Lent on $2.50 a day

My friend Irene Groot decided to try the Lenten Experiment this year. "I recently sent off a couple of hundred dollars to a local soup kitchen," she e-mailed me this morning. "That's the money I saved taking up your challenge."

Irene lives in a pricey Northern California city, so it couldn't have been easy. "Actually, I'd heard a local reporter trying to survive on $4.00/day so I figured that was the California rate," she wrote. "What I found was that I kept my husband and myself well fed on fresh, wholesome, well-balanced meals for $2.50 - $3.00/person/day. I'd say the figure was closer to $2.50."

How did she do it?

The key to this was watching the grocery ads for three supermarkets not too far from our house. I generally used only two in any given week. Here are the sort of items I am buying on a regular basis on sale:

• Fuji apples $0.33/lb, oranges $0.33/lb, bananas $0.47/lb (all excellent quality)
• Ground beef $1.68/lb, chicken thigh + leg $0.47/lb, all other meats in the low $2.00/lb range
• Cabbage $0.33/lb
• Tuna $0.44 and I stocked up
• Cake and brownie mixes (Betty Crocker) were $0.69 and I stocked up
• Whole grain breads are regularly on sale for $1.69 - $2.50. I've snagged excellent fresh French bread for $0.99.
• Eggs go from $0.99 -$1.50.
• 10 lb. of potatoes for $0.99.
• Sliced American Cheese, 1pkg $0.99

Any other secrets, Irene?

Buy the major food groups on sale, and then figure out what recipe to use. If you go to the store with a recipe, I can't see how you could keep the prices as low as I did. Also, make soup from leftovers. Waste not, want not. It's been an interesting experiment.

Irene told me that she didn't use coupons or giant discounters like Wal-Mart or Costco. She just went to the stores closest to her home.

Irene and I did the Lenten Experiment to see if we could survive on a food-stamp budget. An increasing number of Americans have no choice.

The USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - the program that administers what used to be called food stamps - helped to feed some 27.6 million people in December 2007. That number rose to 31.8 million a year later, and last December it soared to nearly 39 million (you can see the figures here).

Feeding America, a network of over 200 food banks, now serves one million more people each week than it did in 2006, according to their "Hunger Report 2010." They estimate that "one in eight Americans now rely on Feeding America for food and groceries." And it doesn't look as if the recession is going to end anytime soon.

Thanks, Irene, for good ideas on how to save money at the grocery store - and on what to do with the money saved.

P.S. Irene e-mailed me after reading this post and looking at the illustration (an ad I pulled off a Safeway web page): "I didn't buy the $0.75 items. Too pricey. I'm watching for better deals and stocking up."

The Lenten Experiment Blog

In January of 2009 Mr Neff and I began a Lenten experiment. We wanted to see if we could eat adequate amounts of tasty and nutritious food on a food-stamp budget. We also wanted to see what we might learn from the attempt. I recorded the experiment in fifty almost-daily posts here on Lively Dust. Trouble is, it's awkward for anyone to go back and read them, because blogs always put newest posts first.

To make them available to Lively Dust readers in a more accessible format, I set up a new blog, The Lenten Experiment, and arranged the posts in chronological order from "1. Please advise us on our Lenten plans," written several weeks before Ash Wednesday, to "50. The Lenten Experiment: Analysis," written the week after Easter. In between are dozens of posts with recipes, menu plans, money-saving ideas, and cheap wine recommendations.

Ash Wednesday is less than a week away. Maybe after this year of continuing economic recession, Congressional stalemates, a monster earthquake, and paralyzing snowstorms, we don't need a spiritual discipline to remind us that we are dust and ashes. On the other hand, maybe the simple act of trimming our food expenses for 40 days would help those of us in affluent countries to be grateful for what we still have, and mindful of the needs of others.

The Lenten Experiment: analysis

Years ago I started keeping a list of every book I read, because when people ask me what I've been reading, I can never remember. Now I can at least say, "I'll get back to you."

When people ask me what we eat, I draw a similar blank. "Uh... let me look in the refrigerator and see if I can find any clues..." But now, thanks to the Lenten Experiment, I know what we've been eating recently.

I just went through nearly 50 Lenten posts and listed the meals I'd recorded. Subtracting meals out and our week off, I ended up with 31 meals to consider.

Here's what I found out.

About 2/3 of our meals were vegetarian (not vegan). The other 1/3 included small amounts of fish (salmon, tilapia, fish sticks), turkey sausage (in soup or stew), or--once--chicken. We followed St. Benedict's advice to eat no quadrupeds.

