Pantone Cookies

Last week, I surprised my friend Holly with a big batch of these little guys for her birthday:

They were a huge hit, especially with all the graphic designers at Holly’s and my office (come on, who can say no to treats as colorful as these?!) Rather than just showing you the photos of these darling cookies, I’ve included a tutorial so you can make your very own batch of edible Pantones for the designer or color nut in your life. Also, check out this post from Kim Creative Star, where I originally got the idea for the cookies. She has some great suggestions on presentation.

These are a great weekend project. Not just because they take a lot of time to put together, but because lots of steps require you to walk away for a little while, then come back and do something else. Whenever I have a recipe like that, I use the down time to get odds and ends done around the house or run out and take care of a quick errand. My mother helped me out with these during a visit a few weeks ago. It took us most of a Saturday to get them finished (partially because we made over a hundred of them…), but we had an absolute blast making them!

We made the cookies about three weeks before they were to be served and stored the frosted cookies in air-tight freezer containers. Two days before, I got the cookies out to thaw them and write the name and numbers on. They took very well to the freezing and thawing – I wasn’t able to detect a difference in taste or texture.

To start, you’ll need a batch of sugar cookie dough you can roll out and cut. You can use my decorator sugar cookie recipe (which made about 10 dozen of this rectangular-shaped cookie) or any sugar cookie recipe of your own. Store bought dough that is meant to be rolled out (not break and bake or slice and bake style) will work as well.

The icing we used on these cookies is royal icing. We selected it because of the control you have over where it goes on the cookie and the seamless, matte finish it has when it dries. You can mix up any color you’d like for the cookies. We did about three cookies per each color we mixed up. For us, it was easiest to start with a very light hue, then add in more color to make it darker and darker as we colored more cookies. Any royal icing recipe should work pretty well. We used the royal icing recipe from Joy of Baking

(Nearly) Everything you'll need to make the cookies (large bowl not pictured)

What you’ll need:

Rolling pin

Pasta roller, pizza wheel or rectangular cookie cutter

Baking sheets and cooling racks

Large bowl with tight fitting lid or plastic cling wrap to cover

Small bathroom cups

Toothpicks

Food coloring

Black food marker

To make the cookies:

1. Roll out the dough into a large sheet 1/8” thick.
2. Using a pasta roller or pizza wheel, cut the dough into rectangles 1 ¾” wide and 2 ½” tall (note: our cookies were a bit crammed for writing space. If you’d like more space or bigger cookies, increase the size to 2 ¼” inches wide and 3” tall). We used a yardstick to measure and cut the strips. Provided it is the right size, a rectangular cookie cutter may also work.
3. Carefully transfer the cut dough onto cookie sheets and bake according to recipe instructions. Once the cookies are baked, allow them to cool on a rack for at least an hour.

To make the frosting:

1.  Mix up the icing according to your recipe in a large bowl. Transfer a third of it into a smaller dish and tightly cover the large bowl. Royal icing dries out quickly so it’s important to cover any you’re not using.
2. Leaving the icing its original white color, apply a rectangle to the bottom third of the cookie. Try to keep the borders as straight and a close to the edge of the cookie as possible). Repeat until all cookies have the partial frosting. Allow the icing to harden completely (at least 1 hour). Add any leftover icing back into the original container.
3. Place 1-2 tablespoons of royal icing into a small cup. Add in food coloring until desired hue is attained. Spread the icing on the remaining two thirds of the cookie, again keeping the borders as straight and close to the edge as possible. Allow to dry for at least one hour, or until hardened completely.
4. Once cookies have hardened completely, use an edible marker to write “PANTONE” across the bottom.  For a genuine Pantone look, you can use a color-matching guide to look up the numbers and write them on the cookie as well.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions!  Even better – share your photos here or on the Spoonful of Something Facebook page (don’t forget to “like” the page as well!) if you are so inclined to make a batch of your own. More pictures of the full batch of cookies available on the Facebook page as well.

30 Days Later

The month of my challenge has come and gone. I am at the finish line, less enthused about the end than I predicted I would be and feeling painfully aware of what hunger can do to a person’s body and soul.

I have gone from adoring food and cooking to dreading the thought of making dinner.  My kitchen went from a sanctuary of creativity to a site for irritation and insufficiency. My soul went from craving culinary education and inspiration to just wanting to understand one iota of America’s food system.

I could see the effects of my changed diet very quickly. I didn’t have as much energy. Because of that, my exercise routine took a hit. I became careless about what I was putting in my body; I just cared that I was managing to feed myself. I think I ingested more yellow 5, blue 1 and red 30 dyes in the past month than I did during all of elementary school combined. When I didn’t have the energy to plan meals, I let it slip; food went to waste and I made careless choices. I usually chose comfort foods so I could take solace in at least some part of my meal. Social functions were almost out of the question entirely. It felt incredibly isolating to feel like I couldn’t go out and be amongst friends at a meal. I felt shame when I could no longer bring people over to enjoy a dinner. Not only was there hardly enough to share, I didn’t want people to see me cooking and eating the way I was.

