Ramen Noodles with Freegan Veggie Haul

Tip for Ramen Lover's I always have frozen duck on hand and its usually the boniest pieces.  It always adds extra flavor to your Ramen.  You only need 2-3 pieces.  I am posting this because the veggie on hand this time was the huge amount of Brocoli Rabe I got from my prior freegan haul.  Of course I cleaned it and even blanched it to be extra cautious.  I just wanted to demonstrate common ways to incorporate Freegan finds into your regular meals. So yummi and cheap.

Curry Apple Chicken Stir Fry

I made this while I was watching the VOICE earlier this week.  I had a bunch of apples from my freegan haul as well as chicken and plain yogurt from another haul so it was perfect time to make this recipe.  It's so easy and to make it even healthier I served on top of brown rice.  All you do is stir fry your chicken first then add the onions, apple, curry powder and salt cook for about 3 minutes.  Then at the end add a little water and your yogurt and mix and your done.  

Veggie Pasta made with Mario Batalli's Pasta Sauce Recipe

This meal is a combo of a practically free meal because of Couponing and my Freegan Food Rescues.  I had  almost no space in my Freezer so I'd thought I'd start using the High Quality Ground Beef I had rescued recently.  I defrosted a batch of Pasta Sauce I made from one of Mario Battalli's recipes and pulled out some free Veggie Pasta I had.  I browned the meat and then added it to the pasta sauce that I was slowing defrosting.  End result a super HEALTHY, Cheap low calorie Pasta Meal.

And because I'm not calorie counting.. I added a bunch of Parmesan Cheese.

White Bean Hummus Pasta Revisited with Croutons

Earlier this week, I made White Bean Hummus Pasta and had leftovers.  Normally, I would freeze them so I can rotate my meals.  I think that's key to eating frugally, if you eat the same thing all the time regardless of how low it costs, you will get tired of it.  And the likelihood of you making the cost effective recipe is less.  But since, I'm low on freezer space at the moment and this leftover meal needed to be eaten. I made spiced it up by adding home made croutons ( I already had batch cooked) and it was a surprising success.  I'd never thought to add croutons and pasta before but the crunchiness of the croutons added a new layer of texture to the meal that made it a perfect compliment !

Hummus Pasta: Stockpile and Cooking with Leftovers

To reduce my food waste and keep myself from using money at the grocery store its important to make meals from what I already have. And I still had 1 cup of pasta sauce left over that I needed to use since I was short on freezer space.  So I grabbed some leftover hummus, my stash of frozen Jalapeno peppers and pasta from my stockpile to make an impromptu, white bean hummus pasta.  And it made the cheap tin tomato sauce taste just like a creamy vodka sauce. With the added health benefit of sneaking in beans to pasta.

Ingredients (3-4 servings)

1/2 LB Pasta

1 Cup Pasta Sauce

4 oz White Bean Hummus

1 Jalapeno Pepper (optional)

1 Teaspoon Sugar

Directions:

Cook pasta and drain.  Set aside.

Heat Jalapeno and tomato sauce in sauce pan. Add sugar.

Add in White Bean Hummus and stir.

Add in pasta and stir in to mix sauce and pasta (italian style).  Plate and optional season with Parmesan Cheese and Basil.

I put this in as a low cost recipe because even with out the Hummus you can puree white beans to add into your sauce.  My cost to make this dish since all this was from my freegan haul and stockpile of free or near free stuff was $.10 and that's being generous with my estimate.

Ideas for Left Over or Stale Bread

I hate having to throw away bread, it really annoys me because the cost of bread is definately rising and its so easy to avoid getting moldy bread.  All you need to do is put it in the fridge and it will typically extend the life of you bread for another week.  Or cover in wet paper towel and microwave shortly just to warm up. And if you put it in the freezer you'll have months of extra time to enjoy it.  All you do is toast it when you are ready to use it.  

IDEAS for Leftover or Stale Bread

#1 Freeze it 

Make French Toast

Make Bread Crumbs

Make Garlic Bread

Make Bread Pudding

Toast and use to dip in Soup

Make Croutons (my 2nd favorite idea)

How to make Croutons

Cut on any type of bread into pieces.  Toss in bowl, drizzle with olive oil and (italian seasoning if preferred) and mix.  Then transfer to baking tray and bake for 10-15 minutes in oven at 350 degrees until toasted.  Wait for it to cool down and store in air tight container.  This can keep for weeks!