We ate a lot of Italian-inspired meals: risotto (twice), gnocchi (twice), whole wheat pizza, whole wheat spaghetti (twice with ratatouille, twice with vegetarian meatballs), lasagna (twice), and beer-flavored pasta & cheese that no self-respecting Italian would get near even though the pasta were gemelli.

We had cheese tamales once and variations on the tostada four times (once with beans, once with potatoes, twice with fish). Once we had omelets, with ratatouille.

Despite our daughter's claim that we eat nothing but lentil soup, we had lentil soup only once--but we did have black bean stew three times.

I baked lots of bread.

We ate lots of vegetables and fruit: artichokes, arugula, asparagus, avocado, beans (black, green, and white), beets, berries (blackberries at least seven times!), brussels sprouts, cabbage, garlic, lettuce, onions, oranges, peas, peppers, ratatouille (eggplant, zucchini, onion, tomatoes), spinach, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes.

And all that good food was only for main meals: we had more fruit with breakfast and lunch, and yogurt and flax seed and cereal and bread and peanut butter ...

It would have been difficult to eat meat or to buy fresh (instead of frozen) fish and maintain the thrifty budget. There was little room in the budget for junk food: most desserts were fruit, and snacks were usually peanuts or cashews.

I knew that a thrifty diet would be likely to increase carbs and decrease protein--not necessary a bad thing in a country where most people eat more protein than they need. I used whole grains whenever possible. Most of the bread I baked was whole wheat, sometimes mixed with oat flour and corn meal. Most of the pastas I used were whole wheat. The arborio rice for the risotto was white, as was the flour in the quiche crusts. I imagine masa harina--the tortilla ingredient--is also processed.

Fish. Cheese. Yogurt. Nuts. Beans. Vegetables. Fruit. Whole grains. If we keep this up, we can save enough money to go live in Azerbaijan, where people live to be 120. Though apparently their longevity requires more than a spartan but healthy diet--it also requires years of back-breaking labor. Not sure I'm ready for that.

Harrowing hell, and the hell of Alzheimer's

Holy Saturday--Jesus may have rested, but everyone in DuPage County is out buying groceries. Jesus may have been busy too. According to ancient tradition, he spent his down time in hell, or the world of the dead, or wherever Adam and Eve were hanging out in hopes that he'd show up. Orthodox icons show him lifting them out of the depths, offering them back the life they so badly messed up the first time.

I've been thinking a lot lately about a variation of hell--the living death that is Alzheimer's disease. My mother, my father, my mother-in-law, and my best friend's mother all died of it, so when I learned that two new novels feature a main character with Alzheimer's, and that both books tell the story from the point of view of the person with Alzheimer's--an almost impossible task, I thought--I felt driven to read them.

And then this week while I was writing a review of the two books, I heard from my friend Evelyn Bence, who has just posted "Receive My Memory" on the Image blog. I love her beautiful essay about visiting her dear friend John Breslin, SJ, a brilliant man whose memories are leaking away.

I'm not going to post my review here unless the magazine I'm writing for decides not to accept it. I'll just direct you to two realistic, emotionally shattering stories, both by first-time novelists in their thirties (how do they know so much about this disease?). If you like well-defined linear stories about women and their relationships--"hen lit"--I recommend Still Alice by Lisa Genova (Simon & Schuster: Pocket Books). If you prefer literary fiction that brings up philosophical questions about human nature and leaves you wondering what really happened, read The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey (Random House: Nan A. Talese). P.S., June 1: The full review is up at the Books & Culture web site, http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/columns/bookoftheweek/090601.html .

Both books are brilliant but draining: perfect for Lent and a great antidote to the Easter bunny. Alzheimer's disease is one of an infinite number of reasons why hell needs to be harrowed.

Holy Saturday is almost over. Soon the Easter candle will be lit.

The last Lenten meals

Just a note to finish the food log (="flog"):

To the left is Thursday's meal, a homemade corn tortilla topped with a package of fresh spinach lightly cooked in olive oil, tilapia (bought frozen at Aldi and cooked in microwave with butter and lime juice), Wednesday evening's leftover beans, 4 oz colby jack cheese ($1.29 for 8 oz at Aldi), and a mixture of diced fresh tomato and diced avocado (69 cents at Aldi). Dessert was fresh blackberries (TJ) and a dollop of yogurt.

Friday's meal is to the right: wild arugula salad ($1.99 at TJ, enough for six generous portions) with half a tomato and a slice of quiche made from the other half of the colby jack cheese, about 2/3 of a can of artichoke bottoms bought at Caputo's last month, 3 eggs, and 1/2 cup milk, on a crust made with 1 cup flour, a bit of salt, 1/4 cup olive oil, and a few drops of water. Dessert was blackberries and yogurt again.

