Good, cheap, food

[lp]

Hi, new to the board and looking for really inexpensive meals for a family of four. Wondered if you all have any URL's that might help. We're trying to cut back on our meat intake, so vegetarian dishes are a possibility. Looking forward to sharing any good finds.
lp

 

[Prairie Lady]

I don't happen to have any links handy at the moment since my searching occured in early spring as I was searching for good passover recipies, but, I strongly reccomend you search for Jewish recipes because they use a LOT of veggies, some fish, a little meat and a lot of chicken, eggs and grains for a healthy well balanced diet. The recipes I used for vegetable dishes were absolutely EXCELLENT!

If you don't have Google search engine, I strongly reccomend it!
http://www.google.com

I keep their basic searchbar (not the advanced) in my IE5.5 browser and it makes searching on ANY topic a cinch and a pleasure!

Hope that helps you some!

PL

 

[lp]

Thanks, Prairie Lady. I think I'll try searching for different ethnic recipes, including Jewish. I'm Hungarian and many traditional dishes are very economical. Perhaps others are the same. Thanks for the idea. lp

 

[Prairie Lady]

You're welcome Ip! Maybe you could post some of those good hungarian recipes!? I enjoy lot's of different kinds of foods myself with frugality in mind also!

 

[lp]

Sure thing!! Caution: These are passed down recipes from grandmothers who did not measure anything exactly! So lots of ingredients are "to taste".

Chicken Paprikas

1 chopped onion
Oil
Paprika
Salt
6 pieces of chicken
Water
1/2 pint sour cream

In large fry pan, saute onion in oil, douse with lots of sweet paprika and a dash of salt. Add chicken and brown. Add enough water to cover chicken half way and simmer until chicken is tender. If broth is weak, I sometimes add a bit of chicken bouillion. Add sour cream, gently stirring in. Add dumplings (recipes follows) and heat through givng dumplings a bit of time to soak up some gravy.


Dumplings ( A bit like spaetzle)

3 beaten eggs
3 cups flour
3T sour cream
1/2 cup water

Mix all and drop by teaspoonful into boiling salted water. Cook about ten minutes. Drain and add to Paprikas. I cook my dumplings in two batches.

Enjoy!!!

 

[lp]

Hungarian Shortening Bread

1 cup lukewarm water
1 pkg. yeast
flour
oil for frying

In large bowl, sprinkle yeast over water and dissolve. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough and beat until smooth. Let raise and punch down. Let raise a second time. Put on floured cloth and strech out thin(rolling it is difficult) Cut into pieces, roughly 4 inches by 4 inches.
Heat just enough oil to cover bottom of pan.
Fry bread hot and fast. Flipping when slightly browned. Sprinkle with garlic salt. Goes great with soup.

Obviously, my ancestors were not concerned with cholesterol counts!!! Funny, they weren't large people either! lp

 

[Prairie Lady]

Thank-you! Those recipes look good to me, simple and easy! And I LOVE sour cream with chicken. It's good stuff. I like your bread recipe too because it's sugar free.

In the summer I am able to eat lots of veggies real cheap because I grow a garden. But, because my space is small and limited, (I use lots of containers to garden in)I am rarely ever able to grow enough to preserve much for winter. The bugs eat more than I do I think! :lol

But gardening is one way I have been able to stretch my budget and provide cheap good food. What little I can save through canning, drying and freezing helps me through the winter when veggie prices become outrageous in the stores. I depend a lot on the farm markets in August and Sept. for bulk purchases and really do manage to save a fortune for example last year I bought a 40 lb bag of fresh bell peppers for $4.00 (four dollars). At the time, bells were sellling on the store shelf at 3/$1.00. Even the farm market had them on their shelves for the same price so I asked what their bulk prices were and they turned out to be a fraction of the shelf prices even at the veggie stand.

I bought the peppers mentioned above and saved a small fortune because they sell here for $3.00 per POUND in the winter. That was a hUGE savings. I used some in pickels and relishes, chopped and froze some, froze whole ones too, and I dried some as well. I still have some of the dried ones but I just finished using the frozen ones about 2 months ago. I will throw the dried ones in the blender and chop them up a bit more to use out of a shaker.

I buy onions from the farm market in 50 lb bags(white ones), and what I don't use over the winter I toss into the soil in the garden where they make green onions and they DO bulb and make more onions if ya wait long enough.

The pumpkins I have growning this year are compost volunteers. I used my compost in my garden and the un-broken down seeds sprouted. I got some nice pumpkins out there now and they didn't cost much at all!