It is a lot cheaper than buying store made Croutons and you avoid food waste.  I eat it alone as a snack, add it to my salads and pasta for a low cost filler, extra substance and texture.

Best Ever Banana Oatmeal Muffins

I love it when you discover an Awesome new recipe by accident.  I was making a version of my bffs Banana Cake recipe but I didn't have the Walnuts her recipe called for. So as a cheap but still healthy substitute I added some Oatmeal in and now this is my favorite recipe ever! 

I actually prefer to make them as muffins vs loaves because they bake faster and its easier to eat when your on the run in the morning.  I make a huge batch of these and put whatever I don't plan on eating within a week in the freezer.  And just simply zap them in microwave, while I'm waiting for my coffee to brew in the mornings.

Leftovers Pasta

One thing that constantly is spoiling in my Fridge is the Jarred Pasta Sauce, I think its because its Jarred I think it has a decent Fridge life left and since pasta is the food I freeze and batch cook the least I find its easy to forget about.  The easiest solution to avoiding waste is to freeze it but it you don't have the space in your freezer... left over pasta is a good idea.  As well as using it as a sauce for your meat dishes.

Since, I was trying to scour my fridge for meal ideas without buying more food to avoid food waste I found the below needed to be consumed.

I had left over meat, because I tend to eat meat sparingly these days so if I have more than necessary for my bowl of rice, instead of over indulging I leave as leftovers.  With the half Bell Pepper, I had laying around all did was chop.  Then put all the leftovers in the pasta sauce, and toss over cooked pasta.  And like magic a meal of leftovers was created!!!!  It's not genius or fancy but left over chicken, mushrooms and other veggies like carrots, onions could have easily been substituted.  This quick meal, eliminated a couple things I had in my lower fridge that needed to be consumed.

Fortunately for me, I still had a huge stash of Garlic Knots ready to microwave and accompany my meal.

How to make Canned Chicken Broth taste Homemade

GINGER!!! A small amount is all you need about 2 teaspoons for a Quart (its really to your taste).  You can mince it so you can eat it our just cut think slices and remove after soup has heated. I would leave it in because Ginger has so many health benefits.

Ground Beef mini Batch Cooking Plan

Prep Work

Night before: 

Marinate Meat in one big bowl, by adding your cooking wine, soy sauce, salt and pepper.  Then take out 1/3 portion of meat to transfer to separate bowl and add your Sazon (this is just for the Spanish style meat)

Day of cooking:
Chop all your onions you need for Menu in Food Processor.  Coarsely process Onions for Carmelized Onions if making.

Wash your veggies.  Dice Bell Pepper.  Roughly cut Broccoli.

Cooking Strategy

I start with the Carmelized Onions (basically dump ingredients in Crockpot and forget till end of day)
Then make Flavored Rice (basically dump ingredients and press cook and forget about it till I'm eating)
Make the Spanish Style Meat (about 10-15 min at the stove)
When that is done, I make the burger patties allowing the food to cool a little.  Then I store the food in fridge.

Using the same pan, I proceed to making the Hamburger Helper meal ( about 15-20 minutes at stove). I make this last, because its sauce based and if you make it first you will have to clean the cooking pan. While I'm waiting for the liquids to boil, I put my Broccoli on Steamer plate and steam.  By the time the pasta in the Hamburger Helper is done cooking, I can turn off the flame for the Broccoli.  Then eat something I've made since rice would be done as well.  And when I've finished eating, the Hamburger Helper should have cooled enough for me to prep for fridge storage.

If you have this routine down, you can do all this and clean up in about an 1-1.5 hours.  I was so happy because I barely had any dishes to wash and for me its at least 15 FULL meals.  I won't be eating meat everyday but I have at least 15 meals I can turn to if and when I am craving meat.  If your feeding a family just multiply the recipes to fit your needs and fridge space.

And by the time you are reheating your your next meal, your Crock Pot onions should be done. And all you have to do is transfer to the fridge.

** I was motivated to cook my ground beef because I had a 10 LB of Onions and some Bell Peppers I got on sale that I needed to use.  I took the opportunity since I was already prepping these ingredients for my immediate meal plan to freeze my extras as well for future meals.

