Crooked Kitchen

Over on The Simple Dollar, Trent writes about Eating What You Have On Hand. He knows that eating at home saves a lot of money over eating out, but what do you do when you’re too tired/sick/lazy to really cook dinner?

Along the same lines, I’ve come to realize that I tend to snack on and eat whatever’s convenient. For lunch, I’ll usually eat leftovers because it’s easy – it’s sitting in the fridge and usually only requires a bit of pepper and a trip to the microwave. At snack time, I’ll look at the fruit bowl and flip open the refrigerator door and grab whatever’s quick and at hand.

So why not combine the two and really crunch your food budget?

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By a lucky coincidence, many of the healthiest foods are also quite cheap in their raw form.

So what I decided to do is start cooking some healthy and very inexpensive staple foods once a week in bulk, store them in containers in the fridge, and utilize them all throughout the week in various dishes.

He suggests cooking a big batch of a staple – something like beans, rice, or whole grains – then using that bit by bit through the week. You can combine it with any quick-to-cook vegetables you have on hand.

I like to do this too. I tend not to eat most leftovers, but if I have precooked base ingredients I’m happy to transmute them into something new.

Trent doesn’t mention meat. While cooking vegetarian meals is a really good way to save money, it’s not an option for me – not only because I’m a zealous omnivore, but I also need lots of protein from meat sources. In addition, his staple recommendations aren’t the best for me (I should be leaning more toward refined grains than whole grains), but for the average healthy person, his advice is very good.

One of the things I love is fragrant rice, either basmati or jasmine. When I cook rice, I’ll cook a big batch and save the extra rice. Reheated in the microwave with a bit of water, it comes back to life well enough to eat again plain. But my favorite thing to do with leftover rice is make fried rice. That uses up a good amount of rice, and little bits of leftover meat, vegetable, or practically anything else. Fried rice will be fully covered in another post soon.

Eating What You Have On Hand has made me think about what I currently have on hand. Tomorrow I’ll take a full inventory of my pantry, fridge, freezer, and spice cupboard, and see what I can make of that.

Recently the time between my posts has increased. In part, that’s due to lack of time and motivation, but the ultimate cause is lack of funds. I have lots of post ideas, but I don’t have the cash to go out and obtain the materials to make them work. Recipes I’d like to try, produce I’d like to do research on, and products I’d like to review – they’re all on the backburner until I can scrounge up enough change to fund the posts.

Starting today, and running for a week, I’ll be calling for donations. I’ve set up a permanent donations page that outlines what I’ll use the money for, and what perks you’ll receive if you help me fund my work. All donated money will go directly towards this site, and I will stay accountable by explicitly recording what the money has funded.

I ask only for a small donation – $1 can contribute to a recipe, $5 will pay for an entire single-serving recipe plus leftover ingredients, $10 will fund an entire multiple-serving recipe or a research post. If you donate, you’ll get acknowledgement and a link to your website or blog on the post that your donation made possible, and the top 5 fundraisers will have a link permanently posted on the donation page.

Please help me keep posts going. I don’t want to sound desperate. For now, my hosting costs are covered, but without more help than I’m getting, I’m afraid that my content will suffer.

This is part of a series of posts I’m bringing back from my previous food blog. The topics might not be as focused, but I think they still deserve to be republished in a current forum. Enjoy this post from February 2007 about my experiment with grinding my own burgers.

Inspired by some talk of homemade burgers, and that I hadn’t had a good burger in a while, I decided to make my own burgers – including grinding my own meat. I reviewed the Good Eats episode on ground beef, and tried to recreate that burger. Instead of Alton Brown’s recommended mixture of half-chuck and half-sirloin, I went with all chuck, a two-pound package of it.

Continue reading to see how I formed the patties and how they turned out »

Earlier this week I picked up some chorizo, and I’ve made chorizo and eggs for breakfast every day since then. The exposure to the Mexican spices and chiles woke up my long-dormant desire to make a big batch of chili, one of my specialties.

