As many of you know, I’m participating in the United Way Hunger Action challenge this week.  What does this mean? Well, since I have a family of three, in Washington State we would qualify for $18 per day in food stamps.  The goal of the challenge is to try and live on that amount for five full days, so my weekly budget is $90.  Throw in the fact that Wednesday is my husband’s birthday and I’m trying to make it special for him, which usually equates to an off-the-hook feast, and I’ve got quite the challenge.  I also plan to stick to my usual habit of buying mostly organic ingredients if at all possible; let’s see if it can be done.  You may think I’m lucky in that I can count three people yet Bentley is merely a toddler.  Not so, because he knocks back three gallons of milk a week, and at $5.00 a gallon (for organic) that drops my budget down to $75 right off the bat, not to mention the fact that he eats bananas like a monkey on crack- thank god they’re cheap! 

This challenge has forced me to reexamine my shopping habits.  A typical day in the life of Salty Seattle consists of a nice long morning run around Seward Park with Bentley in a jogging stroller or at the gym if it’s crap weather,  followed by a trip to either Pike Place Market or Whole Foods (a necessary evil, I know).  Then we bring home the spoils of our shopping escapades and whip them into something elaborate and often excessive for family and usually several friends.  I often buy goods based on freshness, beauty, rarity, local origin, and organic status.  I do not often buy based on economics.  I also repeat this routine nearly every day of the week, which is a problem in that I don’t tend to plan meals that last a few days so I spend more each day.  First things first, I had to eliminate dinner parties this week.  Thank goodness we’re having the big birthday bash for Jonas on Saturday, as that wouldn’t have worked within the budget at all.  I go a bit crazy without lots of people around, but at $18 a day I have to watch how many mouths I can feed- whew, this is different. 

Luckily I don’t typically spend a lot on breakfast or lunch.  Bentley and I have cereal or oatmeal, then we snack throughout the day on leftovers from the night before or ingredients we’re prepping for dinner.  This week we’ve been keeping to oatmeal with brown sugar, prunes or bananas and pecans, and the cost for the family each day for that is $1.57.  That’s another $7.85 gone for the week, bringing us down to $67.15.  My Monday mission was to make something that would sustain us into Tuesday as well, and lo and behold, it provided lunch on Wednesday too.  I chose pasta e fagioli- Italian pasta and been soup.  It’s fricking fantastic, and not very expensive if you use dried beans, make your own bacon, and make your own pasta too.  I used only three ounces of homemade bacon, which equates to 75 cents, since my pork belly is $4.00 a pound.  I also grow my own herbs in the garden, so I factored in a miniscule amount for seeds and watering, but basically spent less than a quarter on parsley, oregano and bay leaves.  I also make my own salt, so the cost is nominal there.  Onions, celery and garlic are cheap, as are flour and breadcrumbs (leftover from homemade bread) from which I made the pasta.  Anchovies were a little expensive, but I only used three filets, so amortized the cost.  I found a screaming deal on organic 28 oz cans of tomatoes for only 99 cents at Grocery Outlet; in fact they are starting to stock quite a few organics- I will likely continue to use them as a resource. 

When the soup was all said and done I spent 7.32 assembling it, bringing my weekly budget down again to $59.83.  I feel pretty good about this because it fed the three of us for 2.5 days, but was mostly organic, very balanced from a food group perspective, and quite delicious.  Lesson One learned- make in bulk!  I did have to spruce up the soup with side vegetables for health and color, so I used carrot ribbons one day, and homegrown mache lettuce from the garden another. 

It’s now Wednesday, which is Jonas’ birthday.  The plan is potato gnocchi because it’s elegant yet spuds are cheap, even organic ones!  I’m going to splurge big time and make his favorite dessert of chocolate mousse, but I buy my chocolate in bulk 11lb blocks for $65 (since I tend to go through a ton making gelato) and I only need to use 6 oz, so it really equates to only $2.22 in chocolate, though it tastes so much more expensive J I will give a final weekly report in the next blog post, and in the meantime if you’d like to learn more, please visit the United Way website to hear about theYes We Can! Project.  Basically, they are trying to raise $10,000 to help fund a project where they rent out space at a local cannery.  With this cannery space, they are able to preserve food (veggies and other good things) that normally would go bad and distribute them to food banks.  It’s a great project that will help tons of families, will save food, and will help people eat healthier!

Santa was good to me this year. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my birthday is three days before Christmas and I expressly forbid gifts for that occasion, so Santa was able to splurge a bit on Christmas. I know, I know, Santa wouldn’t have gotten me a birthday gift anyway under normal circumstances, but you see, we’re good friends outside December 25^th and all its implications, so he tends to be there for me other times of year as well. 

In any case, Santa brought me a Sous Vide Supreme this year and for that I’m over the moon.  Don’t know what sous vide cooking is? Chances are you’ve had sous vide prepared veggies or meat a hundred times and just didn’t realize it as it’s a relatively established cooking technique in both industrial and restaurant settings, however until now the price barrier to entry for the home chef was impractical to say the least.  Cue Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades and their relatively affordable new invention, the Sous Vide Supreme.  They invented a countertop sous vide cooker that’s attractive stainless steel, not gargantuan, and holds a precise temperature to within .5 a degree, more or less.  The premise of sous vide cooking is that if you cook something at the temperature at which it should ultimately end up, but over a long period of time in a regulated water bath, it will come out tender, consistent throughout, and full of flavor.  I can now wholeheartedly attest that this is true. 

Different foods have different ideal “doneness” temperatures; let’s say 134° for a medium rare steak.  In order to sous vide said steak, you marinate it if you like, seal it in a Foodsaver airtight bag, and plunge it into the water bath for a couple hours, or even six or eight. The beauty of sous vide is that you don’t need to pay a ton of attention to time as you’ll never really overcook something because you’re cooking it at the temperature it ultimately needs to be.  Instead, the meat gets more and more tender as it basks in its water bath, but maintains a consistent medium rare throughout the steak.  There are certainly ideal ranges for time depending on the cut, longer for tougher cuts, and shorter for things like filet mignon, but the style if fairly forgiving.  You can see by the photos of my veal chops, the meat is all one color top to bottom- makes for such a succulent bite! 

I will be playing around with sous vide recipes quite a bit in the next month, stay tuned for Moulard duck leg confit and more.  For now I wanted to share this veal chop with you as it’s one of the first things to come out of the bath that I ate without words, it was that good.  I seasoned it mildly so that the flavor of the gorgeous chops (that I got at Select Gourmet Foods in Seattle, my new favorite butcher) would really shine.  I merely added salt, pepper, a bay leaf and a touch of bacon fat- for added oomph, bagged it, dropped in and let it ride.  Four happy hours later, I pulled the chops, pan-seared them very lightly just to develop a bit of caramelized crust, and served them all beet-en up.  Words cannot describe! 

Yes, the chops were the star of the show, but I can’t resist mentioning how amazingly versatile beets are, and how well they complemented this dish.  I picked up some beets at the market, but forgot to grab a green vegetable for dinner.  No problem, because braised beet greens are among one of the most delightful comfort foods there is, and they are so good for you to boot.  Just make sure and cut away the bitter red stems and you’re good to go.  I braise in bacon fat, a splash of wine from the bottle I’m inevitably drinking, and a touch of garlic- couldn’t be more delish. 

I can’t wait to share more sous vide with you peeps, it’s exciting times in the casa di SaltySeattle, just you wait…