Food!

[taimatsu]

Currently I have no money. Well, I have about twenty-three pounds which has to last me I-don't-know-how-long. That figure is, fortunately, *after* the food-shopping I have just done - I have spent about fourteen pounds on food. Now I want you to suggest what I should do with it!

I have (from shopping and storecupboard):

• all the pasta ever
• thin rice noodles, egg noodles and those floppy Amoy udon straight-to-wok noodles
• and some cheapie instant noodley things
• risotto and long-grain rice
• porridge oats
• small loaf brown bread

• a huge red onion
• a small white onion
• two courgettes
• two medium King Edward potatoes
• a fair pile of button mushrooms
• a large, glossy, gorgeous red pepper

• a big tin of sweetcorn
• a small tin of tuna in brine
• some baked beans
• a small jar of pesto
• a tin of chopped tomatoes
• a jar of Cirio Sugo Al'olive (tomato and olive pasta sauce, best thing in the world, have to stop myself eating it with bread constantly)
• some margarine, jam, mayonnaise, etc
• olive oil, sesame oil, balsamic vinegar, soy sauce
• box of enormous plate-sized matzos crackers
• couple of tins of soup
• stock cubes, etc.
• tropical squash, Ribena
• milk

Note I do not have: any cheese, any fresh meat, any fresh tomatoes.
So, what do I cook? How do I make this last as long as possible?

Comments

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

You can cook rice in soup to make a more substantial and rather tasty savoury rice type thing. If you can spare a bit of onion to add that'd be even better.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

You can live forever on pasta, onions and pesto. Honest.

[suave-steve.livejournal.com]

I would suggest eating it, in a number of delicious meals.

[miss-corinne.livejournal.com]

Make yourself a vat of pasta sauce with all the vegetables you have, if you've got tomato soup add that in with the chopped tomatos and stock cubes and some water.

You can then have that with pasta (duh), turn it into a creamy soup with a bit of milk, mix with the tuna/baked beans to have on a potato. When you're sick of the pasta have fried rice with mushrooms, sweetcorn, peppers, and soy sauce...or whatever :)

[juliet]

You've got the makings of a variety of pasta meals there (jar of pasta sauce, obv; onion + tin tomatoes to make more pasta sauce, & then you can put mushrooms or pepper or courgette in depending on mood; pesto).

Mushroom risotto?

Jacket potato & beans. Jacket potato & tuna.

Courgette/onion/mushroom/pepper also could all be stir-fried with noodles (in the circs, you won't want to use all of all of them, obviously!).

Soup & bread.

Very very cheap meal: fry up onion, add rice & stir round for about a minute, add stock powder & herbs if available, add water. Boil until cooked. Meanwhile, boil up some lentils. Mix the two together. Eat. Tinned tomatoes are a nice addition if budget permits. (I know you do not currently have lentils but it might be worth spending some of yr 23quid on them as they cost about 60p/packet, are good protein sources, & last for a great many meals).

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Mmm... you're making me hungry!

I was going to suggest broadly similar things, including the lentils.

[andrewwyld.livejournal.com]

I found you can make great tuna soup with some fried onion, some stock, some tuna and whatever else you have to hand.  Rice instantly extends it to a risotto.  Generally, I seemed to start out in a soup direction and end up making weird little dumplings and adding things until I had a rich stew.

Genetic cookery.  You start somewhere easy and extend stepwise.

[several-bees.livejournal.com]

I think planning is probably the important thing. Use the pepper and the courgettes in the next few days, rather than saving them; the disappointment of finding they've gone off would be horrible. If you didn't want to squander them on one meal, you could make pasta sauce out of them and the tinned tomatoes, and then divide it into a few sections and freeze a couple of them. The corn, similarly, might not keep long after you open it, so perhaps plan a couple of corn-related meals in a row to use it up. With rice and soy sauce one night, and then stuffed in a baked potato the next day, or something.

Freeze the loaf of bread as well (assuming you have access to a freezer), I should think, slicing it first if it's unsliced; that way you can get out a couple of slices a day in the morning. Sandwiches made in the morning on frozen bread are usually just right to eat by lunchtime.

If you have rice one night, you can stuff the leftovers into the pepper and bake it the next day.

I'm tempted to suggest a sort of biscuity oatsy thing using the oats and jam and margarine etc, but I think that would be a bad idea, being a bit too experimental and potentially wasteful.

If you boil any of the vegetables, don't throw the water away; keep it to cook pasta or rice in, it does make it taste heartier and more filling. Alternatively you can cook them in water that's had a stock cube dissolved in it, but that seems a bit wasteful if your stock cube supplies are limited.

I'd suggest visiting here for a meal - I'm in obsessive cooking mode at the moment so like to have people to feed - but presumably the cost of tickets would completely overshadow the benefit of the food.

I've just been reading a chapter in Jeffrey Steingarten's book "The Man Who Ate Everything" on the cheapest possible subsistence diet, and M.F.K. Fisher's "How To Cook A Wolf" on cooking during rationing; they're both really interesting, but not much use to someone in your position, since they require fierce amounts of planning ahead before you go to the shops, rather than telling you how to make the most of the food you have already. Do you think this situation is likely to come up again? I'll type up (what seem to me to be) their most useful suggestions if so.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

The lack of cheese rules out many of my standard recipes :)

Make the pepper, half a courgette, some onion and mushrooms into a pasta sauce with the chopped tomatoes: fry in some olive oil, add a teaspoon or so of balsamic vinegar and maybe a little pesto, then add the tomatoes. Keep this in the fridge and it'll be good for several days. Mix it with pesto for variety.

Unfortunately, a half-used pepper only stays good for about a day or two before going floppy, so use it quickly once you've started.

