Challenged

I guess (maybe 'hope' is more accurate) that many readers are wondering whatever happened to the Budget Challenge. For 2 months, it went extremely well.. and as you might guess, the moment I stopped blogging about was the moment it started going downhill.

I blame the weather, mostly. Sunny days and lazy evenings have me buying too many expensive Belgian beers and fancy cheeses. And I blame the rhubarb, which I HAVE to have for breakfast, no matter how expensive it is. And after more than 2 months of caution and carefull shopping, I often find myself at the store or market and think "What the hell, never mind that stupid Budget Challenge, I want organic steak / wild salmon / smoked mozzarella / luscious red cherry tomatoes". I bought a packet of completely unneccesary and extremely expensive black quinoa (and haven't used it yet), I used half a can of coconut milk and let the rest grow green spots in the fridge, I've been buying sad and pricey packets of herbs at the supermarket instead of big juicy bunches at the market, just this morning I threw out 5 slices of stale and almost moldy bread, I have about 5 dinners in the freezer but instead of eating them, I keep buying new food.

In other words, I've been a bad, bad girl.

Now that, I'm blaming on the almost 40 syndrome. Living dangerously while I still can, even if the danger consists of nothing worse than buying too much rhubarb.

It might just happen, that I'll try to extend my living on the edge beyond 40.

Who knows what will happen then.

Sweet & Spicy Cabbage Soup

This soup (or soupy stew, because there isn't that much liquid) is one I made a little while ago from odds and ends in the fridge. It was one of those dinners that turned out unexpectedly wonderful, but because of the unexpectedness, camera batteries weren't charged and notes weren't written down and there was no blogpost.

Last night I tried to recreate it and it was just as good as the first time I made it - even better becauase of the last minute addition of mint and coriander.

Whenever I cook something 'Asian inpired' I repeat this mantra in my head : Hot Sour Salty Sweet Hot Sour Salty Sweet Hot Sour Salty Sweet. It's the title of a book I don't even own (but covet) (and the authors of this book also have a website that I haven't really begun to explore yet). But to think of these flavors really helps when you're looking for the right balance in Asian dishes. If you consider the 4 flavors as working together like a little symphony, where none of them really takes the central stage but they all tune in together to create a harmony, it's a lot easier to adjust the seasonings (in this case, Hot Sour Salty Sweet - chili, citrus juice, fish sauce, and cabbage). When using other vegetables I might add a bit of sugar, but because cooked cabbage is so naturally sweet, that wasn't really necessary.




Spicy Sweet Cabbage Soup
serves 2, with leftovers for lunch the next day

a piece of carrot, about 125 grams, cut into matchsticks
150 grams cabbage, shredded
750 ml chickenstock
1 tablespoon sunflower oil or other flavorless oil
200 grams lean miced meat (I used beef, but you could substitute chicken, turkey or pork)
1 large shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 heaping teaspoon minced ginger
1 heaping teaspoon chili paste (I used sambal badjak)
a splash of soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
a squeeze of lemon or lime juice (preferably lime, but I still have 5 lemons lying around so that's what I used)
finely chopped mint and coriander, about 2 tablespoons
sriracha, to serve

Heat the chicken stock in a large pan. Add the carrots and cabbage and cook for about 30 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.
meanwhile, heat the oil in a small frying pan. When it's hot, add shallots and garlic and ginger. Cook for a couple of minutes until the soften, then add the meat, breaking it up with a fork while you brown it. When it's nicely browned, add the contents of the frying pan to the pan with the stock and cabbage. Also add the chili paste at this point.
When the cabbage is tender, add the fish sauce, soy sauce and lemon or lime juice, and a bit of salt. Taste, and adjust seasonings (chili, lemon, fish sauce, soy sauce) as necessary.
Just before serving, stir in half the chopped mint and coriander. Rinse the cooked noodles with hot water and pile them into 2 deep bowls. Spoon the soup on top, garnish with the rest of the mint/coriander, add a little swirl of sriracha and serve.

