Frugal Day Every Which Way: Library, Cabbage, Cookbook

As I think of my little adventures, I realize that frugality is woven into my life. This morning, I headed to the public library (very close) to return a few DVDs. While there I picked up a few books that were being held for me. I also perused the Cook's Illustrated that was on the shelf.

Hmmmm. II wonder if one can compute the savings from this one errand.

DVDS: save $7.50 on 3 rental fees.
Books: I requested two books on braising, and the accommodating book buyer, bought them! Let's see how much they are on Amazon: Molly Stevens: All About Braising.

I also picked up Jean Anderson's Falling Off the Bone.

As usual, I am drawn to the cheapest recipes. While I may make duck ragu one of these days, right now I am putting this cabbage recipe on the menu. Molly Stevens calls it World's Best Braised Green Cabbage.

Total time: 2 1/2 hours



1 medium head green cabbage (about 2 pounds)

1 large yellow onion, peeled and thickly sliced

1 large carrot, peeled and cut in 1/4-inch coins

1/4 cup chicken stock or water

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly oil a large gratin dish or baking dish (13-by-9-inch works well).

Peel off and discard any bruised or ragged outer leaves from the cabbage. Cut cabbage in half, then into 8 wedges. (Don't trim away the cabbage heart.) Arrange the wedges in the baking dish on their sides, overlapping a little but trying for a single layer. Scatter the onion and carrot over the cabbage. Drizzle with stock or water and oil. Season with salt, pepper and pepper flakes. Cover tightly with foil and transfer to the oven.

Braise for 1 hour. Uncover and gently turn the wedges with tongs, keeping them as intact as possible. Add a little water if pan is drying out. Cover pan and return to oven. Bake 1 hour.

Remove the foil, increase the heat to 400 and roast until vegetables begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Not only is braised cabbage the cheapest of the cheap, but also I still have 4 cabbages that were thrown to us during the St Patrick's Day Parade.

I guess I saved a bunch on the cookbooks. My cabbage dish will be almost free. Molly Stevens is an eater after my own heart: she suggests serving the cabbage with mashed potatoes as "an appealing vegetarian supper."

The Cook's Illustrated had this on the cover: Is a toaster oven really worth $250.00? You may remember my toaster oven dilemma, followed by a toaster oven disappointment. According to the magazine, the desired-by-many Breville toaster oven is indeed a wonder. Can't wait till the death of my Black and Decker.



My little adventures, which involved less than $1.00 in gas, should, if I put the savings in a jar, add up to that expensive toaster oven in a year or so.

Living like the Wealthy and Influential

I love to read a column in the New York Times that details the weekend activities of the wealthy and influential. To wit: Paul LeClerc, head of the New York Public Library. Yes, Mr LeClerc and his spouse (head of a foundation) have the sheen of wealth, influence, and culture, and no doubt live in an unattainable apartment in New York City; nevertheless, we can emulate their weekend activities.

Yes: he cooks from Marcella Hazan (ME TOO); he bakes (Mr. FS does that); he watches Netflix movies (WE DO THAT TOO); he moseys around a bookstore (DITTO); he reads (WEll, YEAH). Other luminaries I've read about take walks. You won't see me and Mr FS dressed up in formal wear at various functions attracting the powerful, but still . .

Yesterday, Mr. FS and I endured our 12-hour at work day. Sadly, we were away from Miss Em, who is home on break. She emailed us with an account of her day: going to a downtown coffee shop, where she got started on a paper. Then she did something M. LeClerc et femme (he has a doctorate in French lit!) probably don't do: headed to our wonderful Goodwill where she scored a blouse by Elie Tahari.

If you want to live like the influential Mr. LeClerc, you can get a Marcella Hazan book too. He recommends the pasta with cauliflower.

Pasta from the Pantry with Mark Bittman and Arthur Schwartz

Two events converge. First: there is terrible weather in much of the country. Second: Mark Bittman is giving up his Minimalist cooking column in the New York Times.

The first event means that you don't want to go out. It may be DANGEROUS to go out. Therefore, cooking dinner from the pantry is in order. The second event means that there's a Minimalist Nostalgia Fest going on at the New York Times.

Here's one of my favorite Minimalist columns: it features Arthur Schwartz aka The Cooking Maven and pantry cooking.

Here's something I make all the time.

SPAGHETTI WITH FRIED EGGS

Time: 20 minutes

Salt

1/2 pound thin spaghetti

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil or lard

2 large cloves garlic, lightly smashed and peeled

4 eggs

Freshly ground black pepper

Freshly grated Parmesan or pecorino cheese, optional.

1. Bring a pot of salted water to the boil. Start the sauce in the next step, and start cooking the pasta when the water boils.

2. Combine garlic and 4 tablespoons of the oil in a small skillet over medium-low heat. Cook the garlic, pressing it into the oil occasionally to release its flavor; it should barely color on both sides. Remove the garlic, and add the remaining oil.

3. Fry the eggs gently in the oil, until the whites are just about set and the yolks still quite runny. Drain the pasta, and toss with the eggs and oil, breaking up the whites as you do. (The eggs will finish cooking in the heat of the pasta.) Season to taste, and serve immediately, with cheese if you like.