Saturday's meal was identical to Friday's, except that dessert was a square of chocolate from a bar Mr Neff bought at Aldi last week.

And that's it for Lent 2009. Lively dust can wax philosophical again, or perhaps turn to book reviews. Though at some point I will have to figure out just what the Neffs eat. I've been wondering for years, and "whatever's in the refrigerator," though true, is not an entirely satisfactory answer.

The Lenten Experiment: final grocery bills

We did it!

The only shopping I'm going to do tomorrow will be a couple of items for Easter Sunday, and I've decided that doesn't count--it's a celebration and should not be part of the Lenten Experiment.

So, here's the bottom line for 5 1/2 weeks--39 days--from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday (tomorrow). Lent, of course, is a week longer than that, but we took a week off in March to celebrate our anniversary and visit our kids and grandkids.

Our aim: to spend an average of $11/day for the two of us and any guests we might have during Lent, which is roughly what the US Department of Agriculture thinks a thrifty older couple needs for a healthy diet (thrifty: $11.17; low cost: $14.36; moderate cost: $17.69; liberal: $21.23).

We had company three times during Lent and were company three times. We attended two soup suppers and provided all the bread for one of them. I believe I ate in a restaurant twice and Mr Neff did once. Maybe I've forgotten something, but that's what our records show. And we were maniacal about recording grocery purchases.

Our results: Counting only groceries, we spent an average of $9.39/day. (Compare with the $12.00/day we spent during the month before Lent, when we were already tightening our belts but not quite as seriously.) Counting groceries plus restaurant meals, our daily average during Lent was $10.02 (two of those restaurants were really cheap).

I hadn't planned to include wine in the calculations, since wine is an extra that is neither covered by food stamps nor included in the USDA's figures. Also, I didn't keep track of how much we drank during Lent (it wasn't much), and my wine purchases are mostly undrunk or given away. But just to find out how wine might affect the total, I added the amount we spent on Chianti and Dolcetto at Caputo's Cheese Shop March 7--$43.53 for seven bottles--and am hoping that's somewhat accurate. If so, counting groceries plus restaurant meals plus wine, our daily average was $11.13.

Next week I may analyze the Lenten Experiment a bit. What exactly did we eat? What did we miss? What did we learn? What will we be eating as soon as it's over? But for now, just one observation: The Lenten Experiment was really easy. If you want to do an experiment worth blogging about, try keeping an Orthodox Lent. Here are the rules, which the web site says are "not widely known or followed in our day." I can see why.

The Lenten Fast

Great Lent is the longest and strictest fasting season of the year.

Week before Lent ("Cheesefare Week"): Meat and other animal products are prohibited, but eggs and dairy products are permitted, even on Wednesday and Friday.

First Week of Lent: Only two full meals are eaten during the first five days, on Wednesday and Friday after the Presanctified Liturgy. Nothing is eaten from Monday morning until Wednesday evening, the longest time without food in the Church year. (Few laymen keep these rules in their fullness). For the Wednesday and Friday meals, as for all weekdays in Lent, meat and animal products, fish, dairy products, wine and oil are avoided. On Saturday of the first week, the usual rule for Lenten Saturdays begins (see below).

Weekdays in the Second through Sixth Weeks: The strict fasting rule is kept every day: avoidance of meat, meat products, fish, eggs, dairy, wine and oil.

Saturdays and Sundays in the Second through Sixth Weeks: Wine and oil are permitted; otherwise the strict fasting rule is kept.

Holy Week: The Thursday evening meal is ideally the last meal taken until Pascha. At this meal, wine and oil are permitted. The Fast of Great and Holy Friday is the strictest fast day of the year: even those who have not kept a strict Lenten fast are strongly urged not to eat on this day. After St. Basil's Liturgy on Holy Saturday, a little wine and fruit may be taken for sustenance. The fast is sometimes broken on Saturday night after Resurrection Matins, or, at the latest, after the Divine Liturgy on Pascha.

Wine and oil are permitted on several feast days if they fall on a weekday during Lent. Consult your parish calendar. On Annunciation and Palm Sunday, fish is also permitted.

Fair frugal fare

Frugal food tastes better if it looks good. This poverty meal was too beige, so I inserted a strip of warmed-up leftover spinach (Trader Joe's) down the middle. And leftover food tastes better with butter, so I stirred a pat of same (Aldi) into the spinach before serving.

On top, a quarter bag of gnocchi (Aldi) seasoned with a splash of olive oil (TJ), half a cut-up tomato (TJ), and a handful of asiago cheese (Aldi).

