Cooking on a Budget

Every week(?) I get an email from my local fancy H-E-B grocery store otherwise known as Central Market. Normally the deals they advertise don't really strike my fancy, but this time, something caught my eye. Buy a rotisserie chicken and get a baguette and a family-sized caesar salad for free. A total value of roughly $8. Well that's probably three meals for me there, so that's a great bargain. And I might even cook the carcass down to make some stock, so that's a bonus as well.

Then I was also shopping for my annual Irish feast - corned beef, cabbage, and champ (see my last post). The tab looked like this:

• Thyme: $1 (with leftovers)
  
• 4 bulk carrots: $0.85
  
• Parsley: $1.49 (with leftovers)
  
• 4 russet potatoes: $3.99 (with a potato leftover)
  
• 3 bulk onions: $2.30 (with an onion leftover)
  
• 1 head of cabbage: $1.43
  
• 3lb hunk of corned beef: $11.71
  
• bunch of scallions: $0.69
  

All of those ingredients made enough food for three of us at lunch today and probably two more portions for lunch tomorrow.

So for a tab roughly of $32, I got 8 servings (plus the potential for some homemade stock) for a total of $4 per serving.

Hot cha!

Eire Go Brach!

I guess I'm running a bit behind on these posts. A bit later while the potatoes are boiling, I'll take a moment to figure out how many posts I need to add to catch up.



This is just a quick note to say that tonight I'll be making corned beef, cabbage, and champ. The recipe for corned beef and cabbage can be found at epicurious.com. What I like about this dish (as with much from the British Isles) is that you're basically just boiling something within an inch of its life. Literally, this recipe calls for 3-4 hours of boiling (which means I should get to the store and get home soon if I ever plan on going to sleep).



Champ, on the other hand, I learned from a lovely ginger-haired lad I dated for a while who was from Belfast. While he was staunchly loyal to Britain, I still choose to celebrate Ireland Forever (Erie Go Brach) with his recipe. It was a damp cold day when he made this for me, and it just could not have warmed me up any better. Essentially, you simmer milk (or cream...skim probably isn't the best here) with a knob of butter and some scallions. You're basically seeping out all of the scallion-y goodness and the milk becomes infused with it. You then use that oniony-milk yumminess to serve as the lubricant for mashing your potatoes. They end up being a bit soupier than traditional mashed potatoes, but they're lovely and creamy and decadent. He said his mom used to make it for him when he wasn't feeling well. It truly is the ultimate comfort food.