Indian food, so exciting!

Aloo Gobi, prior to cooking.

Fixin a plate

Our friends are coming over for dinner tonight, and I am making Indian food in the crock pot. I LOVE crock pots. Also, Stephanie O'Dea from A Year of Slow Cooking is my idol and has inspired me to make my own blog. A crock pot is like a magical cauldron that you don't have to watch and amazingness comes out of it with little effort. It's witchcraft. And my sister gave me a cook book for Christmas called The Indian Slow Cooker which is actually written by Chicago resident Anupy Singla. One of the best things about living in the Lincoln Square/Albany Park area of Chicago is that you are not too far away from the shops on Devon Ave. It's the Little India of Chicago. I just love India. I went there about 4 and a half years ago and dream of returning one day. I sound hippy dippy talking about it, but for real, it is awesome. They just know how to cook. It doesn't hurt that everything that makes food tasty grows there on trees. And I've seen the trees! And they smell good too!

If you buy McCormick spices at the supermarket you might as well be throwing money in the toilet. You can get basic stuff on the cheap at ALDI and Trader Joe's, then get spices used in Mexican cuisine in baggies at most locally owned groceries in Chicago. And you can get pretty much any spices all at Indian grocery stores. Let's talk about what a RIP OFF spices can be. I'm just looking at Amazon, which has pretty cheap prices on most things. The cheapest they have on McCormick Turmeric powder is $3.57 per ounce if you get it through subscribe and save. I just looked at Peapod, and they have McCormick Turmeric for $3.35 per oz for a 2 oz bottle. At Patel Brothers, a small chain of Indian food stores which has a location on Devon Ave., you can get Turmeric Powder for $0.36 per ounce. If you are buying spices at national chains, I suggest you stop NOW. This is why I'm saying this. For years, I didn't cook for two reasons 1) recipes called for ingredients, including spices, which I felt were cost prohibitive 2) I didn't want to eat the same thing over and over again because I was cooking for one. If the cost of spices are getting in your way, I suggest you go to your local ethnic grocer or check out an online store. There are two in my links section. I picked up a lot of my produce at Fresh Farms International Market on Devon.

I'm making two dishes today. Let's break em down. Because one of our friends is veg (as Indians say) we are making meat-free dishes.

My poor cucumber

I had to throw away a cucumber that had gotten mushy. I knew I should have made a healthy cucumber salad instead of a ham sandwich last week. Also, I forgot to put it in the fridge. 75 cents down the drain. :(. Is there anything cool and useful I can do with a cucumber that is too squishy for eating?

Potato, Carrot, Celery Soup

Clean out the cupboard potato soup

You can't do much cheaper than potato soup. And on a really cold day, it's very comforting. I decided to throw in all of the things sitting in my fridge that needed to be used as well, including carrots, celery, mustard greens, turkey bacon and a little non-fat yogurt.
Here's the breakdown:
1 carrot $0.17
1 bag of Celery $0.60
2 potatoes $0.36
1/2 cup of Trader Joe's Organic Non-fat yogurt $0.40
1 bunch of mustard greens $1.01
4 slices of turkey bacon $0.40
1 onion $0.16
32 oz carton of Aldi Fit&Active chicken stock (used in the soup and to cook the mustard greens) $0.99
The total came to $4.09 and it made about 3 large servings. So, basically, my dinner was $1.36 + the cost of whatever olive oil I used to sauté the vegetables before pouring the broth in. I'm having the last of it for lunch today.
Possible ways of cutting down the cost of this meal would be to:
1. Make my own yogurt - I'm going to try it this weekend!
2. Make my own stock - I'm going to start saving vegetable pieces to make vegetable stock
3. Leave out the bacon - I just happened to have some in the fridge I didn't want to go to waste

Life Purr Unit: How much do my cats spend on food?

These guys need to get jobs

Of course, a crazy lady who obsesses over food costs would be a crazy cat lady, right? I haven't always been a crazy cat lady, I used to just love dogs. I still do, but at this time in my life, dogs = complicated. My kitties provide just as much love and affection as my dearly beloved cocker spaniel Chloe that I got when I was 15 and just died a few months ago with my mom by her side. She lived a very long life. That aside, cats are incredibly easy (especially when you have this litter box). Also, cats are really shy and aloof with strangers, so if you've never had a cat that was your own, you might just not understand.