Below, nearly half a can of white beans (Caputo's), drained and rinsed, cooked in olive oil with half an onion (Aldi), a sprinkling of dried parsley, and a small spoonful of prepared garlic. Salt and pepper too.

For dessert we shared half a container of blackberries (TJ) and a dollop of plain yogurt (Mountain High from Jewel, on sale for $2.50 a quart, really good).

Three days to go. I shopped at TJ and Aldi this afternoon. I'm already starting to pick up items that we'll still be using after Easter. That's fair, though, since I didn't start Lent with an empty pantry. For $11.46 at Aldi I got 8 oz colby jack cheese that I'm going to use in tostadas and in a quiche, three avocados (69 cents each, and they're lovely), six bananas, four lemons, four tomatoes, a pound of butter, and a gallon of milk. For $7.40 at Trader Joe's I got peanut butter, wild arugula (enough for six to eight servings), and 12 oz of wonderful blackberries--our Lenten treat.

I'm going to have to shop once more before Easter, mostly to pick up items needed for Easter Sunday. My conscience has not yet told me whether or not to include that shopping trip in Lenten expenses.

Eating and cheating

Temperature in the lower forties, a bit too much wind, quite a bit of sun... so a friend and I met at the Morton Arboretum just before 11:00 this morning and walked through the woods until 1:15. Plenty of mud, no foliage to speak of, but good conversation and exercise.

We had lunch at the Ginkgo Restaurant by the big window overlooking the pond, where an egret was flying back and forth. It's the perfect place for people who are trying to eat cheaply but desperately want a restaurant meal: ask for a half portion of whatever salad attracts you. Mine was an ample plateful of romaine lettuce, goat cheese, dried cranberries, and walnuts, with poppyseed dressing and a roll on the side. All for $3.75.

Tonight Mr Neff and I were invited to a dinner in honor of a guest speaker at Wheaton College: green salad, whole wheat roll, chicken in lemon sauce, potato fingers, lightly cooked broccoli, chocolate cake, coffee.

I am certainly cheating. If I were really on food stamps, it is unlikely that I would have an Arboretum membership (without it, I would have had to add the $11 admission to the price of my lunch), and I probably wouldn't have been invited to tonight's dinner either. The Lenten Experiment has not shown me what it's like to be poor. I can cheat whenever I want to. I can take a week off like I did last week. I can get interesting, inexpensive ingredients at stores that aren't available in low-income neighborhoods. And I only have to keep this up for four more days.

Mac and cheese for grown-ups

For 2 big servings or 4 little side-dish servings:

Cook 4 oz of your favorite dried short pasta, whether macaroni or some other kind. I used some of the gemelli we bought at our Caputo's expedition a month ago. Boil up some salted water, drop the pasta in, and cook until it doesn't crunch--usually 8 - 10 minutes depending on the shape of the pasta.

Meanwhile, make the sauce:

• Melt 1/4 C oil (butter is nice) and
• Add 1/4 C flour and 1/2 tsp salt, stirring until the mixture is smooth.
• Pour in a bottle (about 12 oz) of beer. I used Warsteiner Dunkel because we had some, but I would have liked the results better with a light-colored beer: a pilsner or just plain old American yellow beer. Mr Neff, however, liked his bitter mac and cheese.
• Stir the mixture over medium heat until it starts to thicken.
• Add about 4 oz grated cheddar cheese, preferably sharp or extra-sharp. Keep stirring until the sauce is smooth.
• Finally stir in a teaspoon or more of something to add zing. I used some leftover adobo sauce. You can use mustard, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce--whatever sounds good to you.

Drain the pasta, stir it into the sauce, and serve. Garnish if you like with parsley or chopped tomato, or sprinkle on some coarsely ground black pepper.

It's quick, it's cheap, it's nutritious, it's Lent!

I served this tonight along with the last of the mâche lettuce, tomato wedges, and those eight carefully counted Brussels sprouts I bought Saturday. For dessert we had blackberries with a dollop of yogurt. We drank water. And if you're in the mood for water too, and would like some music to go along with it, click here and listen to Mrs Olive Coberley of Wheatland, Missouri, singing the old temperance song "Away, Away the Bowl." This recording was made 50 years ago.

Grocery shopping under duress

I'm tired of Lent.

It's no fun having to think about every penny when I shop. No, probably shouldn't get those 49-cent gala apples at Trader Joe's. Guess I'll get the $1.00/lb yellow delicious apples at Jewel. Don't like 'em as well, but they're cheaper.

Except they turned out to cost exactly the same.

OK, we'll try the $1.59 yogurt, fillers and all, at Aldi's. Got two of them, then discovered my very favorite yogurt, Mountain High, which is usually about $3.99 at Jewel, on sale for $2.50. Bought two of them anyway. Refrigerator is now full of yogurt.

