recipe

August 13, 2022 0 comments

Cheap Food: Instant oatmeal; Rotisserie chicken

CHEAP FOOD pt 2

I guess I’m a very simple person. I want my food to be food, and I don’t need a lot of the extras that some people want. Like, eating shaved gold just seems like a ludicrous waste of money and gold to me.

Instant Oatmeal

I buy the packets of instant oatmeal, though I really only eat the apple cinnamon flavor. I leave the other flavors for other people because I’m nice like that 😛 (Seriously: You don’t want everyone in your family to like the same things, because that way leads to all your favorite cookies and snacks being eaten before you can get to them. If each person has their own tastes, there’s no fighting over the ice cream or the lunch meat or the chips, and nobody has to hide their food to keep others from getting to it first.)

Anyways, I like the instant oatmeal packets because 1) they’re convenient, 2) once you pour the oatmeal in a bowl the paper packet can be used as a measuring cup for the water, and 3) you don’t have to worry about someone accidently dumping the whole canister or using it all without saying anything so there’s only powder left in the bottom.

My favorite flavor is the apple cinnamon, and my least favorite flavor is the maple and brown sugar. And of course, EVERY box of mixed flavors includes the maple and brown sugar because of course.

I’ve found though, that buying a bag of frozen blueberries is very convenient. They’re tasty, you can use them in all kinds of recipes, and they’re pretty cheap.

So, if I have to eat the maple and brown sugar flavored instant oatmeal, I can doctor it up by adding a handful of frozen blueberries before putting the bowl in the microwave and it actually becomes pretty tasty. And on special occasions, when I take the oatmeal out of the microwave, I can top it with a small scatter of chocolate chips and they’ll be a little added treat.

The apple cinnamon oatmeal is always good as-is. But all instant oatmeal makes a tasty and filling meal, whether it comes from a packet or a canister you have to doctor yourself.

ROTISSERIE CHICKEN

I shop at Safeway and I have a For U account, which means I get rewards points for buying groceries. $1 = 1 point, and 100 points = 1 reward point, and there’s usually offers to earn 2x or 4x points.

Anyways, you can redeem the rewards points for various things (the offers change so you have to keep an eye out). Like, 1 reward point can get you 2 cans of vegetables or a container of sour cream, 3 rewards can get you a box of ice cream sandwiches or a package of ground turkey, and 4 rewards can be redeemed for a whole rotisserie chicken.

I usually go for the chicken, especially now that the price is so high, and if I do things right I can get at least 2 family meals out of one chicken.

Spicy chicken and rice–Take about half the chicken breast meat and shred it. Sprinkle with a little salt, garlic powder, and crushed red pepper. If you’ve got some diced green onion that will add some nice flavor. Add a few drops of sesame oil, and mix the chicken until every bit is coated with flavor. Eat with rice.

Chicken noodle soup–Strip off all the meat and set aside. Simmer the bones and skin with or without vegetable scraps to make a broth. Remove the bones and discard. Strain the broth and set aside. Sauté chopped onion and celery, maybe some crushed garlic and chopped peppers, then add the broth to the pan and raise to a simmer with some chopped carrots and other vegetables (bok choy, peas, potatoes, spinach, kale, cabbage, etc.) and egg noodles if you want noodles. Chop up some chicken and add to the soup. Season to taste. Can be eaten with noodles or served over rice.

Chicken salad–Chop up some chicken, celery, and onions and mix with mayonnaise for chicken salad sandwiches. Some people like to add diced apple, grapes, shredded carrot, shredded cheese, chopped broccoli, etc. Mix all the ingredients together and refrigerate at least 20 minutes to let the flavors develop. You can serve on bread, wrapped in a tortilla, stuffed in a pita, with lettuce and tomato and a slice of cheese, or even mixed together with like a rotini or a shell pasta as a pasta salad.

Chicken and kimchi–Add kimchi and some kimchi juice to a pan and cook about 2 minutes, then add chopped or shredded chicken and mix together. Cook until the kimchi is tender and the chicken is hot. Serve with rice.

Seriously: Cooked kimchi is a different experience from uncooked kimchi. It’s good uncooked, it’s good fried, it’s good in soups, and every way is a different taste experience.

Other things to use a rotisserie chicken for:

chicken fried rice (use yesterday’s rice)
make some chicken gravy and add chopped chicken to serve over mashed potatoes
sauté onions and peppers to serve in a wrap with shredded chicken
chop up chicken to use in a Caesar salad
mac and cheese with chunks of chicken

There’s lots of things to be done with a rotisserie chicken. Especially if it’s a “free” chicken.

