Tofu Stir-Fry

So I know I've been kinda bad and haven't posted each of my meals with my cost analysis. The truth is that sometimes I figure people must get really bored looking at food. The other truth is that I got lazy, especially with all the calculating! Plus, my dinners last Sunday through Tuesday were all pretty similar to other meals I've posted. Here's a little recap:


Sunday Night I made another awesome whole wheat pasta dish. This one was whole wheat angel hair, and it had 1 can of tomatoes, spinach (super good!), onion, mushrooms, garlic and Italian parsley. Since we only had 1 small can of tomatoes, I added some extra olive oil, red wine vinegar, a couple splashes of Tempranillo, plus salt and pepper. Jeremy added more of his Jamaican sweet sausages to his plate. We ate it with some red leaf salad, and a side of Desperate Housewives and the Pacific.  
Cost: $5.73 for two (not including Jeremy's sausages)

Monday Night I pulled out all the stops and made another roasted chicken with vegetables. (The chicken was pasture raised of course!) For the vegetables, I had carrots, celery, onion, turnips, and potatoes. This time, I roasted the potatoes in a second pan since there was so little room in the pan with a chicken. They took a little longer and didn't have the poultry fat-juice on them, but the were still quite good.
Cost: $10.79 for two

Tuesday Night Jeremy took over the kitchen for me, which was awesome since I was tired. He made the other two catfish fillets we had stored in the freezer, plus some sauteed carrots, snow peas and mushrooms with white rice. I told Jeremy to set aside raw carrots for me because I hate cooked carrots unless they are roasted or stewed in something. (My whole family does, so I think it's genetics not pickiness!) But later, I polished off the remaining cooked veggies as a second helping and the cooked carrots were great! I don't know if it was Jeremy's magical culinary touch or if it's because we got the carrots at the Farmer's Market (stems and all--the kind Bugs Bunny would eat), but they were just fine sauteed. Jeremy also cooked the fish really well. He put just the right amount of seasoning and the texture was nice and soft...hmm I think I might have to commission him for all future fish dishes.
Cost: $8.92 for two

Wednesday Night we went simple and made a tofu stir-fry. I sauteed some organic firm tofu, the remainder of the snow peas and the last orange bell pepper. We also had some lovely organic roasted potatoes (again, courtesy of the Farmer's Market) and red leaf salad. I was really satisfied with this simple dinner. Here's my plate, minus the salad:

Cost: $6.62 for two (I don't know how much the potatoes cost; I conservatively estimated $3.00.)

Fish, Curry, Fish

Hello everyone (or the only two people who read this blog)!

I'm continuing on my plan to make delicious, inexpensive dinners from the foods listed on that fabulously long receipt. In other words, my goal is not to waste any food, while also enjoying scrumptious dinners.

Wednesday Night's Dinner was more fish. The menu: Baked dover sole, sauteed long choy, and white rice with soy sauce. I forgot to take a photo, but I think I've already posted quite few photos of the fish-bok choy-rice combo, since it is a favorite standard of mine. The cost was $5.34 for the sole and $1.49 for the bok choy. We bought a massive bag of rice from Costco, so I really don't know how much the rice costs. Similarly, our soy sauce bottle is one of those supersized containers that really should only be bought by people with 20 kids to feed. So dinner came to about $7.00 total for two people ($3.50 each, in case you can't divide by 2 right now).

Friday Night, we enjoyed even more fish. This time we had catfish--another A list fish according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Guide. We seasoned this fish with the Pike Place Seasoning that Jeremy got in Seattle. That stuff is good and a little spicy! I think a little goes a long way, although we still put a lot on, haha. This time we had potatoes and organic red leaf salad as our sides. See how much salad is in that bowl? That doesn't include the first servings on our plates.



Simple leaf salad is one of the easiest ways to get your greens!

This fish dinner was about $8.75 for two. Jeremy and I shared a catfish fillet since they were so big. We did get a little hungry later and snacked on some mixed nuts.

Now I'm going to backtrack to Thursday's Dinner, which involves a bit more storytelling. I had planned to make omelets, roasted potatoes and salad for dinner. However, when I revealed this menu to Jeremy, he informed me that he has an issue with eggs. The issue? He doesn't like them. WTF? Who doesn't like eggs? I eyed him suspiciously for awhile because I could recall a few situations where he consumed a couple sunny-side ups. But I don't believe in force feeding anyone, so I decided to make a vegetarian chickpea curry. I had diligently bought curry powder, coriander and canned tomatoes in order to make a curry during the week, but I had forgotten coconut milk. I decided to wing it without the milk anyway.

I decided to create my own recipe based upon these two different recipes: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chickpea-curry/detail.aspx and http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/saras-secrets/vegetable-curry-with-chicken-if-you-want-recipe/index.html.

My recipe ended up something like this...

Ingredients:
2 medium red potatoes
3/4 an onion (I happened to have 3/4 in the fridge.)
1/2 an orange cauliflower
2 carrots
2 1/2 celery stalks
1 small orange bell pepper
A few broccoli flowerettes (I had them in the freezer and needed to get rid of them somehow.)
1 large can of diced tomatoes
1 can chickpeas
1/2 cup of light coconut milk (more on this later...)
4 small cloves of garlic (or 3 large)
2 Tablespoons ground cumin
2 Tablespoons ground coriander
2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
2 Tablespoons tumeric
1 1/2 Tablespoons curry powder
1 Tablespoon red chili flakes (I had saved mine from pizza deliveries. I used about half of the little container.)
Salt
Olive oil

Directions:
1. Chop up the potatoes into small cubes. Microwave until soft.
2. Chop up the other vegetables. (Note, the smaller you chop them, the faster they cook.)