Sweet Potato Pancakes

Sweet Potato Pancakes

I got the idea from the fact that I had huge amount of leftover mashed Sweet Potato's from thanks to my $1 bag haul and I usually make the best pancakes from my leftover Soy Bean Okara.  This turned out really well and since sweet potato's are super healthy to start with this is a way to make your pancakes just a little bit more healthy.

SWEET POTATO PANCAKES Ingredients 1 cup sifted flour 1 tsp  baking powder 2 tbsp sugar 1/2 tsp cinnamon powder 1 cup cooked, mashed sweet potatoes 1 egg, beaten 1 cup milk Directions In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugar and spices. In a separate bowl, mix together remaining ingredients until smooth. Add potato mixture to flour mixture and mix until blended. Heat lightly oiled pan or griddle.  Spoon in batter your preference of size. Lower heat and cook until bottom of pancake is nicely browned and tiny bubbles form along top edges; flip with spatula. Brown other side. Serve with syrup. Tip: I try to make them about toaster size, so that I can freeze a bunch and just pop them in toaster to reheat.

Tangy Lime Chic Pea Salad

I was really pleasantly surprised with my experimentation in creating this recipe.  The Lime Juice is the key ingredient. It reminds me alil of Chimichurri but with protein from the Garbanzo beans so yummi and healthy cheap and low fat!

Tangy Lime Chic Pea Salad (4 side servings)

INGREDIENTS

1 Tomato

1 Small Cucumber 

1 Cup Garbanzo Beans aka Chic Peas 

1/4-1/2 Yellow Onion (to taste)

1/2 Lime Juice

1 TSP Olive Oil (optional)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions

1. Chop your Onion, Tomato, and Cucumber toss into main bowl.  If you using canned Garbanzo beans drain liquid first and then dump beans into main bowl.  
2. In small side bowl, squeeze your lime juice, add olive oil, and seasoning.  Then mix.
3. Toss dressing into main bowl and mix all.  Or better yet if you have a lid bowl just shake to mix.  Store in fridge for 1/2 hour so flavors can marinate and then serve when ready.

Note: Because of the Tomato's you don't want to use all of this up in 2 days, the tomato's will get soggy.

Because of the Tangy taste this will go great with bland Rice and Beans.

Note: I used my stash of cooked dried Chic Peas so 1 cup only cost me less than $.30 and the rest were ingredients that are frequently on sale in the summer all throughout the country.  But in NYC, tomato's, cucumbers, limes are regular Huge Dollar bag veggies in the Asian Supermarkets.

Cheap Summer Salmon Meal Less than $1 per Serving

I basically divided the fillet in half and made 1 oz servings for cooked Salmon.  I pan fried because I was too lazy to take out grill, but basically spent about 10 minutes cooking it.  Then plated on large lettuce leaf, so I could eat it as a wrap.  And took went to my fridge from some ready made chic pea salad and added that as a side dish.  And magically you have a quick, healthy cheap and easy summer lunch or dinner!

Note: In terms of cost this meal definately cost me less than $1 to make because I get access to huge dollar bags of Veggies from the Chinese Supermarkets.  But even if you didn't have that I am pretty confident you could do this for $1.50 per dish if not better because the Salmon I ended buying would have been the equivalent of $8/lb which is way too high!  The key is to cut your fillets thin like the prepacked manufacturers do.

Making Hamburgers McDonald's Style

I was recently reading Top Secret Recipes and the section on McDonald's really peaked my interest.  Because health concerns aside McDonald's has always been my comfort food of choice.  It's just so yummi but the prices ensure I curb my cravings.  I finally figured out why I love it so much, the meat in their burger's all have MSG!!!! No wonder I'm addicted.  The most shocking thing, was discovering that for every ONE pound of ground meat they make 10 beef patties out it!!! Which as a frugal girl really, really intrigued me, talk about penny pinching!  In terms of the patty the recipe is simple, its salt, pepper, MSG, and dried onions.

I honestly couldn't stretch the meat that much so I decided to use real onions instead and was able to make 5 patties out of 1/2 LB of ground meat. I changed up the recipe a little since I'm not using MSG.

