I wanted to use up the small zucchini Terra Firma delivered last week and I had a large Marvel Stripe tomato that was starting to go, so I decided to put both of them into a simple pasta dish.

First I dropped 4 ounces of spaghetti into a big pot of salted boiling water. While that was boiling, I sauteed 2 TB of olive oil and 2 cloves of finely chopped garlic with chopped zucchini and then let it all cook, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, I chopped up a large tomato (very large). When the spaghetti was done, I tossed it with the zucchini, added the tomato, and tossed again. I topped it all with some toasted bread crumbs and passed freshly grated parmesan cheese at the table. Served with some sweet crimson flame grapes, it made a simple summer supper.

Now, it wasn't perfect. Next time I'll try cooking the zucchini over a medium low heat before the pasta began to cook. I think zucchini tastes best when it's browned, and last night it just didn't have time to do that. I'll also spoon the tomatoes into the pan with a slotted spoon so as to avoid most of the juice, which just made the dish messy. (I'm making sure I always include the tomato jelly and seeds, though, after reading Harold McGee's explanation of why tomato jelly has more flavor than the flesh.)

And I'll use conventional spaghetti. Last week I picked up some whole wheat spaghetti in my yearly experiment to see if I like it as well as refined-flour spaghetti, and this year, like every year, I don't. The texture just isn't right. I've been happy with whole wheat penne in the past, but whole wheat spaghetti just doesn't twirl or otherwise behave like its refined cousin, and I always go back. Since most of the grains we eat are unrefined, I'm not too worried: the largest loss in refined flour is fiber, and I think we're getting plenty of that in the rest of our diet.

How did she end up with just 1 small zucchini? I hear you asking at home. Well, that's one of the problems with the small box. You sometimes receive a token amount of a vegetable, not enough to use unless you supplement it with more of the same or combine it with something else. The other problem, of course, is that you just plain miss out on some of the good stuff of the season as it goes into the larger sized boxes, but not yours.

But we just can't use up a medium box, not unless they've balanced it with more fruit to vegetables than when we started. The first year we subscribed to Terra Firma Farms was a constant struggle to use up vegetables, once the season kicked in. So much so that Jesse insisted, when the new year rolled around, that we downsize to the small box. "This is supposed to help," he reasoned, "not cause you more stress" and I couldn't argue. That summer, every dish I made contained, or was garnished with, tomato (or both). And the melon! Even with the small box, we often receive two melons a week, just too much melon for the two of us.

So I contract for a small box and supplement as needed throughout the year. It provides a good base for my weekly menus, and serves as a handy guide for what is in season. And of course, the prices are good and I like supporting a local farm.

What is the history of your favorite food? That depends upon the food and how deep you want to dig. Take tiramasu. This dish was "created" in the late 20th century. You could find a few magazines articles confirming period popularity/origination and stop there. Or? You could go the next level and research the recipe based on composition. You would soon discover this dish was based on Victorian-era moulded creams which were based on Colonial-era tipsy cakes which were inspired by Renaissance-era trifles.

EVOLUTION VS. INVENTION
Very few (if any) foods are invented. Most are contemporary twists on traditional themes. Louis Diat's famous Vichysoisse was a childhood favorite. Today's grilled cheese sandwich is connected to ancient cooks who melted cheese on bread. 1950s meatloaf is connected to ground cooked meat products promoted at the turn of the 20th century, which are, in turn related to ancient Roman minces. Need more? Corn dogs and weiner schnitzel. French fries and Medieval fritters. New York gyros and Middle Eastern doner kebabs. Hershey's Kisses and ancient Incan cocoa.

So awesome.

At Hampton Court, we spent some time with the Experimental Food Historians in the Tudor Kitchens, perhaps the highlight of my visit. Since learning there is such a thing, I am tempted to become an Experimental Food Historian myself when I get home, working from my own kitchen, and subjecting my poor husband to experimental concoctions. (via br)]]> tag:www.rebeccablood.net,2007:/thriftyo//7.1368 2007-06-14T23:02:36Z 2009-04-27T17:22:40Z

This was our first dinner at home. I was out of fresh vegetables, of course, having pickled all the carrots before I left for London. But the night we got home, I pulled a container of black beans charros and rice from the freezer so I could warm it for dinner the next day.