Do a half-onion, half-courgette and mushrooms stir fry with the stir-fry noodles and some soy sauce and olive oil, plus a splash of sesame oil. Possibly twice. Pepper would also go well in this if you have any left over.

It's also possible to do a good imitation of fried rice: cook some rice, fry some vegetables (pepper, onion, mushroom and/or courgette), slosh in soy sauce as it cooks, add the rice, fry for a little bit longer with more soy sauce, then scramble an egg in the middle and mix it in (the egg is optional). Peas are also good in this, and sweetcorn would probably work as well - just chuck a few spoonfuls in (drained) at the same time as the rice.

Mix the tuna, sweetcorn and mayonnaise into a baked-potato filling and have it with the potatoes. It would also work on crackers.

Have the pasta with pesto and/or pasta sauce.

Have the beans on toast sometime when you can't be bothered doing proper cooking.

If you have cornflour to thicken a milk sauce, then you could do a creamy mushroom sauce to go with pasta - saute the mushrooms in some butter, cover in milk, then stir a teaspoon of cornflour into a splash of milk in a cup and add it to the sauce once it starts to bubble slightly, and that'll thicken it up. Just don't use too much milk - if in doubt, add less.

If you're doing more shopping, get more vegetables and cheese, because your diet looks a bit short of fruit-and-veg and protein. Onions, mushrooms, peppers and courgettes are awesome on practically anything, and the first two are usually cheap.

Frozen peas are also a good five-minute foodstuff to have around. I usually chuck them into rice when I'm cooking.

If you've got £1.50 or so to spare, get some lentils and a bunch of root vegetables, and make them into a tasty stew with a couple of stock cubes.

[juliet]

If you're doing more shopping, get more vegetables and cheese, because your diet looks a bit short of fruit-and-veg and protein.

Agreed that that's what you're short of here; cheese is an expensive way to get protein, though. Lentils or other beans (tinned beans aren't *horribly* expensive but you're on a pretty low budget right now, so you can also get them dried, in which case you need to soak overnight & boil for a couple of hours. Do not add salt to beans before they're cooked! Lentils don't need to be soaked, & only need about 20-30 min to cook, so are a bit easier.). Soya mince, if you can get the dried stuff (try the supermarket aisle where the dried beans are, or a health-food shop) is also v cheap & doesn't require too much pre-dealing-with. Although it benefits from spending some time in a marinade (e.g. balsamic + tomato paste + herbs; chuck the whole lot in, don't waste the marinade!).

Fruit & veg: is there a market near you? You should be able to get fruit/veg cheaper there, especially if you buy in season (so, currently: root veg, some sorts of greens, mushrooms because they don't really have a season. Apples.). Or go to the supermarket near closing time & see if they've got anything reduced to clear.

Definitely: root veg + lentil stew. £1.50 of root veg & lentils, if you buy carefully, can do you 2-3 meals.

[mistress-carrot.livejournal.com]

Tinned lentils or other beans are on sale at 3 for a pound at Sainsbury's at the moment. And you could look down Smelly alley for cheap veg/fruit/meat.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I'd be a bit wary of mushrooms from Smelly Alley though!

[juliet]

Even at 3-for-a-quid tinned lentils are still a lot more expensive than dried lentils per weight (& not much more convenient). That's pretty good for the other sorts of beans, though!

[igniscience.livejournal.com]

Now I want you to suggest what I should do with it!

eat it !

or did you mean helpful suggestions ? <grin>

now i'm hungry...

[mistress-carrot.livejournal.com]

Sorry, it's all in the first person. If you can't read it all, read the last paragraph; if you can read it all, the suggestions of spending are just suggestions and not essential.

The first thing I would do is freeze the bread, preferably in easy to handle packets of how many slices you eat a time, so that it doesn't go off because you aren't eating it fast enough.

Then I'd probably make a huge pan of pasta, onion, some of the mushrooms and half a jar of pesto and make it last two or three meals.

Breakfasts would probably be porridge or toast and I'd save the matzos for snack attacks.

I'd go for either tuna pasta bake (tin of tomatoes, tin or half tin of tuna etc) or baked potato with tuna. Then I'd improv a stir fry with soy sauce, a stock cube, veg and seasoning. The pasta bake and stir fry could probably do two meals each.

Midway through I would treat myself to a cheap meal out/in, if I could afford it, of what I was fancying - it would take away the need to splurge on things I can't have and mean that I wouldn't have to cook that night. If I was thinking, I'd get Takeaway, because the portions are always huge and can be made into two meals. Also, I'd buy a pack of biscuits/pack of chocolate bars/multipack of crisps/whatever was my favourite snack food, because I know that I'll be tempted to snack and it's cheaper to do that than think "Oh, there's a shop, I'll buy myself..."

Obviously, the soup and the tinned stuff is for later in the fooding as it won't go off. Bulking the soup up with rice is a good idea. Beans on toast is a meal, and can be made more interesting with the addition of a stock cube. Pasta and sauce is good because it fills you up.

Then when I did get some money I'd do a forty/fifty pound shopping trip just for basics - tinned food (I hate them, so they always get left to when they're all I have left), soups, frozen things like potato products and veg, chicken or bacon for freezing, pesto, stir fry sauces, flour etc... so that when it happened again I would have lots of bases that only needed an onion or a pepper to make a real meal or meal replacement filler like beans, tinned spagghetti, ravioli. Having been in this position for most of last year, I know how you feel, but all it takes is planning - and maybe a shopping list.


Also, remember that I'll be cooking for Exalted on Tuesday, probably veg or meat lasagne, and that I usually make too much so you should be able to take some home with you.

[angoel.livejournal.com]

Your post reminded me of this one: http://vyvyan.livejournal.com/108787.html. Not that I recommend you follow it, but I thought you might be interested.

[taimatsu]

Unfortunately that is not an entry visible to me.