Yield: 2 or 3 servings.

Here's something I'm going to make. This takes ingredients that are probably in everyone's cupboards.

LINGUINE WITH TOMATO 'FILLETS'

Time: 20 minutes

1 28-ounce can plum tomatoes, or about 2 pounds peeled fresh tomatoes

Salt to taste

1 pound linguine or spaghetti

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic

Red pepper flakes to taste

3 tablespoons minced basil or parsley.

1. Cut tomatoes into strips, discarding seeds and juice; place in a strainer to drain while you bring a pot of salted water to the boil for the pasta. Start the sauce in the next step, and start cooking pasta when water boils.

2. Combine tomatoes, oil, garlic, salt and pepper in a 10-inch skillet, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook briskly for about 5 minutes (8 minutes for fresh tomatoes), stirring occasionally. The tomatoes should remain in pieces, and there should be no liquid remaining in the pan other than the oil.

3. Toss the pasta with the sauce and the basil or parsley, and serve immediately.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.


And here are my favorite cookbooks by Bittman and Schwartz.

Thanks guys.

Scary News, Little Pleasures

More scary news in the big world, even scarier than the last batch.

I am so lucky that I am able--on a lazy evening--to sit back and watch Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night.

Not only was it fun in itself, but I was actually WORKING. I am teaching Shakespeare's play next week, and the plot--for a reader--is head spinning. Not so for a viewer.

I am lucky in another way. I can wander down my back steps and pick some scallions and cilantro. Then, since I have to attend a pot luck dinner/musical performance tonight, I get to make a dish that uses some of my bounty: Texas caviar. I've eaten this, but never made it: WHY? It's easy and good. In fact, Mr. FS urged me to make a ton, so he can eat the leftovers tomorrow.

Texas caviar is a frugal recipe: black-eyed peas are the caviar. Recipe from Pam Anderson.

Ingredients

* 2 (15.8 ounce) cans black-eyed peas, drained
* 1 (14.5 ounce) can petite diced tomatoes, drained
* 2 fresh medium jalapenos, stemmed, seeded and minced
* 1 small onion, cut into small dice
* 1/2 yellow bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and cut into small dice
* 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
* 6 tablespoons red wine vinegar
* 6 tablespoons olive oil (not extra virgin)
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
* 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1 teaspoon dried oregano
* 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

Directions

1. Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl; cover and refrigerate 2 hours or up to 2 days. Before serving, adjust seasonings to taste, adding extra vinegar, salt and pepper. Transfer to a serving bowl.



EASY! I have a number of Pam Anderson's cookbooks. My favorite is Perfect Recipes for Having People Over.

I also love her book on losing weight. She lost 50 pounds, eating real food and without starving herself. I would use these recipes even if I weren't on a diet. Actually, I am not on a diet.

How lucky I am in my cilantro and scallions. And how wonderful Shakespeare is!

What is love? 'tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What's to come is still unsure:
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

First Bit of Luck for the New Year

On New Year's morn, I cooked up some lentils. I got a little nervous. Later, I asked Frugal Son if it HAD to be black-eyed peas for the new year or would lentils suffice? Black-eyed peas, he averred.

I never ate the things before I moved to the South. I think the black-eyed peas are optional anywhere else, but I did not want to bring the bad karma down on me. We need that gris-gris.

Our first dinner was traditional: black-eyed peas, greens (still from the garden!), a little bacon. I think rice is traditional, but I made mashed potatoes anyway because I love them.

Next day: Miss Em inserts DVD into drive on our Mac. Mac goes crazy. This happened before. The nice people at Best Buy removed the DVD at no charge and we forgot about the problem.

Mr. FS very gloomy: We need to get this fixed. It will cost hundreds of dollars. Me: gloomy too.

Sunday at noon: Mr. FS sets out on the sad journey to Best Buy. Guess what? Our Mac is under warranty for SEVEN MORE DAYS.

MORAL: Eat your black-eyed peas. Eat your greens. No matter how you cook this traditional fare, it will be frugal. And what could be more frugal than good luck?

The best Louisiana cookbooks are the ones put together by the various service organizations around the state.

Long-Cooked Broccoli: It's Divine and Versatile

I've always been a broccoli lover, but I find most cooking methods fussy. Woe to the LAZY COOK. Then I discovered this broccoli, which is perfect for the lazy cook.

The first version I made came from a book by Evan Kleiman and Viana LaPlace. I can't remember which book; all are good and worthy of your perusal.

Then I found an even easier method from, to my surprise, Alice Waters. Will I go to h-e-l-l if I admit that I find Waters' public persona rather annoying? Who cares (she certainly doesn't)?

AW's broccoli couldn't be simpler: Chop a bunch of broccoli, trimming woody stems. Heat 1/2 cup olive oil in a pot; add 6 garlic cloves and some red pepper flakes. Stir and add the broccoli and some salt. Add a cup of water and cover. Keep it at a simmer and stir now and then. After an hour or so, it will be a mush. Add a squirt of lemon if you have any around.