Several people have expressed their relief at the conclusion of the challenge. Many said they had felt bad over the past month eating or cooking certain things in front of me they knew I couldn’t afford. Others wanted me to be back to a more active social life, which included the ability to have a meal or drinks out. Some were concerned for my health and were happy that I’d be able to take better care of myself again. These are many of the same people who have been extraordinarily supportive of me over the past month. Don’t get me wrong, I’m appreciative of their honesty but on some level it makes the conclusion of the challenge seem incredibly unfair. I get to flip a switch and go back to life as I knew it 30 days ago. That change is at such odds with reality, it hurts.

What am I taking away from the Hunger Challenge? Three important lessons:

No judgment.

Food, clothing and shelter are the basic needs of human life. How you choose to feed, clothe and shelter yourselves and your family are personal choices. If I want to fill up a shopping cart full of ramen noodles and Cheetos and call it dinner for the night, I can. If I want to make a dinner out of Cap’n Crunch and Ben and Jerry’s, I can (And, for the record, totally have). My mother always told me “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.” Have I ever looked into someone else’s shopping cart and thought, “I’d never buy that!” Of course I have. But the next time I find my eyes wandering to someone else’s cart, food stamp recipient or not, I’ll think twice before I start examining their purchases. I hope you’ll do the same. If you won’t, then have the decency to keep your thoughts to yourself. No one deserves to be publically chastised for what they choose to eat. Ever.

(Amateur Gourmet recently had an excellent, brief article on a similar topic. I highly recommend it: http://www.amateurgourmet.com/2011/10/lets-not-be-paternalistic-about-food.html#more-6290)

There’s no simple answer to the question “Can you afford to eat healthy on food stamps?”

After researching the actual prices of certain fruits and vegetables (and filling in from my experience over the last month), buying fresh produce or produce at all certainly is possible on a highly restrictive budget. But what about that can of chicken noodle soup? How far up the price chain do you have to go before it’s void of a laundry list of additives? In half the stores I visited, otherwise identical loaves of white and wheat bread were being sold at significantly different prices. When pennies, nickels and dimes matter, would you choose to buy milk, or pay a small fraction of the price for soda? Is your motivation to buy fresh vegetable strong enough when canned varieties are (or even just appear to be) cheaper and require a much shorter prep time? Everyone is free to make their own choices on exactly what they eat, but the almighty dollar sure does have a way of shaping those choices, especially when dollars are scarce.

If you are fortunate enough to have enough, share what you can.

The operations of so many food banks and soup kitchens run on the generosity of both companies and individuals. If the economy over the last five years has proven only one point, it is that anyone, no matter their class status, race, religion or age, can go from having everything to nothing in the blink of an eye. Chances are you won’t wake up tomorrow in need of a food bank’s services. But someone will. Tomorrow I go back to a regular grocery budget just as swiftly as I began to restrict it. There’s no switch to flip that turns off hunger. How can you help? You can donate food. You can give your time. You can provide funds. You can understand how the food banks in your area provide assistance. You can start a conversation. In whatever way you desire or are able to help, it can make a difference.

For me, helping will mean more frequent donations to my local food banks, especially in the seasons when I can donate excess from my own vegetable garden. It will mean keeping accessibility in mind when I decide what foods I feature and recipes I post on this blog. It will mean when I teach beginning cooking classes, to better educate my students on the true cost of certain foods and how to shop and choose ingredients intelligently. It will mean giving some of my own time with efforts to mitigate hunger in my community.

I hope you have gained something by going on this journey with me. If you’re interested, I encourage you to take on a Hunger Challenge of your own. If you are able, I urge you to support your local food banks. Most importantly, if you are reading this, I thank you for having the curiosity, interest and support to see this challenge through. Regardless of your opinion on food, the challenge or hunger itself I hope these posts have helped you to see this issue from a new perspective. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll charge one of you to help make a difference.

Is Eating Fresh Really More Expensive?

I'm headed into the final five days of the hunger challenge. I'd been giving a lot of thought to how I'd handled the challenge: the types of food I'd been eating, the changes I'd made to my diet and lifestyle and I started to feel disappointed I didn't work harder to keep more of my own cooking and fresh foods at the forefront. I felt as if I'd tried harder I could have made my results more meaningful for other people. I could have written more recipes or talked about more resources or ways to budget and plan.

