Five Minute healthy soup!

My eyes were bigger than my stomach last week at the grocery store. I'd bought three, count-em, three, veggie kits. One was a veggie stir fry ("Cooks in five minutes!") and the other two were cold salad veggie kits.

I have gravitated to these kits because they contain a variety of veggies, kinds of veggies I do not usually buy.  They also have neat tasting sauces or dressings, again, kinds I don't usually buy or make. Admittedly, they're convenient too. They are very expensive though. I restrict myself to buying the marked down ones, usually half price, which means usually around $1.89 or $1.99 per package. I get several salads out of each. That solves the frugal problem.

However, they are marked down because their expiration date is upcoming, usually within a week or so. I have to eat a lot of salads to go through three packs of salad or stir fry kits! I was looking at the stir fry kit this morning and the date had passed two days ago. It'd probably be good for another day or two, but what to do? I know! I will stir fry them up and then pour broth over it and it will be soup!

No chopping veggies, no cooking in stages (hard veggies like carrots and potatoes first, then softer like zucchini, and then softest like mushrooms. It's a lot of standing around. I really liked the idea for cooking a bunch of veggies in 5-minutes, with no chopping. I dumped the whole pack into a pot, added oil and spices, and voila!

Meanwhile, bouillon cubes were softening into broth. Soon I combined the two, after the stir fry had softened and absorbed the spice flavors. I added some tomato sauce I had in the fridge for good measure. One and done! Soup! (I can always add tofu or another protein like quinoa later if I want).

I did not use the stir fry dressing included in the packet when sauteing the veggies for soup so the bonus is, I now have an extra packet of dressing I'll use on my salad this week.

A great price for a lot of healthy veggies. This can be stretched to several meals.

I just dumped them in.

I added oil and salt and some spices to taste.

That's it! Done.

It's vacation week and was Bountiful Basket weekend

It's spring break and Saturday was a Bountiful Basket Saturday. Yay!

I had lots of peppers. I'd bought a reduced package of tiny sweet red and orange peppers. I also had all the Anaheim peppers left over from the Basket two weeks ago. I had one left over wrinkled green pepper from some era long before. And, in the Basket on Saturday were three large red peppers. So, I needed to use a lot of peppers, lol.

What to do? I roasted them. Then, I mulled. By Sunday morning I'd looked up recipes. It's not rocket science. I googled "How to use a lot of peppers." Literally. That's the kind of searches I do. I just ask, and google answers. I try not to think about the Orwellian implications of this.

I found a recipe for a pepper tart. I often make quiche and I'd thought briefly about a pepper and cheese quiche. But I only had four eggs left and I didn't want to use them all. The tart called for 1 full egg and 1 yolk. Of course the tart comes out thinner but that was OK, quiche is heavy anyway. I liked the fact that it used fewer eggs, no flour and only cooks in the oven for 15 minutes. The oven (and the dryer) takes so much electricity I can tell by the monthly bill when I've cooked a lot. I had feta cheese on hand so I topped the tart with that.

It came out great! I only had a deep dish pie shell on hand but next time I'll get a shallow pie shell or phyllo dough for a real tart.

You see how the tart definitely doesn't need a deep dish

It's thin, but I like that. The flavor of the peppers is more prominent

Now the other problem: I had 6 pears left but they were weird. I'd eaten one the day before at school for my lunch, but it was hard even though it looked soft. As a matter of fact half of one pear was rotten in my bowl, but the rest were still hard. It was one of those situations where they'd never soften up, so I'd need to cook them. Throwing them out was out of the question. I don't waste.

Voila, pear sauce. I simply peeled and chopped them, put them in boiling water and cooked until they were soft. I blended them with ginger and cinnamon, lemon juice and just a tablespoon of sugar. You can see it filled a large Ball Mason jar. (I've already had one helping. It used to be filled to the top. ;)

Of course I never turn the oven on unless I can stuff it. This saves electricity. The costliest items in the home for electricity are the air conditioner, the dryer and the oven. So when the oven is on, it's working to cook several dishes, not just one. Using all the food you have with a minimum of extra ingredients saves money too.

Here is the photo of the Bountiful Basket and all that was in it. The photo is from our local co-op Facebook page.

I ate the strawberries right away. I roasted the carrots whole. The cauliflower will be roasted next weekend. I've already eaten some of the bananas and apples. I roasted the peppers as mentioned. Below was my Sunday Brunch after church. The potatoes were from the last Bountiful Basket two weeks ago.