Slurping is mandatory.

Smoky Chili

OK, we could have been eating roast pumpkin leftovers and cucumber salad for a couple of more days, but yesterday I rebelled against ‘eating from the fridge’ and ‘budget shopping’. I had a sudden, real, unavoidable craving for something spicy and flavorful and hearty and meaty. In short, I wanted chili.

This would be a challenge in itself, because last week I discovered a colony of bugs in my dried chili supply and had to toss them all out – bugs, chiles, the whole lot.

It’s a good thing I’m going to London next week, where, I’m told, the Spice Shop sells all kinds of dried chiles (from smoky dried chipotles to guajillos).

But my meaty black bean chili could not wait until I replenished my chili stash so I had to improvise. The combination of chipotles in adobo, heady spices like cumin, allspice and coriander seed, smoked Spanish pimenton, and finally a garnish of crispy smoked bacon resulted in an unorthodox, possibly blasphemous, but excellent chili. It had just the kind of spicyness I was looking for: the spicyness that's warm rather than sharp, a spicyness that's more about deep strong flavors than about sudden heat.

Toppings included avocado, soft goats cheese, fresh coriander,cool cucumber, and crsipy smoked bacon (the third element in the smoky trinity). And I also made skillet cornbread!



Klary’s Smokin’ Hot Chili
serves 3-4

250 grams dried black beans
400 grams beef suitable for stewing
4 large onions, minced
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
1 teaspoon allspice berries
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
1 small chipotle from a can of chipotles in adobo, cut up, and about 1 tablespoon of the adobo sauce
½ teaspoon oregano, preferably Mexican oregano (I had some that I bought at the farmers market in Santa Fe, it’s much more fragrant and spicy than European oregano)
About half a glass of wine, any color
A pinch of sugar
250 ml. pureed tomates from a can
250 ml light chicken stock
2 tablespoons of Turkish red pepper paste
Salt & pepper
Olive oil

garnishes: cubed avocado, soft fresh cheese or sour cream, something cool and crisp (cucumber, radishes), smoked crispy bacon.

Pick over the beans, rinse them, put them in a pan with water to amply cover. Bring to the boil, add a bit of salt, and cook over low heat until the beans are tender (it depends on the freshness of the beans how long this will take – probably an hour or 2).
Then, cut the beef into very (and I mean very) small cubes. Don’t be tempted to use ground meat for this dish: the hearty robust flavors demand the extra texture from the cut up beef.
Toast the coriander seed, allspice and cumin seed in a small frying pan until fragrant, then grind them to a powder in a mortar.
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a Dutch oven. Season the meat with salt and pepper. When the oil is hot, brown the meat (I did not bother with doing this in batches - it's ok if it doesn't get really brown). When it has some color, add the onions and garlic and fry for 5 mionutes or so until the onions start to soften. Then add the spice mixture from the mortar, the smoked paprika, oregano, the miced chipotle and chipotle sauce, and the red pepper paste. fry all of this for a couple of minutes, stirring frequently.

Then add the tomatoes, stock, wine, and sugar. Bring to a simmer and cook over low heat for an hour and a half. While it's cooking, check that it doesn't get too dry - add some water if necessary.



If you started your beans before you started your meat, they may be almost cooked by now. If not, turn off the heat under the meat sauce, and wait till they are. Then, drain the beans and add them to the meat, and cook everything together for another hour.

You can eat it now, but it will taste better tomorrow.

Serve hot, and put bowls of the garnishes on the table for everyone to help themselves.

All in all, this wasn't really too expensive: about 7 euros for the meat and beans, and everything else came from the pantry/leftovers. We ate a lot and still had enough to put one huge portion in the freezer for another day.

Truffled away

How can you, my readers might ask, be on a budget challenge and have truffle risotto for dinner?