Then I realized that's the point of the challenge. Anyone in this situation day in and day out is surely faced with the same (and probably more) frustrations and fewer resources than I have been in the past month. It gets so easy to reach for the pre-packaged option that's cheap and quick. The first two weeks I showed you exactly what I was purchasing and planning on cooking. Last week my shopping happened at a time that I was unable to photograph the purchase. This week I decided to make a menu using almost exclusively what was already in my kitchen so I could spend almost half my budget (just $14.00) on food to bring to a friend's get-together. Did I make a poor decision with the money I had to spend? Some may say so. I say I was tired of turning down invitations from friends because I did not have the money to spend buying meals out or felt like I couldn't provide a contribution for a meal at their house. To be perfectly honest, my shopping has involved less and less fresh food as the month has gone on.

As the challenge winds down, I am continuing to gather information and research so I can provide others with some insight into the strategy of shopping on a budget. One area that has still felt fairly gray to me this entire month is the price of fruits and vegetables. When I started the challenge, I was asked several times if I thought I could afford fresh produce on this budget. My naive response was "Well, I know I can at least afford bananas!" knowing them to be one of the cheapest sources of fresh fruit.

In my research, I came across a study from the USDA on the prices of fruits and vegetables. I wish I'd found it sooner. It doesn't give you all the answers, but it does help spell out how much a particular fruit or veggie costs in various forms (fresh, frozen, canned or dried) and how much you'll end up paying per cup of actual food. For example, an ear of corn may cost .50, a can .67 and a frozen bag for $1.85, but which one is cheapest? Cans and bags are relatively easy to compare, but with most fresh produce there is at least some refuse (the inedible part that gets thrown away, i.e. banana peels and apple cores).

The USDA study looks at food prices in households across the US for 2008. Foods were purchased at various times of the year and from various retailers. They examined foods in fresh, canned, dried, frozen and juiced forms. They present their data in two ways: the first representing the actual price per pound and the second representing the cost per usable cup.

What did they find? You can see for yourself by looking at the full report here or the summarized findings here. Here's my Reader's Digest version and run down of the winner's circle.

First, not all produce is created equal. Some items see very little price difference from fresh to canned to frozen, others see major differences in price. Bottom line? Pound for pound it's cheaper to feed yourself Ramen noodles and canned soups. There's plenty of research and reasoning to point out the flaws in that diet plan, but integrating produce has to be a conscious choice. And it is possible to keep good nutrition in mind, even on a limited budget.

Cheapest Sources of Fresh Fruit (per usable cup of fruit)

1. Watermelon (17 cents)
2. Bananas (21 cents)
3. Apples (28 cents)
4. Navel oranges (34 cents)
5. Pears (42 cents)

Cheapest Sources of Fresh Vegetables (per usable cup of veggies)

1. Potatoes (19 cents)
2. Carrots (25 cents)
3. Lettuce (26 cents)
4. Cabbage (27 cents)
5. Onions (28 cents)

Cheapest Sources of Canned Vegetables (per usable cup of veggies)

1. Sauerkraut/cabbage (30 cents)
2. Carrots (34 cents)
3. Green beans (34 cents)
4. Corn (37 cents)
5. Turnip greens (40 cents)

Cheapest Sources of Frozen Vegetables (per usable cup of veggies)

1. Green beans (37 cents)
2. Carrots (39 cents)
3. French fries/potatoes (41 cents)
4. Kale (48 cents)
5. Green peas (51 cents)

Keep in mind, these are based on average prices over a year. Want a way to beat the average every time? Focus on what's in season. Grapefruit in September cost a heck of a lot more than they will in January. Use this Seasonal Ingredient Map from Epicurious or check out the selection at your local farmers market to find out what's in season near you.

Whose Groceries are Cheapest?

One thing that I’ve had a bit of trouble with during this challenge has been believing I am getting the best value for what I’m buying. Am I shopping at the cheapest store? Is the sale I’m taking advantage of providing a big enough savings to make a difference?  When you’re on a limited budget, a 10-cent difference in price on a handful of items starts to add up very quickly. I decided to settle the issue by surveying four different grocery stores for their prices on just over 40 pantry “staple” items.

I started at Target. I sort of assumed Target would be most expensive given that they don’t focus on grocery and don’t have a bottom-dollar brand. I love Target’s store brand for lots of household items, but I hadn’t had much experience with the quality or value of their “Market Fresh” store brand for food items. While I was browsing shelves for price tags I overheard a group of college students referring to the store as “the poor man’s Wal-Mart.” I couldn’t help but agree with the stereotype, believing when I got to Wal-Mart later on that afternoon I would find prices significantly cheaper than what I was finding on the shelves at Target.

After Target, I headed to Marsh. Those who live outside of Indiana may not be familiar with this particular grocery store. It used to be an Indiana-owned chain, but now has ownership and locations outside of the state. However, they still brand themselves “Indiana’s Hometown Grocer.” At Marsh, I scoured the shelves looking especially for items bearing their house brand’s name, “Food Club,” or their value brand’s label, “Value Time.” I was able to find versions of most items under the store brand umbrella, but not quite all.

