I’m three days into the United Way Hunger Challenge and I have $59.83 left to spend.  Good thing too, since tonight is Jonas’ birthday, and I have to at least make it somewhat special, which led me down an entirely different train of thought.  We agreed to do this challenge despite having several events (like a birthday) this week that would be tricky to work around.  I recall feeling a bit miffed at the beginning of the week, thinking “couldn’t it have been a different week?” and oscillating over whether to actually go through with it. 

Well midway through the challenge I look back at my three-day-ago self with disdain.  There are people who have to scrape together for kids birthdays, spouses anniversaries, holidays and the like on the budget I was given for a week only they have to do it 365 days a year.  What kind of little princess bitch am I that I mumble and moan feeling sorry for my family when we only have to do this for five days? And we are doing it voluntarily at that? And I’m writing about it and documenting it for my blog, which is an even further luxury?  The bright side is that in three short days I’ve learned to be a humbler person, and to appreciate my lot in life.  In fact, if everyone like me were to live on slightly more moderate means there would surely be more to go around, but that’s a different matter entirely. 

Because I’ve come to this realization, a few other key points struck a chord with me.  Namely that in a way this challenge is an unfair game that’s a bit gauche in some respects.  It’s kind of like how un-PC it really is to play cowboys and Indians considering our nation’s history with Native Americans.  Is it really fair for us armchair enthusiasts to look at something like a limited food budget as a fun game to play for a week, throwing in personal challenges like “let’s make it organic,” and “I won’t support chains”? The fact is, I have nearly $60 left and I have 2.5 days to go, so I know I can do it.  The truth of the fact is that while I’ve managed to source many organic ingredients, I’ve deliberately chosen them based on their value, and for a week, sure it’s ok to eat carrots, onions and potatoes, but to do that every single day of every single week of every single year would really suck.  What if you notice a pastry in the window of a coffee shop that practically screams your name, but day after day you know you can’t go in and get it because it would mean forgoing dinner for your family that night?  Forget the pastry, on a budget like this you can’t even so much as afford a coffee at most retailers in Seattle! 

Another big factor that plays into how I can fairly easily conform to this challenge is time.  I certainly don’t come from an affluent family, but I have a baby at home and while he is young, we’ve decided that my day job can take the back burner to his rearing.  This affords me the luxury of time.  Yes, my bacon is cheaper than any you can buy in a store because I make it myself, but I spend hours curing pork belly then smoking it to produce said bacon. Many folks don’t have that kind of time.  Or an extra wine fridge in which to cure the pork belly.  Or a smoker in which to smoke it.  Sure, half my vegetables and all of my herbs come from my outdoor garden and indoor plant windows, but that again takes time, a green(ish) thumb, and space in which to garden.  Is it really fair of me to preach that I can easily feed my family on $90 a week and so everyone else should too when I know for a fact that most people on the planet don’t have the impetus or desire to roll out and cut their own pasta thus making it cheaper in raw materials, but more expensive when it comes to labor and knowledge? 

That being said, I’m going to stop with the item calculations.  Suffice it to say I’m sticking to the budget, eliminating luxuries like side salads, and focusing on one-dish wonders, namely this gnocchi.  It was delicious for all intents and purposes, and really couldn’t be easier.  I cooked my potatoes in the sous vide machine so they would retain their light texture, mixed with flour, parmigiano reggianno and salt.  I then rolled the potato mixture into tubes, cut into individual pieces of gnocchi, and boiled in salted water until risen, et voila.  I tossed together a makeshift sauce of cream, peas and bacon and there you go, all under budget, pretty enough for a birthday dish, and extremely satisfying.  The satisfaction was made even richer with the realization that our fortunate family has all the things that should really matter on a birthday in spades; namely the pleasure of togetherness, good food, a humble abode, and a sense of security. 