This method is so opposed to the health-food broccoli method drummed into us. I love it for that alone.

What to do with it? Stir it into pasta as a sauce. Serve it on bread as a bruschetta topping. The famous restaurateur Nancy Silverton proposes a sandwich: bread, broc, feta, scrambled egg. This is divine too.

So, to give credit to AW.

Not sure where the sandwich is from. Maybe this one?

Let me know if you try this. Take the leap!

The Supper of the Lamb Chez Nous: Leftover Love

The Supper of the Lamb: That is a famous book by the Episcopal priest/cook Robert Farrar Capon (his real name!). It is a wonderful read: Capon cooks some lamb, and then provides recipes for several more meals with the leftovers. As might be expected from his vocation and from the title of the book, Capon includes lots of spiritual content. He also provides lots of opinionated information on knives, stoves, and the like. So wonderful is The Supper of the Lamb that it was reprinted in the Modern Library series of food writing.

We had a leg of lamb last night, thanks to the Dairy Store at LSU, which sells the products of the Ag School. It was fine. Frugal Son braised it and we had garden greens and couscous on the side. Now comes my favorite part: leftovers. Although I don't share Capon's religion, I do find cooking--especially with humble ingredients and leftovers of luxurious ingredients--an enterprise imbued with spirituality.

Eventually, we will have Scotch Broth, which means we will make stock from the bone, add onion, carrots and barley, plus whatever scraps of meat remain.

Tonight, I am thinking of making Diana Kennedy's yogurt sauce, which I've written about before. I've only had it with chicken, though she says it's good with lamb too. Here's the recipe, copied from my blog post of yore.

From Nothing Fancy: Recipes and Recollections of Soul-Satisfying Food. It's called Syrian Yogurt Sauce with Cooked Meat. Kennedy notes that it's especially good with cooked lamb or chicken. Hence it would be great for a rotisserie chicken, a fairly cheap boon for college students and harried working people.

Cook 1 onion in 2 TBS butter--caramelize it.

Put 1 beaten egg in 2 cups plain yogurt. Cook over lowish heat, stirring till it bubbles and thickens.

Add 1/4 cup (optional) broth to yogurt mix.

Add 2 cups cubed, cooked meat, salt and pepper. Stir till heated through. Sprinkle with dried mint.

Kennedy forgets to mention the onion again, but either stir it into the melange or use as a topping.

Serve with bulgur or brown rice...or white rice...or couscous. All would be better than pasta.



The next day, I will make pita sandwiches with lamb, feta, yogurt, maybe some olives and roasted peppers. The best thing is that none of the lamb recipes requires any shopping. We will be cleaning out the cupboards too.

The only other thing I want to make is a Chinese dish. I seem to remember reading a recipe for Hunan lamb somewhere. I just found a recipe, which I can adapt to leftovers.

How I love leftovers. I have had acquaintances who throw leftovers away as unworthy of a second chance. Are leftovers coded poor? perhaps, like beans and greens, they deserve another chance.

I look forward to my upcoming meals.

How to Cook: An Answer

Not THE answer, of course. In my strolls through the blogosphere, not to mention real life, I am always meeting people with the same lament: I CAN'T COOK.

Helpful types are always proffering advice: Get Mark Bittman's cookbook. It's so easy. It's true. It is. But giving someone such a massive tome is often counterproductive: all those recipes are intimidating.

So here's how to begin, carnivore version. Get a slow cooker. Buy a piece of pot roast beef (chuck, brisket,whatever). Put it in the cooker with a little water and an onion. Too hard? Throw in some of that dried onion soup mix. Cook for a long time. This will give you enough for several meals.

Are you a vegetarian or a vegetarian wannabe? Mash up some beans (drain them!). Put on a tortilla with some cheese. Roll it up. Heat in the oven, the microwave, or in a pan. Serve with salsa.

See? It is not a big deal. If you eat both items, you have the basis for 3 meals--half the week.

If I had to recommend one cookbook for the timid cook, vegetarian or otherwise, it would be Jeanne Lemlin's Quick Vegetarian Pleasures. This is not as well known as other veggie cookbooks that, to my mind, are far inferior. (Mollie Katzen comes to mind.) Everything is good and easy. Many of her pastas and grain dishes are one-dish meals. Some are so simple: rice mixed with broccoli and feta, for instance.

The book is short so it doesn't provoke a panic attack or send one back to reading The Paradox of Choice.

If you MUST get the Bittman, this is what it looks like.

The Lemlin (or the Bittman, really) would make a great gift for the holidays. Lemlin lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, near where I visit every summer. I wonder if I've ever caught a glimpse of her strolling through the wonderful downtown.

Poetry and Manly Meatballs

Last night, Mr FS and I went to a reading of Auden at the home of a former colleague. We were so excited! Our "going out" life is picking up.

The hostess's house was beautiful, full of old rugs and other neat things. Her father was a famous Proust scholar, originally from Germany, so she had many things that evoked that older European culture.

