Cass Cooks, Too!

posted by admin on Aug 15

Ok, I hope you are ready. I told you you would need:

2 pounds of pinto and/or black eyed peas for around $4
A hunk of salt pork (or bacon ends) for around $3
Rice, 5 pound bag for around $3
Tortillas for around $2
A bag of precooked sausage patties for around $4
A chub or roll of sausage for around $2
Shredded cheese, 2 cups for around $2
Sour cream for around $2

I’m estimating prices, and I am estimating high. Like, Rachel Ray, spices are freebies, but you’ll need salt, pepper, garlic powder, basil, and thyme. So, we are coming in under $25 and I can feed my family of 9 at least three times, and there will be some sausage patties and rice left, along with sour cream.

So, the first day, around noon, wash your beans and put them in a pot with the salt pork. Cover them in fresh cool water and bring them to a hard boil. Let them boil maybe five minutes and then turn them down to medium. Let them simmer for several hours. Check the water now and again so they don’t cook dry. When it is time to eat, cook enough rice to serve with the beans, and also one sausage patty per person. Just before you serve, season the beans to taste with the spices listed above. You can discard the salt pork as well, unless you can afford the fat and calories. This is meal one.

For the second meal, fry up the chub sausage, and make sure it’s in small pieces. Heat up the beans and mix them together. Heat your tortillas and spoon the mixture into them, about 1/3 cup for the small tortillas and top with a little sour cream and a bit more of the bean and sausage mixture. That is meal two.

Meal three (and possibly four) are repeats of those two meals. We love the Mexican food around here, so we chose the tortilla option for lunch on the third day. Yum, yum!

To get the absolute most use out of the $25 you spent, add some eggs and a loaf of bread to your shopping list. Then you can serve scrambled eggs and toast along with the remaining sausage patties for breakfast one day.

I think that would bring us up to 4 meals for 9 people for $30 or less.

posted by admin on Aug 14

So, I showed you my menu, right? And yesterday, practice was cancelled, so I got to go to the grocery store. Now, last month, we ate pretty good, and I spent about $700 on groceries. Last night, I spent $400 on what I hope to make last 2 weeks. I wasn’t even able to get all the stuff on my list, for crying out loud! Remember that flood a while back in the midwest? I saw those fields covered in water, and I mentally said “Oh, crap!!” because I knew what was going to happen, and Lo! Behold!! It has come to pass!!! Groceries have increased at least 25%, and when you are feeding this many people, that is a crisis.

And do you understand that I am not talking about luxury food items like ice cream and chocolate chips????? Those prices are about the same, but the flour and sugar and meats and dairy are insanely high.

And have I mentioned that my husband drives for a living? I knew that we weren’t quite keeping up with the Joneses and all, but I’m finding it hard to understand how meeting our basic food, clothing, shelter and transportation needs has put us in a financial crisis. How do you get Debt relief for basic recurring life expenses?

Well, I don’t know what to do about clothing, shelter and transportation, right off hand, but I know what we are going to do about food. I had been making a clear separation between lunch foods (usually cheaper dishes with less meat) and dinner meals (more meat, spendier ingredients), and in order to make that food I bought last night last $400 worth, that has to change. We’ll be eating lunch and dinner meals for dinner, and lunch will be leftovers or a sandwich. And we will be eating the leftovers. All of them. Because we can’t afford not to!

It’s just smart financially to not be wasteful! The first step to financial prudence is to be wise in how you utilize your resources. After all, it’s hard to invest if you spend all you have on necessities. And how do you plan for the future if every bit of your energy is spent trying to make it through the today?

But enough gloom and doom! This means that I get a chance to share some pretty frugal cooking ideas with you. Let’s start next time when I tell you just how far 2 pounds of dry beans can go. You’ll need one pound of chub sausage, and 2 pounds of either pintos or blackeyed peas (or a combination), and a hunk of salt pork. You should be able to purchase that for less that $10, but you’ll also need rice and tortillas. And sausage patties or links. If you can afford them. They aren’t necessary as rice and beans together form a complete protein. However, adding sausage patties, rice and tortillas will only cost you another $10, for a total of $20, and you’ll get several meals from it. If you are feeling really extravagant, or already have rice and tortillas on hand, pick up some cheese and sour cream.

ETA for you yankees:

A “chub” is a roll of sausage. And a good substitute for salt pork is bacon ends.

Thanks, Ang. for pointing out the geo-differences.

posted by admin on Aug 12

That title will make much more sense if you read it like Hank Jr. used to sing the lead-in to Monday Night Football, back when it was still played in Monday nights. However, I refuse to digress about FOOTBALL today, for crying out loud, so let’s get on to the point.

I made my menu and shopping list yesterday, and the dinner menu includes:

sloppy joes
BBQ sandwiches
manicotti
stuffed peppers
tacos
hunters chicken
meatloaf
chicken parmigiana
pork chops
enchiladas
chicken and rice casserole
spaghetti
salmon
steak

Sound good to you? I’ll be talking about some of it over the next couple of weeks. Provided I can chisel out time to get to the grocery store. Otherwise, it’s going to be PBJ until we’re ready to gnaw off our own arms!

posted by admin on Aug 7

Did you know that I used to be a smoker? I just passed my one year non-smoker anniversary. One of the things I have noticed since I stopped smoking is that I taste more, and taste diferently. I no longer taste just the top tones of a spice or flavor, but the undertones and aftertastes as well. It’s kind of interesting to know now that most of my life I wasn’t tasting what I ate. Which is kind of amusing, considering how much I love to eat, LOL!

I called this paprika eureka is that the first spice I re-discovered was paprika, and I was reminded of that when I wrote my review of The Spice Merchant’s Daughter today.

Consider this post the cyber equivalent of me passing around the bottle and saying taste this! Try it in dry beans, on chicken and fish, and also on popcorn!

posted by admin on Aug 4

Friends, meet Uber Griddle. Uber Griddle, meet my friends. Here you see it full of sausage patties that eventually became Egg MomMuffins, but I use it for a great number of things. It will hold 9 pancakes at a time, and also 9 eggs, though not together. I can fry up to three pounds of bacon or chicken breast on it. Sometimes I fry bacon on it, scrape almost all the grease off, and then throw some scallops or shrimp on it for a few minutes. That’s tasty!

One of the great side benefits of using the griddle is that it makes short work of what would otherwise be a Herculean task. Making pancakes for nine people 2 or 3 at a time takes an hour. With this thing, I can do it in 15 minutes, just three griddles-full.

The other benefit is that it seems to keep the kitchen cooler. I know that seems incongruous, since it is an overall bigger heat source, but it’s true, none the less.

posted by admin on Aug 1

Do you guys drink wine with your meals? I have to admit that I usually don’t have wine until the evenings after the kids are in bed. I’ve never really bothered to figure out what goes with what, and my folks never served wine, so it’s just not something I know how to do. But I’d like to. I guess if I ever get around to throwing an actual dinner party, I will make the effort to put it all together with the right wines for the courses. I am actually kind of proud of myself for moving out of my white zinfandel comfort zone in the past half-year. There are some really nice wines out there, yes, even at Wal-Mart and even at less than $10 bucks a bottle if you can let your tongue do the tasting instead of your “palate”.

In the meantime, since studying wine is not on my official agenda, I can cheat. I read Rachel Ray’s mag, and in the back of every issue, she suggests wines to go with the recipes. That works for me, for now. Only most of them aren’t available at Wal-Mart, nor are they under ten bucks. Also, Boone’s Farm still burns my tongue. Just sayin’