Food Stamp Challenge - Sarasota Soundings

Food Stamp Challenge: The Anthology

Holly and Skip — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 20:22:06 +0000

As soon as we began to chronicle our involvement with The Food Stamp Challenge, Living on $42.00 per Week,* a series we initiated nearly three years ago, we got our readers’ attention—lots of it.

Obsolete $2.00 Food Coupon
On exhibit at The National Museum of American History

Yes, it’s hard to believe we did that before most of us thought we’d see the Obama family in the White House. And we’re really glad they’re there, especially since Michelle Obama has put herself in the front-lines with her campaign to reverse the American epidemic of childhood obesity.

To lend our support to Mrs. Obama and a cause we also support, we’ve aggregated posts that were part of our good-food-on-a-budget series. Our own observations as well as our philosophy on the cooking—and sharing—of a week’s worth of food-for-thought is now here, accessible via a single cyber-link.

With all of our posts about spending a week “on food stamps” here in one spot, you can now move more easily from one post to the next—or back-track to a particular recipe.

We’re gratified that so many have told us they value our exploration of such topics. And we hope that by providing a convenient link to all of them, the ideas we discuss will gain wider circulation.

* As of November 1, 2009, the Federal Food Stamp budget for one person is now $25, slightly higher than the $21 allotted when we undertook the challenge in 2007.

Living on $42.00 Per Week: The Anthology

Living on $42.00 Per Week—the Challenge
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 1
Living on $42.00 per Week—Day 2
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 3
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 4
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 5
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 6
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 7
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Summary
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Redux

For years, we’ve written about the significant pleasure of cooking and sharing everyday food. Below are links to a few other posts on this blog that tie in with Living on $42.00 per Week

Slow Food Fast
Florida Foraging
Jamie Oliver on NPR
Shopping on the Edge

The post Food Stamp Challenge: The Anthology first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 Per Week Redux

Skip — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:56:48 +0000

Vendor at the Red Barn, Bradenton

You may have noticed that we haven’t been posting for a couple of weeks. What began as a glitch with one of our Websites escalated to become a calamity for all of them, causing us to leave our former hosting service and sign on with a new one (thanks to a very practical referral from our new friend, Skip Dyrda). But we’ve put all the pieces back together, so now we’re back in business.

As we’ve made this transition, we’ve been reviewing the archived content of our sites. We’re surprised to find that it’s been nearly a year since we chronicled our experiment, Living on $42.00 per Week, shopping and dining within the Food Stamp budget. Having reviewed our experience, we thought it would be a good idea to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re headed in the year to come.

The stark answer is that we don’t know. The changes we’ve made in our lives since last year have more to do with energy conservation than diet.

Given what has happened to the cost of fuel, and how that has affected virtually every other service and product we use, our thoughts have gone far beyond the inadequacies of the Food Stamp program.

One of our friends, who runs a deli in Sarasota, says the Italian-American bakery delivering his fresh bread has raised the price three times since February. But the Publix 5-pound bag of unbleached flour had been the same price for a year—until a few weeks ago. That tells us that there weren’t too many other home bakers depleting existing shelf stock. However, a product requiring less time and manipulation than flour—dried pasta—has doubled in price.

The retail prices of virtually all foods have risen over the course of the past year—most dramatically in the last four months. Eggs and milk have been climbing steadily and grain products have bolted. Crude oil gets a lot of press, but the increased volatility of food commodities make trading in rice, wheat, and corn qualify as an extreme sport.

Canned goods have gone up, too, and we see far fewer specials. There doesn’t seem to be a 14 oz. tin of anything on offer for less than half a dollar. Where have those once-frequent two-for-one sales gone?

Up at Bradenton’s Red Barn, our former haunt for produce, a week’s worth of fresh vegetables herbs, and fruit for two cooks like us now costs $14 – $16 per week. Last year, we usually spent $10 – $11.

So we are shopping closer to home, buying more things from the Saturday morning market downtown—whether our purchases are the pricey organic items or “conventional” produce from the wholesale market in Tampa. If we factor in gas at $4 a gallon, we save the 25 mile round-trip to Bradenton and at least a gallon of gas by staying here in town. And we give up two things we really care about: the broader selection of Latin produce and the pleasure of eavesdropping on fellow shoppers chatting in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and a host of Asian and Slavic languages.

Gas, of course, is the big topic of conversation for everyone today—up a third from the price this time last year. We, the cheerful, resourceful foodies. have to admit: it casts a cloud over our daily lives.

The Farm Bill—which contains amendments to the Food Stamp program—remains in limbo. Anticipated are: Congressional approval, Presidential veto, and ultimate override of the veto. How much the weekly Food Stamp allotment stood to increase—if at all—was never clear.

But we stand firm on one thing: Food Stamps won’t alleviate American hunger and malnutrition unless education is a major component of the program. Rampant obesity among our poorest citizens demonstrates that knowing how to choose and prepare nutritionally and economically sensible meals is not an innate skill.

Even for people as savvy as we consider ourselves to be, the grocery store can be a hornet’s nest of nutritional traps. Last week we bought a loaf of multi-grain whole wheat bread only to discover later, on tasting, that it was heavily sweetened. Why? High fructose corn syrup prolongs shelf life for all those centrally baked loaves trucked around the country. It’s not only wheat prices that are making your daily bread more costly. Oil runs farm equipment, the power plants that keep bread ovens baking, and the trucks that deliver the bread.

We’re all caught in the same down-draft but we’d like to think we can help you cope as we and others rethink, adapt, and innovate.

For starters, we’re using our pressure cooker a lot more now. We’ve written about how easy—and energy-efficient—it is to cook beans. Of late, we’ve expanded our repertoire to include potatoes, yams, and beets. We’ve found them to be perfectly whole and cooked through with just five minutes under pressure. After that, we turn off the heat, not opening the cooker until at least an hour later (when the pot has cooled). And if you don’t open the lid and break the seal, the veggies can wait for more than a day, unrefrigerated, until you need them.

As we’ve said, nutritional/culinary education is vital. A can of tuna, beyond serving as the base for the all-American tuna salad, can become Salad Niçoise, Provençal tuna salad; Condiglione, Italian tuna salad; Pain Bagnat, tuna grinder from the South of France; or Pasta with Tuna Sauce. This information is readily available on the Internet—from library computers if necessary—and in cookbooks from library shelves. And none of these dishes requires a can of cream of mushroom soup.

