callistra | Hillbilly Housewife 70 Dollar Menu

yeah baby! but does it have hotdog stirfry?

LOL
It has instructions for hotdogs and beans but does not get so uppity as to pretend it's an actual recipe.
:-)

I would take up that challenge however it seems very dairy orientated... and its american, so the pricing would be out. what about if we came up with our own one for the challenge? as in "this much per person" kinda thing?

also i haven't mentioned it before.. but i want to learn as much as i can from the duchesses of the domestic order aka you and a few others on my friends list :) My main fooding is takeaways cause i'm not so good at the cooking thing.

Takeaways hurt the budget in new and painful ways.
:-(

It would be actual work to try and develop one for Australia... man, I aint so good at that *grin*

The problem with cooking is that we have to find out our patterns and then re-evaluate them. And sometimes someone's bad habits are OK, and other people's are not. For example, if you are both working, takeaway is not such a huge dent in the budget. But for a single income family, even sizzlers is getting expensive LOL

Really, the best advice I got for cooking help is to menu plan. If it's written on the fridge, and you know you have the food on hand, it's easier to make it than to drive down and get take away. And if you're stuffed and the SO hasn't cooked in a while, you can tell him to go and pick something and cook it. My eventual plan last pregnancy was to havea complete house book with a menu plan, shopping list, and the recipes in each section, so that I could just tell John to do X or Y month... It didn't quite happen that way though.
:-)

I like to talk about it and read about it and get ideas about it... but I'm not so good with the execute it. :-)

yeah joel supports me in my study and in return i do the house stuff minus dishes and my study/uni fulltime and maintain a good average :)

my FMIL just bought my a slowcooker so i plan to see if i can make that work for me :)

Our bad habit is that we don't have a car so we don't go grocery shopping :(
But my solution to that is to make a list of things that keep well and can 'make' food minus the fresh stuff and Joel picks that up from woolies on the way home or i get it from the local butcher around the corner (reasonable prices for the more expensive cuts at woolies) and the italian deli next to it (deli to expensive to do most big stuff but for last minute vegies they are not bad).... thats where that 'what 10 things?' thing came from :)

sorry that does mean that i plan to do a massive shop with someone with a car every month or so:)

Or organize a co-op.
:-)

i have access to FAL card :)

Slowcooker is good. :-)
Next thing I want to make in mine is mac and cheese, and in tbe big one make mulled aple juice.

Did I mention I have three slow cookers?

the boy kinda looked at me weirdly when i mentioned that just now.. muttered something about he hopes i don't ever have that many :)

however i love them so i wouldn't mind :)

I reckon skip the supermarket all together, get your meat from the butcher round the corner and get a seasonal box of mixed fruit and veg delivered every week. It will work out cheaper, healthier and better for the environment all round.

yeah, i just hate freezing meat, but maybe going twice a week, we'd still have to go to woolies for chicken and stuff though cause he expensive when it comes to those. (although i don't think i'll ever buy one of the rabbits he sometimes as in the cabinet!)

Why do you hate freezing meat?

do you really think the delivery boxes are worth it? i've thought about it but i've always worried about the amount in the boxes

The boxes are often good value because of things other than $$ -

1) Budget is always the same
2) You don't have to brave coles or woolies and face the sales or walls of timtams or chocolates
3) The quality is usually very good. Most of the ones in perth get their vegies from canning vale markets, and then distribute.
4) It's a reliable system in that you don't get much variation unless you want it.

It does have negatives of course -

1) You don't get to choose each vegetable or fruit individually
2) If they miss or skip something, they will often need to make it up next week
3) Sometimes it's not quite enough for what you need
4) No quality control for you. You have to trust them. They are human too, and they make mistakes.

I liked it for a while because that way I was only buying toilet paper and etc at woolies or coles, and then we got a wizard's chemist which had TP and stuff even cheaper...

well i swear by risottos the way

dormant_dragon taught me, which requires no real fatty ingredients (uses no dairy)... its fairly simple, takes about 30 mins and you can chuck what you have left in the fridge (my last one was carrot and broccolini) and because the vegies are mostly chucked in at the end i can give the boy mushrooms and i can have minus :)

Yeah, I always found cheese to be an option in risottos.
:-)

I have been having thoughts about your changing the menu suggestions

i'm good at inspiring people to think ;)

Um. I'm going to challenge her prices. I mean, the US is cheap for a lot of grocery items, but I have never seen eggs for anything under about $1.20 for a dozen. I just did a bit of a trawl of grocery sites, and I think some of her prices are kinda farmer's-gate style (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with that - hell, until I was twelve, 90% of my food was either home grown or farmer's gate), but it's a bit hard for most of us, and can take a chunk out of your week to organise/source.

