Dinner on a Budget: Sloppy Joes

Remember how I'm a poor college student? Yeah, well I'm always looking for cheap and healthy dinner ideas (like most everyone else). On the menu this past week? A kick back to the good ol' days of childhood: sloppy joes. Of course, I've made it a little more grown up with the sides and the ingredients.

Sloppy joes + seasoned zucchini and summer squash + sweet potato fries

Sloppy Joes

I always use ground turkey instead of ground beef. For one thing, it's cheaper where I shop, and it's healthier. But ground beef works too. Just brown a pound of ground meat (for 4 people) with 1/2 diced onion and 1/2 diced green bell pepper. When the meat is cooked, add sloppy joe sauce and let it simmer. I use whole wheat buns or bread if I don't feel like spending money on buns. White buns and bread works too, though.

Store-brand sauce: $1

Ground turkey: $2

Onion: about $1

Pepper: about $1

Sloppy Joes: $5

Zucchini and Summer Squash

Slice the zucchini and squash and quarter the slices. Depending on the size of the squash and zucchini, you'll need about 1 for 1-2 people. Saute them in a little bit of oil over medium high heat. Season with salt, pepper and any other spices you like. I used Mrs. Dash. Let them cook until browned.

Veggies: > $2

Baked Sweet Potato Fries:

1-2 sweet potatoes (1 sweet potato for 2-3 people)

Olive oil

1/2 T. cinnamon

1 t. nutmeg

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Peel and slice the potatoes into fry-sized pieces. Toss with a little bit of olive oil (only a little) and spices. Spread fries in even layer on cooking sheet. Bake for 10-15 minutes. When they're tender and starting to brown a little, they're done. Granted, they're not as stiff as regular fries, but they taste sooooo much better and they're a lot better for you. I like eating them with fry sauce (even parts ketchup and mayo).

Sweet Potatoes: > $2

Total price: Around $10

If you have bread, oil, and spices already, then the price is pretty unbeatable for a meal for 4 or dinner for 2 nights for 2 people.

Food Sections Worth the Read

Newspapers can have amazing food sections. While the larger papers have amazing recipes and spotlights on trendy city restaurants, local papers aren't something to be ignored.

My favorite food section would have to be The New York Times' section. Mark Bittman's blog, Bitten, is really good with a lot of great recipes and interesting personal stories related to food.

http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/?ref=dining

Recently, having combed through much of the NYT's food section, I looked around for other good ones. On a whim, I decided to look at the Los Angeles Times' section and there was a phenomenal guide to buying fresh produce at the market. It included the regulars, like carrots and berries, but it also featured produce like figs and zucchini flowers. In total, there were 32 types of produce featured. Not too shabby.

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-seasonal-cooking-pg,0,5765260.photogallery

And of course, I love my hometown newspaper's food section. The Columbia Daily Tribune always has tasty, simple recipes. Featured this week are turmeric and curry powder, corn and eating well in the recession.

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/lifestyle/food/

Sunday Dinner

Boy did my tiny kitchen get hot yesterday. Corn chowder AND tomato and bacon jam? Whew. I had to kick up my AC, that's for sure.

As a college student living on a very tight budget, I've been missing Sunday dinner. Growing up, my family always had dinner on Sunday evening after church. We would have pot roast or homemade chicken pot pie--you know, the usual delicious home cooking. I missed being in the kitchen for the better part of the day and then enjoying what you make in the evening. Working full time doesn't really allow for much of that.

That's why I decided yesterday that I was going to make a Sunday dinner, and I would do it cheaply. I found a great recipe in my hometown newspaper for tomato and bacon jam. It sounded quite tasty, so I gave it a shot. It only called for one relatively expensive thing: bacon. It wouldn't be expensive if I found a recipe for Sunday dinner that called for bacon too, so I tried to find one. There was a recipe for corn chowder in the newspaper and well, I had to. Let me just say how much I love soup. I love soup. There. Now you know how much I love soup.

I thought a corn chowder would be a good compromise for soup in the summer. It would still be soup, but the corn would help make it taste summery. It was an easy recipe, but I changed it quite a bit. I added potatoes and chicken, and I used more chicken stock then it called for. The only hassle was frying bacon (which I hate doing). When I made the bacon for the jam, I just went ahead and fried up the bacon for the chowder too and got both starting at the same time. Hence the air conditioning.

The corn chowder was delicious, hearty, and everything a Sunday dinner is supposed to be. The brownies I made while dinner was cooking didn't hurt!

When I was done eating dinner, I poured the cooled jam into little jars and stuck them in the fridge. This morning, I made a whole wheat bagel with cream cheese and spread some of the jam on top. It was pure heaven.