Think about foods that can be multi-purpose. As we wrote last year, a take-out rotisserie chicken—although not eligible on the Food Stamp allotment—can be two, and possibly three, meals for two people.

If you must snack, make it carrot sticks. Those zany “home economists” from a couple of generations ago certainly didn’t know half of what we know today about basic nutrition, but they had the right idea. While high fructose corn syrup may not be the nutritional demon it’s been made out to be, it remains insidious, unnecessary, and best avoided when possible.

If we could impart only one piece of advice, it would be: Share your meals. Turn off the TV; don’t answer the phone.Whatever you bring to the table, sit down with the people you love. Make the time.

Links to the rest of the posts in our series:

Living on $42.00 Per Week—the Challenge
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 1
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 2
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 3
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 4
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 5
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 6
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 7
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Summary

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The post Living on $42.00 Per Week Redux first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 per Week-Summary

Holly and Skip — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:20:34 +0000

From the moment we first heard about Congressmen giving up cocktail parties so they could stick to the Food Stamp diet, we asked ourselves if we could live on $42.00 worth of food each week. We knew the answer to be yes, but we decided to document the effort. Last week, we shopped and cooked as if we, too, had to get by on food stamps. Here in Florida, that means $21.00 per week for each eligible household member. Our household is comprised of two food writers who love to cook.

We began our week-long experiment on Sunday, July 15, with $42.00 and the smugness of insiders. We ended our week on Saturday night with a steak on the grill and $5.46 remaining. Today, we’re talking about how we did it; whether we could sustain our enthusiasm if the dependency were real; and what we could have done better.

As we studied the Web pages describing how others had attempted to meet “The Food Stamp Challenge,” we noted that many of the participants didn’t cook. They simply went to a grocery store and bought the cheapest food they could find.

Recently the restaurant critic at one of Sarasota’s alternative newspapers did a feature on “The Food Stamp Challenge.” The author contrasted his own food choices with those of two young women with children, who really do receive food stamps. By his own admission, the critic’s synthesized experience was not a happy one. The women, who did not go into great detail about their meals, seemed to have worked our strategies for meeting their personal needs.

We suspect that most of the public figures participating, unlike the food-stamp mothers, didn’t spend the sort of time we did thinking about how one would shop and prepare a week’s meals. Political office-holders have other agendas. Furthermore, we started our project with significant advantages over most who had attempted this challenge before us.

• We’re foodies. We cook—from scratch, and we actually like grocery shopping and creating meals. For people like us, hunting for food bargains can be as much fun as yard sales and Ebay are for others.

• We’re informed—over-informed, some might say—about food issues, nutrition, and myriad ways to prepare food. Our favorite lunchtime conversation is, “What shall we have for dinner?”

• We began the week with a well-stocked larder: among other staples, we already had our bargain-priced 3-litre bottle of extra virgin olive oil (e.g., we did not have to lug it home in a folding shopping cart in 92 F. heat nor did we have to drive to BJ’s to buy it.) Nevertheless, if we dipped into the pantry for something that made a significant contribution to our diet (the milk for our coffee, olive oil, bread we had frozen),we deducted its cost from our budget as if we had actually purchased it with our Food Stamp funds.

• Because we own cars, we’ve no problem getting to the Vietnamese grocer on Fridays when he has fresh, whole kingfish. Or swinging into a Publix parking lot because it’s an easy right-hand turn and we just remembered their 2-for-1 special on canned garbanzo beans.

• We live an easy drive from an open-air produce market where we can buy more than a week’s worth of produce for approximately $11.00.

So how was our week? Were we preoccupied with food? Absolutely, but then, because of our professions, we usually are. However we were not hungry between meals, and very satisfied as we made and consumed them. Certainly, we needed to be attentive to what we planned to eat and to whether or not we’d need to draw down our allotment. We cooked and sat down to eat two nourishing and delicious meals every day. We didn’t feel the need to snack, except for a few handfuls of sunflower seeds.

We suffered no symptoms of fatigue or cabernet sauvignon withdrawal. Of course, wine isn’t eligible for the food stamp budget anyway, but it does soothe hunger. And although we often have wine with dinner, to play fair, we didn’t consume any during the challenge. To sum up, we did well, extremely well, and ate pretty much as we usually do.

A nutritionist we know checked in during the week to tell us that she absolutely loved our food journal and intended to direct her entire mailing list to our blog. If she were more doctrinaire, she could have scolded us for not eating a “balanced” breakfast. But, if our mothers couldn’t do it when we were teenagers, we’re even less likely to start eating oatmeal or scrambled eggs now. We do eat those things—just not at the hour most folks do.

In a typical week, we might have one or possibly two meals with meat as the focus. The key word here is might. Certainly the Sicilian member of this partnership feels that there is no such thing as too much pasta. And our culinary repertoire includes scores of dishes that pay our respects to the Holy Trinity of vegetarians everywhere—beans, greens and starch—be that rice, barley, bulgur, potatoes or pasta. We’ve gone days without more meat than an ounce of pancetta in some pasta alla carbonara. But when we do make meat the main event, it’s almost never a New York strip or loin lamb chops.

We are big fans of lesser cuts over American favorites like rib-eye steaks and loin lamb chops. Our choices are not out of economic necessity nor because we have our grandmothers’ recipes for things like tripe, but because many inexpensive cuts of meat are, simply, the most flavorful.

Short ribs and oxtail have been discovered by the foodie community, and their prices have risen. But beef cheeks are still a bargain. How weird can they be if Mario Batali is getting $23.00 per portion? As omnivores, we shop low and eat high. Nothing is off-limits, neither offal, nor meatless meals.

One thing we felt we couldn’t do during the challenge was take full advantage of supermarket sales. This might be have been the hardest thing we faced all week: beef chuck shoulder steak was only $1.49 per pound at our local Sweetbay during the challenge. Ordinarily, at that price, we would have bought one steak for immediate use and a second to freeze. But as we thought we should keep some funds on reserve, we bought only one.