I have a backlog of green beans in the freezer, too, and I added some to the meal. I froze these beans two years ago, when my crop did better than I expected—and during the summer, when produce from Terra Firma Farms is most plentiful, to boot. There they still are. The Community Garden is a subject for another entry, but let me just say that it has not been a smashing success. I've been able to grow some things, but not enough to replace the CSA. Nor have I had success in growing the things Terra Firma Farms doesn't provide, like salad in the summer, or plum tomatoes for canning or drying. Anyway, I harvested these green beans an embarrassingly long time ago, and it's time to eat them—what's the use of freezing food, if you never eat it?

]]> I prepared the beans very simply: warmed them, then tossed them in some olive oil in which I had sauteed some garlic. I chopped some fresh thyme from the plant on the deck, and sprinkled it into the beans. As it turned out, the beans were a bit soft—I think I overcooked them when I was blanching them to freeze—but the flavor was very good. I'll do this again.

For this meal I also put out some of the carrot pickles from the new recipe I tried right before I left. They are very good—a rounder flavor than the dills I made before that. Interestingly, none of the garlic in these new pickles turned blue.

I tasted the new-recipe pickles the night before we left for our trip. Since then, the flavor has become more sour—they never tasted sweet, but overall, the flavor seemed a bit more complex then than it does now. I may want to experiment with the addition of more sugar, using this recipe as a base. I'd also like to learn more about the difference between dill seed and dill weed when used in a brine. Whatever modifications I'd like to make, these pickles are terrific—highly recommended.

It was a good meal. It was nice to be at home, eating at our own table, and it was such a treat to be able to eat food I'd fixed before we left for our trip. I need to try to cook ahead every time we travel—there's always so much to do when we get home, and if I've planned well, little fresh food to cook with, anyway. It's good to be home.

]]>

The characteristics of a really good...mac and cheese are that it should have a gooey, unctuous, cheesy inside, topped by a crispy, intensely cheesy crust. This version fulfills those requirements. Serve with a plain green salad. You will not need anything else, unless it's a good red wine. Be prepared to compensate with spare eating for days afterwards. To my mind, this is the perfect thing to serve at a casual dinner party with close friends.

With a rich dish like this one, you often eat less than you otherwise would, making it a thriftier choice than you might think. Oh, what a lame excuse. After reading her description, I'm ready to throw thrift (and calories) to the wind one night just to have some of this.]]> tag:www.rebeccablood.net,2007:/thriftyo//7.1349 2007-06-06T11:30:05Z 2007-07-10T22:44:20Z

He says, "The directions are the same for all the recipes. Here are the ingredients:"

Whole Wheat Bread

2 cups bread flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp honey
1/2 tsp yeast
2 cups water

Rye Bread

2 cups bread flour
2 cups rye flour
2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp caraway seeds
1/2 tsp yeast
2 cups water

Pumpernickel Bread

2 cups bread flour
2 cups rye flour
2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp cocoa
3 Tbsp molasses
1/2 tsp yeast
2 cups water

Lunch today is Tex-Mex Chili from way back in Week 2 via my freezer. I warm the last of the cornbread in the oven, we have it with butter.

Dinner is just as easy as lunch was: I stir-fry the last of the sugar snap peas in olive oil and garlic, and add a little fresh oregano from the plant on my deck before I serve it. For the main course, I just warm up the rest of the White Beans with Rosemary—and then freeze what's left for a lunch when we get back. We use the remaining lettuce for a crisp romaine salad. I finished up a bottle of wine last night, so tonight I drink a beer with dinner, and it's quite good. After months of sampling Jesse's various beers, I think I may finally be developing a taste for the stuff.

Breakfast: Coffee; Muesli & Yogurt
Lunch: Tex Mex Chili; Cornbread; Hot Tea
Dinner: White Beans with Rosemary; Sugar Snap Peas with Frech Oregano; Romaine Salad; beer
Time to dinner: 15 minutes; Active cooking time: 15 minutes.

I have some pre-project carrots in addition to the carrots left from last week's box. I decide to make 3 kinds of carrot pickles to use them all up (another reader suggestion): that Thai recipe (this time with the proper rice wine vinegar); the carrot pickles with dill I liked so much before; and a new recipe. I'm looking forward to sampling the results when I get home. (One pound of carrots, by the way, roughly translates into a 1-quart jar, if it's a matchstick cut. The slices sit more compactly and take up about 2/3 of a jar.)