Do not look to the right or to the left while passing the fresh fish counter. Aldi's cheap frozen fish is at home and needs to be used. $1.00 avocadoes are good for Jewel, but since I didn't get the 69-cent ones at Aldi, guess I'll pass.

TJ applesauce is better, but it's $1.99 for the cheapest and Jewel is having a sale on applesauce for $1.50. We'll save a dollar or two and buy eggs from tortured chickens. Brussels sprouts too expensive in the 1-lb bag at TJ; I'll get eight--count 'em--little sprouts at Jewel.


Yeah, we're saving a fair amount of money. And the food isn't bad. Wednesday we had breaded tilapia with an arugula & avocado salad. Thursday we had whole wheat spaghetti with vegetarian meatballs in tomato sauce topped with asiago cheese, along with green beans tossed with potato gnocchi ("too much starch," said Mr Neff, but starch is what poor people eat). Tonight I made a quiche that involved Aldi frozen salmon, TJ cheap goat cheese, and cheap onions, eggs, and milk from Aldi. With it we each had half a tomato and a few greens. We also had soup that involved frozen spinach, an onion, a little oil and butter and garlic, and imitation chicken broth. Tomorrow we will have leftovers, and probably Brussels sprouts.

One week till Easter ...

Lent with Charlie Trotter

A funny thing happened back in 1981-82 when mortgage interest rates were 18% and inflation was rampant and we changed to lower-paying jobs and we ended up accidentally owning two houses. On a budget so tight that if I found a dollar I rushed out and bought potatoes, I began dreaming about dressing like Princess Diana.

With only a week to go in our Lenten Experiment, and with the automobile industry crashing and burning and unemployment soaring, I'm having a similar kind of dream. It's Friday afternoon, and I want to go out to dinner. Not to Adelle's or Pad Thai etc or Cafe Galicia, though I love them and can't afford them on this regime anyway.

No. I want to go to Charlie Trotter's.

In my dream, Mr Neff will have the Grand Menu and I will have the Vegetable Menu, or vice versa. We might as well share and taste everything. In addition, we will each order the Wine Accompaniment. The website avoids telling me how much this is all going to cost, but from readers' comments scattered across the internet, I gather that it will be at least $600, tip and tax included. In other words, more than my entire Lenten Experiment budget.

Maybe I can save money by borrowing one of Princess Diana's old dresses...

Challah on Wednesday

Challah is the traditional Jewish Sabbath bread eaten with the Friday evening meal. Back in 1973, when we lived down the street from an excellent Jewish bakery, we started buying challah every week. Mr Neff passed for Jewish (little did he know, back then, that he wasn't just passing) until one Friday afternoon when our neighbor Arthur J. Balderman saw him across the bakery and hollered, "Happy Sabbath, Reverend!"

To do it right, you need two loaves and a challah cover and candles and prayers in Hebrew. Gefilte fish is nice too. We never did it right. We just enjoyed the bread along with cheese and fruit and grape juice. It became our Friday night tradition. So in 1975, when we moved far from our bakery, I had to learn to bake challah.

Here are the proportions I use. You can do this by hand, in a food processor, or in a big old mixing machine. You can even mix it in a bread machine, but you'll have to shape the dough by hand.

For one big loaf
3.5 C (=1 lb) bread (or all-purpose) flour
4 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1.5 tsp yeast
1/4 C butter or vegetable oil [Note: If you will serve your challah at a meal where meat will be eaten, do not use butter. At least not if you want to be Jewish.]
2 eggs plus most of the 3rd egg--leave out about half the yolk for glazing
3/4 C hot tap water

Etc., etc. Mix, knead, let rise, shape, let rise, bake at 400 for about 25 minutes or at 350 for about 45 minutes or whatever.

To shape the loaf, divide dough into three balls and roll out into three long strands. Starting at the middle, braid out to each end. Tuck ends under and seal. Just before baking, lightly brush top with the reserved egg yolk which has been diluted with about a teaspoon of cold water. If you like, sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds.

Alternately, divide the dough in half. One "half" is always larger than the other, right? Don't try to fix it. Take the larger portion, divide in three, and braid as above, except don't seal the ends. Then take the smaller portion, divide in three, braid, and plop the braid on top of the larger braid. Seal all the ends together. This produces a beautiful loaf (see the picture for how it should look), unless the top braid slides to one side, in which case it still tastes good.

You can make two loaves from this recipe, but they'll be pretty small. If you do that, shorten the cooking time by 5 or 10 minutes. Or you can increase the proportions. Try 5 C flour, 2 T sugar, 1.5 t salt, 1 pkg (2.5 t) yeast, 1/3 C oil, 1 C hot water, 4 eggs.