Could we sustain the Food Stamp Challenge? Of course we could, but we’ve already confessed our own ‘unfair’ advantages. Eventually, we’d need to replace items depleted from our pantry. Even a small bottle of good olive oil could wreak havoc with a budget as austere as this. But if we were to really feel the pinch, we could eat more meatless meals, and it would be no hardship to eat more pasta. And since it is midsummer, we’ve barely dipped into the repertoire of hearty pulse and grain combinations that occupy our thoughts and table during cool weather. So was this week even a “challenge” for us? Not really.

Does this mean we think the U.S. Government’s food stamp program is adequate? No way—but our reasons for claiming the deficiency have less to do with money than with education and eligibility. We’ll expand our ideas on this topic in a post within the next few days.

Our thanks again to Derrick at Obsession With Food for mentioning us on his blog. We’d like to see more food bloggers take up the Food Stamp Challenge. We’d love to have the insights and recipes that come out of other bloggers’ kitchens during a week of living on the food stamp budget. Please let us know if you join the experiment. We’ll put a link to you on our blog.

Links to the other posts in our series:

The post Living on $42.00 per Week-Summary first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 7

Holly and Skip — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 14:15:37 +0000

Total food stamp funds remaining:$12.67

You may have been wondering about our breakfasts…

Before we eat anything substantial, we usually opt for caffeine and a few hours spent brainstorming and writing. (We’ve both resided in countries like Portugal and Italy, where breakfast may be only a beverage.) We buy good arabica (both whole beans and ground, in bargain quantities) and often add powdered cinnamon to the ground coffee.

A very ordinary Braun clone of Mr. Coffee brews our morning draught. We microwave 1% milk in our cups and pour strong coffee into the heated milk. Two cups each, and we are usually fine until about 11 a.m…when a desire for something we can chew begins to preoccupy us. Coffee finished, we can now do lunch:

Lunch Saturday:

Around the Mediterranean, melon and cheese are often paired. Nowhere is the combination more refreshing than in Turkey, where one of us has lived. Today’s mid-day meal needed only some warmed whole wheat pita bread and snippets of fresh spearmint to enhance the half cantaloupe and 4 oz. chunk of feta* cheese we shared.

* Feta is the Greek name for a soft, crumbly white cheese that may be made from cow’s and/or sheep’s milk. Popular throughout the Balkans and Middle East, it’s long been made throughout those regions. Now there are internationally marketed brands coming from Denmark, France, Britain, Canada, and the US, as well as the traditional producers like Greece and Turkey. Our favorite is Bulgarian, but in Sarasota, we’re happiest with the tangy American Président label ($2.99 lb. at BJ’s).

Cantaloupe $0.88 (and we’ve used only half)
Feta Cheese $0.75 for 4 oz. ($2.99 lb at Richard’s Whole Foods and BJ’s)

Total food stamp funds remaining: $12.67 – 1.63 = $11.04

Beverage Disclosure

Food Stamp Challenge aside, we rarely buy any bottled or canned soft drinks. But we do drink cold tea throughout the day. We vary our additives according to what we have around, but here’s our basic recipe.

Chilled, Spiced Tea (makes about 2 quarts)

3 Heaping tsp. loose black tea or 4 teabags
(we buy whatever black tea or “orange Pekoe” is on sale, usually 100 bags for @ $2)
2-3 Nickel-sized pieces of fresh ginger root
1/4 Teaspoon ground cinnamon (2-3 shakes from a jar with a perforated top)
2-3 Wedges of lime, lemon, orange or even leftover citrus rind (ok if you’ve already squeezed out the juice for something else)

Place the tea and other ingredients in a large teapot. Bring 1 quart of water to a boil and pour it into the teapot. Stir pot to settle the tea. Let stand 4-5 minutes. Meanwhile, bring one more quart of water to a boil.

Strain brewed tea (it will be very strong) into a 2-quart, heat-resistant vessel that will fit in your refrigerator. Refrigerate this half-full vessel.

Leave all the ingredients in the teapot and refill it from the boiling kettle. Let this weaker tea sit until it has cooled slightly. Strain and add to the first batch. We usually reserve the ginger slices (which are still very flavorful) and put them into the cold tea vessel. Sweeten, if you must, but the aromatics may just pacify your sweet-tooth. Chill and enjoy with or without ice.

Supper Saturday:

We wanted our last meal to be special. The weather deities of south Florida had other ideas, but in the end, they relented enough to allow us to grill a steak. On our last foray to Sweetbay supermarket, we found beef chuck shoulder steak on sale at $1.49 per pound. While this cut of beef is not as inherently tender as New York strip or rib eye, it’s well marbled and flavorful, and much less costly: just the sort of cut that benefits from a long marinade. The boneless piece we brought home was destined for tagliata, an Italian steak salad.

Tagliata means ‘cut,’ in reference to the method of serving this salad. Ordinarily, a steak is marinated, grilled, then sliced diagonally into strips, tossed with greens, and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. The traditional leafy component for tagliata is arugula, a green that does not grow well in hot weather. We decided against a short drive to Whole Foods, where arugula is nearly always available (about $2. 50 a bunch). That would have pushed our budget limits. Furthermore, we have been trying to consume as much Florida-grown produce as possible, for this experiment and in ‘real life.’ To quote Cole Porter again, “It’s too darn hot.” Arugula and other bitter greens are surely growing in shade-houses somewhere right now, but under the July skies of Sarasota, no way.

Watercress ($0.89 a bunch at our Vietnamese grocer, and a bit more at Sweetbay) would have been another good choice, but as we were in the middle of una tempesta, a downpour, driving anywhere wasn’t advisable. The most prudent choice seemed to be the heart of Romaine we had left from last week’s trip to the Red Barn.

The classic marinade for tagliata is a simple mixture of olive oil, sliced garlic, and rosemary. Because we knew our shoulder would need some tenderizing, we added acid: 3/4 cup of yellow grapefruit juice. (We still have some over-ripe grapefruit clinging to the tree in our yard.) We let the meat marinate in the fridge for about four hours.

At dinnertime, we grilled the steak (over palmetto again) until rare* and let it rest, covered, for approximately ten minutes. (As an accompaniment, we also grilled two halves of a sweet, white Florida onion.) We sliced the meat on the bias into 1/2 in. slices and served it over the Romaine, with an additional dressing of olive oil and balsamic vinegar .

The last two ciabatta rolls rounded out this final feast.

