Good food cheap

 

You think food prices are excessive? Sure, they are, but all the time you spend whining about it, you could have spent being smart about it, alleviating your cost by educating yourself. "No food waste" is not only good for your wallet, your purse. It's good for your health, too, and it's good for the enviroment. Learn to use everything and don't throw anything away.

One of the best ways to save money, big money, are soups, stews, caseroles, etc. Not only can they be enormously delicious, they are nearly always healthier, because you can use virtually any leftovers in those ones (if you are a little creative, and creativity can be learned), and that is something I truly recommend, because you get a lot more nutritional bases covered than you do in a "fancy" meal. And at a far, far lower cost. Educate yourself; fight back, change your bad habits.

Yummy-yummy! Oven roasted chicken. Maybe marinated overnight. Crispy skin. All the good stuff. Flavour bursting onto your taste-buds, like a good lover staying overnight. Done in the toaster oven, of course, because the toaster oven cost about 1/10 of what your large oven cost to run (in BC; 3 cent/hr vs 30 cents/hr, roughly), so why on earth do them in the big one, if you don't need it? Use your brains. And oven roasted in healther than pan fried, so you can kill two birds with one stone - no pun intended. Cheap and healthy. I'll take that one any day. Especially when loaded with flavour. Bones and left-over liquids go into my next bone broth, obviously. No waste, added health.

The sausages? The sausages are my "suicide food". Where others eat burgers, I much prefer a spicy sausage, but it's an "ocasionally" thing with me. Very occasionally. Last time was probably 4-6 months ago. Likely closer to six than to four. Pan fried (small element, small pan) on "medium", 5 minutes on each side. Into my homemade "dog" and loaded on raw onions (even better with horse-radish), strong mustard and whatever I crave right at that time. I go all out, because next time will probably be six months from now. Or at least four (I suspect two of the sausage will end up in a delicious soup).

ALL FOOD IS PROCESSED (UNLESS YOU EAT YOUR CHICKEN ALIVE, FEATHERS ON). THE KEY IS TO EAT FOOD THAT'S PROCESSED AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE, BECAUSE ANY TIME YOU PROCESS IT (ASSUMING YOU COOK YOUR OWN FOOD (STAY AS FAR AWAY FROM INDUSTRIAL "FOOD" AS POSSIBLE)) YOU WASTE VALUABLE NUTRIENTS.

I buy a lot of "no-name" products. Not because I'm cheap, but because I'm smart. You see, the only difference between "no-name" and brand name, is the missing name on the label, the propaganda. That's right. Your "no-name" coffe (just one of thousands of examples/products) comes from the same place that brings you all the fancy names you are dumb enough to pay double price for. Only difference is that they are not allowed to put their brand names on the no-name packaging and that is why you get it cheaper. You are not paying for "the name" (which tells you what a rip-off the brand name is).

Now, I'm just curious, would you rather pay $ 31 for your Starbucks coffe...$ 30 for your Tim Hortons coffe...or would you rather pay half price for exactly the same coffee? 

Got some "riblets" at a discount, today. It's all about being a smart consumer, especially in these days. Two litres of water in the pressure cooker, bit of chopped jalapeno, salt and pepper and down they go. Two hours on low, just to get to all the micro-nutrients of the bone broth (super healthy). Then pick the meat off the bones and add it back to your broth, together with some honey garlic sauce and you have yourself the best tasting - and healthiest - soup/stew ever made. Eight meals for $ 4.50. It's all about being a smart consumer. Especially in these days. But read between the lines: You have to educate yourself, change your mindset to "open" and then think smart. You can go a long way to alleviate the soaring food prices. But only if you think smart. But eight meals for $ 4.50? I'll take that any day. Bring on the rice...and the homemade sourdough bread. What? Don't feel like cooking today? Buy it anway. They invented the freezer, ya' know. It's not rocket science. You just have to open your mind (change your bad habits) and think smart. Do that, and it all becomes very easy.

Sorry! No more space in the freezer.