I made this chili milder than usual for the benefit of my mother, who can’t handle lots of heat; but I still packed as much chile flavor and deep body into it as I could. I used a method similar to that used for Ragu alla Bolognese, cooking down and caramelizing the vegetables, meat, and tomato paste before adding the liquid.

Continue reading to see the recipe and a full chili pictorial »

Salivary glands, lips, and lymph nodes: the ultimate breakfast meat.

The last couple days, I’ve been eating chorizo con huevos (chorizo sausage with eggs) for breakfast. Mexican chorizo is sausage made from finely ground pork, vinegar, lots of ground chile, and spices. It’s typically packaged in plastic casings, which are removed to cook the paste-like sausage inside.

Chorizo con huevos is one of my favorite scrambled egg dishes. The chorizo has more than its fair share of spice and flavor, and it’s happy to share with the eggs.

Continue reading to see how I make chorizo con huevos, and why the nationality of your sausage matters »

This is part of a series of posts I’m bringing back from my previous food blog. The topics might not be as focused, but I think they still deserve to be republished in a current forum. Enjoy this post from 2006 about Tom Kah Goong.

Tonight I made Tom Kah Goong, Thai coconut soup with shrimp. This was the first Thai food I ever ate, in a Thai restaurant back home that took over the space of the Chinese restaurant that I used to go to. It’s basically a broth made with coconut milk, chicken broth, galangal, lemongrass, Kaffir lime leaves, chiles, lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar. I didn’t have any galangal or lime leaves, so I used ginger, extra lemongrass, and lemon juice. After the broth had simmered for a while, I added straw mushrooms and shrimp, and the soup was ready to eat.

This was not only the first Thai dish I attempted to cook (Thai Kitchen instant noodles don’t count), but also the first time I successfully used fish sauce. The last time was in an omelette meant to go on top of ramen, but that whole operation was botched. The first time, I made egg drop soup, but botched the addition of the egg so that the soup became creamy instead of giving me strands of scrambled egg. I added fish sauce to that, and it ended up smelling and tasting like cat food.

Anyway, I gritted my teeth and started pouring fish sauce into the soup, eyeballing 2 tablespoons. Very quickly, there was a strong pungent odor that wasn’t all too pleasant, but wasn’t like the cat food odor I encountered before. I wonder if I upset the people downstairs with the strong smell, who were watching TV and eating pizza. I tasted the broth at that point, and didn’t notice any unpleasant pungent or fishy taste. It did exactly what it was supposed to: fill out the flavor with some body, and add salt.

The combination of hot, sour, salty, and sweet flavors was very nicely matched. The shrimp were a little big; slightly smaller shrimp would have been easier to eat. I garnished the soup with cilantro and sliced chiles before I ate it. It was the kind of meal that’s so tasty that even though I was dying from the chiles, I keep eating them because it was all so good.

In writing some of my recent posts, I felt like I haven’t offered quite the best advice, especially in the way of useful ingredients. None of my recipes feature beans or cheese, and some other ingredients are limited. I’m writing this post to explain why that is.

I have end-stage renal disease (kidney failure), and I’m on dialysis. My kidneys can’t effectively remove the toxins in my blood, and dialysis isn’t nearly as effective at removing some of them as a healthy kidney. That means that I have to take in amounts of potassium, phosphorus, protein, and water that are different than a healthy person.

Continue reading to find out the details »

It seems to be a very basic thing, but many people find it hard to cook rice without it being hard or getting gummy or mushy. Using a rice cooker is the easy way to make rice – in most cases, just set it and forget it – but rice cookers take up counter space and their function can be duplicated with a single pan with just a little bit of skill and practice.

I cook rice in a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. My method is very simple, but results in perfect rice every time. The method varies slightly depending on the type of rice used. This is different than the pilaf method, which is often used to produce rice with things added – vegetables, spices, and herbs.

Continue reading for guidelines and a series of steps to create perfectly cooked rice »