When Dennis sent out the invites for his birthday dinner, he specified that he did not need any gifts – but for people who did not want to come empty handed, he advised ´perishables´: meaning, no stuff that ends up in a closet never to be used/read/listened to, but things that can be enjoyed for a while and then are gone forever.

After all, stuff, we have enough of.

So he ended up with chocolates, some great wines, port, special teas, and whisky.

And this little thing:

It arrived in a polystyrene box, the kind that´s used to transport donated organs from one hospital to the other – and jokes about Dennis being in need of a new liver abounded. But on opening the lid it wasn´t a bloody body part on ice that he found, but a delicate brown morsel wrapped in straw, packed in plastic, that looked and felt just like a true winter truffle. Which is what it was, shipped all the way to Amsterdam from France, all 19.7 grams of it.

I spent a couple of hours trying to think of creative, original things to do with the truffle, and then decided that with great things, simplicity is always best. I did remember a previous truffle dinner (2 years ago, with a truffle we´d brought back from our vacation in Umbria, which, by the time I got around to cooking with it, tasted of.. absolutely nothing). Ofcourse I had faith in my friends but maybe not in every truffle seller, and even the slightest possibility of a disappointing dinner was too much for me yesterday. So I decided to make a risotto that would be good on its own, and hopefully, sublime with the truffle.

There are plenty of discussions floating around on how to cook with truffles. Some people say they need to be cooked with the rest of the dish to release their full flavour potential, other say they only need to be slightly warmed for optimal aroma, and yet others say that shaving the raw truffle onto the food gives the best result. Because this truffle did not have an overwhelming aroma when I opened the plastic bag, I felt that a little cooking wouldn´t hurt and would help to coax as much truffle flavor out of the 19.7 grams as possible.



I made a very simple risotto, with white wine and chicken stock and some sauteed chestnut mushrooms for textural contrast. About 2/3 of the truffle was added halfway through cooking the risotto, the rest just at the end (with a good glob of mascarpone for creaminess and richness). I saved a couple of paper thin slices to sprinkle on top, where they kind of melted in the warmth of the rice.

We sat down to a very good dinner. The risotto had musky, earthy, luscious undertones from the truffle, and it was very rich and creamy and delicious. But (and yes you could feel this but coming on didn´t you?) we weren´t blown away. Not the way you would expect to be blown away when you slice up an almost 20 gram truffle between the two of you. And I am sorry to say this, seeing that this was a gift and all, and don´t get me wrong, it was a truly delicious risotto (and would have been much less delicious without the truffle!), but we´re talking about food here people so I have to be really honest.

Truffles can be heavenly, this one was like drifting on a little cloud on your way to heaven.. and finishing your plate just before you get there. I wonder why this is? Is it really only possible to experience truffle-heaven in the country of origin? Although I must say I´ve had some fantastic truffle dishes in Dutch restaurants, too... could it be that it´s restaurant chefs who snag up all the best specimens?

Still, a cloud on its way to heaven... not a bad place to be on a Monday night, in the middle of Budget Challenge.

Whatever happened to the Budget Challenge?

When someone announces a project, talks about it enthusiastically for a week or so, and then stops talking about it, there´s a pretty good chance that said person has abandoned said project but is too embarrassed to admit that. (From my past: learning Russian, taking up guitar lessons, attending the gym regularly... to name but a few).

I´m happy to report that the Budget Challenge does not fit into this category, and that the fact that I haven´t reported about it, is simply due to my omnipresent unavoidable laziness. Because, in fact, it´s been going very, very well.

Today I chekced the bank balance and saw we had 190 euros left until Saturday, which means I can spend 90 euros on this week´s grocery shopping (way too much, but not really, cause this will help contribute to Dennis´ birthday dinner for 17 that we´re having on Saturday) and still have 100 euros left over this month. Woohoo!

We had some uninspiring, cheap dinners the last couple of days (the best one was penne with panfried zucchini and goats cheese, pictured above). Yesterday was a lovely dinner at VDuck, the corncakes with chipotle shrimp I´d been coveting ever since Mark blogged about it here. And they sent us home with leftovers, so tonight will be a reprise of that, yes, I´m almost ashamed to say it, for free.