* Even at $1.49 per pound, we consider our steak to be an investment. As such, we wanted it to be as good as it could be. Though we hovered around the grill as it cooked, we wanted another edge. We used an instant-read thermometer to assure that we’d remove the steak from the grill when it reached an internal temperature of 120 F. We expected the temperature to rise an additional 5 degrees in carry-over cooking as the steak rested; an internal reading of 125 F. gave us a perfectly done, rare steak.

1.73 Lb. boneless beef shoulder roast: $2.58
Misc. bread for the week: $3.00

Total food stamp funds remaining: $11.04 – 5.58 = $5.46

In a couple of days, we’ll write a summary and assessment of our participation in the Food Stamp Challenge. With nearly $5.50 left over, we feel we’ve done very well. However, the real challenge lies ahead. How do we encourage actual food stamp recipients to look at our example and devise their own ways to prepare and share better meals with their families and friends.

Links to the other posts in our series:

The post Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 7 first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 6

Holly and Skip — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 14:22:08 +0000

Total food stamp funds remaining: $17.87.

Lunch Friday:

Another pattern emerging from our experiment is that one day’s lunch is often based on leftovers from the previous night’s supper. We don’t see this as a bad thing. It’s a legitimate way to extend the grocery budget, reduce labor, and get a nourishing meal at noontime. And if the original meal was good, we don’t consider leftovers hardship fare.

With the beaten eggs and the halibut collagen, last night’s avogolemono soup was sufficiently rich that we were very satisfied with one bowl, and a smaller second helping. That left us with nearly three cups of soup available for lunch today. And though we didn’t mention it yesterday, we now have 1 1/2 quarts of fish stock in our freezer as well.

Today, for variety, we added nearly 1/4 Lb. of linguine from our miscellaneous, won’t-quite-serve-two pasta inventory. We broke the raw pasta into 1-inch bits and simmered it in the leftover soup till it was al dente. Avogolemono bonds with starch, so a soup can be thickened by adding potatoes, rice, or pasta. With our linguine-thickened avogolemono, we had yet another ample lunch.

Supper Friday:

It was hot, but not unreasonably so, and a great evening for grilling. At our local Sweetbay grocery store, we found a 20 oz. package of 5 Hot Italian sausages for $3.49. We’ve been fans of Sweetbay’s sausages since we first tried them. One of us spent 25 years living in the North End of Boston (THE Italian section where there’s an Italian butcher on nearly every corner). We like Sweetbay’s sausages better than any we ate there.

Sweetbay has a central corporate kitchen in Tampa which supplies all their stores in Florida. We have six Sweetbays in metropolitan Sarasota alone; all sell great sausages. We like to think about a Tuscan nonno—an Italian grandfather—coming into the corporate kitchens as a consultant on sausage-making days:” No, un po più di finnocchio; più peperoncino!” a little more fennel; more hot pepper, he says as workers pour pounds of ground pork and seasonings into a huge mixer. At a certain point in the process, he carefully sautés a small portion of the stuffing, takes a practiced taste, and pronounces, “Ah, salsiccia buona.” And they’re done.

The nonno may be there, he may not, but Sweetbay’s sausages stand out among the best.

We noticed one of the Sweetbay butchers hunched over his work table, knife flashing from time to time. We inquired about what he was carving and he replied, “Beef heart, $1.49 per pound.” This struck us as a superb bargain, and suddenly we were thinking about a Tuscan mixed grill for supper.

Beef heart is a member of that class of meats euphemistically known as “variety cuts,” or offal. Marinated, grilled on a skewer, and called anticucho, it’s a very popular street food in Peru. Apparently we have enough Peruvians and other beef heart-eaters to give Sarasota criticial mass, and thus make it worthwhile for supermarkets to keep it in stock. At $1.49 per pound, it’s a very inexpensive way to get high quality protein that does not require a lot of preparation.

Ferreting around in a cabinet beneath the kitchen counter, we found a bag of harina de mais fina amarilla, fine yellow corn meal we had bought a while ago at a Latino market. It turns out that this corn meal makes superb polenta. (Imported Italian corn meal for polenta runs about $3 for a 17.5 oz. package. We got 16 oz.of Mexican harina for 69 cents.)

And since we were going to have the grill going for the meats, we thought it would be a fine time to roast some of the bell peppers we’d bought earlier this week at the Red Barn. (We are fuel-frugal, too.)

This was shaping up to be a glorious, trattoria-style feast. Only the beef required any degree of prep work: we marinated four slices (about 8 oz.) in a mixture of red grapfruit juice (While foraging, one of us had scored a fallen, late-harvest grapefruit on a neighbor’s lawn earlier in the afternoon). Our marinade was simple: the grapefruit juice with just a splash of olive oil, sliced garlic, ground black pepper, and fresh rosemary (we have a veritable rosemary “shrub” growing in our front yard).

We’ve written before about grilling over palmetto and using the woody stalks of the palm fronds. Since we live in a neighborhood checkered with palm trees, finding this aromatic fuel for our domed Webber grill (another trash day street-find) is never a problem. Palmetto burns much hotter than charcoal, but the fire doesn’t last as long, so we supplement our fires with ten to twelve lumps of hardwood charcoal. Nevertheless, palmetto smoke imparts a delicious and distinctively Floridian flavor to meats.

We put the peppers on the fire before it really settled down to embers, because we wanted to get a good char on the skins for easy peeling.

When they were done, we took them off the grill, redistributed the coals and added more palmetto before putting on the sausages and beef heart.

Total food stamp funds remaining: $17.87 – 5.20 = $12.67

Now is as good a time as any to remind ourselves that to fully satisfy, food should please the eye as well as the palate. If you take the time to cook, don’t eat dinner in front of the TV or standing over the kitchen sink. Take the time to plate your creations, then sit down at the table to savor rewards well earned.

Links to the other posts in our series:

Living on $42.00 Per Week—the Challenge
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 1
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 2
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 3
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 4
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 5
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 7
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Summary
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Redux

The post Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 6 first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 5

Holly and Skip — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:45:08 +0000

Lunch Thursday:

Lunch today was catch-as-catch-can. One of us had a dental appointment that caused involuntary facial contortions from Novocaine, and the other had mid-day business in Lakewood Ranch.