But the food! Amid all the cheeses was a plate of meatballs on bread. I said, "Are those MANLY MEATBALLS?" The hostess was shocked that I knew. We both had the same cookbook, which described the recipe. I'd always meant to make them. The meatballs are manly as opposed to froufrou appetizers. According to the lore surrounding them, manly meatballs are guaranteed to disappear. Indeed, they did.

So, if you're doing some entertaining, try these MANLY MEATBALLS. It's fun just to say the name. The recipe below is copied from this site. Both my hostess and I found the recipe in Best American Recipes 1999. You can get that book for a mere penny (plus shipping) on Amazon.


Alan Richman is the esteemed and always witty food writer for Gentleman's Quarterly magazine, but I take the blame for calling these his "manly" meatballs. He made them for a birthday party of our mutual friend Alexis Bespaloff, the well-known wine writer. As he was passing them on a platter, taking full responsibility for their simplicity and strong flavor, he explained that he made them because when he heard the menu planned by Alex's wife he felt there might be too much "sissy food" -- you know, pasta and salads.

They are not, of course, anything like any recipe you've ever seen for Swedish meatballs, but to my mind they make an even better stand-in. Baking them on bread slices -- which, by the way, do not burn or get too hard, even though it seems as if they would -- makes them perfect finger food.
1 pound ground chuck (not leaner beef)

3 scallions, finely minced (use most of the green)

4 tablespoons dark soy sauce (or regular soy sauce, if that's all you have)

1 firmly packed teaspoon brown sugar (a rounded teaspoon, if using regular soy sauce)

1 baguette or ficelle (a small diameter French bread), about 20 inches long, sliced about 1/2-inch thick (if the bread has a large diameter, cut the slices in half, just a bit bigger than the meatballs)

In a medium bowl, combine all the ingredients, except bread. With your hands, mix and knead thoroughly until the meat is a fine paste.

Make balls the size of smallish walnuts.

Place baguette slices on a baking sheet and place one meatball on each.

Bake for 7 to 9 minutes in a preheated 450-degree oven until done to taste (Richman says "until just cooked through." I like them still rare.).

Serve hot.


Do you have any favorite foods for entertaining? Or poetry to read aloud?

Paring Down the Pantry: White Bean and Pesto Soup

I don't understand it. I hardly spend any money on groceries, yet my pantry, which includes freezer, fridge, and REAL pantry, is STUFFED. I am aware that Thanksgiving is only about 6 weeks away.

I love Thanksgiving. It is a holiday based on a family meal. It is marked by great sales on staple foods. It yields wonderful leftovers, including and especially, broth.

As I did last spring, I am limiting my expenditures to $25.00/week, to force a paring down.* Mr. FS and I have the day off, so we looked through the freezer: steak, meatballs,various vegetables, tons of ratatouille from garden eggplant, tons of lemon juice from tree, shrimp, and, WHAT'S THAT? How embarrassing: BROTH from November 2009. We defrosted it and it was OK. We also found some frozen white beans.

I whirled the possibilities around: white bean soup with lemon, white beans with shrimp (a nouveau-Creole dish that proved somewhat disappointing), white bean bruschetta, white beans with tuna, eventually settling on WHITE BEAN SOUP with PESTO.

This is from a seemingly forgotten cookbook author: Perla Meyers, whose first book
The Seasonal Kitchen made a huge splash. Yes, you can now buy it for a mere 8 cents plus shipping on Amazon. How I wanted that book, first published when I was in college.

The white bean soup is from another book, The Peasant Kitchen. (OMG someone is selling this on Amazon for $247! Sadly--for me--there are other versions available for a penny).

I won't give you the exact recipe, since I didn't have the right amount of anything. I threw into a pot some of those caramelized onions from my slow cooker, added the frozen white beans, broke off a chunk of frozen stock, and added a few canned tomatoes. After a while, I pureed it with my trusty immersion blender. Then I cooked a few handfuls of macaroni in the puree. When that was done, I added some PESTO we had frozen last month.

Note that because everything was either frozen or canned, I didn't have any prep work. Such is the blessing of the freezer/pantry.

Do you ever cook like this? Send me a list of your ingredients and I'll see what I can come up with.

*No sooner did I make a vow than I broke it. I just ordered a 50 lb. sack of oat groats.

Skirting the Edges of Too Frugal?: Garbage Edition

Now that the temperature is no longer in the 90s, Mr. FS and I ventured out for a stroll through our neighborhood after dinner. As I mention now and again, my neighborhood is filled with big fancy houses and little tiny houses. There are even some medium-sized houses, such as the one in which I reside. I like the diversity, so unlike the cookie-cutter suburbia in which I grew up.

It happened that one of the streets has garbage pick-up tomorrow. As an amateur sociologist I find it interesting to scan the recycling bins. People drink so much alcohol and diet coke!

You can probably see where this is leading. To add a bit of suspense, let me ask: have you ever read Laurie Colwin? I love her fiction, which features urban people with lots of education and interesting careers. She also wrote wonderful books on cooking.