Sunday dinner and an awesome Monday morning breakfast? This week HAS to be good!

Tomato and Bacon Jam (recipe originally printed in The Columbia Daily Tribune on July 22, 2009)

2 lbs very ripe tomatoes, chopped and cored
1/2 lb bacon
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 T. cider vinegar
Salt and pepper.

In a large skillet over medium-high, cook the bacon until crispy, about five minutes. Transfer the bacon to paper towels to drain excess fat, blotting it dry with additional towels as needed.

In a large saucepan, combine the tomatoes, onion, sugar, cider vinegar, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, stirring often, then reduce heat to medium. Crumble the bacon into the tomato mixture.

Simmer until very thick, about one hour. Season with salt and pepper, as needed.

Let the jam cool, then ladle into jars. Can be refrigerated for three to four days, or frozen for as long as two months. If freezing, divide the jam among several small jars. When ready to use, let a jar thaw overnight in the refrigerator.

Corn Chowder

6 strips crispy bacon
1 small onion, chopped
1 diced red bell pepper
1 diced green bell pepper
6-7 small red potatoes, chopped
2 chicken breasts or 4 chicken breast tenderloins, cooked and cut into small chunks
1 T. ground cumin
1/2 T. cayenne pepper
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2-2 1/2 cups chicken stock (use for desired consistency)
1 cup milk (do not use low-fat or nonfat)
1 16- to 17-ounce can whole-kernel corn, drained, liquid reserved
Salt and pepper to taste

In stockpot, fry up the bacon. Remove the bacon and leave the fat. Sauté onion, peppers, potatoes, cumin and cayenne until veggies are soft. Add in the flour and cook for about a minute, stirring the whole time. Stir in chicken stock, milk, and reserved corn liquid. Let mixture come to a boil and whisk until smooth. Stir in corn and chicken chunks. Let simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

When ready to serve, crumble bacon into chowder. Serve with shredded cheese on top if desired.

"Catching Fire" Update

So, I'm probably a third of the way through Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. It's a very insightful and well-written book. Some things I noticed or that stuck out to me:

1. The expensive tissue theory is really cool. Basically, Wrangham is saying that because of cooked food, which contains way more energy than raw food, our digestive systems were able to decrease in size, taking less energy. This then left energy for our brains, which then grew in size, leading to higher levels of intelligence and larger brains. I didn't know this, but apparently our brains consume 20% of all the food we eat--significantly more than any other animal. This probably explains why we have created amazing things like cars, planes and twinkies.
   
2. Wrangham uses a lot of studies, which is helpful. It also makes the book more of a "smart read" instead of a relaxing read. Probably my favorite study that he cites is one on raw food diets. He pretty much says that raw food diets are BS and there is no way humans could ever survive on such a diet. I want to say that more than 50% of the woman in the study completely stopped having their periods (you should read the book instead of quoting me on that).
   
3. Also, he mentions something about instinctual raw foodists. I know--just when you thought raw foodists were already crazy, here come even crazier ones. Basically, they "let" their stomachs decide what they will eat. They will smell all of the fruit in a bowl, for instance, and then instinctually pick what to eat.
   

Those are just a few thoughts. I still have a while to go before I finish the book. I'm actually pretty excited, though, because he's getting ready to talk about the gender roles that evolved from cooking. We'll see what amazing and brilliant things he has to say!

Note: I may or may not have a slight crush on this man.

Other note: I just read my post on the Farmer's Market. Boy was it sappy and generic. I guess that's what happens when you've been surrounded by fresh, amazing produce and food for an hour!

And just one final note: We went to CJ's last night. They have the absolute best chicken wings in all of this grand nation. I ate way too many and felt the grease monster to its full effect this morning. Totally worth it.

Goats Hopping on the Roof

A month or two ago, I was reading the Food and Wine section of The New York Times. I tend to do that a lot when I am bored, in case you haven't noticed. There was a pretty interesting article on goat meat that convinced me I had to try it. The article touted numerous benefits--more protein than beef and less fat than lamb. And wouldn't it be stupid not to try the source of meat that most of the world actually eats on a regular basis? Of course it would.

But when I was little, my mom used to tell me about a pet goat she had growing up. Apparently this goat climbed the barn's roof and ignited quite some anger within my grandpa. Curses were cast. Expletives were muttered under his frustrated breath. And this quirky, lovable portrait of goats was all I really had to go off of when I thought of goats.

At the farmer's market a week or so ago, though, one of the farmers was selling goat meat. Because I'd made Jim read the article, he too was swayed to give it a try. So we went for it and bought four goat chops for $10, which was a little bit pricey given the size of the chops (which were a lot tinier than I'd expected). Adventure in cooking, however, has no price.