When we finally came together for a meal, it was nearly 3:00 p.m., and we were (metaphorically) “famished.” Knowing that this is when we or anyone is most likely to succumb to indiscriminate snacking, we did not simply plunge into the larder in search of instant gratification. Instead, we made a simple salad of 1/2 an avocado, a plum tomato, chopped Italian parsley, the grated rind & juice from half a lime, a squirt of hot sauce, and 2 tablespoons of sunflower seeds. (We buy ours in bulk, dry-roast them in the toaster oven and keep them on hand for occasions like this.) We had our salad with a two heated rounds of whole wheat pita bread. We took no more than 10 minutes to prepare everything, and there was just enough food to take the edge off until supper. Furthermore, we had a chance to sit down, talk, and relax a bit in the midst of a very busy day.

Kitchen tools: (Williams-Sonoma will hate us)

We began this project with a toolkit: Interest, enthusiasm, experience, appetites, and skills. But we couldn’t have implemented much of what we’ve done without tangible tools. For years, we’ve been reading about “the one kitchen tool” some rock star chef “can’t live without.” In our case, we can’t identify just one, but here, in no order of priority, are four inexpensive tools we feel every kitchen should have.

A Box Grater. We admire Mario Batali for his ability to create a snow-shower of Parmigiano with his Microplane grater. We question how much of the cheese finds its way onto the food, but it looks spectacular on TV. For most of our basic grating needs though, we rely this old standby.

A Chef’s Knife. We’ve read and heard all the hype about Wusthof, Henkel, Global, and recently, Kyocera. But for us, our knives (with or without pedigree) must be comfortable to be useful. And any knife can be sharpened. We found our Sabatier Santoku knife at T.J. Maxx for $9.95. It’s the bargain end of the Sabatier line but it feels good. However, before we brought it home, we took it to our local True Value hardware store and had it professionlly sharpened for $4.00. Now we have a tool that’s a pleasure to use in the kitchen. We simply give it a few swipes with a sharpening steel and make short work of whatever we chop or slice.

A Paring Knife. Ours is so old, we’re no longer sure where we bought it. But it, too, is French. Made from carbon steel, it has been professionally sharpened as well. It’s an invaluable instrument for the finer jobs we do in the kitchen, like dissecting meat from fish frames.

A Microplane Grater. At approximately $12.00, some might perceive this as a luxury. Beyond its obvious use for grating hard cheeses, this is sine qua non for grating citrus rind, fresh ginger, and carrots. We’ve even used it for making extra-fine bread crumbs. With the capabilities it’s given us, it has paid for itself many times over.

Supper Thursday:

After our ceviche meal, we banked our greatest bargain: we froze the Whole Foods halibut frame until we could afford it the time and thought it deserved. The Novocaine had worn off and one of us was still feeling a little sore, so a hearty soup seemed a good choice for supper. Cue in the fish frame…

In a large pot, we barely covered the fish frame with 10-12 cups of water. At this stage, our only seasonings were two bay leaves and about twenty black peppercorns. We brought the pot to a simmer; the broth began to perfume the kitchen. And we really mean that. There’s a reason professional cooks hold pricey halibut in such high esteem. Our broth was not fishy, but fresh—like an evening at the beach. As the broth hovered around a simmer, we began to gently scrape at the bones to release whatever meat still remained on the frame.

We’d planned to add some pieces of inexpensive frozen ocean perch ($3.49 for a 1 lb. bag at Sav-A-Lot, and we did have some in our freezer). However, we’d already gleaned more than a cup of halibut from the frame. The wafting stockpot aroma was so pure that we began to say things like, “You know, we may not need to add any more fish or seasonings…” But we did put one whole carrot into the stock, which we removed and reserved later, while it was still intact.

After about an hour, we strained the stock into another pot and picked as much of the meat as we could from the cooked bones. When we were done, we definitely had enough halibut meat for two.

But then, being foodies, we faced a dilemma: we wanted a simple preparation that would not obscure the halibut flavor. We had thought briefly about cotriade, a very simple fish soup from Brittany, and we had considered a minimalist version of soupe de poisson, the classic Provençal fish stew, which would have demanded olive oil, tomatoes, a bouquet of herbs, and saffron (all of which we had within reach). But to best illustrate frugality with flair, we chose the classic Mediterranean egg and lemon soup frequently known by its Greek name, avogolemono. The mixture can also be a sauce—enhancing poultry, meat, fish, and vegetarian dishes throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. It’s a great way to stretch a couple of eggs and a single lemon.

Four small, red-skinned potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces and 4 cloves of chopped garlic went into the strained, simmering stock.

Into a separate bowl, we grated the rind of one lemon, then added its juice. We scrambled two large eggs and the juice until they were well-combined, beginning to froth. We couldn’t pour this mixture directly into the stock, or we’d have fish stock with scrambled eggs. So we took a ladle of stock, poured it into the eggs-with-lemon and fork-stirred to blend and bind the mixture—to “temper” the eggs. After adding two more ladles of hot liquid, we stirred the egg and lemon mixture into the stock. Having checked to be sure the potatoes were tender, we sliced the reserved carrot and added it to the broth. After tasting for salt, we were done.

A little finely chopped parsley for garnish, two ciabatta rolls, and we had one of our most elegant suppers yet.

Links to the other posts in our series:

Living on $42.00 Per Week—the Challenge
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 1
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 2
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 3
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 4
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 6
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 7
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Summary
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Redux

The post Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 5 first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 4

Holly and Skip — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 15:05:10 +0000

Total food stamp funds remaining: $17.87.

Lunch Wednesday:

After yielding two meals, our weekend chicken didn’t owe us a thing. Nonetheless, we took the remaining bones (approx.. 6 oz. including the bits of meat clinging to them) and made our version of “stone soup *.”

Placing the bones in a 3-quart sauce pan with approx. 3 cups of water, we simmered them for 15 minutes then strained the liquid, reserving the bones. When the bones were cool enough to handle, we stripped them of their meat. Suprisingly, we had nearly 3/4 of a cup.

We brought the chicken broth back to a boil and added 1/4 cup of medium-grain white rice, some minced ginger root, garlic, and 2 kaffir lime leaves **. Having reduced the heat, we let the covered pot simmer for 15 min., until the rice was done.

Sunday’s pre-cooked carrots were thinly sliced and put into the pot along with a rib of celery and a scallion (both minced). In the spirit of “Archeology begins at home. Excavate your own fridge first,” we also tossed in half-moon slices from a piece of daikon found lurking on the bottom of the vegetable bin.