One of her novels, Happy All the Time, features a character named Misty Berkowitz. I kind of identified with Misty because she has these great one-line zingers, not that I could ever have thought of them. Misty is also sullen and moody, just like me. In spite of her moodiness, the wealthy Vincent Somebody-or-Other falls madly in love with her. He lives off a trust fund, but works as a garbage analyst, writing important studies.

One of Misty's zingers to her garbage analyst is "Rich people make me sick." I can't remember what prompts this comment, but it does not deter the smitten Vincent.

Anyway, Mr. FS and I passed the once-beautiful, now falling-down house, that, according to Frugal Son who knew two of the girls who lived there, has rooms filled with garbage.

We went by the new, fancy house that sold for almost a million dollars. It was built on the site of a house that was torn down. A man who had killed his mother had lived there after he was released from a mental institution. The new house is quite ostentatious. There, next to their garbage can, was a giant cardboard box. I stepped closer to investigate. I never did figure out what was originally in that box, but I saw a grocery bag filled with hangers. At the top of the bag was a new-looking pair of white shoes.

Now I don't wear white shoes, but I took them anyway. I will donate them to Goodwill, where someone will be delighted to get a pair of Sesto Meucci flats.

We continued on our walk, stopping to talk to people who run a business called Holistic Pet Care. When we got home, I said to Mr. FS, "I'm going to go back and get the bag of hangers. The thrift stores are always asking for donations of hangers."

So I walked back and got the bag. Once I was home, I peeked inside. Under the hangers--neatly folded--was a pile of clothing, quite current, from Talbots and Rickie Freeman for Teri John. The latter, especially, were of the genre I call "rich lady clothes."

UGH. Why don't people donate these things? How horrible to just throw them out.

What would Misty say?: "Rich people make me sick."

Misty, by the way, ends up marrying the garbage analyst.

If you need some wonderful escapist reading, check out Laurie Colwin.

Her real masterpieces, I think, are her books on cooking.

So...what to do with those caramelized onions? MEGADARRA once more

As I type, I'm making another batch of slow cooker caramelized onions. I figure most will go into the foods onions usually go into: soups, rice dishes, potato casseroles, and so forth.

The best use of caramelized onions as far as I'm concerned is in MEGADARRA, a lentil/rice/onion dish ubiquitous in middle eastern home cooking. I wrote about this dish, and bean cuisine in general, in December 2008, when I was a beginner blogger, with just a handful of readers. So, in addition to saying "Forgive the food of the poor," I will ask you to forgive the re-posting of this piece.

At some point nearly every blog on frugality has a post on beans. Usually bean cooking is presented as one of the miserable things you have to do as the cost of being frugal. Often one sees comments like “I’d eat beans before I’d give up … whatever. “ And doesn’t the famous Dave Ramsay, who tells you to attack your debt with “gazelle-like intensity,” advocate beans and rice…not because you want to, but because you have to, as penance for whatever debt you racked up.

Myself, I love beans. I did not eat them (with the exception of the occasional canned beans with hotdog dinner) till, besotted with Mr. Dr. Frugal Scholar, I set out to learn to make the bean burritos he ate at Mijares, the Mexican restaurant of his California boyhood. This was in the mid-70s, before salsa was in every grocery. Yumyum: they were good! And, as an added bonus, they were unbelievably cheap (beans were about 50 cents a pound); we were poor graduate students at the time, living on a $3,000/year stipend (for teaching!), half of which went to rent.

I now think of beans with an aesthetic reverence (is there such a thing?). Almost all the cuisines of poor countries focus on wresting flavor out of the plainest and cheapest ingredients: think of Mexican, Indian, and African cooking.

One of my favorite bean recipes is MEGADARRA, which I first encountered in Claudia Roden’s masterpiece “A Book of Middle Eastern Food.”

Here is what she says:
“Here is a modern version of a medieval dish called mujadarra, described by al-Baghadi as a dish of the poor, and still known today as Esau’s favorite. In fact, it is such a great favorite that although said to be for misers, it is a compliment to serve it.”

“An aunt of mine used to present it regularly to guests with the comment: “Excuse the food of the poor!”—to which the unanimous reply always was: “Keep your food of kings and give us megadarra every day!”

The dish consists of lentils cooked with rice topped with caramelized onions. Serve with yogurt.

I had the book for years before I made this. It sounded so plain. Then I tried it: WOW!

This is the recipe as adapted from Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.” Her version is easier (if that’s possible) than Roden’s. Madison calls this “one of best dishes there is.”

Slowly cook 1 large sliced onion in lots of (6 TBS) olive oil till golden. (Tip: mix olive oil with regular vegetable oil for frugality and to increase the burning point).

Meanwhile, cook 1 ¼ cups lentils in quart of water for about 15 minutes. Add ¾ cup rice. Cover and cook another 15 minutes or so. Add salt. Check the water and add some if necessary. Make sure you stir that onion.

Stir onion into lentil/rice mix when done.

Top with yogurt.

As you serve to your family, proclaim “Excuse the food of the poor.”

P.S. If you are out of yogurt, it's still good. It's the onion that makes the dish.