She's also assuming you have a lot of seasonings and leavenings, and can amortise the cost over many weeks. Kinda fair enough, but a little dodgy. What if you were out of cinnamon? Does the budget have any flexibility, or do the kids have to water down their frozen orange juice concentrate to a thimbleful per meal?

The menu itself...hmm. White trash food. Muffins made with bacon grease as the baking fat? Instant potato? Hell, if you're going to watch your budget, grow your own, and actually get some decent vitamin/fibre/mineral content. Speaking of which, I honestly think this is a kinda inadequate diet, nutritionally speaking.* Maybe we eat too much fruit and vegies and fish and stuff...** but if you add up that part of her shopping list, it falls a loooong way short of the five and two that Australia regards as minimum. And that's being kind and regarding ketchup and instant mashed potato and frozen fruit juice concentrate as contributing.

Frankly, I'm weirded out, sceptic and scared. But that's American food for you. *sigh*

(I haven't even touched on the way I am freaked out by the idea of anyone I love eating American beef. Kinda irrelevant, but we're talking about American food and health and stuff...Y'see, one of the big 'don't mention the war' topics over here is that they know damn well they have BSE, but are too frightened to do comprehensive tests. One premium organic brand wanted to test every cow they sent through (at their own expense) and are now being chased to the local equivalent of the Supreme Court as their competitors feel it would 'invite unfair comparisons'. Uh - huh. The Ag Dept's defense is that if they test too many cows they are more likely to get false positives, which could harm trade. Uh - huh)

We went to a Wal Mart today. I am now drinking vodka in an attempt to re-normalise.

*And contains way too little vodka.
**And vodka.

Nope. I take it back. I just found (via Google) a reference on a low-carb page (http://www.lowcarbohydrate.net/httblog/archives/000252.html) to eggs being available in Spring for 66c per dozen at his 'local Kroger'. I don't know what that is, but apparently, for at least a few weeks a year around Easter, you can do that part of it. In some parts of the US. If you look hard.

(Okay, I just think it's a bit of a stretch, okay? :) )

LOL
I think heaps of american prices are a bit of a stretch. On Freezer-Friendly mailing list people talk about chicken at 99cents a pound! And other freakishy low cost of meat.

When I get off my ass and buy the new digital I so sorely need, I promise I will take it into the local Mexican groceries and show you some cool, weird, scary stuff. The local Mexican population still cooks like Mama used to, and that means using every part of the cow/pig except the moo/squeal. And cheap. Just don't think about the health and well-being of said animals.

Read Fast Food Nation. It talks about the meat packing industry in scary depth. Then read the book he keeps referencing, Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair) and realise that this is a very different sort of society. They really did have snake oil salesmen, and any method of making a buck is fine so long as you don't get found out - and even if you do, if you keep the money, in a few generations you'll be one of the old families of Nob Hill (no, that really is a district in SF, and it is exactly what it sounds like) and no one will listen to the poor people who have paid for the 20 million dollar Victorian with their health and limbs and lives. And that's how it's so cheap.

When I got here, I was blown away by the local taquerias. Yummy, fresh Mexican food, and more than I could possibly eat in a sitting, for less than five dollars. Then I looked at the average age of the serving staff and wondered what they get paid, and started to feel guilty. I hate feeling that if I don't tip the standard 15%, my waiter may not be able to pay his or her rent, or bus fare, or medical bill. I hate knowing that the consumer paradise that is America is paid for by people like our cable guy, who works 10 hour Saturdays for no extra money, so that Com Cast can connect people like Google engineers who work 60 hours a week (but only weekdays) to the internet. I hate the feeling that I could eat so, so, cheaply - but only if I don't care about the damage that has been wrought on the environment, or on the workers, or on the local community, in bringing me that 99c/pound chicken.

This is a society of dipoles, and I guess your post brought a lot of nascent stuff I had bubbling underneath the surface to the fore. Don't be offended. :)

No no, never offended, I find it fascinating!
A lot of what you talk about here is one of the reasons why America is on our "very hesitant to travel to" areas.

I read everything Barbara posts about food in america, and she likes to do a LOT of research. I read her blog feed, but if you're curious about the issues you talk about, check her out:

http://www.tigersandstrawberries.com/
Or
http://www.tigersandstrawberries.com/category/essays-rants-and-reflections/

She also breaks down cooking into really small component parts, but that's aside from her political leanings about food.

Also, I am trying to grow my own food. This is the year of learning, suddenly interrupted by the year of being pregnant, but I want to grow the things I eat! UI want chickens! I have a duck in the freezer still - I should do something about that LOL.

