Food

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Budgeting Your Organic Dollars

There are two piles of apples in the produce section of my market. The first, at $2 per pound, are grown conventionally. The other pile, at twice the price, have been grown organically. Which apples should I buy?

Every time I go to the market, I have to make the decision whether or not to buy organic. If my food budget was unlimited, it would be easy. Organic farming is better for the planet. It’s better for the field workers. And it’s better for the consumer. But organic food is also more expensive. Given that our family is on a strict food allowance, I need some sort of criteria to help me decide when to spend extra and when to buy the cheapest available.

Happily, a bit of searching came up with a list of commonly purchased food items, and their average pesticide load when grown by conventional farmers. You can find it at the Environmental Working Group’s website.

Seeing that apples score among the highest produce items for pesticide load, I’ll definitely spring for the organic ones. Onions and peas, however, are traditionally grown without a lot of spraying, so I’ll stick to the cheapest ones I can find.

I think I’ll print out this list and stick it in my wallet for my next trip to the market.

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I Love Chocolate

I love chocolate. I admit it. I’m one of those people you could find wearing a T-shirt reading, “Hand over the chocolate and nobody gets hurt.” It’s definitely one of the major food groups. I could hug the scientist who named the cacao plant Cacao theobroma—literally, “chocolate God-food.”

There has been plenty of research now indicating that chocolate (sans the sugar) is actually good for you, but a little more encouragement can’t hurt. I recently read an article containing the phrase, “The incidence of fatal heart attacks correlated inversely with the amount of chocolate consumed.”[1] In other words, eating chocolate reduces your chances of dying from a heart attack. Pass the Toblerone!

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Moroccan Tomato & Eggplant “Salad”

Vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh eggplant (that haven’t hiked all the way here from Mexico) are two of my favorite things about late summer. Here’s an unusual recipe that uses both. Don’t be put off by the eggplant. My husband, an avowed eggplant-avoider, loves it this way. (Be sure to read down for tips on picking out an eggplant.)

The traditional way to eat this stuff is with your fingers. Please do this. Somehow, it just doesn’t taste the same with a fork or spoon. Provide warm water and towels to guests for cleaning up afterward.
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Fresh Tomato-Basil Soup

Harvest is beginning. In spite of our recent hail, my garden is actually producing some edibles, and the farmers’ markets are overflowing. How to take advantage of all this fresh produce? Tomato-basil soup is a delicious way to use lots of tomatoes and fresh basil.

If you’re familiar with canned tomato soup—this is nothing like that. No modified food starch, only a minuscule amount of sugar… this is the real thing. Don’t worry, you can still serve it with grilled cheese sandwiches. Just make them with a hearty whole wheat bread and a more interesting cheese than American!

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Jeremy’s S’mookies

How much sugar can you cram into one gooey, delicious mouthful? Quite a lot, apparently. My creative son-in-law, Jeremy, came up with this new camping dessert while we were enjoying a weekend in the mountains.

To make one serving (note: Jeremy downed a number of these, so maybe this only makes a partial serving):

  • 2 large marshmallows
  • 2 squares of chocolate bar
  • 2 large, gooey, chocolate chip cookies

Build campfire. Wait until flames are mostly gone, and coals glow red. Toast marshmallows until thoroughly melted, and brown on outside.

Scrape melted marshmallows off skewer onto a cookie. Shove chocolate into marshmallows to melt. Top with other cookie. Stuff into mouth. Repeat.

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Kreny’s Hoisin Chicken

Time for a recipe break. With a long-delayed Spring finally arriving in our part of the world, it’s time to fire up the grill. While our son-in-law is a BBQ chef extraordinaire, I too have a few recipes that are family (and guest) favorites.

Corinne Chan Straume“Kreny’s Hoisin Chicken” is one such family tradition. “Kreny” (my college roommate and good friend, Corinne) taught it to me [insert codger voice] way back in ’75. Pete and I enjoyed it at the BBQ following our wedding rehearsal, almost 30 years ago. Then our daughter Karin, and her fiancé, Ian, requested I grill some Kreny’s Hoisin Chicken for their wedding rehearsal three years ago, not knowing we had done the same thing. Last year our other daughter, Teri, and her fiancé, Jeremy, asked me to make it for their wedding rehearsal dinner. Yes, it’s that good.

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My Favorite Salmon Dip

Adapted from Best Recipes of Alaska’s Fishing Lodges, by Adela Batin

  • 8-oz. pkg. low-fat cream cheese
  • ½ C low-fat sour cream
  • ¾ tsp. minced garlic
  • ½ tsp. dried dill weed
  • 1 Tbsp. minced parsley
  • 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
  • ½ tomato, diced
  • 3 green onions, chopped
  • 8 oz. smoked salmon or 7½-oz. can salmon with skin and bones removed + ½ tsp. liquid smoke flavoring

Combine cream cheese, sour cream, garlic, dill, parsley, and lemon juice; blend together until smooth. Break salmon into flakes. Gently fold salmon, tomato, and green onions into cream cheese mixture. Serve with crackers or baguette slices.

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Chicken Paprika

After 10 days in warm, sunny Arizona, we arrived back in Colorado just in time for a blizzard. The thermometer is at 28 and falling. While the snow accumulates outside, I’m craving something warm and comforting to fill up my insides. Tonight I’m making this Chicken Paprika, with wide noodles, steamed broccoli and lots of hot tea.

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Cheap Eats: Membership Warehouses

The current issue of “Real Simple” magazine contains the statement, “… members-only markets can be an indispensable source for saving on essentials, such as steak, shrimp, and [washed and bagged] salad greens.”

OK, here’s mom’s advice: If you are trying at all to cut costs, steak, shrimp, and bagged salads are not essentials. They are special treats, maybe even reserved for occasions such as birthdays or anniversaries.

Buying groceries at Sam’s, Costco, or similar store can definitely save you money. But remember, just because something is cheaper doesn’t make it cheap. This brings us to the question: is a membership warehouse always cheaper?

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Cheap Eats: Marketing tips

You want to eat like a king, but your budget is more on the peon level. What to do? Don’t despair. Help is on the way.

How you do your marketing can impact how much you spend on food, as well as how healthy your meals are. Now that you are learning to cook, you can skip those frozen dinners, boxes of mixes, and the tasty-but-expensive pre-made meals in the deli. Instead, look for staples that can be used in a number of different ways.

I have a number of ingredients that I keep on hand at all times. Granted, I live quite a distance from the nearest market, plus I have plenty of storage, which makes it more convenient for me to store stables, compared to someone with a closet-sized kitchen and ready access to groceries. But there are some basic foods that most cooks use often enough to stock. You can see my list on my Mom’s Pantry page. Yours will be different, of course. This is just a starting place.

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