Other things that have been happening: I´m shopping like crazy for the birthday dinner, and today I made more than 50 Morroccon lamb pastries - which will be the appetizer on Saturday. They´re safely tucked away in the freezer, but I did bake one just to see if it was okay. It was more than okay, it was so good I burned my mouth because I could not stop eating it even though I knew it was way too hot to bite into.

Scheduled for the rest of the week: poach a mess of quinces, bake basbousa, count my tableware.

Dinner, February 16: Lazy Lasagna

The ragú I made this weekend became a gloriously rich and decadent lasagna today. We only ate half, so the leftovers will be dinner tomorrow for me and Maarten who´s coming over for the next installment of our Dynasty marathon.

Money spent on groceries today: 4.50 euros (salad, zucchini, goats cheese). The zucchini and goats cheese were an impulse buy that will now have to be part of Wednesday dinner.

Home sweet home

I´m typing this on my own dear laptop, at my own desk, enjoying my own view (even if the view is grey skies and drops of rain on the window - I don´t care)- it took the laptop about 6 days to receover from its hangover, and then, miraculously, he (she?) was completely fine again. Oh joy.



Other updates.
Dinner on Thursday was leek and ham quiche (money spent on groceries: 5.00 euros).
On Friday Dennis had leftovers, and I went to a bar and had beer for dinner (and half a pizza).
Yesterday I spent 30 euros on groceries (which included a bottle of cheap every day olive oil, and 40 roses). For dinner we had chipotle marinated salmon, fried sweet potatoes and guacamole - which tasted a lot better than it looks in the picture, I´m sorry about that garish seventies color scheme. I also made a huge pot of ragú yesterday, which will be dinner for 2 nights: tossed with penne tonight, turned into lasagne tomorrow. The ragú has beef (stewing beef cut into tiny cubes, a lot of work to prep but the end result is so much better than using ground beef) pancetta and chicken livers. I can´t wait.

Dinner, February 11: A bowl of noodles

Money spent on groceries today: 4.00 euros - organic beef, and some bok choy.

With udon noodles, black bean sauce and chili paste from the pantry, and spring onions and coriander from the fridge, this made an excellent tv-dinner. Spicy, healthy comfort food for those of us with a slight hangover from yesterday's eetclub festivities.

The laptop is still in the recovery room, we are too scared to see if it can breathe on its own. Yet. Maybe tomorrow.

The fairy tale dinner

Falafel, the ur-version, made with dried broad beans instead of chickpeas. After painstakingly removing the tough skins from every single broad bean (which took me more than half an hour) I decided I should have listened to Claudia Roden, who advises to buy the dried beans 'already skinned'.... The soaked, hulled beans are pureed with parsley, coriander, coriander seed, cumin and chili powder - and a ton of garlic. The deep-fried end result was very tasty - I would say that flavor-wise, these were the best falafel I ever had - but the texture needs some tweaking. They were a bit dry, and the outer crust was a tiny bit chewy instead of nice and crisp.



Musakhan
I used Paula Wolfert's recipe for this traditional Arab chicken dish. It's spiced with lots of ground sumac, which gives it a mysterious, lemony tang and a deep earthy flavor. I love any dish that combines good bread and juicy meat, and this recipe has you baking the chicken on a bed of pieces of flatbread. The juices of the chicken and stewed onions permeate the bread, which becomes part soggy / part crispy, and the whole dish (though simple and easy to make) is unusual, delicious and interesting.





Basbousa
We had finished the entire tin of Basbousa my friend had brought us from Abu Dhabi, so I decided it was time to make my own. Instead of soaking the cake with a lemon sugar syrup as the recipe (from Claudia Roden's Book of Middle Eastern Food) states, I used the reduced poaching liquid from my quinces, with a good glug of quince wodka for an extra quince (and alcohol) kick. Served with poached quinces and a good dollop of mascarpone, this was a truly gorgeous dessert - one I can see myself making for a big dinner party in the near future.


