Colors

Well, I'm getting mixed signals, so I'm going to keep playing around with the blog colors a little. Right now I have them set up in an ode to the blue cupcake photo. :)

What Do You Think?

I'm trying to decide whether I like the black background or white background better. What do you think?

The Hillbilly Experiment: What I Learned

(kneading 2 loaves of HbHw's 'overnight bread' /flex)

This was my normal food-day before the experiment: wake up 30 minutes before class, drink a glass of milk, go to class, possibly make a sandwich for lunch, or eat chips and hummus, make a 4-serving dinner, eat half, eat dessert (probably oreos). Not all pizza and ramen, to be sure, but not great either. This has been my typical food-day during the experiment: wake up 1 hour before class, make and eat breakfast with juice or milk, make a sandwich or something more substantial for lunch, make a 2-serving dinner and eat half, make fresh bread, muffins, or iced tea as needed. At first I didn't think I'd be able to eat all the food that was slated for each day, but boy was I wrong. Other things I've learned:

1) Dishes speak louder than words, especially if that word is "vegetarian." I'd discussed trying a mostly vegetarian diet with S before, but he wasn't big on the idea. I think a lot of people think of skimpy, unfilling food, or tons of salads when they think "vegetarian." If you want to cook vegetarian food and you're feeding other people, don't start out by saying "vegetarian;" believe me, you'll have them at "lentil and vegetable soup with dumplings."

2) On the note of vegetarian food: legumes, whole grains, dairy, and greens are your friend. I really already knew this, but I'd never put it in practice. If you're not going to be eating much meat, you can use the proteins found in legumes (beans, peanuts and lentils), whole grains, and dairy to create proteins that are just as complete as those found in meat. Especially if you're a woman, eat your greens to get the iron you won't be getting from meat (believe me, anemia is no fun).

3) Baking is not as complicated as I thought it was. This menu has pretty much been a baking boot camp for me; for some reason I always thought baking as more complex and tricky than cooking in general. Turns out, making everyday baked good like bread, muffins, and biscuits is not that tough. Making your own iced tea's not so bad, either.

4) Homemade bread products taste MUCH better than store-bought. The bread, muffin, dumpling, etc recipes on this menu are pretty much as basic as you can get, but they knocked the socks off anything I've ever bought in the taste department. Never before have I had the thought "hmm, maybe I'll just have some bread as a snack."

5) Lastly, caloric drinks should be consumed like foods, and not like water. In this case I'm just talking about juice and milk, but it really goes for soda and other things as well. Even though orange juice and skim milk are good for you, it's cheaper, and really better for you, to treat them like foods. You might eat bread and ice cream, but you wouldn't just spend all day eating them. Water is free, and great for you, and tea is pretty close to free, and just fine for you if you don't sweeten it with sugar.

Oh, and collard greens are actually really tasty. Who knew?

The Hillbilly Experiment: What I Liked

(The picture S took of the chocolate cupcakes I put together from spare pantry ingredients, recipe later)






(the picture I took of the cupcakes. Turns out I had the "night mode" on or something, but I'll tell you I was really surprised when I downloaded my photos)




Even though I made several changes to HbHw's menu, there are lots of things I like about it.

1) It's cheap. Really, really cheap. A lot of "save money on groceries" articles I read propose things like "save money by cutting out the caviar." Ok, maybe not that extreme, but telling me to skip the Starbuck's bottled lattes isn't really helping. If you really are in an emergency, or if you just want to learn how to pare your grocery bill some, this is a great resource.

2) Nearly everything is made from scratch. Even though I home-cook a lot of food, our normal shopping list usually includes processed snack foods, breads, and drinks. My mother always told me to "eat a variety of foods, in as close to their natural state as possible." I might not always have the time to make my own bread, but I think it's better for us than the processed version.

3) It's nutritious. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a diet menu (although the site does have one), but it does an excellent job of providing the necessary nutrients, especially if you use whole grains, like I did. On a small budget, it's even harder than normal to resist filling up on empty calories, but there are a lot of lean proteins here, as well as fiber, greens, and other good things.

Of course sometimes a woman's just gotta say "Screw nutritious; I have flour, butter, cocoa, sugar, milk, eggs, and baking powder, and I'm MAKING CUPCAKES." They weren't really part of the plan, but they were a delicious detour.

The Hillbilly Experiment: Grocery List

(I emailed S this picture I took of some of the bread I made, to see if he could use Photoshop to tone down the glare. . . .and this is what happened)

In order to adjust the grocery list from Hillbilly Housewife, I began by literally cutting all of the amounts on the list in half. I didn't know off the top of my head what size containers of various items were available at the store, so I just wrote down half the amount on the website and planned to buy as close as possible to my written amount. Of course this also meant I would be halving all of the recipes, and doing it as efficiently as possible. This hasn't been a problem so far; one day I made a recipe that called for 3 eggs, so in order to halve it, I beat one of the eggs and put half of it into a ziploc baggie to use for French toast the next morning!

Next I scratched off the list everything I already had at home: sugar, baking powder, oatmeal, salt, pepper, syrup, bullion (well, Better than Bullion, actually), vinegar, cinnamon, garlic powder, and chili powder. I actually had 5 pounds of all-purpose flour, and a bag of Splenda at home also, more on that later.

Finally I replaced some ingredients with equivalents that I thought were healthier or better-tasting. I replaced all of the grains with their whole versions (brown rice, etc.), and bought a bag of whole-wheat flour to go with my all-purpose stuff. I replaced all of the canned vegetables, except the tomatoes, with frozen; frozen veggies taste better than canned, retain many more nutrients, and are still quite cheap. I replaced the margarine with butter (part of this experiment was about eating less processed food, remember). I replaced the powdered milk that would be used for drinking with a half gallon of skim milk because drinking powdered milk just isn't the same, and I replaced the celery with a bunch of leeks. Leeks cost more than celery, but S isn't fond of celery, and I'm not a huge fan of it cooked.