I bought a flat of tomatoe plants for $1.59 which gave me 6 plants. I put 4 in a big 18 gallon bucket from walmart and now I have some tomatoes ripening. My daughter saved her kittly litter buckets from walmart...the one that sells in buckets...Well, I threw some dirt in it and some cucumber seeds (end of season sale on seeds...50 cents a pack) and now I have cucumbers to go with my tomatoes. If you like fresh like I do, and you are limited on space too, I promise, tomatoes and cukes do MUCH better in containers than they do in the ground! A little sun, water, and miracle grow now and then like a house plant and you have some cheap good stuff! I used the bush type cuke and it has out produced its full vine cousins. It also started producing a full month before the ones in the ground did, and the yeild has been MUCH bigger. I have pulled 3 cukes from the inground ones, and over a dozen from the potted one.

Even a 4x8 balcony will produce some good salads!

 

[lp]

I, too have a small veggie garden. It's been a tough gardening season here this year, though.
Never thought about freezing peppers. Do they need to be blanched? What's a Hungarian without stuffed peppers!!!
I freeze and dehydrate from the garden, but hate the canning process. Dried Roma tomatoes are great for a little tomato flavor in soups and sauces.
Had to laugh at your compost pumpkins! Every year we have "the mystery squash" that grows in the compost pile. It looks and taste like a combination summer and spaghetti squash, but the outer shell is tough and hard like a winter variety. It tastes very mild. We'll probably grow purple cones from our heads, but hey, it's free squash in my book!! lp

 

[Prairie Lady]

Lol! I love that free surprise squash!

Yes, you do have to blanche the peppers. In fact, MOST all veggies need to be blanched to varying amounts to kill the enzymes that cause the food to continue to break down even in freezer storage causing spoilage, nutritional loss, and flavor loss.

Peppers only need 2 min. of blanching, then 2-5 minutes in ice water. I then flip them upside down to drain on a towel or rack, dry the outside if needed and then plop them in a freezer bag and into the freezer. Course I clean out the seeds prior to blanching, and I do save the caps and freeze them too.

(For those who may be reading this and are new to freezing or processing, blanching is the process of boiling a vegetable in preperation of freezing. You bring water to a boil, add the veggie, and begin timing after the water begins to return to a boil.)

When I use the frozen peppers, if I haven't chopped them prior to freezing, I chop them while they are still partially frozen. In fact, usually all I do is quarter the ones i intend to use in cooking and chop them as I need to. It saves me tons of time during the freezing process. I cut them from the inside to the outside because the skin is a little bit tougher after thawing. It's just easier to cut from the flesh side than the outside. But they do hold up well in the freezer so when you use the whole ones, you can reduce your cooking time just a bit because they were par cooked prior to freezing.

I think they hold up tons better than the ones that I've purchased frozen from the grocer, and they keep their good flavor.

I plan to do some plumb tomatoes this coming spring. Do you ever have problems with blossom end rot on yours?

Somewhere around here I have a recipe for tomato leather. It's good for instant spaghetti sauce or soup in a pinch. I primarily use it to season soup. After you make the leather you drop it in the blender to powder it. You can use it alone too but i think it's too pulpy by itself. It does a fantastic job in a vegetable soup though, and it enhances a sauce in progress as well.

Do you have recipes for tomatoe paste?

 

[Prairie Lady]

I meant to ask you...you said it had been a tough gardening season where you are...What's been going on?

It's been tough here too due to excessive heat (more than 105+ degrees) and I've had to fight every squash bug, grasshopper, and striped cucumber beetle in the county for each and every one of the very few squashes I have managed to harvest. My zuchinnis are being denuded to the ribs by the grasshoppers, the plants are stressed from being sucked on by the squash bugs (not vine borers), I lost several plants already...just up and died without warning (hubbards) so I am going to break the organic gardening rules tonight (Im planning a murder) and will pull out the trusty pressure jug and apply some malathion (UGHHH!!! ) before I dont have a garden left!!!!!!

I really should have put down some black plastic under the plants but didn't realize at the time that the squash bugs like to nest in grass course, the squash has sprauled all over the place and I can no longer mow there...hence, good nesting for the bugs. The garden I CAN weed has very few to no bugs except for the striped bettles that like to kill the flowers! Sheesh!

Tomatoes don't want to fruit due to heat..I have SOME but not as many as a plant is capable of. Flea beetles killed all my cabbage and broccoli...I've replanted all of that....

yup, im discouraged.....

 

[lp]

Wow! Your year has been about as bad as ours. We're in Mid-Michigan. Had a cold, wet spring and early summer. Then I got hit by the bug invaders, too. In 15 yrs. of gardening here, this is the first time I've ever had squash beetles. I guess that's what those yellow and black striped devils were. They ate every squash and cucumber back to the nubs. I had thought it was the deer or rabbits at first. Since I had no experience with them, I had to break out the chemicals, too.

Now, we're in serious drought and high heat. Very weird summer.
Last week the deer ate my green beans just as they were about to blossom out. They had the courtesy to leave 2 of my 6 sunflowers. How nice!!

I forgot about tomato leather. Haven't made it for a few years. Your right, it has some good uses. Never made paste before. Could you rehydrate some leather, but make it thick? Just a thought. Here's to hoping we BOTH have better garden luck for the remainder of the season. lp