The dish without a beautiful name
Roasted aubergine with a minted joghurt dressing, sprinkled with smoked paprika.

Assembling

Money spent on groceries yesterday: about 40 euros, but effectively nothing, because I was shopping for another eetclub installment (the best club in the world: I shop, cook and clean up, and my guests pay).

Yesterdays dinner was composed of leftovers, after D. and I took the wine soaked laptop apart. I'm not touching it for a couple of days.. hoping that letting some air flow through it will help....

We had leek and yellow split pea soup, a halloumi spring onion frittata, and bulgur salad with mint and parsley.

The soup was amazing, mostly because I let it burn ever so slightly, which gave it a lovely deep caramelized flavor. So here's a recipe that tells you to actually burn your soup. Trust me. The budget element: I had a large bunch of gorgeously fresh parsley that was too lage to fit into the vegetable drawer. As I cut off the stalks, thinking I might as well throw them away, I had the idea to use them in the soup. Because it cooks for about an hour, the tough stalks become tender (but still retain some bite) and give a lovely green and fresh flavor to this earthy soup.

Tonight: Falafel, Musakhan, Basbousa.

Sounds like a fairytale, right?

Leek and yellow split pea soup

1 fat leek, the white and tender green part, cleaned and sliced
The stalks from a large, very fresh bunch of parsley, finely chopped
1 large clove of garlic
a knob of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil
a cup of yellow split peas
chicken or vegetable stock, about 500 ml.
a large pinch each of dried thyme, ground cumin and red pepper flakes

Heat the butter and oil in pot. Add leeks and garlic and sweat them until soft but not brown. Add the peas, thyme, cumin and pepper flakes and half a cup of water. Cook until the peas have absorbed the water and the resultung mush is starting to stick to the bottom of the pan. Stir to dislodge the brown crusty bits at the bottom of the pan and add the stock. Simmer slowly for 45 minutes, adding more water if necessary to make a thick and creamy but not too stodgy soup. taste for salt and pepper.

The problem with wine

I have a good friend whose favorite thing to say, after taking the first sip of a glass of wine/beer/jenever, is: "Aaaaahhhhh... a drink always makes you feel better."

And I tend to agree with him, most of the time, except when you spill half of your much needed drink on the keyboard of of your laptop, which then proceeds to make all sorts of very disturbing noises. It did start up again, but with all the keys confused, and many functions not functioning at all.

(All this right before a very nice dinner of tomato bulgur pilaf, pan fried haloumi, and a roasted green bean/olive/mint salad).

So I called the laptop doctor this morning who told me to unplug the laptop, take out the battery, and not do anything with it for a week.

A WEEK.

My knees started shaking and I almost cried. Well, no, I actually cried.

I'm typing this on another computer, where I don't have the things I need to work, to blog, to write, to work. I can check my email and look up the occasional tidbit of info, but other than that, I think there will be computer silence this week.

And after that, who knows what the diagnosis will be. Let's try not to think about that now.

So, there won't be much blogging going on for a while. I'll document my meals and grocery spending, and hopefully, in about a week, will have a plethora of catching up posts for you.

I guess this means I'll have to go and clean the bathroom.. no excuses now, right?

Sniff.

Spending, no spending

A little update:
Money spent on groceries yesterday: zero. So what did we eat? As luck would have it, a belated, unexpected Christmas gift from relatives landed in my purse, and we decided to spend it immediately. So we had a reckless night on the town which involved, beers, jenevers and a really good dinner at Levant. (Possibly more about that later).

I guess you could call that kind of behavior penny-wise, pound-foolish. Yesterday, we preferred to call it seizing the moment.

Money spent on groceries today: 22.50 euros, which includes a bottle of wine to take to our friends house tonight. Because yes, we were lucky enough to get another dinner invitation this weekend. But tomorrow, there will be some cooking - and a cheap dinner - I promise.