A dash of hot sauce, salt & freshly ground pepper, and a few snips of flat-leaf Italian parsley (because we’d forgotten to buy cilantro) finished this lively, vaguely Thai-tasting soup. It gave us 2 servings each.

Stone Soup provides a great illustration of how we—and anyone else—can make a tight food budget work. Leftovers aside, imagination and a little effort are the crucial ingredients in any satisfying dish.

This meal marked the last of our day-old rolls from BJ’s. They’ve served us well. And with our little trick with the kitchen faucet and the toaster oven, they’ve provided a satisfying accompaniment to many of the casual meals we’ve been enjoying this week. And at $2.00 for eighteen rolls, they rank along side our produce supply as one of the best bargains we’ve found for this experiment.

* Stone Soup: The old parable of how those with little, gain much if they share what they do have.

** This may seem a bit over-the-top on a food-stamp budget, but we’ll explain: we’d bought the kaffir lime leaves from our local Vietnamese grocer before Christmas last year. For $1.00 we came home with a bag containing approximately 70 of these beauties. They keep well in the freezer, and we’ve simply been dipping into the bag as recipes warrant. Though we also have lemon grass growing in our back yard, we decided against using it for this recipe in the interest of time and simplicity.

Supper Wednesday:

Midway through our challenge, the Sicilian half of this duo was suffering from pasta withdrawl. What better way to assuage the malady than to use up 3/4 cup of ricotta left from last week? Because we also had some Red Barn eggplant, and because it was already after 8 PM, and because we often turn to other sources for inspiration, we Googled “ricotta + eggplant + pasta” and found ourselves on the Food & Wine website. A recipe for pasta with eggplant, ricotta, and tomatoes was right there. Did we follow it? Not really, but sometimes all one needs is an idea.

Eggplants have earned a bad reputation for being oil sponges. Cooks of all stripes have long tried to devise techniques to keep their eggplants from absorbing all that precious olive oil. Among alternatives to frying is merely brushing eggplant slices with oil and either baking them or putting them under the oven broiler.

We have two oil-free techniques, each of which flies in the face of centuries of Italian cookery. One, is to use our George Foreman outdoor grill. It gets just hot enough to cook the eggplant slices through without burning them. We can season them later when we assemble a dish like eggplant parmigiana or mousakka

The other prep method is more radical, more counter-Italian than even an electric grill: we steam our eggplant. This requires total attention, because eggplant can quickly go from firm to mushy. But steaming uses no oil and takes approximately 3 minutes.

If steaming eggplant is radical, our method for cooking pasta will send Italians, Italophiles, and foodies in general into paroxysms. Depending on the recipe, whenever we can, we use our trusty Pasta Perfect, *** as seen on TV. (That’s according to the blurbs on the box. We don’t have cable; for that matter, we don’t even own a TV.)

Before moving to Sarasota, we bought our Pasta Perfect as a joke at one of those “job lot” stores in Connecticut. However, it turned out the joke was on us. It works…mostly. We can cook spaghetti or linguine to the al dente state. But certain shaped pastas—like penne, rigatoni, or shells—will cook only so far and no further, no matter how long they sit in steaming water. That’s okay because the only time we use Pasta Perfect is when we plan to finish cooking our pasta in a sauce.

But the benefits of our Pasta Perfect outweigh the laughs. We need boil only two quarts of water rather than six; once the water comes to a boil, we can turn off the stove, saving energy. We don’t need a colander because the top of our Pasta Perfect is perforated for easy drainage. Finally, when we’re done, clean-up is not a pot and a colander, but just the single plastic tube of Pasta Perfect.

Alas, delicious as this recipe may be, it turned out to be brutta ma buona, that is, not particularly photogenic.

Pasta with Eggplant & Ricotta

Ingredients:

1 Small eggplant, approximately 1/2 Lb., cut into 3/4 in. cubes
Olive Oil
2 Cloves garlic, sliced
1 Small onion, diced
1 tsp. Crushed red pepper flakes
4 – 5 Plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped
3/4 Cup whole milk ricotta
1/4 Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Parmigiano cheese
1/2 Lb. Short, tubular pasta (We used campanelle. Substitute penne, rigatoni, or mostaccioli if you prefer)

Preparation:

Bring about 1 in. of water to a boil in a three-quart saucepan. Add 1 Tbs. salt, then the eggplant. Reduce heat to medium-low and steam the eggplant for approximately three minutes, or until it’s slightly translucent and tender. Drain in a colander and reserve.

Heat a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add just enough olive oil to film the bottom of the pan, then add the garlic, onion and red pepper flakes. Lower the heat slightly, and saute the mixture until the onion is wilted; three or four minutes.

Add the tomatoes, and cook until they soften and begin to render some of their juices. Add the eggplant, and cook to heat through. Taste for seasoning and add salt & pepper as necessary.

Reduce heat to low, and stir in the ricotta. Maintain on low heat while the pasta cooks.

Cook the pasta in your traditional way, according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. When the pasta is al dente, drain and add it with the parsley to the sauce. Raise the heat slightly and cook, stirring gently to keep it from sticking, for two or three minutes until the pasta is done, and has absorbed some of the sauce.

Pour the pasta into a large bowl, garnish with freshly grated Parmigiano, and serve family-style.

Ordinarily, this would be sufficient for four as a pasta course. Since it was our whole dinner, this served two abundantly.

*** We agree, Pasta Perfect is so strange, it deserves a blog post of its own. We’ll put that on our to-do list for the future when we’ve finished writing about our Food Stamp Challenge experiences.

Links to the other posts in our series:

Living on $42.00 Per Week—the Challenge
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 1
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 2
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 3
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 5
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 6
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 7
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Summary
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Redux

The post Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 4 first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 3

Holly and Skip — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:46:54 +0000

Total food stamp funds remaining: $17.87.

Lunch Tuesday:

Last night’s supper became the basis for lunch today: we supplemented the leftover chunks of potato salad, tomato slices , and about half a cup of ceviche with an additional boiled potato, five leaves of torn Romaine, and one more tomato to yield a lunch-sized salad for two. The marinades, juices, and herbs from the three dishes were almost adequate as a dressing, but we added a little more vinegar and another spoonful of olive oil. Along with the salad, we had some of our day-old BJ’s rolls.