Besides HbHw's groceries, we also bought a box of pasta and some sauce, 2 frozen pizzas for lazy dinners and the ingredients to make Thai curry, because we loves us some curry. All in all, we bought enough food for 10 days of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, and 1 day of just dinner. The total came to about $80. If you count a snack as half of a meal, that comes to $1.11 per person per meal. $1.11! That won't even buy you a soda some places!

Next time: what I like about the Hillbilly Housewife menu.

The Hillbilly Experiment: Intro

I'd been thinking recently about trying to cut processed food out of our diet as much as possible; besides that, S likes to play "grocery bill limbo" (my term, not his), seeing how low he can get our grocery bill without resorting to buying things that don't taste good (or eating a diet entirely of pasta, for instance). To these ends, we decided to experiment with an interesting online resource: Hillbilly Housewife's $45 Emergency Menu . I'd like to share our experience with this in a few blog posts. My camera's batteries died and I don't have new ones yet, so no pictures for this first post, but they're coming soon, I promise.

Now, the title is misleading for a few reasons: first, the menu is for a family of 4 but the groceries were priced in 2006 and mainly came from Walmart and The Dollar Store. There are only 2 of us to feed, and we shop at Shnuck's, and it's 2008, so we knew the total wasn't going to be the same. Second, this wasn't an emergency, so I changed a few things according to my preferences.

In the next post I'll note what I changed about the menu and what our grocery bill came to - in future posts I'll discuss what I like about the menu/recipes, and what I've learned from the experiment, and highlight specific recipes.

A final note - this is not a wholesale recommendation of hillbillyhousewife.com. The author has a very different worldview from me, and I don't agree with some things she says, but I bow to her greater experience in the arena of home cooking.

Vegetable Pot Pie with Cheddar Biscuit Crust

(mise en place)



(after browning)



(the finished product)

I own a copy of The Joy of Cooking. It was given to my by my mother before I started college, and it was the first real cookbook I ever owned. It has traveled with me for many years over many, many miles. That being said, I don't exactly have a cozy relationship with Joy. It looms in my cookbook cabinet like some huge, snowy white tome of arcana that cooking wizards should pour over, and relative novices like myself should approach with caution. Joy is a great reference - I use it all the time to check for substitute ingredients, measurement calculations, and to get a handle on the base version of recipes I'm trying to alter. But I don't pop it open at 5pm on a Thursday night and say "Hmmm, let's pick something to make for dinner."

This recipe is why.

I have to admit, I loved the result. S wasn't very fond of the parsnips, and more than one person has suggested it could benefit from the addition of some meat. But really, I'm a sucker for winter vegetables, as well as biscuits and cheddar cheese, so I thought it was really tasty. On the other hand, I walked into the kitchen to start making this before 6pm and I didn't eat the first bite until 9:30. Really.

If you want to try this recipe out, make sure you plan ahead. Your toil will be rewarded with tender, non-mushy chunks of winter vegetables, just a little bit sweet, and fluffy, cheesy biscuit topping. One note - I'm recording the recipe as I made it, but I'd recommend adding less broth; I thought mine turned out a little watery, though the taste didn't suffer any.

Vegetable Pot Pie
adapted from The Joy of Cooking
(8 servings, total time: ~3.5 hrs)

2 medium red onions
3 medium carrots
3 parsnips
1 fennel bulb
1 butternut squash
1 acorn squash
8 ounces portobello mushrooms
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 tablespoons unsalted butter
S&P to taste
4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
400 degree oven

1. Wash all the vegetables. With a large, sharp knife, peel the squashes, gut them, and cut them into 1-inch chunks. Peeling them will be easier if you cut them into quarters or so first. Put each chopped squash into its own bowl. Peel and chop the parsnips and carrots into 1-inch pieces, and put them in a bowl together. Cut the mushrooms into thick slices and halve crosswise; place them in their own bowl. Cut the onions into thick slices,and place them in their own bowl. Cut the fennel bulb into 1-inch chunks, and place them in their own bowl.

2. Heat about 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil and 1/2 tablespoon butter in your biggest frying pan over medium-high. Cook the onion slices until browned, ~3 minutes on each side. Place them in a 9X13-inch baking dish and season with salt and pepper. Add about 1/2 tablespoon more each of the butter and oil, and repeat this process with the carrots and parsnips (5-7 minutes), fennel (5 minutes), and squashes (~6 minutes each). Lastly, add the last of the oil and butter, if needed, turn the heat to high, and cook the mushrooms 5-7 minutes, until brown.

3. Carefully mix all the browned vegetables up in the baking dish, and season as desired. Pour the broth over the vegetables, cover the dish with foil, and bake at 400 for 30-45 minutes, until vegetables are tender when pierced with a sharp knife.

4. While the vegetables are in the oven, make the cheddar biscuit crust recipe. After the vegetables have baked for half an hour or so, spoon the biscuit dough over the vegetables, return the dish to the oven, and bake at 400 for another 20 minutes or so, until the biscuits are browned. Remove from the oven and let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Cheddar Biscuit Crust
(total time: ~10 minutes)

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teasponn salt
5-6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
2. Cut in the butter pieces with a knife or pasty cutter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Dump in the milk, pepper, and cheese, and mix the dough with a wooden spoon or spatula until it just comes together.
4. GENTLY knead it a time or two in the bowl to mix in all the loose pieces hanging out on the bottom.

Whew.