Dinner, February 4: Stamppot and Basbousa

Money spent on groceries yesterday: 0.00 euro.

Dinner yesterday was the most reliable Dutch winter dish: stamppot.
Stamppot is a mixture of mashed potatoes and an (about) equal amount of cooked or raw vegetables. The classics are raw endive, cooked kale and sauerkraut. It's filling comfort food at its best, usually served with winter meats like smoked pork, bacon and smoked sausage. See here, here and here for more stamppot recipes.

The nice thing about stamppot is that basically anything goes. One of my favorites is stamppot of Brussels sprouts, and I made a really great one with sweet potatoes and cabbage a little while ago. Yesterday it was raw, thinly sliced Belgian endive that went into the mash, together with a couple of chopped up hardboiled eggs, and a tablespoon of mustard. The stamppot was served with shallots fried in butter, and a smoked sausage that I had in the freezer.

No pics, stamppot isn't the most photogenic dich anyway (and this one was particularly boring, with nothing but beige and brown and pink on the plate). But it was a great dinner, and tonight Dennis will eat the leftovers while I have dinner at a friend's house, so this will be another zero euro shopping day. Yay!

What is pictured, is the gorgeous baklava Nouf brought us from Abu Dhabi. This has been dessert for almost 2 weeks now.. just a little piece with a cup of tea.. okay maybe another piece, oh what the heck they're so tiny I'll have a third. There are 2 layers in this box.. so we can keep eating for a couple more days. There were also delicious chocolate covered dates, and a tin of basbousa (I hope I spelled that right) which was my favorite: a dense yet crumbly, not overly sweet, nutty flavored delightfully knobbly-textured semolina cake.

It's real easy living on the cheap when you have friends who bring you kilos of exotic sweets.

Dinner, February 3: I´m so proud

Money spent on groceries today: 4.01 euros, at Lidl (a huge box of ridiculously cheap granola - we´ll have to wait and see if it´s any good!), a bag of Belgian endive, mineral water, milk and a tin of tomatoes.
Dinner tonight was the pork and barley chili I made on Sunday, with guacamole, grated cumin cheese (great way to use up that little end of cheese that´s been lying around in the fridge) and, tada, homemade corn tortillas!

I had a lot of masa left over from my tamale experiments, so I decided to try my hand at making corn tortillas. The recipe, if you could call it that, is extremely simple: just mix warm water into the masa until you have a smooth but not too sticky dough. Roll the dough into balls. Now you have to press them into flat rounds before frying them - there are special tortilla presses for this, but I just put the ball of dough between two layers of heavy plastic (from a ziploc bag), placed a skillet on top, and leaned on it will all my weight.

Now, for the frying. It took me a couple of pale, sickly looking tortillas before I realized that the pan in which you are frying these, should be totally, absolutely, incredibly HOT. Don´t try this with a regular flimsy non-stick skillet - you really need a heavy cast iron pan for this, or another type of frying pan that you can heat till it´s almost about to melt.
Technically I don´t even think we can call this frying, since there is no fat involved. What you do is slide the dough disk into the hot (did I mention the pan needs to be really, really hot?), dry pan, cook for half a minute, flip it over, and cook some more until you have a lightly brown-speckled, soft and pliable tortilla. Keep them warm under a cloth (and keep them wrapped in the cloth even when you sit down to dinner: when they cool, they become dry and brittle very fast).

The chili was delicious (and how I love barley!) but today´s real joy came from making my own tortillas. Hurrah.

Dinner, February 2: Kimchi, I love you

Money spent on groceries today:
Tiger prawns - 3.50
Vegetables - 4.30
Today´s major mistake: buying a 1.00 bag of sesame seeds, then coming home and finding a nice stash of sesame seeds in the spice drawer. Guess I did not clean that one out as well as I thought.