At this point, our rolls are becoming a little long in the tooth, but we know a trick to revive them: we simply pass them quickly under running water, shake them off and toss them into the toaster-oven at approximately 375 F. for five to ten minutes. Voila!! nearly fresh rolls.

As we go along with this experiment, we’re seeing a theme emerge: maintaining a reasonable diet on such a limited budget requires significant thought and planning. And we admit it—we have another advantage: we truly enjoy the process. For example, on Sunday, while cooking potatoes for our dinner salad, we added a few extras, just to have them available as ready-to-use components of other dishes later in the week. So it was easy today to augment leftovers from last night with another potato.

We also had carrots in the fridge before we started. We par-cooked two of them for three minutes with the potatoes even though we had no specific use in mind. Now, they’re available when we make a quick soup or perhaps for a carrot salad.

Our endeavors have not been limited to shopping and cooking. We’ve also been at our desks—reviewing other blogs and news sources concerning the “Food Stamp Challenge.” As part of an organized program (May 15-21, 2007), several members of Congress and numerous bloggers across the country attempted to survive on the weekly allotment of $21.00*.

We have observed something noteworthy: many of the participants didn’t cook. They simply went to the grocery store and bought the cheapest food they could find. It’s laudable that many of them bought apples, bananas, salad ingredients, and canned tuna fish, but there seemed to be no underlying strategies, and they found that they quickly depleted their weekly allowance. We said at the outset we had an edge as foodies who know how to cook. And unless you live in an area with markets that sell low-cost vegetables, following our program would be an even bigger challenge. We feel that to make the experiment work, and for that matter to make food stamps work in the real world, one must cook, or be part of a household or social group where someone else cooks—from scratch.

Of course $21.00 per week for food is Spartan by any American’s definition. But we’re not so married to our liberal ideals that we think increasing the weekly allowance is the whole answer (although it’s a good start). In order to succeed, no matter how large the budget, we feel that part of the food stamp program should involve some kind of education. At a minimum, the program needs an instructional component that shows food stamp recipients how to select, prepare, and store fresh food. Bilingual pamphlets won’t do it—we mean instruction: free classes, demos in schools, DVDs, TV—anything to show people how to make appealing and healthy food on a shoestring. Oprah and Cristina, are you listening?

We feel, for example, that those bags of pre-washed, pre-cut lettuces are among the worst ways to use our food budget (sorry, Rachael Ray.) At mainstream grocery stores here in Sarasota, a bag of pre-washed lettuce would deplete an individual’s weekly food stamp budget by nearly 20%. On the other hand, a head of Romaine—even if it is slightly wilted—costs $1.00 at the open produce market. We revive it by simply cutting a small piece from the base and standing the head upright in an inch or so of water, (in a recycled yogurt container). We place the lettuce on the shelf of the fridge door, like a bouquet (We use the same trick to keep our parsley from wilting.)

We think it is legitimate to ask: do most people with food insecurities own salad-spinners or know how to wash greens and then, know how to store them? And we’ve not even arrived at the point of food preparation! A lot of people don’t know how to dress a salad with oil and vinegar, how to sweat collards, or how to stir-fry sliced zucchini.

Supper Tuesday:

Once again, we brought out our Wal*Mart rotisserie chicken, divided the remains in two, so we each had a serving of breast meat and a wing (a less elegant version of the “Statler breast”). We simmered two of our sweet potatoes till tender, slipped off their skins, and mashed them with garlic, a little salt, and coarsely chopped parsley. An apple found in the fridge became a fresh chutney with green bell pepper, ginger root, lime rind, lime juice, and a dash of chili sauce.

* The weekly food stamp allowance varies from state to state—on the Web we’ve found allotments ranging from $19 to over $24 per week. $21 is our Florida figure.

Links to the rest of the posts in our series:

Living on $42.00 Per Week—the Challenge
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 1
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 2
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 4
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 5
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 6
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 7
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Summary
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Redux

The post Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 3 first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 2

Holly and Skip — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 13:00:27 +0000

Here is a brief follow-up to our first day’s culinary adventures.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to Whole Foods, where we bought approximately 3 Lbs. of a halibut frame. For those who may not know that term, it’s merely the carcass, left over after the fish has been filleted. Whole Foods will be happy to sell you all or part of a fish frame (also known as a rack) for $1.99 per pound.

Sometimes, a seemingly inedible foodstuff can serve as the catalyst for several meals. In the case of our fish frame, we’ll make at least three and possibly four quarts of fish broth. From there, we can make a Mediterranean fish soup, seafood risotto, or perhaps a seafood couscous. With options like these, $1.99 per pound struck us as a bargain. And when we saw how much meat was left on this fish frame, we had no problem parting with $6.11.

Total food stamp funds remaining: $17.87.

Sunday Supper:

We simply removed our Wal*Mart rotisserie chicken from the fridge and allowed it to come to room temperature. For this meal, we served the leg and thigh quarters along with boiled potatoes and sliced plum tomatoes dressed with olive oil, red wine vinegar, and chopped flat-leaf Italian parsley.

We cut the boiled potatoes into bite-sized pieces and tossed them—skin on—with two minced scallions, a couple of Tbs. each of flat-leaf Italian parsley and spearmint ( we keep ours growing a pot on our porch). A scant Tbs. of olive oil and approximately two Tbs. of citrus vinegar, salt, black pepper and a dash of chili sauce finished the potatoes.

On Tuesday, we’ll very likely finish the chicken, although we’ll still have the remainder of the carcass. Cooked chicken bones may not make a great stock, but they still have a lot of flavor to contribute. We haven’t thought that far ahead, but we’ll surely figure out something to do with them.

###

Monday Lunch:

We put together a salad of avocado and tomatoes that, although the essence of simplicity, was entirely satisfying. Along with some rolls from the day-old shelf at BJ’s —sliced and toasted as crostini—we had a delicious lunch.

Avocado & Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

1/2 Large Florida Avocado, cut into small cubes
1 Med. tomato, coarsely chopped
1 Pickled jalapeno, minced
1/2 tsp. grated lime rind
1/2 tsp. grated fresh ginger
6 fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
3 or 4 grinds from the pepper mill
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. salt
2 – 3 tsp. lime juice (the juice from approximately 1/2 lime)
1 Tbs. onion, finely chopped

Preparation:

Combine the avocado, tomato, jalapeno, lime rind, ginger, and mint leaves in a non-reactive bowl. Stir gently to mix. Add the pepper, taste for salt and add up to 1/2 tsp. as necessary. Add the juice of 1/2 lime and the onion.