And with that, for the first time ever, my crisper is empty before I leave.

When I started this project 4 1/2 weeks ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. "I wonder if I could eat well on a really limited budget," I wondered. "I wonder if I'm as thrifty as I think I am." When I decided to put my experiment online, I couldn't have imagined how much time I would spend weighing little jars of spices, or how many times I'd go to the store (once a day!) the first week to get prices.

It's been worth every minute, because I also never imagined that I would attract such an interested, involved, and genuinely helpful community in such a short time. It's been a great pleasure—and I'm not finished yet.

I won't be able to do the final calculations until I get home a week from now, of course. After I get home, after I go over the spreadsheet again, after I weigh all those little jars of spices again, I'll post a summary.

What I can tell you is that I was able to feed us on this budget. And I ate well doing it. Thank you for your interest, your support, and your many suggestions. I'll be back in about a week. Since I won't be chronicling every single meal I eat, I hope I'll have time to delve deeper into a few of the issue that have been raised in the last month. I'll continue writing about the way I eat and the way I cook. And I'll let you know how those pickles turned out.

I doubt if I'll be motivated to post while I'm travelling, but in the meantime, I've scheduled some links to tide you over while I'm gone, including a couple of reader recipes (and one really decadent one from one of my favorite food bloggers). But for now, it's nearly midnight and I still haven't packed. I'll talk to you soon.

Tuesday total: $3.17. Remaining weekly allowance: $6.97

I think it's good, but Jesse thinks it's so minty that the green tea taste is obscured. Next time (and it will be weeks before I get through this batch of mix) I'll try 2 parts green tea, 1 1/2 parts mint, and 1 part lemongrass and see how that comes out. Whether or not it is too minty (and I'm not convinced) it really is a refreshing summer drink.

Breakfast: Coffee; Muesli & Yogurt
Lunch: White beans with Extra Virgin Olive Oil (1); Lemon Basil Rice Pilaf with some brown rice (1); Cherries (1); Summer Tea
Dinner: White Beans with Rosemary; Spinach with garlic and red pepper flakes; Cherries; red wine (1); beer (1)
Time to dinner: 2 1/2 hours; Active cooking time: 30 minutes.

For dinner we have an old favorite, White Beans with Rosemary, and something new, Spinach with Garlic and Red Pepper Flakes. The first recipe calls for lima beans, but at the store on Friday, I was uncertain of how much money I had left to spend, so I opted for the navy beans instead.

I have to admit, the last shopping trip is the one that was the most nerve-wracking of this entire project. It was Friday, and I hadn't fully accounted for the current weeks' expenses. I was hoping to have enough money for hamburgers on Memorial Day, and in all I made a number of different food choices than I normally would have. I opted for the navy beans instead of the lima beans. I decided to make due with the grapefruit I had left at home instead of buying 2 more pieces of fruit for lunches. I chose romaine lettuce instead of spinach for salads. I elected not to buy swiss cheese, deciding that a cheaper variety of bulk cheese I had at home would be good enough instead. (And as it turns out, I won't be making that recipe after all.) In short, I cut every corner I could think of, all because I was afraid I had too little money left to spend.

The navy beans work just fine in this dish, however, so the corner cut here is minor—our palettes won't suffer much at all. It's as easy as can be: presoak a cup and a half of beans, saute garlic and onion in olive oil, add a chopped tomato—I use part of the can I opened a few days ago— and crushed dried rosemary and salt, mix in the drained beans and 3 cups of water, and let it simmer for an hour and a half.

The spinach is a surprising success. I almost never cook spinach. Reason #1: Jesse dislikes it (I think it's a texture thing). Reason #2: while I like cooked spinach, I love raw spinach salad, and so does Jesse. So that's what we always look forward to and have.

But Madhur Jaffrey suggests serving the beans with a pile of "garlicky greens" on top, and I decide that's worth a try. This recipe is from Deborah Madison, and it's also very simple: blanch spinach, and then saute it in olive oil with garlic and crushed red pepper flakes and a little water. Add a little lemon or vinegar, and serve.

The two flavors go very well together, although I feel the bean's rosemary flavor is obscured. In all, it's a successful combination, one I'll have again.

Total today includes a batch of Summer Tea.

Tuesday total: $7.57. Remaining weekly allowance: $10.14