Utilize this wonderful contraption to stock up when you when you see what really is a good deal - not what looks like a good deal (rememer: unit price - not sticker price). If you only buy things when needed, you get screwed, because by that moment, there is no special deal around.

Yes, you see ice cream (Vanila), but the strawberry topping is homemade and those two "frozen dinners" you see, are not bought. They are homemade, from fresh, nutritious ingredients, so everything is healthy and tasteful. The only thing that is industrial in there, is the ice cream; I'm perfect or an extremist. I'm just smart. Soon, berry season will be upon us and my bike trailer is ready; I will be out there, in the beautiful, fresh nature (good physical and mental health), picking fresh blackberries, right off the bush...for the freezer. I don't buy them. I pick them in mother nature. Free food, loaded in nutrition and flavour.

DIET? FORGET IT. JUST EAT LESS (SMALLER PORTIONS - NOT THE "NEBRASKA DINNER PLATE" SIZES), AND EAT A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING. OH, YA: AND THEN GET YOUR EXCERCISE. GO FOR A WALK IN NATURE. EVERY DAY! YOU'LL BE AMAZED WHAT IT'LL DO FOR YOUR BODY AND YOUR MIND. AVOID THE BAD STUFF BUT DON'T BE PARANOID OF IT. SOMETIMES WE ALL NEED A TREAT.

Fish! I can usually get that at a good price, and fish is extremely healthy for you. I shop around (savvy consumer) but I always buy the entire fish because unprocessed is both cheaper and healthier for you. My favourite is mackarel (for the most and best flavour) but I take what I can get, and again, like always, I use everything. I gut the fish, leave the head on and toss it in the pressure cooker, together with bay leaves (be generous) and salt. Nothing else. When surely done, I filter the stock out, pick the meat from the bone and toss the meat back in, add whole pepper corns, whole mustard seeds...and then seaweed. How much of everything obviously depends on much fish you got, but again; quite cheap, super healthy and wonderfully tasty. Soups and stews are the ultimate way to save you money and they are super healthy (and easy) because no nutrients are wasted as they stay in the water/stock/soup/stew. Did I mention; zero food waste! And in my house, everything comes with homemade sourdough bread.

You might be aware that you want to throw just a tiny amount of black pepper into your dark chocolate when doing chocolate work, just to enhance the flavour. Well, when you do your own pineapple, you want just a few anise seeds in there (and those are the seeds you see). It makes a huge and positive difference in the flavour. But now to the main story:

Pineapple? I do my own. Now let's do the math:

You buy a can of pineapple (398ml) for $ 2.79. 1/3 of that is "juice" (water and sugar). You get 150 gr of sugar water and 290 grams of...shitty, low quality, tasteless pineapple of last year's harvest. That comes out to a kg price of  (1 kg / 290 =3.4482 x 2.79) $ 9.62.

A delicious, fresh, ripe and tasty pineapple (1.8 kg) leaves me with 1.2 yummy kg's of fresh pineapple meat for a price of $ 6.00 (5.99). Math: 1000 gr / 1.2 kg = 0.833 x $ 6.00 = exactly $ 5.00

Now, are you a smart consumer who goes for fresh, delicious and cheap...or are you a dumb one who goes for tasteless, canned crap from last year - with a large carbon footprint - and gladly pays way too much for it?

I figure we should finish off with something good?
Ocasionally, I like a pancake or two for breakfast (together with my strong, black coffee), smothered in syrup. But if I really want to treat myself, I make my own coulis to drown my pancakes in. Pancakes don't stand a chance of obtaining rigor mortis, I tell you.

Use your preferred fruits/berries, but in our house it's strawberry and "berry mix" (straw/rasp/blue/blackberry - I'm a humongous blackberry fan). No more sugar than you absolutely need (30 %/kg or about 1/3 of berry amount by weight). You don't want it sickeningly sweet, right.

If you like, you can add a little cornstarch to your coulis and use it as the best jam ever: Bagels with cream cheese? Throw some of the strawberry on top. Coulis you can use for absolutey anything in your kitchen. Coulis will totally open up a whole new culinary universe to you.