Caramelizing Onions in the Slow Cooker

In anticipation of Labor Day, I am caramelizing onions. In the slow cooker. Which requires little labor.

I have discovered that I hate a number of things: going to the store for one thing, cooking at the last minute, dealing with onions, plus many more.

Because of the first on the list I recently bought 15 pounds of onions. For the last few months, I have been living la vida College Cook and using frozen chopped onions. This was partly for research and partly because, all through the summer, onions were over $1.00/pound! Ridiculous. Since frozen onions were the same or even less, I chose the lazy way.

This week, onions are 40 cents a pound. As we all know, onions don't last forever, especially in my hot and humid climate. I remembered reading that you could (sort of) caramelize onions in the slow cooker. Yes, you can. Just chop them, put 'em in with either oil or butter, turn the machine to high, wait 8 hours.

My slow cooker won't hold more than a few pounds at a time, so I will be doing this several times.

On the finer points, see the lengthy discussion at Chowhound.

I am going to freeze the much-reduced-in-volume onions in ziplocks and use in soups and, really, anything that calls for onions, caramelized or not. You can always make French onion soup or my beloved panade. I wrote about panade more than a year ago.

I got the panade recipe from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook, which has some of the most overheated food prose I've experienced in a while.

It's still too hot here for French onion soup or panade. Or overheated prose.

One last tip: those onions smell TERRIBLE while slow cooking. We plug the slow cooker into an outlet on our porch. We do the ssame for beans.

My Rice Cooker Hero: Roger Ebert

When I was first experimenting with the rice cooker--just a few months ago--I was lucky enough to find Roger Ebert's blog on the wonders of "the pot." I was thrilled to see that he had a book coming out. A good writer and a good cook--all in one cookbook.

Here's an article from the New York Times.

And here is his book: only three more weeks.

I started with the rice cooker to help my daughter negotiate the challenges of cooking in a stoveless dorm suite. Now I use the rice cooker at least three times a week. And I have a stove! I love the rice cooker because it is CHEAP, EASY TO USE, SAFE, FORGIVING.



I know I will love the book. What's your favorite cookbook?

Help Me With My Title: College Cooking

I am having so much fun testing recipes for my mini-cookbook. It turns out that it's very easy to create an ebook to sell on Amazon. Not easy for me. But Mr. FS, who also typed my entire dissertation into the computer as a SURPRISE many years ago, thinks that he's figuring it out.

I am a decent writer; titles, however, have always been a weak spot. I can think of only three good titles I came up with--that's over almost 40 years.

My readers ("fit audience . . . though few"*) are excellent writers. Perhaps someone can help me.

My concept is: College Cooking for Dorm Dwellers (and Others?)
No stove
(Almost) no time
(Almost) no shopping
(Almost) no prep
(Almost) no cleanup

No ramen
No Kraft Mac and Cheese


Any titlists out there? Any suggestions appreciated.

*Paradise Lost (Book 7)

College Dorm Cooking: The Good, The Bad, The Dangerous

Should I continue with this project? Should I--as blogbuddy Chance suggests--write an ecookbook? So far, I have started a pantry, including a freezer pantry, suggested some essential equipment, notably, a rice cooker, and test-driven a recipe-less concoction in the rice cooker. So far, so good.

I continue to look around for helpful sources. I was in Barnes and Noble last week and saw a slew of slow cooker cookbooks, with nary a rice cooker book. I check around the blogosphere. Let's go through my subtitle in reverse order.

THE DANGEROUS. There are many blog posts that suggest going against dorm rules so you can keep a toaster over, a Foreman grill, even a hotplate in your dorm room. Many of these have a jeering tone: "Hey, I'm an adult. Can't I be trusted with a hotplate?" Uh, no. I remember reading about a dorm that burned down because a student tried to dry her underwear with a blow dryer. And I remember being in college myself, trying to stay up all night, and falling asleep over my books.

Some of the posts advising hiding proscribed appliances in your closet are written by PARENTS. Please, parents, your child is just as likely to pass out as the next kid.

THE BAD. I've already described some of these: ramen stroganoff, velveeta nachos, and the like. One recent discovery (no link--find it yourself if you want it) gave directions for microwave meatloaf, which consisted of 1/4 lb of ground beef cooked in a mug with various meatloaf ingredients. To me, this is simply useless. Assuming you don't have 1/4 lb of hamburger in a defrosted state, you need to trudge to the grocery, purchase your quarter pound of meat, pay, return to the dorm, and concoct your meatloaf.

The GOOD. Well, it doesn't exist. There are decent college cookbooks out there, but they are not dorm cookbooks. One I flipped through at Barnes and Noble gave the useful (I'm being sarcastic) suggestion that if you don't have buttermilk to make your muffin batter, you can sub yogurt. Gee, that's helpful for the average dorm dweller.

So this is what I think would be good.
First, a PANTRY. I've already started this. With basic ingredients, you can make any number of things quickly. It's the haphazard shopping that is a time-waster.