Next, I drove across town to research food prices at Wal-Mart. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never gone to the Wal-Mart here for groceries. Part of the reason is that it’s out of the way from where I live. The other, and larger, consideration is a personal preference to support other retailers before Wal-Mart. The first thing I noticed was that the selection was massive and the store had a crowd to match. At Wal-Mart more than any other store, the value was substantially greater when you purchased a larger size. Most know the same company owns both Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart, but I wasn’t aware that the idea of savings through bulk sizes was integrated so thoroughly into Wal-Mart’s inventory as well. I also noticed the prices of their Great Value brand seemed to consistently be at least ten cents lower than prices I had recorded from Marsh or Target. I was quickly becoming convinced that everything I’d heard about Wal-Mart was true: Love or hate them, their price point is compelling, especially when your budget is restrictive.

My last stop after two hours of playing Nancy Drew in aisles of bread and peanut butter was at Kroger. Kroger is the mainstream grocery store I did most of my pre-challenge shopping at, though my shopping is typically split between a few different places (a luxury I have given up the last few weeks to save as much money as possible).  Like Marsh, Kroger has both a standard generic house brand (Kroger brand), and a more economical option on some items – their Value brand. Many staple items I was shopping for were available in a Value brand version.

Once I’d finished my rounds at all four stores, I went back to the list to compare prices across the board. I went in with a list of 42 items, but in the final list I’ll be comparing there are only 29 items. This is to ensure an apples-to-apples comparison across all stores.

And the winners are…

Wal-Mart came in as the cheapest with its cart totaling $53.17. Kroger, however, came in right on their heels with a total of $53.22, only a nickel more than the cost of the Wal-Mart cart. Most surprising to me was third place being awarded to Target with a total cart price of $61.83: notably more expensive than the first two retailers, but surprisingly cheaper than another “grocery” store option. Marsh came in fourth with a cart totaling $65.71, a difference of more than twelve dollars above both Wal-Mart and Kroger. Additionally, the extra $12 spent represents more than a third of my weekly allowance on a food stamp budget.

Take a look at the chart below if you’re interested in the specifics or to see how retailers compare on particular items.

Regardless of where you’re shopping, here are some general tips on making sure your dollar is stretching as far as possible:

• For staple items, choose a retailer you know to be generally less expensive. Sale prices can be alluring and provide great deals on the right items, but if you have enough general pantry-stocking to do, be sure you’re not being swayed into paying more for the basics by brightly colored sale tags.

•  Take a look at the various sizes of a particular item on your list and determine the optimum balance of your budget, what you’ll reasonably use and the difference is price per ounce. Sometimes larger sizes garner great savings, other times not so much. If you know you only drink a couple glasses of milk a week, any savings you get by buying a whole gallon may be nullified if the milk sours before you’re able to use it. On the other hand, if you’ll use a whole pound of cheese within a couple of weeks, it may be worth the extra dollars now (if you can spare them) rather than paying more in the long run for two smaller package.

• Consider whether or not an item will freeze well. If you can freeze it, you don’t have to worry about some going bad before it can be used up. Meat, fish and bread all freeze very well. Some vegetables like corn or green beans also do well, but others, especially those with high water content aren’t as ideal for freezing (think celery or tomatoes). In general, dairy products are better left refrigerated rather than frozen.

• Make a plan, write it down and consider plan B. I touted the virtues of “the plan” the first week of the challenge and I do believe it’s a great strategy to shop with. When you’re deciding at home what to pick up at the store (use the contents of your cabinet, fridge and weekly ads as resources) think about potential substitutes in case a particular item you’ve placed on your list ends up being unavailable or too expensive.

• Glance over the weekly ads before heading to the store. The longer I do this challenge, the less I build my grocery lists living and dying by sale prices, but they are worth consideration. Think about a few things to determine whether or not it’s worth it. How much are you saving over regular prices? Do you have to go further or to multiple places to get these savings? Are there acceptable substitutes that are cheaper?

What are your experiences finding the best prices when you shop? Do you think you have a rock-solid strategy or do you feel like you’re on shaky ground every time you have to make a plan? I’d love to hear  your thoughts and experiences!

Why I don't like to cook (for the time being...)

Confession...

I have eaten more cereal and peanut butter sandwiches in the last week than I did my entire first semester of college. 

Why?

Because they are cheap. And they are oh so quickly prepared. And they're cheap. Also, they're sort of a comfort food. 

I am a little disappointed in myself that I've gotten to a point where I do not care to cook. But I'll be honest, while the nutritional value may suck (especially if I'm eating generic Froot Loops) it's so cheap and easy it's hard to say no. It's the food stamp alternative to take out. Long day at work? Starving when you get home? Just don't want to think about getting the food to the table? Slap some peanut butter on a slice of bread and call it dinner. 