Tonight we attended the last Lenten Loaf and Ladle supper at St Barnabas. I brought challah--inappropriate for Wednesday, but everyone liked it--and whole wheat bread. Matt Rodman brought apple and brie soup, the Swansons contributed cream of tomato--an old family recipe that has nothing whatsoever in common with Campbell's--and the Pelches brought Italian wedding soup. Mr Neff, who tried all three, reports that all were excellent.

Fish tostadas, a political discussion, and a nursery rhyme

Here is what the Neffs ate tonight. The bottom layer, which does not show, is a homemade corn tortilla. Next comes a handful of wild arugula ($1.99 for 8 oz. at TJ). On top of that, 1/2 of each of three bell peppers (red, yellow, green) sliced and cooked in olive oil with a sliced onion. Next, six TJ fish sticks. After that, a hearty handful of grated feta cheese. On top, a mixture of diced tomato, avocado, and lime juice.

Here is what the Neffs talked about while eating. Mr Neff was interested in this article by Helen Alvaré, the Catholic church's poster girl for intelligent non-feminism. She is concerned that some initiatives by some governments seem aimed at forcing, or at least strongly nudging, mothers out of the home and into the workplace, and she writes approvingly of governmental programs that subsidize homemakers.

All very high-minded, said Mrs Neff to Mr Neff, but an odd situation has developed over the last hundred or two years. Once upon a time, if the man was an agricultural worker, so was his wife. If he was a servant, she probably was also. If he was in the leisure classes, she had servants waiting on her too.

But since the industrial revolution, there is often a social-class divide between husband and wife. While he is off, say, editing a magazine and running a department, she is at home, say, cooking fish tacos and doing the income taxes.

In such a hypothetical situation, Mrs Neff persisted, the man is part of the upper-middle-class intelligentsia, and the woman is his servant. Perhaps some of the governmental initiatives that worry Ms Alvaré are simply trying to move the man and woman toward parity.

But no, Mr Neff countered:

The king was in his counting house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlour,
Eating bread and honey.

When you were working on taxes, quoth he, you weren't doing a servant's job. You were doing the work of a king!

Never argue with Father Goose.

Homemade pizza

Coming home from a lovely hour-long walk in the Arboretum, I couldn't resist stopping at Trader Joe's, and that's why we had pizza tonight.

They were selling rather large, healthy-looking pizza crusts: just add topping and bake. I chose the whole-wheat variety and picked up a brick of feta cheese. Yesterday I had bought a trio of bell peppers (yellow, red, and green) at Aldi's as well as some marvelously cheap onions. A partially used jar of marinara sauce has been in my refrigerator for too long.

So I smeared some olive oil on the crust. Then I poured a little more oil in a large frypan, lightly cooked one thinly sliced onion and half of each pepper, and added a spoonful of garlic (from a jar) and a little salt at the end.

To assemble, I smeared a little of the marinara sauce on the crust on top of the olive oil. I arranged the cooked pepper mixture evenly, and then added two or three ounces of feta cheese, diced small. I baked the pizza at 450 for about 12 minutes and served it with a salad of wild arugula, tomato, and green onion.

Half of the pizza was left over, so we will each have cold pizza for lunch tomorrow. Or maybe I'll microwave mine.

Verdict: I enjoyed the pizza, but the crust was on the tough side and tasted healthier than it needed to. Next time I'll save money and raise quality by making my own crust.

For inspiration: check out the Wikipedia article on pizza. I had no idea.

Lent and lentils continue

Two weeks until Easter. We're back from our week off from Lent, and of course we had lentil soup for lunch. Last Wednesday our daughter Heidi rolled her eyes when her sister, Molly, announced that dinner would be lentil soup. "All your posts recently have been about lentil soup," she said to me, exaggerating only slightly. The lentil does not fall far from the pod.

Dinner tonight, however, featured no lentils. At the top of the plate: tomato and fresh mozzarella from Trader Joe's. In the middle: half a container of gnocchi from Caputo's Cheese Market mixed with homemade pesto (basil, olive oil, parmesan, sliced almonds from TJ). At the bottom: spinach from TJ cooked quickly in olive oil and seasoned with salt and fresh lemon juice. Wine: chianti classico from Caputo's. Lovely meal, inexpensive, nutritionally balanced, no red meat. Life is good, even in deepest Lent.

Refreshment Sunday

Today, the fourth Sunday in Lent, is Laetare Sunday in the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions, though probably not many of us notice. (Laetare is the first word of the introit for the day: "Rejoice, O Jerusalem!") In the UK, it's Mothering Sunday, and sometimes it's called Refreshment Sunday. Hey, it's halftime. Those onerous Lenten restrictions can be relaxed for the day. Take off that hair shirt! Eat some chocolate! Spend wildly on food!