Second, a FEW recipes. Many blog posts on the subject advise buying your scholar a basic cookbook. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything is often mentioned. That's a fine suggestion for someone like me, who loves to peruse cookbooks, but that sucker is over 900 pages long. I can just see your scholar flipping though, trying to decide. Remember: PARADOX OF CHOICE. So let's limit the choices.

My cookbook is written for my darling daughter, so my recipes will be her favorites. I remember reading Peg Bracken's I Hate to Cookbook, a fun read, though I never did cook anything from it. Anyway, she said: no one needs more than 28 recipes (or was it 30?). Well, I think that the college student needs even fewer.

These will be mine, decided on in consultation with my dear Lucy M.
1. African peanut soup
2. Thai coconut curry (shrimp, chicken, or vegetable)
3. Shrimp and corn soup
4. Burritos
5. Chilaquiles
6. Chile (beef and vegetarian)
7. Red beans and rice (of course!)
8. A magic spinach/ricotta dish that can be Italian or Mexican, depending.

None of these needs the stove; some can be put together and then microwaved. These--along with the rice cooker basics--provide plenty of variety. They are mostly one-pot meals. I seem to remember Peg Bracken also saying that you don't need to get all your nutrients in each meal; you can spread them out over time! Good point.

Anyway, I would be appreciative of any other ideas. Be looking for further development through summer.

Newsflash: Peg Bracken's book is being republished in a 50th Anniversary edition. Bracken is a great writer.

How Making Bread and Yogurt REALLY Save Money

A few of my readers opined that yogurt-making is not a huge money saver, because you can get it cheaply at Trader Joe's and the like. Would that Trader Joe's* would open here.

I usually accede to the wisdom of my readers. But then I wondered: If it doesn't pay to make your own yogurt, how come my food costs are so low, lower even than the Food Stamp allowance, I believe. I don't use coupons; we eat very well; we are picky about quality, especially of cheese, and so on. No junk food or faux food for us.

Eventually I realized that, like Dorothy, I had the answer in front of me all along. In my very own post about how gardening saves money. In that post, I argued that we saved money with gardening because we ate a lot of, say, kale, and the kale displaced other things we might have bought.

Mr. FS and I (and our dear children, when they are home) consume tons of delicious bread and yogurt. Who wouldn't?

I just consulted with Mr. FS, who makes the bread and the yogurt. He says he makes yogurt twice a week--that would be 4 quarts. He bakes once a week--that would be 3 loaves plus two baguettes.

You may picture us eating yogurt upon yogurt, joylessly looking at our bank balance. Or piece of bread upon piece of bread, ditto.

But no. Right now, I am looking at a cookbook (a favorite pastime), daydreaming about what I will be cooking. The cookbook under my gaze is Joyce Goldstein's Solo Suppers:

I am considering making the Persian meatball soup on page 50, since I have some frozen meatballs: meatballs, chickpeas, other stuff in yogurt-thickened chicken broth.

Or maybe the chicken and bread soup on page 43, a delicious sounding soup, thickened with bread.

And we still have lots of greens. How about white bean guazzetto with shellfish and greens on page 47?

And that's just in the soup chapter. The book has the Search Inside feature I love so much, so you can check out Goldstein's recipes yourself.

Not ONE of these recipes will require a trip to the store for me: everything is in the pantry, freezer, fridge, or garden. More savings--of time, not to mention the planet.**

We don't eat much dessert, but if you blend frozen bananas with a little yogurt and a dash of vanilla in the food processor (stick blender doesn't work here), you get something very like soft-serve ice cream. I learned that trick from Martha Shulman's Fast Vegetarian Feasts.

No dreary dinners for us.

*Mr. FS grew up in Pasadena, site of the very first TJ's. There really was a Joe.

**We went to a wonderful concert last week, featuring Don Vappie and his band and Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet. Many cracks were made by the musicians concerning the latest environmental disaster. Michael Doucet said "BP stands for beaucoup pissed-off."

Having Your Fancy Restaurant Meal at Home

I've been mulling over an appropriately frugal topic all day, but have been stymied by the fact that I've been swooning over the meal I produced last night. It's been a long time since I cooked anything that good. And I suppose it was frugal, since, in a restaurant, what I cooked would have cost at least $20.00/person. Probably more.

What I made wasn't all that hard, but you, my far-flung readers, may not be able to get one of the ingredients. You'll know it when I get to it.

My dear children seldom reside chez nous, so when they are at home, I go into a frenzy of cooking. Dear Lucy Marmalade had her beloved shrimp and corn soup for 2 days. Then Frugal Son returned from France and we had a big pot of gumbo (not up to my usual standards, I'm afraid). One day remained, before both kids went off to their jobs as Residence Assistants at the Advance Program, at the site of their beloved high school, Louisiana School of Math, Science, and the Arts.

What to cook for their last night at home, after so few? Also, in spite of the many virtues of the school, the food is pretty bad. I happened to see a small piece of TASSO REDUCED FOR QUICK SALE.

KARMA. I realized that I could make a recipe I jotted down from a library copy of Susan Spicer's cookbook. Spicer, who is now a consultant for the show Treme, and was written about in the Wall Street Journal recently, owns the restaurant Bayona.