I finally worked up the motivation to cook a real meal tonight. It's a breakfast casserole that I'll throw in the oven in the morning and eat through the rest of the week. That's the first time I've cooked since Saturday. I go several days without cooking occasionally, but in the meantime I'm usually eating off of home cooked leftovers rather than convenient store-bought items.

Here's another thing to consider. How much does it cost to eat a bowl of cereal or peanut butter sandwich?

Right now I buy my cereal for 99 cents for a 7 or 12 cup box (depending on if I want the sugary or non-sugary cereal) and my milk for around 2.75 a gallon. Let's say I use 2 cups of more expensive (sugary) cereal with a cup and a half of milk. The cereal would cost about 28 cents and the milk 25, bringing the total for the meal to 53 cents a serving. 

A peanut butter sandwich is costing me around a dime for the two slices of bread and 23 cents for 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, bringing the grand total to less than 35 cents a sandwich. You could have three peanut butter sandwiches for less than one dollar.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the daily breakdown of my budget. Yes, I get 4.46 a day or 31.22 cents per week. But what does that really mean? Specifically, once I figure out how much a recipe cost per serving, how do I know if that was "cheap"? I know I was able to buy all the ingredients I needed on a budget, but how do I know I didn't waste my money by spending too much on the recipe?

I'm still working on breaking this down, but there are a couple different ways you could look at it. Assuming you eat three times a day, you can break it down by meal size or do an even split into thirds. Separating by meal size would give me about 75 cents on breakfast, 1.50 on lunch and just under 2.25 for dinner. If I split them all evenly, I'd have about 1.50 per meal. 

This may help explain some of my hesitance to cook all of my meals. If I make a dinner that's $2.25 a serving, that means I have to eat a smaller portion for lunch if I'm to keep the rest of the day's cost balanced. Most of my meals have been, but I'm not sure they've been down to the $1.50 range. Furthermore, what about snacks? I know I don't fare well if I go without a mid-morning or late afternoon snack. With those accounted for, your daily average pre meal ends up closer to $1.25 per day. 

Instead of thinking of the food stamp challenge as X dollars per week, try to think of it as $1.50 per meal. Changing how I crunch the numbers has given me a much better starting point for creating recipes that are cheap enough to be made with food stamps. I'm excited to share them with you in the coming weeks!

Shopping the Ads and a Trip to Kroger

Today kicks off week three of the hunger challenge. At this point, the new budget is feeling more routine. Unlike the first week, I felt like I was able to stray from the plan without fearing I'd run out of food. Part of this was due to leftovers from week one, but I think it was mostly because I was a bit more savvy with things I bought that would last for more meals with less cooking. Namely, peanut butter, honey and a loaf of bread.

Rather than talk you through what my grocery haul for the week shall be, I decided to film my shopping trip to give you a different view of how it all goes down. This week's strategy was focused on maximizing the savings from the weekly store ad.

A few things to note when you're going about your grocery shopping this way:

1. Know the rules. Do you have to buy 5 to get the 5 for $6 price? Or can you buy one and still take advantage of the savings?
2. Have a B plan. You never know when something will be sold out or the sale will have changed, so make sure you can be flexible. If a third of your meals for the week depend on one item being available, think about alternatives before you go to the store.
3. Make a plan that's under budget. If you find yourself having to make an unexpected substitution mid-trip the alternative may slightly increase your grocery bill. Leave a little bit of wiggle room so it won't break the bank if you have to change your plan.
4. Don't loose sight of non-sale items. Often times a generic brand is still cheaper than a name brand on sale. Browse the products around the sale item you're after to ensure you really are getting the best deal. 

Do any of you have other tips on saving money and shopping smart when you're using the weekly store ads as part of your strategy? Share them if you've got them!

Here's how my trip to the store went this week. I think I had violations of rules 1, 2, 3 and 4. And I overstated my budget by a penny.

I suppose Pro Tip #5 should be don't do your grocery shopping in the middle of the night...

On What Food Stamps Buy and Cooking for One

Welcome to week two of the hunger challenge! Here's what my fridge is stocked with this week:

(from left): Apples, celery, broccoli, red peppers, peanut butter, milk, eggs,
butter, bacon, cheddar cheese, coffee, corn flakes, spaghetti, hot chocolate,
cream of chicken soup, cornbread mix and brown rice.

Everything pictured above (and everything I'm eating throughout this challenge) are things that I would be able to buy if I were paying with food stamps. So what can you buy on food stamps? Most food items are fair game, including fruits and vegetables, milk, cereal, yogurt, meat, frozen foods, etc. Even cookies, candy, snack crackers, chips and soft drinks are eligible. "Is it food? Then it's covered." is a good rule of thumb until you get to ready-to-eat food. If it's something you're eating in the grocery store or a hot food item, it's not allowed. No rotisserie chickens or soup from the salad bar. Alcohol of any kind is also out. Energy drinks are ok as long as there is a nutrition facts label on it. If it sports a supplement facts label, it's not considered a food item.