I noticed that my vegetables were the colors of Ireland's flag. Here's orange (gold).


green


and white

3. Heat some olive oil in a pot. I also added a slice of butter since I didn't have coconut milk.
4. Add the cumin, coriander, cinnamon and onion. Saute until the onions are soft and become translucent.
5. Add the tumeric, curry powder, chili flakes, and garlic. Stir in with the onion.
6. Add the canned tomatoes and stir up.
7. Add in the vegetables--I added the carrots, cauliflower and celery first since I knew they would take longer to cook.

About this time I started to panic about the texture and taste of the curry and decided I needed coconut milk. It probably would have been fine (albeit different) without the milk, but I really didn't want to f*** things up too much in this experiment, so I ended up running out to buy some.

When I got back, I discovered that the veggies were way cooked aka almost burnt! I left Jeremy in charge of stirring and checking the temperature, but I don't think I was very clear in my directions. Oops. Anyway, I added half of the can of coconut milk, which definitely helped. I then added the can of chickpeas (drained), potatoes and broccoli. (The broccoli was frozen and I had nuked it for a minute to get it soft.) After some good stirring and simmering, the curry really came together. I had only used about half the amount of the spices listed above. In other words, I had used 1 Tablespoon of cumin instead of 2. But after some tasting, I decided to amp up the flavor and added another measure of each of the spices. Note, though, I don't actually have measuring spoons. This is my idea of a tablespoon:


Finally, the curry was done. Add some white rice and here's what you get:


Plus Jeremy's plate, plus leftovers in the pot:


I have to say I was surprised at how good it was. I think I used just the right amount of spices. It was spicy but not too hot. I'm definitely glad I microwaved the potatoes to cook them a bit before adding them to the pot, otherwise they wouldn't have cooked all the way. In the future, I think I will also try to cook the carrots a bit beforehand, as they were a little crunchy. I love raw carrots, but when all the other veggies are soft, I prefer them to be soft too. The chickpeas were a good and different source of protein--but feel free to use tofu, beans, or a meat if you prefer. The light coconut milk brought the dish together.

I'll have to calculate the cost of this on my next post. I think this novel, I mean post, is long enough.

Cheap Eats (with no meat)

My last two posts have been about sustainable chicken and fish, but there are other foods that offer eco-friendly and animal-friendly deliciousness. One such meal that I love to make is beans and rice.

Beans and rice make a great meal because together they make complete proteins, but also have lots of fiber and no saturated fat (if you don't add fats to the beans). Best of all, it is a very cheap meal! I use dried beans to save money (and I don't want to lug the weight of cans since I don't have a car).

Dried beans are easy to make as long as you remember to pre-soak them. I usually get a mixture of different dried beans and lentils. Soak them overnight or for a day. I usually put 1 to 1.5 cups of dried beans in a pot and cover them with a good amount of water, about 3 cups of water to 1 cup of dried beans. (Too bad I didn't think of taking step by step photos so you could see the dried beans soaking.)

I start soaking the beans in the morning before I leave for work (around 8 a.m.) and then start cooking them once I get home (around 6 p.m.). Strain and rinse the beans and then put them back in the pot, covered in water. Once the water comes to a complete boil, I take the pot off the stove, strain the beans again, and put them back in the pot with fresh water for a second boil. Doing this makes the beans softer and more digestible (ahem, less of a "magical fruit"). Use about 3 cups of water to 1 cup of beans, so that 1 cup of dried beans will become about 3 cups of cooked beans. This is one reason why it's so cheap!

From there, the beans will take about 1-2 hours to cook. I like to add different herbs and seasonings to the beans. Tonight I added chopped celery, rosemary, onion, garlic, chili flakes and black pepper. After the beans soak up most of the water, I add in a can of chopped tomatoes and some olive oil. Note, do not add salt to the beans until the very end of their cooking.

And then viola! You're done. Cooking beans from scratch is time consuming, but it isn't labor consuming. You really just put everything in a pot and check on it now and then.

I had these beans with white rice (brown rice is good too) and sauteed orange peppers. Tasty, healthy and easy on the wallet.

Jeremy's Vegetarian Invention

Jeremy invented a new, quick dinner to make, and surprisingly, it's a vegetarian dish (gosh!). We wanted to make something easy, that wouldn't require a lot of dishes to wash afterward either. Here's the very basic recipe:

Rice
Salsa
Tofu
Egg(optional)
Vegetables (we used onions, shallots, and red bell peppers)

Start cooking the rice. Cut or dice the tofu however you like (I cut small rectangles) and whisk an egg in a bowl. You'll also want to prep the veggies by dicing them up. Add some olive oil to a pan (or a superduper cast iron skillet!). When it's hot, dip the tofu in the whisked egg--as you would bread for french toast--and fry it in the pan/skillet. Jeremy and I decided that we liked the tofu more soft than crispy, but cook it however you prefer. Once it's done, remove the tofu and keep it warm in the oven. (Just warm, don't bake it!) Then saute the diced onions, shallots, and red peppers. Once that's done, time to mix it all up. Add the rice, tofu, and vegetables to your plate and then pour salsa on top. Mix everything up and you have a tasty, and pretty healthy, meal.

Note: Jeremy and I used a lot of salsa, cause it was good. Real good. Also, I'm still rethinking about how I cooked the tofu. Keeping it the oven kept it warm, but might have dried it out a bit. I think next time I might cook the vegetables and tofu in the skillet together.

Try it and let us know how it turns out!