Not everything was a success. The carrots came with tops. They were two feet long and green. I love anything green so I looked up recipes for how to use carrot tops. Yes they're edible, and I set about to make carrot top pesto. I stripped the leaves from the top so I wouldn't have the hard thin stems to deal with and put the leaves in boiling water to blanch them, in order to soften them up. I don't have a hand blender so I put them in the regular blender with lemon juice and olive oil. There wasn't enough bulk to blend and the whole thing ended up being a propeller-stalling stringy mess with splattered olive oil up the sides of the blender. And the carrot tops didn't taste good anyway.

Well, I tried not to waste anything. Maybe next time I'll roast the tops...

Today is 78 degrees and tomorrow and the next day are predicted to the the same. I have plans to have breakfast with some gals on Thursday morning and another date with a different gal friend later in the week. It's all good.

A new feature! "Eating on a Budget"

We're all stretched these days. Paychecks are thin, where they even exist at all. I have a job, thank God, and a second job because the first job's salary isn't enough to live on, which gets me to barely where I need to be to break even. I have no extra money and little time because I am working so much. I'll share some tips about eating on a budget. I'm good at it.

I am single and a vegetarian. I don't eat red meat, white meat, or seafood. This is because of cost, access to freshness, and personal taste. Admittedly, not buying these items helps a lot in cutting the budget. But it isn't good to eat a lot of red meat in the first place, and a much of meat and seafood simply isn't healthy, given the animals' living condition. And what about the Gulf of Mexico? All that oil. Last, given costs, it is likely you have already cut down on these items anyway.

The main things are to [1] prepare a budget & stick to it, and [2] plan when you cook your meals. There is one thing you cannot plan for, and that is what you will cook. That is because of important item [3] -- buy only what is on sale and make your meals from those items. There is some advance planning you can do with that if you get the grocery store's sale flyer and circle what you are going to buy ahead of time. Because my time is limited I just veer over to whatever is marked "Manager's Special", ".99 cents" or "On sale." I figure out later what to do with the items.

I'll give more details in the weekly posts to come. This week I made Salmon-potato patties, cantaloupe-grape fruit salad, Penne with tomato sauce, Green bean Casserole, and steamed potato and butternut squash. The salmon was from the can- not the good salmon but the kind that you have to pick out the bones. The potatoes were the Dollar Store's version of instant potato flakes. This dish is like Hamburger Helper. The potato flakes stretch the salmon meat. I sauteed half an onion, and mixed it with the salmon meat, the cooked instant mashed potato, salt, pepper and a few crushed Dollar Store style Ritz Crackers. I formed them into patties and fried them in a bare amount of oil. It made nine patties. I will use them atop a romaine salad or in sandwiches, (good with tomato slices! Sliced paper thin of course). These will be my lunches and dinners most of the week.

The cantaloupe was shrink-wrapped and marked 99 cents because it was slightly pocked. There was no mold on it so I bought it. The thing about almost gone-over fruit is that when you buy it, you are making a commitment to eating it quickly. So to that end, I scooped the seeds out and sliced it all into a big bowl. That way when I am on the go or really hungry, I have a ready snack. This will be my dessert from my lunches this week, with either cottage cheese added or other fruit, for variety.

I made green bean casserole because cans of green beans were on sale for 33 cents, along with cream of mushroom soup for 65 cents. Crushed Ritz-style crackers made the topping.

I am not embarrassed at going to the Dollar Store for my food. Canned goods, irradiated packaged goods like chicken broth, cereals, spaghetti, all are much less expensive. I forego the brand names. Sure, I prefer Barilla pasta over Dollar General's, but that's the way it is. The people living through the Great Depression in the 1930s ate what was in front of them, period. So do I. Moreover, the small mom & pop grocery store and the dollar store are 8 miles from my house. The larger grocery store is twice as far, using more gas and more time to get there. It is more expensive, too. And because the chain store is bigger, it has more variety which only means increased temptation to buy more, anyway.

I have figured that with my $30/week fresh grocery budget and $15-$20 Dollar Store budget that most of my meals are under $1.50 each. More specifics next time. Just remember, budget, plan, and forgo the big stores like Whole Checkbook Foods, Publix, and Ingles. Buon Appetito!
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