Ingredients:

1/2 LB Ground Beef

1/2 Medium Size Onion

2 TSP Soy Sauce

2 TSP Cooking Wine

Salt and Pepper to taste

You will need Wax Paper or cheaper alternative Plastic Wrap

Directions:

Using fork lightly mix your Soy Sauce, Salt, Pepper and Cooking wine into the ground beef.  Let sit and marinate for at least an hour in lower fridge.  Finely chop your onion or use food processor.  Then Mix in you onions to the beef.  Divide your meat so that you get 5 even amounts.  On flat surface lay out your Plastic Wrap.  The proceed to scoop your sections onto the plastic wrap like below.

Then cover the beef mixture with the other half of Plastic Wrap and gently press to form your patty.  

After you have formed your patties, pay attention to the ends.  Use your fingers to gentle make sure the ends aren't too thin as that would make it vunerable to falling apart when cooking.

As the book said, its easier to cook these then patties when they've been slightly frozen.  For me, I'm just putting these into my freezer for when I need an emergency Burger.What I discovered is that this method is great for getting the max out of your meat.  It would also work great for mixing black beans as well so you have a combo of meat and black bean burger patty !!  What I love about this is that my hands never get dirty and the clean up was just the bowl I used to marinate and the chopping board for the onions.  Next time, I get a great deal on Ground Beef, I'm going to make a ton of these and they take up almost no room in your freezer!

Cost Analysis: Even if you get your ground beef for $2 per LB which is way to high, it would cost you only $.20 of meat for each patty.  And it's a lot more filling than what you pay for ham or turkey sandwich meat.  And this version is NO MSG and real Onions!

TIP Cheap Flavored Rice

So I got a ton of these for free a while back when they were doubling coupons, I'd never in my life used packed rice before but I've discovered their pretty yummy.  But since I'm not used to such a strong flavor in my rice, I experimented with diluting the taste.  And this is how I got to this blog post about making cheap flavored rice.  The proportion I am very happy with is for every 1 pack of Carolina Rice (4.5 oz) add 1 full cup of regular plain dry white rice.  Then add water to proper rice proportions.  The best thing about flavored rice is that its suppose to be a dry and so you can use super cheap Jasmine White rice. And because I'm extremely lazy I do this in my normal rice cooker.

Ingredients

1 Cup of Plain White Rice

1 Pack of Carolina Rice Mix

About 1 1/2 Cup Water ( follow your rice cooker)

Directions

Add the dry white rice, complete contents of the rice mix, and lastly water.

                                                Stir so seasoning can be evenly distributed.  

The close your rice cooker and press the cook button.  In about 30-40 minutes, you should be done.  Fluff the rice and serve.

If you have leftovers, this is a great type if rice to put in fridge and re-heat in microwave.

Hamburger Helper Healthy Modified Version

It's no secret I love love cheese and processed too.   What I don't like is the cost of Cheese and its calories. So as a frugal tip, anytime I can get cheap box Mac and Cheese or Hamburger helper for less than $.50, I'll pick it up so I can have satisfy my occasional cheese cravings.  As in the case with the pack of Hamburger Helper I got for super cheap at Target last Thanksgiving.  I modified the recipe by using less meat, slipping in black beans, unions and using reduce fat milk.

Ingredients:

1/2 LB Ground Beef

1/4 Medium Size Onion

2 TSP Soy Sauce

2 TSP Cooking Wine

1/4 Cup Black Beans

1 Package Hamburger Helper

2 Cups Milk (lowfat)

3/4 Cups Water

Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

Using fork lightly mix your Soy Sauce, Salt, Pepper and Cooking wine into the ground beef.    Finely chop your onion or use food processor.  Then Mix in you onions to the beef.  Let sit and marinate for at least an hour in lower fridge.  In oiled pan on high heat, cook the meat/ onion mixture till beef has browned about 5 minutes.  On the side mix your liquids with the Cheese Packet of the hamburger helper, then add to the cooking meat in pan.  Add in pasta and bring everything to boil.  Stir occasionally, so nothing sticks to bottom of pan.  Add in black beans.  Let simmer for about 10 minutes till pasta is cooked.  Taste and add additional seasoning if needed.

The reason this recipe is a great freezer style meal is for proportion control, I could seriously eat a huge bowl all at once but then I'd seriously be a glutton with all those calories.  Also the box suggests you could add in veggies like green beans, which I would consider for next time.