Since I jotted the recipe down, I don't have proportions. The dish is shrimp in tasso cream sauce on cheese and pepper grit cakes. Wow! That sounds fancy and too hard for mere mortals. Not so.

First, for the grits, I subbed polenta, which I made in the slow cooker. I mixed in cheddar and canned roasted peppers when it was done (leaving out milk, home-roasted poblanos, etc). I couldn't make the cakes because I goofed and added too much water to the polenta. It was still good.

The tasso cream sauce called for a roux with onion, green onion, celery (none of which I had, so I used leeks), with cream (used evaporated milk instead). Oh-and a little shrimp stock, which I also didn't have, since I was using frozen shrimp. Then I added the strips of the tasso.

Shrimp-frozen I hardly ever use frozen, but there was a price war when a new grocery opened and frozen largish-size shrimp were $3.00/lb. (I know, I know, but we won't be having shrimp much longer [BP], and it won't be cheap, so don't be jealous.)

So--a beautiful pool of polenta, with another beautiful pool of shrimp in sauce, with plain garden greens on the side to ward off the crise de foie that can come from such rich food.

The dinner itself was very pleasant, except that Frugal Son passed out from jet-lag exhaustion right as we were setting the table. His place was taken by a friend of his (who keeps saying we adopted him), who had a similar dish at a fancy restaurant in honor of his college graduation. He said ours was AS GOOD!

We saved a plate for Frugal Son, who staggered in after we finished.

No pics; we ate it all up.

Frugal Point: The food was great, the company was good, Frugal Son's collapse was accommodated, as was the presence of an unexpected guest, the cost was low.

As for Susan Spicer, here's her book:

The recipe I made isn't included in the Search Inside feature, but look how cheaply you can get a used copy ($7.50). I may buy one myself. There are lot of goodies in the book.

Do you cook anything that makes you swoon?

Eating from the Pantry: Potato Soup

Now that Mr. FS has put new shelves in the pantry, I have to bring it to order. I must admit that this caused a bit of friction in our generally harmonious union. Mr. FS likes to store things in the "some here, some there" manner: canned tomatoes, of which we have many, are in several places, including some that are impossible for me to reach or even know about (boxed in an unmarked container in a shed). Problem: I buy MORE tomatoes, because I don't know how many I have.

OK. So we had a fight. I have now wrested control of the pantry AND the canned tomatoes. See, I've read all these organizing books (more honored in the breach than the observance**, I'm afraid). They ALL say store like things together. I haven't done that yet. I have put on the easiest-to-see shelf all the things that must be used ASAP. When these things are gone, I will do the pantry.

It is a motley assortment. Last night, I used some canned pineapple to make a sweet and sour Asian chicken, which was a blast from my childhood Chinese restaurant past. Two days ago, I FINALLY used some of the arborio rice I have and made the wonderful Italian soup/risotto risi e bisi. Tonight I am going to use some almost-too-old potatoes and some canned green chiles to make a wondrous and very easy soup.

Remember how I told you that when you linked to a cookbook on Amazon you could often do a search?

The recipe is from The Feast of Santa Fe.

It is called Potato Soup with Green Chilis on page 189. It is so good and now I don't have to reproduce the recipe here! Potato soups are often more than the sum of their seemingly meager parts, I've noticed.

**the allusion is to Hamlet 1.4. However, note that I am using it in the modern sense of the phrase rather than in the sense that Hamlet meant.

Cookbooks in the Pantry

Continued....

The pantry clean out was--and is--dispiriting. I don't even want to tell you what I threw out (not that much, but still). The second- and third-tier cookbooks are giving me trouble too.

But what do I do with a copy of Anna Thomas's The Vegetarian Epicure, that staple of the student kitchen circa 1975? Everything in that book tasted good, no doubt because of the pounds of cream, butter, and cheese that nearly every recipe contained. And how's this for a blast from her past: The two-hours-later course is especially recommended if grass is smoked socially at your house. If you have passed a joint around before dinner to sharpen gustatory perceptions, you will most likely pass another one after dinner, and everyone knows what that will do...

I do sometimes make her Russian vegetable pie, which is filled with mushrooms, cabbage, cream cheese, and hard boiled eggs.

Then there is another veggie fave: The Vegetarian Feast by Martha Shulman. There you will find a recipe for Oeufs Poches en Souffle a la Florentine. This dish consists of poached eggs placed on croutons, covered with creamed spinach, topped with cheese souffle. These pages are unmarked, except perhaps with my sighs.

Anna Thomas, who sold millions of copies of the book she wrote at 22, has resumed writing cookbooks. I am sorry to say the new ones are terrible. Martha Shulman has veered from the vegetarian path and is now writing a Recipes for Health column in the New York Times. She has wonderful recipes and is particularly known for her Tex-Mex.

I recently bought one of Shulman's books, though I haven't used it yet:

One neat thing you may not know about: if you link to a book on Amazon, often you can "search inside the book." Click on it, enter a search term, et voila. That way you can look at and even try a recipe--to see if you want to purchase the book. Not all pages are available, but I test-drive cookbooks all the time.