This entire exercise brings to mind the “teach a man to fish…” adage.  I have enough experience with food to recognize a good deal in shallots, chevre, or cannellini beans when I see one, and I know how to combine that screaming deal with pantry staples in order to make a cheap and tasty dinner.  It would be worthwhile to lead market walkthroughs for food stamp folk (yes, Seattle farmer’s markets take food stamps) pointing out great bulk buys that are money-saving measures in the end.  Discuss how to use both the beets and their greens, for instance.  This concept could be refined further by leading basic cooking classes to teach simple flavor combinations and hopefully inspire a love for quality food.  I appreciate the United Way for putting forth this challenge.  It’s opened my eyes to the idea that I can make a difference in the milieu I understand most: the world of food.

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!

Got a multi-day Coq au Vin simmering away in the Le Creuset? Need a quick amuse bouche to wow your guests while you’re putting the finishing touches on the wine-soaked coq? Do I ever have the perfect little niblet for you.  Brace yourselves, I’m rolling around in the quince paste again, people.  I can’t get enough of the stuff ever since we had a bountiful quince harvest here in Washington State last month and I made a batch of paste large enough to feed Tiger Woods’ bevy of buxom blondies.  It really couldn’t be easier to make; just slice some quince, toss it in a pot with water and sugar, and let a hot burner and nature take its course.  After an hour or so you’ll have a thick, creamy paste that you can spread on everything from toast points to tater tots. Well, not really tater tots, I just liked the alliteration, you know my weakness.  Sub the tater tots for taleggio and we’ll all be happy in one big alliterative, tasty bubble of quincey ooze. 

In all seriousness, quince is the new caviar in some social circles, and these little babies will tide your guests over right nice.  Three ingredient appetizers are often spectacular, I think it’s that whole rule of thirds thing.  Just slice some manchego cheese, slather it in a smear of quince paste, dollop a Marcona almond on top and prepare for closed-mouth ooohing and aaaahing from your happy hostees.

 Then you can move on to the coq au vin.  I’m not going to bore you with the details of my tweaked and polished recipe, mainly because I’ve done it so many times I just add by feel rather than measure and I’m not sure I’d be able to write it down.  Suffice it to say that using a nice burgundy is elemental, as is home-smoked bacon.  The most important part is to hunt down a good butcher that will source you a nice big cock.  Please get your minds out of the gutter, folks- that’s cock as in rooster, not as in Ron Jeremy.  You see, cocks are tougher and generally older when butchered than their Holly-Go-Lightly chicky counterparts, and in the case of coq au vin, this is a very good thing.   Look at it this way: you wouldn’t braise for days a hunky tenderloin filet, right? No, you’d opt for something with a bit more grit and sinew like chuck or rump.  Same thing with fowl- since coq au vin is slow and low, it’s nice to have some texture to break down, i.e. a dandy rooster. 

cognac burning off the coq pre vin

The final cornerstone of my coq au vin is sweet and sour cipolline.  Cipolline are those tiny gorgeous little onions you often see at farmer’s markets this time of year.  Chain grocery stores tend to package them up in mesh bundles, call them pearl onions, and charge an arm and a leg for them, but avoid this form factor if you can.  I have always had much better luck with the fresher, loose ones found at the market.  To peel them, cross the tops with a paring knife, blanch them, cool them and pop the onions out of their skins.  To caramelize them all sweet and sour like, grab a frying pan and some patience.  Toss in some red wine, red wine vinegar, honey, hoisin sauce, and butter, and get it nice and toasty.  Once you have a good mix, drop in the cipolline and swirl them about.  Pop a lid on it, turn the flame down, down, down, and give it a half hour to develop flavors.  Remove the lid, turn it up and stir constantly for the final five minutes to develop a nice caramel crust on the outside of your onions.  Add this good stuff to your now-tender old rooster and serve the whole mess over homemade egg noodles and just try to tell me you are not in foodie heaven. 

One final note: For the next five days I will be participating in the United Way’s Hunger Action Week challenge.  What this means for me and my family is that we have $18 per day to spend on breakfast, lunch and dinner.  This amount is determined based on the monetary value of aid we would receive if we were using food stamps as a family of three.  I am a self-proclaimed excessivist, so this will be pretty tough.  Watch this space to hear how I’m managing to feed my brood on 18 bucks each day, and if you’re interested in taking the challenge along with me you can sign up here.