You can see while there are restrictions, there is room for choice. Generally, it's more expensive to purchase fresher, healthier foods than their processed counterparts, but there is opportunity to strike a balance if you're thrifty enough with your choices. However, I'm not yet ready to make any claims that I'm eating as nutritionally as I was before. That determination will come in once the month is complete and I can see my temporary diet in a bigger picture.

For the record, I'm following this challenge as if the cash I am using is a food stamp card. I am only buying items that would be eligible for purchase with food stamps, not eating out and not purchasing any alcohol.

I think the hardest part of this whole thing is that I'm cooking more or less for just one person. Economies of scale in the kitchen make larger recipes potentially more cost effective, especially when you're using ingredients you have to buy a minimum amount of. For example, bacon is on sale for $2.50 for a 1 pound package. I have to buy the whole package to get the sale price, but I only need half of it. Sure, I can freeze the other half for later use, but I had to spend $1.25 extra at that moment in time to get the bacon in the first place.

Now, I could take on this situation a la Steve Martin in Father of the Bride, but on account of not wanting to end up in jail, I pay for the entire package of bacon. However, when you're on a budget that is so tight, not having that $1.25 right then can make a big difference in what you're able to buy. Right now, $1.25 is more than I've paid for a can of beans, a loaf of bread or a box of cereal.

The same goes when you buy from bulk. I buy a lot of spices from bulk because it's cheaper for how much I need. I don't want to buy an entire jar of celery seed because the 1/2 teaspoon I need for this recipe is probably the only celery seed I'll need for six months. Why spend $5 when I can spend 5 cents and get the actual amount I need? See, bulk bins are great, right?! Great for some things. The half cup of flour I bought from bulk last week only cost me 15 cents. A 5 pound bag costs less than two dollars. At that rate, buying a bag's worth of flour from bulk would cost me around $5.62, almost triple what it would cost me to buy an equivalent 5 lb. bag.

So what does that mean for how I'm eating? It means my meals are repetitive. I make a casserole that serves 8, because it costs less per serving than making one that serves 4. Even if I freeze half of it, that's still 4 servings of the same casserole that I'm chowing down on day after day. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful to have the casserole at all. But it's no wonder cooking isn't doing it for me so much these days. To help combat that, I'm trying to find creative ways to use leftover meals or ingredients. I've come up with  few so far and am excited to share them with you at the end of the month?

What are your ideas on using up leftovers? Any suggestions on reincarnating ingredients from the night before into the next night's dinner? Share them if you've got them!

Hunger Challenge 2011, One Week Down

For those just tuning in to my posts on the Hunger Challenge, here's the Reader's Digest version of what's going on:

For a month, I am eating on a budget of $4.46 per day ($31.22 per week), roughly the same budget a person in Bloomington, Indiana receiving food stamps would have to work with. Why am I doing this? Two main reasons: 1. To attempt to gain a tiny understanding of what it's like to eat on such a limited budget. 2. To force my culinary skills out of their comfort zone, make this budget work, and in turn teach others how cooking on a restrictive budget can happen for them.

I'm just over one week in. Obviously, this isn't an easy task (nor did I expect it to be), but I have never had such feelings of desperate attachment to things in my refrigerator. I've been trying to keep my eating relatively normal for how my cooking and meals usually run. Over the weekend I get some ideas for what I'd like to cook, check the fridge and pantry for what is already on hand, make a menu and then head to the store for a list of remaining ingredients. Invariably, this plan will change throughout the week. Worked late one night, picked up takeout on the way home. Had colleagues in from out of town, went out for dinner with them. Just didn't feel like cooking much so I whipped up some quick pasta instead of the meal I'd planned. Those days of tossing the plan are so over. For my time on this challenge, at least, my menu is my lifeline. That's how I know when I look in the fridge and see leftover chili and ketchup, I know I've got a plan for how to eat the rest of the week.

If I didn't already know how to cook, this would feel impossible. While shopping both this week and last, I had to do some last minute ingredient substitutions because of unexpected prices or lack of stock in the grocery store. If I wasn't able to do that on the spot, a skill I only have because of copious amounts of time spent in the kitchen and with my nose in cookbooks, I would have panicked. I would have ditched the recipe and reached instead for something I knew how the heck to make and had all the ingredients for or even something that I knew I could add just milk or water to for a meal.