And finally, on Sunday, we cooked them. Jim's brother gave us a recipe for Goat Curry that would take about 4 hours, which is exactly what's needed to make the meat as tender as possible. Our apartment smelled delicious for the better part of the day. Nothing like smelling something all day to make you crave it.

Or so I thought. The entire time Jim was making the curry, I kept thinking about a cute and friendly goat hopping all over a roof. I knew that the curry would be amazing, but I was nervous to try it. When Jim pulled a chop out of the curry to check its tenderness, he pulled a little piece off for me to try. I went to take the piece, then changed my mind and squealed. "A goat??? I'm going to eat goat?" I thought. But it looked and smelled great, so I ate it. And it was great. It tasted just like spicy pot roast, honestly.

The added effect of imagining a goat climbing up a barn only made it taste better!

Goat Curry

4 goat chops
3 large yellow onions
2-3 tablespoons oriental curry
1 tablespoon chili powder
2-3 potatoes
2 carrots
2 tablespoons Canola oil

Chop up onions very finely. If you have a food processor, put them in there to make a paste. Heat the oil in a stock pot. When oil is hot, put onions in pot. Cook until they are golden brown and smell slightly nutty. Add the curry and chili powder to the onions and stir.

Salt and pepper the goat chops. In a separate skillet, sear the goat chops until brown crust develops. Put seared chops in with the onions. Add water until the chops are covered. Cover the stock pot and let simmer for three hours, stirring occasionally.

After three hours, cut up potatoes and carrots and put in the pot. While vegetables cook, make rice and serve curry over the rice. When vegetables are cooked, you can take the chops out to pull the meat off of the bone and put back in the pot.

Note: When eating the curry, watch out for bones. Because goat meat isn't very popular, they don't butcher it very well. We found a couple bones in the curry even after we took the meat off the bones. If you'd rather, and what I'll do next time, is to take the meat off of the bones before I sear the meat.

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

From Lauren:

I was reading the New York Times Food and Wine section at work today--yes, I know, but I was bored. Anyway, there was a post on their Bitten Blog about Richard Wranham's book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Wrangham's book suggests that cooking, and not anything else, separates us from animals.

Wrangham writes that cooking influenced our evolutionary progress and development in many ways. Most importantly, our ability to obtain and conserve more energy from cooked food than uncooked food led to a change in our physical bodies and mental capacity. Stomachs took less energy to process the food, leaving our brain open to receiving the excess energy and attention. It also promoted more refined social practices. The act of cooking food brought people around a fire, and this simple act of gathering could have calmed the nature and disposition of humans.

While I have yet to read the book, I know I will probably love it. He dismisses vegetarianism and the raw food diet, which I always love because I think both food movements can be harmful and don't make much sense.

The review brought up a lot of other interesting and valid points as well. One, for example, was especially striking to me. Wrangham suggests that the emergence of cooking started gender roles because females needed protection from being exploited as cooks while men did the hunting. Can't wait to read more on that.

Wrangham is a primatologist and biological anthropology professor at Harvard. Most markedly, he studied under Jane Goodall and wrote another fascinating book, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origin of Human Violence. It too, is now on my list of books to read. He writes with such a conversational and personable tone that it's hard not to love it. And I've only read excerpts!

So, I'm going to go buy this book. Hopefully within the next week or so because I really cannot wait to start reading. As I read, I'll write about the book and my comments.
Note: The picture of Wrangham was published in NYT's Bitten Blog and was taken by Rick Friedman.

Sidenote: The 63 Diner is now open again. We went last night, and it was delicious. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuit, and vanilla milkshake. Perfect for a date night...except for the grease dribbling down my chin. I don't think Jim minded though!

Columbia's Farmer Market

The start of the Columbia's Farmer's Market is a perfect reason for me to start writing again.

What I love about the Farmer's Market is how community-oriented it is. The grocery store is an errand. You want to get in there, get what you need (and you know exactly what that is and where it is), and get out. At the Farmer's Market, it's a conversation. You ask the woman selling cute jade plants how to care for it, and she tells you. She tells you that it is the hardest plant to kill. It doesn't even matter if that isn't true. What matters is that you are actually conversing with the person who is providing what you want to buy.

And, when you're done talking to her, you talk to the guy selling homemade pasta, which starts a conversation about how people cook pasta wrong more times than not. Too little water. Not enough salt. Way too overcooked. It's refreshing.

And the breezy air and sunshine can't even begin to compete with supermarket lighting and stuffy air.

Needless to say, I'm more than excited that the Farmer's Market is open for the season. I plan on visiting more than I should, considering there is a stand with homemade mini pies that are delicious.