Easy Spanish Style Meat Dish

For ages, I'd been a huge admirer of Spanish foods being a fan of Sophie's in NYC.  And I'd tried reproducing my favorite dishes but there was always a missing component to my recipes and I'd finally figured it out! You need SAZON from Goya, its basically MSG but so basic to every Spanish style meat dish.  My recipe is super easy and versatile, and great even when frozen and reheated.

Here's my Recipe its really flexible you really just need ground beef, sazon, onions and bell pepper.  It makes 6 servings for me but 4 if you eat a lot more.

Ingredients:

1/2 LB Ground Beef

1 Bell Pepper (any thing you have on hand)

1 Onion

1/2 packet of Sazon

Salt and Pepper to taste

2 TSP Soy Sauce

2 TSP Cooking Wine

1/2 Chili Pepper (if you like heat and have on hand)

Directions:

• Put your Wine and Soy Sauce into your Ground Beef and lightly distribute.  Then mix in Sazon. Store in fridge overnight.
• Chop your Onions and Bell Peppers set aside.
• Heat and Oil up your cooking pan, add in Onion and Chili Pepper (if using).  Let cook for 3 min, then add in your meat and keep moving the items in pan.  Cook till meat looks about done and add in your Bell Peppers.  Add Salt and Pepper to taste.

I love this dish because it's so yummi and the bell peppers and onions are great ways to stretch the meat use out.

Usually I serve over my Frugal Version of Spanish Rice but today I was too lazy to make a new batch of rice.

Cheap Appetizer Curry Egg Potato on Saltine Crackers

A cheap, quick, easy, prepare mostly ahead appetizer is Curry Egg Potato Salad on Saltines.  In NYC you still can get a box which will have a hundred square crackers for $.99 at Cheap Jacks 99 Cent Store, and make about 40 of these with pantry like ingredients we all mostly carry.  The RECIPE .

All you do before serving is scoop the salad on a saltine cracker.

***A side note is too cut everything up smaller so it looks nicer on the cracker.  I also think square saltines are the best because your guests can easily grab up the appetizer vs toast or circle saltines.

And if its the summer and you have an abundance of Basil you can use it as a garnish that adds an amazing layer of flavor.

Serving Suggestion I would arrange in pentagon shape vs rows, because its easier to reach since corners won't be blocked.

Thai Basil Chicken with Chic Pea

One of my favorite Thai dishes and frugal dish to make is THAI BASIL CHICKEN. It's so easy and really adds a kick to my meal plan.  It's also a great way to use my summer Basil.  One thing I added to the traditional recipe is chic peas, it helps to stretch out my chicken to reduce the cost of this meal.

Ingredients

1.5 lb Chicken Breast or Chicken Thigh

1/2 cup of Basil (or two handfuls its too your taste)

1/2 cup of chic peas

2 TBS Thai Chilli Paste with Sweet Basil Leaves

2 TBS Thai Fish Sauce

Salt and Soy Sauce to taste

Optional: I added the last of my red bell pepper and green chilli pepper for heat and to sneak in some veggie

Lime Juice

Directions

1. Chop your chicken, excess veggies into bite size for faster cooking.
2. Oil up your work or pan, let it warm up on high heat and then toss your chicken in first to cook.  Stir around till chicken is almost cooked.  
3. Then add your Chilli Paste and stir until chicken is all cooked.
4. Then add your chic peas (and peppers if you have any) to the wok/pan, then the fish sauce and soy sauce.  Stir for 2-3 minutes, check the salt and spice level and adjust if necessary.  If its too spicy or salty if you have lime juice handy add and check levels again.  If you don't have lime, just add some water and turn heat down to low.  
5. Add half of your basil leaves and put lid and let simmer for about 3 minutes to allow flavors to combine.
6. Turn heat off and toss in the rest of your basil and stir for a minute.
7.  Serve with rice and ENJOY!!!

Note: Recipe easily serves 4 people.  This dish is one of the few that actually tastes really good with Brown Rice. It also freezes well.

****If you don't have Maesri's Chilli Paste with Thai Basil leaves.  You can substitute with plain Chinese Chilli paste, some grinded garlic and chopped basil leaves.

This is what it looks like inside the can and it lasts for a long time.

OTHER SERVING SUGGESTION

It's common to add a fried egg along with this dish and white rice.  You can cook it after the chicken, that way some of the lingering flavors of the dish can go to the egg.
Also, I would normally use chicken thigh but chicken breast is healthier and more often on sale in my area.