Butler, our tuxedo cat, is dressed for the profession. Unfortunately he doesn't serve me,  I serve him. So it goes when your butler can't stand on two feet and doesn't have opposable thumbs.

Mixed Fruit Salad

Sometimes I have a craving for fruit salad, but the kind at the store is either prepackaged in weird syrup or juice and "fresh cut" salad is sold at an exorbitant price. Also, they usually have cantaloupes or melons in them, which I don't hate but I also don't prefer. I picked up a really cheap pineapple at Aldi, some grapes at Cermak Produce (one of Chicago's many great locally own markets, this was my first visit), as well as some kiwis and a lemon. This was the first time I ever cut a pineapple! It was easy. I also have a good knife. I should have followed this guy's advice better because I think I wasted a lot of fruit. Then I washed the grapes, plucked them from their stems, and peeled and sliced 4 kiwi. I tossed it all together in a bowl with the juice of one lemon to act as a preservative and give it a little tartness.

Here's the breakdown:
1 pineapple $1.22
4 kiwi $1.10
13.22 oz of grapes $5.31
1 lemon $0.19

Once I finished, I put the mixed fruit salad in 20 oz containers. I filled up three, and plan on eating them for breakfast for the next few days. They came out to be about $2.61 per container. You could probably get something like this for just a dollar more at one of Chicago's locally owned produce markets, but you'll pay twice as much for this at a major chain store. I just hope the fruit lasts and doesn't get slimy before I can gobble it down! Though this is a very healthy breakfast, it's only going to be a special treat for me. I can do way better on price by eating a banana and having a bowl of cereal.

Turkey bacon wrapped breadsticks with parmesan cheese

Bacon Parmesan bread sticks prior to baking.

We were trying to plan something easy to take to our friends' annual New Year's Day party, and my bf suggested that we make something that his ex-coworker made for work gatherings which were always devoured instantaneously. He recommended a slight variation on this and I picked up three packages of soft Pillsbury bread sticks instead of hard bread sticks. Also, we have friends that don't eat pork so we decided to make them with turkey bacon instead.

I found the prices on the Pillsbury bread sticks to be pretty atrocious, however, there was a 75 cents off coupon if I bought 3. The list price on these guys was 3.59 for an 11 oz package of 12 bread sticks, so with the 75 cents off and tax added on, my bill came to $10.26 at Jewel for 3. ALDI doesn't carry bread stick dough. Sigh. And Jewel doesn't even have it's own knock off brand. However, I bet you could do an interesting variation on this using tubed crescent rolls which are more readily available on the cheap. ALDI has a pretty decent turkey bacon in their Fit & Active® line of "healthy" foods available for 1.99 for a 12 oz package, and they have Parmesan cheese for $1.99 for a 5 oz tub.

Cost breakdown including tax after the jump.

Make it, or buy it? Baked Potato Chips

One of the recurring columns on this site will be called "Make it, or buy it?" where I analyze whether a product is worth making or buying at the store.

Things I will consider when doing this analysis are:
1. How much are the raw materials?
2. How long does it take me to make it?
3. If it took a long time to make it, was it at least fun to make it?
4. Does it taste like crap?

One thing that I wish I could take into consideration was the energy used to operate things like microwaves, crock pots, ovens, toasters, hand mixers, blenders, the list goes on and on and on. Also, how much water will I use washing everything? Unfortunately for this project, but fortunate for me, I have an all utilities included apartment, so I really am not sure how to analyze those costs. If you know, let me know.

A couple of years ago, Slate ran a really great article by Jennifer Reese whether it is worth making something from scratch or buying it at the store. Also, I picked up a great book from the library (libraries are great for tightwads) called Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It by Karen Solomon (who looks like a very hip nerdy lady). It gives you all kinds of recipes for doing the things that we only thought machines or people of yore could accomplish. I'm going to try and go through as much of this book as I care to, and see how things pan out. Out of respect for Karen, who I don't even know, but already respect, I won't be publishing the recipes, only doing my own science project on them. Because I think my mom did most of my science projects for me growing up (please don't retract my first place ribbon from 1989!), this is my chance to shine. Hypothesis: If you shake heavy cream long enough, can you make butter? Conclusion: I'm really not sure, and I don't think I can shake a jar for 30 minutes straight unless I have a jar shaking party with my nearest and dearest friends.

Here's one thing I tried from the book recently, homemade baked potato chips.