~Harper Kingsley
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog
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August 13, 2022 0 comments

Cheap food: Egg soup; Flour soup

CHEAP FOOD

I make food. I don’t call myself a chef or anything formal like that, but I do make the food my family eats and there’s very few complaints.

I would probably write a cookbook if I had formal training and some official record of amounts. But I cook more by feel and taste than anything, adding ingredients in the amounts that please me in the moment.

So here’s some "recipes," though I leave the amounts of spice to the tastes of the eater. You know what you like best after all.

EGG "SOUP"

eggs
water
green onions, chopped
jalapenos, cut in rings (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

One of the things I liked eating as a kid was a kind of egg soup that was both cheap and easy to make. It can be eaten with rice or alone.

You set some water to boiling, then crack in eggs while stirring. You don’t want to whip the eggs, as you want there to be solid bits of white and yolk, but if you mix in the first egg it will flavor the water into a more broth-y flavor, and the following eggs can be broken up to cook without thoroughly mixing together. (A nice swirl of white and yellow without there being whole yolks.) Season with salt and pepper.

Add the green onions and jalapenos and simmer until the jalapenos are tender and the egg has formed a semi-solid. Sort of like a jell-o or a pudding consistency, where the egg can be cut with a spoon and eaten right out of the pan.

More water if you want it more soupy, less water if you want it to be a delicate egg dish. You can add some bouillon or a few drops of sesame oil to the broth, but it tastes good with just the eggs and green onions as the base flavor.

If you don’t have green onions or jalapenos, you can flavor the eggs with a little crushed red pepper, garlic powder, sesame oil, and salt and pepper. Maybe a small splash of soy sauce if you like.

FLOUR SOUP

flour
water

Whatever anyone says, flour and water is all that’s needed to make noodles. And if you don’t have a pasta press or the willingness to roll out and cut noodles, you can make a dough that you spoon or tear directly into your soup broth.

You mix flour with water in a bowl to a consistency of cooked oatmeal–not watery and not solid, but thick enough that if you scoop some up with a spoon it won’t immediately plop off,

I like to add salt, garlic powder, and paprika to my "dough" mix, as it will cook in the flavor, but you can leave it plain or add other flavors if you like.

You mix the "dough," cover it, and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes. This will cool it and give it a chance to thicken a bit.

When you’re ready to cook, you make a broth and add whatever vegetables and meat you’d like, then when it’s about 10 minutes from being done, you raise it to a soft boil and drop the dough in to cook, lowering the heat to a simmer once the dough is added.

I use a metal spoon and I keep my dough bits to about the size of my pinkie tip. If you drop in bigger bits you’ve got to cook them longer, or pea-sized bits cook shorter. You can tell the dough is cooked when you cut it in half and it’s no longer doughy in the middle and it doesn’t taste of flour (has kind of a translucence to it). You might have to experiment a bit, so if you want to cook a few pieces in a simmering broth to see how long it takes, it’s cool. Just put the rest of the dough back in the fridge until you’re ready.

Now, when adding the dough, I like to dip my spoon in the hot broth first, then I scoop the dough from the bowl a bit at a time, working from one edge inward (don’t scoop from the middle!).

Using a metal spoon–regular cutlery, nothing special–I try to aim for scooping about 1/3 of the spoons bowl. Like, not mounded, just a dip of the dough. And because the spoon is wet and hot, the dough will fall right off into the soup bloop.

I drop the dough into the bubbling soup a spoon at a time, making sure that the drops don’t touch each other and not stirring until the dough has a few seconds to add a skin around itself–you’re making soup, not lumpy gravy.

Once the dough is beginning to solidify, you can stir it down into the soup to free up the surface for more dough.

They’re not lovely perfect noodles–they’re like small spreading lumps–but if they’re thoroughly cooked they add a heartiness to a soup as chewy "noodles."

For my broth, I like fish bouillon, but you can use beef, chicken, or vegetable bouillon–whatever you like. If you’ve got leftover cooked meat you can chop that up and add it, same with canned clams and clam juice if you want a more seafood flavor. For vegetables I like spinach, kale, cabbage, zucchini, and bok choy, but depending on the flavor profile you’re going for you could add okra, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, potatoes, carrots, or peas, whatever you like. You can even use kimchi for a spicy "vinegary" kick.

I like a fish broth with a splash of soy sauce, crushed red pepper flakes, garlic powder, a little mirin, and then a few drops of sesame oil when the soup’s almost done.

Add the dough when the broth is boiling, then lower to a simmer until the "noodles" are thoroughly cooked.

You can eat the soup alone or with a side dish of white rice if you need it to go farther and be more filling.