This week's meal line up went a little something like this:

• Chili and cornbread kicked off the week. Easy and comforting, this wasn't much of a departure from how I was used to these turning out. Though I did make some substitutions to keep the chili cheaper, they were unnoticeable in the finished product. 
• Next up were quesadillas. I'd wished I'd had more protein, but the peppers I had to use were great, so I didn't mind much. 
• Then came the zucchini and corn pancakes. I had to alter the recipe because of a serious lack of flour and ended up with cakes that felt undercooked because there was so little flour to balance the eggs. Perfectly edible, but not terribly enjoyable. 
• Then the pasta I meant to toss in olive oil, but realized I had next to no olive oil left for the week. I made it work, but was also much hungrier than usual with the cumulative effect of repeated 1400 calorie days that I wolfed down the entire thing, accidentally eating what was meant to be tomorrow's lunch. 
• Then there was the lunch when all I ate was carrots. See what I mean by panic setting in when I stray from the plan?

Rather than continuing to post recipes as I go along, I'll be posting recipes the week after this challenge concludes so they are a better balance of low cost, little prep time and excellent taste and can hopefully be more useful to more people. 

I'm heading into week two with some things on the menu that I'd normally be excited to make (Mom's broccoli and rice casserole), but cooking is beginning to excite me less and less. Nervous that if something goes wrong, I'll have wasted precious ingredients that I really, really needed. Feeling that if I have a craving, I can't try to ignore it, I have to. There's no margin for error when I'm in the store shopping and no room for exceptions when I'm cooking my meals. Sure does put a whole new perspective on cooking.

A couple of words on what it's like going to the grocery store:

Before I go shopping, I've been checking ads to determine where I will shop for the week. I make a list before I go, mark prices where I know them and estimate them when I don't. When I walk through the aisles there's a constant number in my head. "30.25," "29.00," "27.50" as I count down the amount of dollars I'm left to work with on any given trip.

But when I get to the checkout, I pay with cash and seem no different than most others in the store to the cashier or patron in line behind me. However, for those actually on food stamps it's not cash they pay with, it's a preloaded debit card that effectively identifies them as a food stamp recipient. When I hand over my cash, there's no judgement from anyone around (at least, not on how I'm paying for my purchase). When someone is actually on food stamps, there's no guarantee the cashier or person in line behind you won't make a snap judgement or utter a condescending remark. It's a part of the food stamp reality I am luck enough not to have to learn firsthand in this simulated exercise. There's an excellent post by food blogger Beth Sheresh on her blog kitchenMage about what she remembers from her days on food stamps and why this challenge isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be. I found it quite impactful and helpful as I continue to gear up for the coming weeks of the challenge (especially this post on how to better make the challenge more like reality). What fantastic perspective this woman has and how grateful I am that she shared it. I encourage you to read it.

Hunger Challenge Recipes: Quesadillas

The hunger challenge keeps rolling on. There's not a whole lot I truly feel is missing from my diet, but the requirement to stick to whatever plan I created during the week creates a small sense of panic everytime I feel my stomach growl or someone else is helping me eat my food. Snacking really can't happen right now. If I eat between meals I'm eating something meant for a meal. I don't normally do a ton of snacking, but I'm learning I do enough that it makes a difference when it can't happen.

I miss tea. And I miss butter.

Despite my culinary longings, there are a couple of non-chili dishes I've whipped up this week. The quesadillas I made were good, though turned out to be less than ideal from a cost perspective. I wish I'd had some protein in there other than the cheese. I'd imagine if a can of black beans were tossed into the mix, they'd be a bit more on target. The zucchini and corn cakes hit the spot from both a taste perspective and price point. I found a couple of vendors at the farmers' market that had oversized zucchini being sold very inexpensively, so I snagged one for the cakes. It uses shredded zucchini so the baseball bat-sized ones that don't really taste good on their own work perfectly.

Stay tuned for the zucchini cake recipe. In the meantime, here's a recipe for relatively cost-effective and healthy quesadillas.

Hunger Challenge Quesadillas

Serves 3 as a meal, 6 as a side

20 minutes

Cost per serving, $1.76 as a meal, .88 as a side

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
• 2 large bell peppers, diced
• 1/2 cup shredded zucchini
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 6 burrito-sized flour tortillas
• 2 cups mozzarella cheese

1. Heat 1 Tbsp. of oil in a skillet over medium heat. Sautee the peppers and onion for 5 minutes.
2. Stir in zucchini and allow to cook for an additional two minutes.
3. Remove the skillet from heat and set set vegetables aside in a separate bowl.
4. Place the skillet back on the stove over medium heat with 1 tsp. of the remaining oil.
5. Prepare the quesadillas by adding just over 1/3 cup of the vegetable mix off center to one side of the tortilla. Sprinkle 1/3 cup of cheese over top of the veggies and around the veggies. Press the opposite side of the tortilla over to fold it in half.
6. Place the assembled quesadilla in the skillet and cook for 1-2 minutes. Flip and cook on the other side.
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for the remaining tortillas.