The Neffs are going to take a whole Refreshment Week. We're going west to visit our descendants and celebrate our 41st anniversary, and we're going to pay no attention to our food bill. Well, knowing us, we'll notice. But it will all be off-record. The Lenten Experiment returns one week from today.

Meanwhile, a progress report. For the first 25 days of Lent, we have spent $241.92 on groceries. That's a per diem of $4.84 apiece. In addition, Mr Neff has had several business lunches and a couple of restaurant meals when he was out of town; his company paid, so that somewhat lowered our food bill. We have each bought ourselves one lunch out: Mr Neff's was frugal. We have had meals with friends several times, sometimes at their place and sometimes at ours.

Most of our food has been vegetarian, though not vegan. We've had fish several times and chicken once or twice. I've put sausage in the soup. We've drunk a little wine, but not much and mostly when visiting friends. I've baked a lot of bread.

And now I'm going downstairs to warm up the lentil soup, chop some cilantro, slice some bread, and pour some wine. Laetare!

Leftover ratatouille

Mr Neff and Muffin have a wonderful bond. They especially enjoy talking to each other after supper. That has little to do with tonight's post, apart from the fact that every meal is better when shared with friends. Muffin really wishes we'd share the ratatouille.

So what do you do with one serving of four-day-old ratatouille (once you've explained to Muffin that she can't have it)? Well, you look in the refrigerator to see what it might go with--and what might need to be eaten before we go out of town and the housesitter comes. I don't want to gross out the housesitter, who is a good friend.

Yesterday I noticed green bell peppers on sale for $1, so I bought one. And last night I noticed half an onion that seems to have taken up permanent residence in the lower crisper. It is obviously an effective crisper, because the onion was in good shape. I also noticed a half-empty can of chipotle chilis in adobo sauce left over from when I made black bean stew.

So I began cooking the way I nearly always do, by pouring a little olive oil in a frying pan. I chopped the onion and added it, then did the same with the pepper along with a little bit of the adobo sauce. After four or five minutes, I dumped in the leftover ratatouille.

Meanwhile I warmed up two frozen cheese tamales (from Trader Joe's) in the microwave, and then warmed up a small amount of frozen corn with a smidgen of butter.

I arranged the ratatouille-onion-pepper concoction on half of each plate, snuggled a tamale up to each vegetable pile, and arranged corn on the other side of the tamale. And that, plus a bite of dark chocolate with hazelnuts (from Aldi), was lunch.

This morning I threw a pile of stuff (onions, dry lentils, carrots, sweet potato, celery, canned tomatoes, chipotle in adobo sauce, and, eventually, some diced turkey sausage) into the slow cooker, and for supper we had lentil soup with whole wheat bread. Tomorrow's lunch will be similar. Perhaps identical.

And now, back to editing. I really want to finish my current project before we go. Leftovers help.

Ratatouille

Ratatouille ... I'd never heard of it until I married a foodie's son and he insisted I learn to make it. Back then my motto was, if it takes longer than five minutes, we don't eat it. I thought ratatouille was extremely time consuming.

Then, nearly 40 years later, it became a movie about a rat and everyone learned how to pronounce it [ʁatatuj]. Nowadays I consider ratatouille to be the fourth-most important food, after bread, wine, and cheese. And I can make it in not much more than five minutes.

OK, maybe fifteen minutes. But then--assuming you already have the bread, wine, and cheese--your meal is ready. And if your family is small, you can eat ratatouille leftovers for days. Just don't follow most of the recipes you'll find online. They are too complicated.

Here's what you do, in two versions for two kinds of cooks.

For both versions, buy one eggplant, two zucchini, one big round onion, and some tomatoes--3 or 4 medium, 5 or 6 plum tomatoes, or even a handful of cherry tomatoes. I'm assuming you have extra-virgin olive oil and a head of garlic already.

Short version
Cut everything into bite-sized chunks, adding it to the pan as soon as it's ready and cooking as you go. Here's the order to add: olive oil, onion, eggplant, zucchini, garlic, tomato, seasonings. That's all you really need to know.

Long version
Get out a nice big heavy frying pan. Pour olive oil into it. Heat it up.

Chop up the onion. Dice it, slice it, do whatever you feel like doing to it. Put it in the pan and let it soften (not brown--turn down the heat if it tries) while you...

Peel and then dice the eggplant. Chunks should be between 1/2 and 1 inch square. Toss the eggplant into the pan with the onion and let it cook, even brown a little (you may feel like adding more olive oil; eggplant drinks the stuff), while you ...

