking and week nights won't be such a madhouse.  Get the kids involved.  Make Mexican or Indian.  Try some vegetarian dishes, like curried chick peas.  So good, so cheap.  Instead of a salad serve slice carrots and cucumbers.  Be creative.  Be cheap.  

Make your own pizza and save!

Leveraging Leftovers

Last night we ate at a new Chinese place in the neighborhood, and ordered too much, which is to say we brought most of one vegetarian fried rice and a chicken/shrimp/pork fried rice home. 
But it wasn't enough for the (this week) four of us.  I dug out my recipe file and found the recently made yakisoba with pork and cabbage.  I needed to buy the good Chinese noodles, a pork chop and cabbage.  Not too pricey for four.  We reheated the (copious) fried rice and I  divided the yakisoba into vegetarian (no pork) and meat.  We had a delicious dinner for just a few dollars.

Yakisoba with Pork and Cabbage

Tomorrow I'm cooking the world's best macaroni and cheese, so I bought mild cheddar and condensed milk.  There's going to be a kickass dessert.  Chocolate Pecan Pie.  How do you like them apples?  I have a gigantic bag of pecans in the freezer, and so tomorrow's dinner will be good, good, good.  By the way, we're having broccoli and salad, too, so it won't just be a cheese/chocolate frenzy, although there is nothing the matter with that.

Here is Emeril's recipe.  Not the one I am using (an old New York Times Sunday Magazine one), but Emeril's recipe's rock. Chocolate Pecan Pie from Emeril

Yours in frugality, 

The Cheeseparer  

Blood Oranges and pork chops and rum cake

Last year I ate blood oranges for the first time and loved their sweetness.  Our supermarket had them on sale (a rare occurrence), and I bought four.  Found a recipe for pork chops and oranges and did a riff on it, because the recipe called for Mandarin oranges, and I'm substituting blood oranges with some blood orange juice.  I cooked them with the boldly seasoned rice and I browned the chops with more seasoning (this is a Penzey's recipe, so naturally spices are called for).  The recipe also did not call for browning the chops, but it seemed to me that this would improve the flavor.

Penzeys Pork Chops with Oranges  


I'm also making a few organic carrots (so delicious) and a salad.  We can eat it for two nights, always a plus. 

My Significant Other's birthday is Tuesday, and I promised I would make him his favorite meal, beef Stroganoff.  Who remembers beef Stroganoff?  Raise your hand.  Years ago it was on every "continental" menu, and now the only place I know where one can eat it is at a pricey Back Bay Russian restaurant.

I found a sale (can you believe?) on beef tenderloin, so we have a pound of filet, some dried mushrooms, onion, cognac, and real sour cream.  I'll serve it with buttered noodles, peas and carrots and salad.  Iceberg lettuce was requested.  Except for the Stroganoff, the menu sounds rather pedestrian, but ordinary can be good, and it won't compete with the main course.


We have a busy week and I promised (fingers crossed) to make the favored marble cake (Marmorkuchen) at a later date.  It's totally from scratch to the point of beating the yolks and whites separately.  A true labor of love.  What could I make instead?


Recently, going through all my mom's old recipes, I came across her rum cake recipe.  She always made this for Significant Other and I do recall that it was very tasty and he relished it.  I had never realized that the cake was from a mix, with oil and pudding and eggs dumped in with some dark rum.  The glaze was delicious, too. 


I am not a cake-mix person, but I remembered the cake and my mother so fondly, that I thought what the hell?  It must be fate, because the grocery store had cake mix on sale for $1.00 and the pudding was cheap, too.  This is the first time instant pudding has crossed our threshold. 


I'm going to freeze half for company coming at the end of the week.  Two people and one big cake is asking for weight gain, although I'm sure the neighbors would be thrilled with a couple slices. 

I just bopped out to the web, and sure enough the recipe was there.  Do try it.  Read the reviews.  Cooks always have good ideas. 

Bacardi Rum Cake 

Yours in frugality, good taste and sometimes even shortcuts  

Tips from Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart didn't always have houses in East Hampton, Connecticut and Maine.  As a young woman she learned frugality, and although today she has no need to pinch pennies, she still understands that saving and frugality are Good Things. 


Food Saving Tips From Martha  


Fresh herbs are expensive and oh so tasty, so do pay attention to Martha's tips on how to save them.  Herbs also contain micro-nutrients that we all need.  I hope  you have an herb garden every summer.  I use the basil, sage and oregano that I dry all year round.  The oregano is particularly tasty.  Alas, I cannot keep a rosemary plant alive in the house after bring it in in the fall.  This year's died early.  Once I kept it going until March and then it died.  What is my problem?  

We are eating white chicken chili that rocks.  Made totally from scratch without cheese or sour cream from fresh peppers, chicken and herbs.  Google White Chicken Chili and Cook's Illustrated.  It's not often low cal food tastes so good. 


Yours in frugality, 


The Cheeseparer

Hobo Slang

Off topic, or OT as we say in the writing listserves.  I am always intrigued by colorful speech.  My dad came from Texas and my Mom from central Kansas, and they both spoke with lots of idioms that came from the farm, speech that would now be somewhat, well, inscrutable.  My mom always said, "I went to bed with the chickens," meaning early.  Something that would never happen was "she will wait until the cows come home."  Bad cows!   My dad, when something was too difficult said, "It's too wet to plow."  He called a big knife a "toad stabber" and big shoes "gun boats."  I love it 


For some interesting expressions and phrases, try The Hobos Dictionary




Good stuff.  Language is a living thing.  


We had our "traditional" Super Bowl meal of meatloaf, roasted potatoes and broccoli yesterday.  I always make meatloaf, because it is easy to eat while watching TV.  The Pack is Back!  


I made guacamole from an old Mexican cookbook (Elena's) and it was wonderful.  Full of onion, tomato, cilantro, jalapeno and fork mashed (still chunky) avocado.  I made my own chips from corn tortillas.  Better than packaged.  


Happy Monday.  Do you think they're getting any work done this morning in the offices of Green Bay?  Water cooler time!  


The Cheeseparer