Tips and Tricks:

• Utilize a non-stick skillet, especially if you're limiting the amount of oil you're using. This can help prevent the tortilla from getting stuck or ripping.
• If the folding technique isn't working for you, you can use two tortillas laid out on top of one another and double the filling and cheese you use.
• You can use any combination of veggies you'd like! They should measure out to be between 2 and 2 1/2 cups total.  
• I served mine with plain yogurt and salsa on the side, adding about 30 cents to the cost of each meal serving.
• If you want to make this a more complete meal on its own or get a more filling portion from just one quesadilla, add in 1 can of drained black beans when you put the vegetables in a bowl. This will increase the cost to around 2.09 a meal serving, but because of the added calories and fiber, you wouldn't need to eat as much to feel full.

Three Days In with Chili and Cornbread

Three days in. Faring pretty well so far and quite proud that I have five whole cents left over for the week. Though, now, I quite literally do not have two dimes to rub together. Somewhere my mother and her repertoire of folksy expressions are having a good chuckle about that at my expense.

To kick off the Hunger Challenge, I cooked the cheapest thing I know how to make: chili. First, let me say that chili is no where near as cheap as I thought it was (not that I had a dollar amount in mind, but I balked at the extra quarter for chili beans versus black beans). Regardless of my inaccurate perceptions of the cost of chili, this meal can easily be made and served for around a dollar a serving. Now, I am well aware dried beans are a cheaper (and healthier, from the perspective of preservatives) than canned beans, but I was making the chili shortly after I was shopping, so soaking time for the beans wasn't an option. Food stamp recipient or not, sometime there just aren't enough hours in the day to make a recipe as nutritionally ideal as possible.

There's not much of a difference here from how I normally make the chili except that I use more beans and more TVP and use tomato juice instead of sauce and water. Marsh had a BOGO sale on their house brand canned tomato products, so going with the sauce and water was far cheaper than the juice. I needed the extra dollar I would have spent on more beans for something else on the grocery list. As far as the TVP goes, it was the last thing I bought this week and I literally bought all I could afford. All 27 cents worth (about 3/4 cup).

What is TVP you ask? TVP or Textured Vegetable Protein is essentially soy after the oil has been extracted. If that eeks you out a little, I'll let you know you've almost certainly eaten TVP at some point in your life. Imitation bacon bits? Flavored TVP. Some school cafeterias use it as a cheaper, safer (from food borne illnesses), leaner, and a longer-lasting alternative to meats. It comes in lots of shapes and sizes and is available in flavored varieties, though, some of the health advantages over meat go away with those additives. Bottom line, TVP is far cheaper pound-for-pound than any kind of ground meat I would put in chili.

The downside of this recipe is the sodium content. With all of the canned goods, it is through the roof for something that's a standard recipe for me. The best way to reduce the sodium content is to use dried beans in place of canned ones. In the interest of time, I opt to keep the canned beans. If you are concerned about sodium, be sure to make this during a week where you'll be making other recipes utilizing more fresh ingredients.

I am three days in to the challenge. And pretty much all I've eaten is chili. This was a gross oversight on my part. Normally I'm really good at planning meals and spreading out my leftovers, but I somehow with the distraction of a tight budget, I didn't notice I planned chili for Sunday dinner, Monday lunch, Monday dinner and Tuesday lunch. Suffice it to say while I love chili, I won't be terribly sad to see it exit the meal rotation for a little while. I can't fool anyone. I love fall. And fall means chili. And the weather these past few days has been terribly suitable for warm comfort food around the clock. I don't mind that chili has been on repeat.

Hunger Challenge Chili and Cornbread
Cost per serving, $1.07
Makes 6 servings (1 1/2 cup chili and 2 corn muffins)

2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 onion, diced
1 28 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 28 oz. can tomato sauce
1-4 cups water
3/4 cup TVP
1 regular can chili beans
1 regular can black beans, drained
1 regular can kidney beans. drained
2 1/2 Tbsp. chili powder
2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. coriander
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

1. In a large stockpot, heat the olive oil over medium heat.
2. Add in the garlic and onion and sauté for 3-5 minutes, or until onions start to become translucent.
3. Add in the tomatoes, tomato sauce, 1 cup of water and the TVP. Bring to a boil.
4. Reduce to a simmer and add in the beans and spices and stir to ensure it is well combined. Taste and adjust spices if necessary.
5. Add additional water if the chili is thicker than you would like, up to three cups.
6. Continue to simmer on low heat for at least 30 minutes.

Tips and Tricks

• If you add additional water at step 5, be sure to taste again and make sure the flavor is still right. Adding water may dilute the spices you've put in.
• Serve with Jiffy Cornbread made according to package directions. For extra crispy-edged cornbread, bake it in a greased casserole dish or (the best way) a cast iron skillet instead of muffin tins.
• Tomato sauce and water can be swapped out for tomato juice. 
• 1 packet of chili seasoning is a suitable substitute for the spice mixture listed here, if you have that option.