Chop the zucchini. No need to peel. If they're small, just slice them fairly thick. If they're bigger, cut them in half lengthwise before slicing. If they're truly huge, use only one of them and cut them in quarters. Toss them into the pan with the onion and eggplant and let them cook while you ...

Dice some garlic, as much as you like, and toss it into the pan with the onion and eggplant and zucchini and let it cook while you ...

Chop the tomatoes. I don't generally remove the seeds; they don't get in the way and probably are good for us. Then dump the tomatoes in the pan with the onion and eggplant and zucchini and garlic and let it all simmer until you get the table set and the bread sliced and the wine poured.

If you like, you can add dried or fresh herbs after the tomatoes: parsley, basil, oregano are all good.

What to do with it once you've made it

• Whatever else you do with it, top it with shredded or shaved fresh Parmesan cheese (never the powdery stuff that comes in a green tube, however).
• Serve it as a soup or stew, with fat slices of good bread.
• Use it as pasta sauce. It's great on spaghetti or in lasagna.
• Brown some chicken breasts and then braise them in ratatouille.
• Smash it up a bit and spread it on bread rounds. Garnish with sprigs of parsley.
• Top a baked potato with ratatouille and cheese.
• Use it as a side dish with meat and potatoes.
• Serve it cold, on greens, perhaps with chopped boiled eggs.
• Stuff an omelet with it.
• Get creative.
  

This week we've had it on spaghetti (twice: I've been busy). And today we'll be having ratatouille omelets. If I ever finish my current work project, I might cook something else...

By the way, the Lenten Experiment is having a good effect on Mr Neff's lunch habits. He managed to eat in a restaurant with a friend at noon today for only $2.25.

Saint Patrick de l'Irlande

Tomorrow we are going to a St. Patrick's Day dinner of French and Italian food.

This makes perfect sense: tradition has it that the saint's grandmother was from la Touraine, the region made famous a millennium later by its chateaux; that Patrick studied for several years on a Mediterranean island near present-day Cannes; that he assisted the bishop of Auxerre in what would become Burgundy wine country; and that he once visited the Tuscan Pope Leo the Great in Rome (though it's possible that some of these legends confuse Patrick with Palladius, a Gaulois who also became a bishop in Ireland in the fifth century).

In honor of l'évangélisateur gaulois de l'Irlande, I am bringing two loaves of home-baked French bread to our fête patricienne. I recommend Mark Bittman's recipe, which I won't post because you really need to go out and buy his book tomorrow, or you could click on the link below and just do it.

But first, enjoy this article from the Telegraph: "French Still Like Their Daily Bread Fresh."


Oh yes, I almost forgot. Would you believe we had leftovers again tonight? The cabbage/beet/orange salad. The black bean stew, this time with some turkey sausage added to the rest of the emoluments. And the Brussels sprouts. Everything is now used up. Let the St. Patrick's Day feast begin!

Dailyness avoidance

Beware the ides of March.

Forget the Lenten Experiment--my major penitential act has been editing a manuscript that is taking much longer than I had anticipated. I thought I'd finish it last week, but now I'm wondering if I can get it done before next Sunday. The more I edit, the grumpier I get (cf. yesterday's post). Mr Neff has been marvelously patient. Right now, he's loading the dishwasher.

(Digression: for lunch we had a salad made of finely grated cabbage dressed in olive oil, lime juice, and a little salt and sugar; each pile topped with half a baked beet, sliced, and half a sliced orange; garnished with a dollop of thick Arab yogurt and a sprinkling of pecan bits. We also each had half a chicken breast, browned and then braised with half a cabbage, coarsely chopped, and some chopped onion and garlic, a splash of orange juice, and a shake of ground ginger. For supper we had leftover black bean stew, just like last night's, with a jalapeno corn muffin given to us by a neighbor we ran into while walking our dogs this afternoon. We also had Monastrell wine left over from my lunch with Ginger on Friday.)

Well, I was thinking about why the editing was putting me in such a foul mood. Do I really hate editing? Sometimes. Am I really miserable as I slog through this manuscript? No. Why, then, am I so grumpy? I think it's the dailyness of it--the "same damn thing over and over" aspect of editing a long manuscript.

I've never been good with dailyness. I wrote two books of daily devotions for Loyola Press just to see if I could discipline myself to do it--365 reflections times two, dailyness on steroids. I thought if I passed that hurdle, my dailyness-avoidance would be solved.

Apparently not.

One foot up and one foot down, That's the way to London town.

Hey, maybe I'll quit editing and fly to London. The dollar is holding up quite well against the British pound ...