The dinner would have been ok without the prawns, but what can I say, I was really, really in the mood for prawns. Before I can become a true budget queen I must learn to control my cravings..

Kimchi pancake with prawns and spring onions

The pancake is incredibly simple: a small can of kimchi, chopped up and mixed into a pancake batter made with flour, water and eggs. The slightly sour, spicy-sweet flavor of the kimchi combines really well with the fluffy pancake batter. There are a couple of wedges left over, which will make great lunch tomorrow.

Cold udon noodle salad with steamed eggplant, cucumber and sesame dressing


Steaming chunks of eggplant is a nice way of getting them to that soft and luscious state that is so typical of well cooked eggplant, without having to use a lot of oil. The sauce is based on the sauce for ´Strange flavor chicken´ in Fuchsia Dunlop´s Land of Plenty. It´s a highly addictive dressing that´s great on cold noodles (although I sometimes use it for warm noodle dishes as well), salads, you could even try it on plain grilled or steamed meat or fish.

2 tablespoons tahini
1/2 tablespoon peanutbutter
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon roasted, ground Szechuan peppercorns
1 tablespoon Chinese black vinegar (or more if you want it really tangy - I often use up to 2 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon light soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon of chili paste, chili oil, or even just some chili flakes (optional, I didn´t use the chili today because the kimchi is spicy, and I wanted one spicy and one non-spicy dish).

Mix everything together. It will probably ´seize´ into a stiff mass: instead of adding more oil or vinegar to make it smooth and runny enough to be a dressing, I usually add a tablespoon of water. Mix that in till you have the desired consistency. Taste, and add whatever you feel is necessary: a bit more sesame oil, some vinegar, soy sauce or sugar.

Dinner, February 1: Pork & Beans

You would think that in that huge pile of pantry clutter, there would have at least been on little bag of dried beans, wouldn´t you? But no. Buckwheat, couscous, barley, spelt, bulgur, split peas and lentils, and no less than 6 types of rice, but no beans. The only incarnation of beans that I could find in the house was a can of rather mushy white beans. Why I ever bought those, I don´t have a clue. But I have to eat them, so why not today?

I had about a pound of organic braising pork, which I cut it up into very small cubes. Half of it was browned with an onion, lots of garlic and a diced large carrot, then simmered with about a third of a can of chopped tomatoes, a cup of white wine, and lots of fresh sage. When the meat was tender I added more sage, some sliced spring onions, and the white beans from the can.

The other half pound of pork was browned with onion, carrots and garlic too, but then simmered with the rest of the tomatoes, oregano, all spice, chile powder and cumin. Then I threw in about a cup of barley and a cup of water, and simmered again, for half an hour or so untill the barley was tender. This pork barley chili concoction will be dinner some time during week. The pork & white bean dish was dinner tonight.


In the interest of frugality, I did a thing I´m very proud of. We usually throw away a pretty big chunk of bread on Sunday night - it´s been around since Friday, we didn´t eat it all, on Monday it will be too old to eat. Today I processed the bread into crumbs (even saving the crusts to feed to the rat), used half of those crumbs, mixed with parsley and lemon zest, to top my pork and bean casserole, and froze the other half.

Now if only I can find a use for those frozen breadcrumbs before they get freezer burn...

The pork & beans were delicious, and because the canned beans were kind of soft and bland, the crunchy, savory breadcrumb topping was a very welcome addition. We had some panfried zucchini, tossed with the remainder of Friday´s buch of rocket, as a side dish. The good news is that there´s a tiny bit of pork left over.. which will make a great lunch tomorrow, when I'm working from home.

Fight the Clutter

Money spent on groceries today:

7.50 Euro. Most of it went to the usual dairy staples we need for the rest of the week (cheese, milk, buttermilk, joghurt), the rest to some vegetables.

I also tackled what qualifies as my ´pantry´.. basically it´s a deep drawer, which isn´t very handy because I tend to stack things on top of each other and then forget what´s there.