Allow to sit at room temperature for approximately 1/2 hour before serving. Serve with toasted baguette, or, as we did, with sliced and toasted day-old rolls from BJ’s.

Serves two.

Monday Supper:

We were able to dissect nearly one pound of usable meat from the fish frame. (Here again, we have a couple of advantages: a very sharp multi-purpose carbon steel knife and the skills to use it.) While the meat we rescued was not pretty and would have been of no value to Whole Foods, it was ideal for our purposes; we marinated it in citrus and olive oil and made a delicious, elegant supper of ceviche.

Again, we served the ceviche with boiled red-skinned potatoes and a salad of Romaine and tomatoes.

Ceviche

Ingredients:

1 Lb. firm-fleshed white fish (again, we used halibut, but you’d do fine with cod or ocean perch)
1 Lemon
1 Red bell pepper, julienned
1 Small white onion, thinly sliced
1/4 Cup Flat-leaf Italian parsley, coarsely chopped
1 Small clove garlic, finely chopped
2 Tbs. Olive oil
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 Bay leaves
Lettuce for serving (optional)

Preparation:

Cut the fish into bite-sized chunks and place in a non-reactive bowl. Grate the zest of the lemon over the fish, then cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice into the bowl. Toss to coat all the fish pieces. This begins the process of “cooking” the fish.

Add all the remaining ingredients and stir well. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least one hour ( and up to 24 hrs.) before serving.

Stir again before serving and plate atop coarsely torn Romaine.

Serves four as a starter, two as an main course.

Links to the other posts in our series:

Living on $42.00 Per Week—the Challenge
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 1
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 3
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 4
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 5
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 6
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Day 7
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Summary
Living on $42.00 Per Week—Redux

The post Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 2 first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.

Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 1

Holly and Skip — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:28:11 +0000

We did indeed shop yesterday at the Red Barn in Bradenton, where we bought what will probably be all the fresh produce we’ll need for the week. We began with a Mexican friend who runs one of the vegetable stalls with her husband and two sons. She has an endearing custom of packaging diverse vegetables into what we call ‘kits.’ And irrespective of the contents, she sells each kit at $1.00.

For example, one Saturday, we found a kit that contained all the necessary vegetables for the Sicilian vegetable stew, caponata. Today, we bought two kits: one with four huge green and red bell peppers, and another with a Florida onion, a dozen plum tomatoes, and four cucumbers.

Seperately, we selected some Florida white onions, 3 lemons, 3 limes, and a large Florida avocado. Total price: $5.40.

At another stall across the way, we found a very large head of Romaine lettuce, and two large bunches of flat-leaf Italian parsley. Total price: $2.50.

The first stall at the entryway to the market yielded two eggplants at 2/$1.00, a 5 Lb. Bag of red-skinned potatoes, and 3 sweet potatoes. Total price: $3.19.

Total for the Red Barn: $11.09.

On our way home, we stopped at Wal*Mart Super Center on State Road 70 to buy coffee (French Roast 100% Arabica. 2 Lb. 2.5 oz. for $5.58). While we were there, we found rotisserie chickens* on sale. The one we selected was approximately 1.5 Lb., came off the rotisserie at 11:35 a.m. and cost $3.98. And while we weren’t “shopping” per se, we also spotted some Barilla pasta in a hard-to-find shape we like, so we picked up a pound at $0.98.

Total for Wal*Mart: 10.80 – 3.98 = $6.82 (We had to pay for the chicken outside our food stamp allowance).

Total so far: $17.81. Total remaining: $24.09.

Note: under the current guidelines, the chicken would not be eligible for purchase with food stamps. Florida eligibility guidelines exclude take-out and “hot foods.” We consider this unfortunate, because we’ll probably get two meals out of our chicken. And we think that beyond the price, it’s a great way to conserve energy—particularly during this hot weather. For two meals, our energy use for preparation and washing up will be practically nil.
Note also: Just for fun, we took our Red Barn shopping list to Whole Foods this afternoon. Buying these ingredients at Whole Foods—not all of which were organic—would have cost us $55.48.

But we’re not here to fix a broken world. We’re merely trying to live within the guidelines and to report our experiences.

Sunday Lunch:

Considering the bounty we brought home, it seemed reasonable to use some of it right away rather than store it. And again, we’re also mindful of our fossil fuel consumption in hot weather. A salad seemed a great choice for lunch. We had some motivation to make this Tuscan bread salad, because we had two ciabatta rolls “of a certain age” in the fridge. Sometimes, even a stale ingredient can stimulate an idea for a meal.

Tuscans are particularly frugal when it comes to bread, and have found some creative ways to use leftovers no longer suitable for the table. Most notable among them are, papa al pomodoro, tomato and bread soup, and this salad, panzanella.

Panzanella
Tuscan Bread Salad

Ingredients:

4 slices stale Italian bread (We used two ciabatta rolls)
1 Clove garlic, peeled, and halved
4 tomatoes, cut into 1″ chunks
1 Large Bermuda onion, peeled, and thinly sliced
1 Medium cucumber, peeled, and sliced into 1/4″ rounds
2 – 4 Tbs. Red wine vinegar
4 Tbs. Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt & freshly-ground black pepper
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Crumble the bread into rough chunks, and place in a bowl with three or four cups of cold water for about five minutes. While the bread is soaking, rub the inside of a salad bowl with the exposed portions of the garlic. One fistful at a time, squeeze as much water as you can from the bread and add it to the salad bowl.

Break up the bread with a fork, then add the tomatoes, Bermuda onion, cucumber, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and toss to coat all the ingredients. Taste for salt & pepper and add them to your taste.

Add the parsley, divide among four plates, and serve immediately. If you prefer, you can refrigerate the Panzanella for about 1/2 hour before serving. If you plan to do this, though, omit the salt until serving time because the salt will leach moisture from the tomatoes.

Serves four.

Note: This recipe, as written, will indeed serve four very nicely. But for us, it made an abundant lunch for two.

Links to the rest of the posts in our series:

The post Living on $42.00 per Week-Day 1 first appeared on Sarasota Soundings.