There are still some stacks, but at least I saw everything again, and I know what I can work with the next couple of weeks. I didn´t have to throw away too much - except for the contents of some tupperwares that had been living in the fridge since before our trip to Tallinn!

Dinner tonight will be free (at least for me!). Tomorrow, pork with white beans and sage.

Another thing to think about. When I go on a trip, I usually bring back edible souvenirs. And my friends also often bring me stuff from their travels. For some reason, I hesitate to use these things. I want to save them for a special occasion, but can never seem to decide on when that special occasion might be. And before you know it, the expiration date has passed (even though sometimes these are things that stay good for years - when those years have passed by, it will.. eventually... go bad).
I need to start using the maple syrup a visiting eGulleter gave me, the lingonberry honey I bought in Tallinn, the pozole and Mexican chocolate Mark brought me back from his last trip to Arizona, the rosemary seasalt Marieke brought me from Corsica, the cocoa nibs I bought on Bainbridge island more than 2 years ago (they don´t have an expiration date, but I´m guessing these have indefinite shelf life).

Shop in my own pantry!

Dinner, January 30

Linguine with a creamy blue cheese sauce, sauteed yellow bell pepper, rocket and pine nuts.


Rocket 1.00 (used only part of the 1.49 packet)
Pepper 0.70
Blue cheese 1.53
milk, pasta, pine nuts, olive oil and garlic from the pantry.

The verdict: this was a good, satisfying pasta dish, perfect for a Friday night after 1 or 2 drinks at the office. Would have been better with a higher quality cheese, and would have been nicer with walnuts (which I wanted to buy, but I stopped myself, because I knew I had pine nuts in the pantry).

Eat cheap, travel far

I just booked a trip to London, and if all goes well, tonight I'll be booking a flight to Rome.
I've also just come back from a trip to Tallinn, Estonia, and my friends are starting to ask me if maybe I won the lottery and didn't tell them? Some of them don't say anything but I can hear them think: how does she do it?

The truth is, I don't know! Another truth is that the sum of all these trips (and I haven't even started to think about my birthday weekend, or the summer holiday) is more than I can afford. So I thought of a plan. A plan to save, a plan to budget.

We spend 325 euros a month on groceries. I use the term groceries loosely here: this covers food and drink (breakfast, dinner and weekend lunches for 2, including dinner parties with friends), wine and beer, toiletries, cleaning supplies, household stuff like batteries and candles, and flowers. We don't always manage to stay within the budget, in which case we both add half of what we overspent at the end of the month.

Even though I feel I manage the grocery budget pretty well, I know I can do much better. I have a shameful amount of waste that goes into the garbage container every week. Foods that spoil in the fridge because of bad planning or bad timing when shopping... left overs that never get eaten.

So here's the plan. For a month, starting today, I will try to stay within a budget of 200 euros. I will document my shopping, the receipts and the dishes I cooked. I realize this is going to be a huge challenge. But if I manage to pull it off it means that by the time I fly to Rome, I will have earned myself a plane ticket. Literally.

One very important thing: we have to eat well. If we lived on peanut butter sandiwches for 3 months, I could fly to Rome and take a little detour to New York before flying back to Amsterdam... But, ideally, Dennis should not even notice we're on a budget. I'm kind of hoping he won't check this blog for a while - and see if he figures it out by himself.

So, here's what I spent today:
Organic pork - 5.69
a bunch of rocket - 1.49
a piece of blue cheese (roquefort-like, but cheaper brand) - 1.53
1 yellow bell pepper - 0.70

The pork will be saved till Sunday, I'll probably make a chili-type braise with it (with beans from the pantry to eek out the meat). Rocket, bell pepper and blue cheese will be dinner tonight (with pasta from the pantry). Tomorrow night, Dennis is taking me out to dinner!

What I need to do as soon as possible is to take an inventory of what exactly is in the fridge, freezer and pantry. I suspect we could live on that for at least a week...

Please cheer me on!