I just read a huge saga on the hillbilly housewife's blog about bathing. :-)

You should definitely eat the duck. We ate our last one of yours a while back now and it was just bloody fantastic.
Or we could come around and cook it for you *grin*

I read FFN and lost all desire to eat McDonalds. On the other hand, McD's in Perth has always tasted a bit dodgy and was for when I was in a hurry or had little money.

Now if I could only find something to put me off the other fast food chains! (well apart from the fact I know it's not really that good for me)

:-)
I don't think there's much there that you told me I didn't know before. Believe me, my friends and I have talked about the white trash food and the costs and unlikelyhood of everything for ages. But it still amuses me.
:-)

Have you read the USDA recommended menus? They provide a meal plan, with some great ideas (*snort, in case you missed the sarcasm) including turkey pizza (where the turkey is actually the pizza base) and other great saturated fat frighteners and scary pre-processed food. IE, potatoes don't get mentioned, but frozen and heat-in-oven types do...

It's more an exercise in fun than anything else, and a real window in an ethnic american food that probably doesn't get talked about much. Also, I would like to get more whole beans and legumes into our diet. I'm pretty slack about that though, and I just don't have much in the way of recipes. I'm still trying to find a decent dahl recipe!
:-)

The night before last, I really felt like a whole bottle ofport with my name on it, and a big fat cigar. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. You'll need to do the drinking for me for a bit.

Heh, I should email Barbara from Toger Berries and challenge her to develop a similar sort of menu. Then it would be full of yummy locovore stuff and exciting asian dishes.

I love legumes and beans in Italian minestrone type soups, as well as the spicy dahls I've been forced to largely forgo since moving in with the world's biggest chili wuss. Minestrone is meant to be made of whatever you have on hand, or whatever is fresh and seasonal, or whatever was left over from last night. It's flexible and adaptable.

Minestrone 1 (from a week or so ago)

Fry lots of garlic and your allium of choice (onion, leek, shallot) in olive oil till fragrant and soft and translucent. Sneak a pinch of chili flakes in if no one is watching. Also to be added at this stage is anything like celery - basically, anything you think ought taste better sauted than boiled, anything with fat soluble flavanoids (ginger, if you're giving it an Asian twist, or spices at the end of the fry if an Indian) Chuck in some tinned tomatoes, and some presoaked whole lentils. Poke at it. Add some water or stock or wine. Keep adding liquid as the lentils absorb it. Whole lentils take a while, so don't add zucchini or anything that fragile until you think you're less than half an hour out. You want them to cook through in the soup and absorb flavours, but not turn to mush. I thickened this one with the night before's mashed potatoes at this point. I also like to stir through spinach or kale or silverbeet or something in the last five minutes. Dollop with pesto, or just sprinkle with grated cheese and chopped basil. Serve with bread.

Tonight's dinner, minestrone 2: Saute garlic and onion, add red wine and a large tin tomatoes, two chopped carrots. Simmer. Decide you want more flavour. Scissor a dried chili into it, watched in horror by your partner. Challenge him to eat a slice of the very, very mild variety of ancho chili that they sell in local groceries here. He does. He recants, and stops threatening to go to Burger King. Cook. Carrots 75% done. Add drained rinsed tin of beans and a handful of soup pasta. Simmer for another ten minutes to half an hour. Again with the green leafy thing and then the pesto and bread thing.

Both of these fed the two of us for two meals (ie, dinner for the two of us, a late night snack and a reheated lunch the following day. I'm not real good at quantities, but the tin of tomatoes I used in the second one was twice the size of the tin of beans I used, which was the standard 440g gross, 2xxg net, but I lacked zucchini or leak or any of the other stuff the second time round. I think I used about 1/2 a cup of dry lentils in the first, maybe 2/3. They expand a lot when cooked)

Look up Madhur Jaffrey for good dahl recipes. I also liked a completely and utterly and totally out of print book about the cooking of the Ottoman Empire, but it was all a bit labour intensive. Madhur Jaffrey, in addition to being a good cook, was amazingly hot when younger. Grrrowl. And a mother, and pursuing more careers than seems sane at any given time. I suspect we ought watch and learn, grasshopper. :)

THE CHILLIES THE CHILLIES

The chilis might be the ONLY reason why i want to go to america....
*sighs*

And cool, thanks for the recipes!

I find it amusing when you read the cooking magazines, and they do weird things to the food, like completely forget the history, or try to dress things up. Like "seafood and chicken rice" is apparently a new name for paella, and aranccini not only becomes "risotto balls" but they instruct you to make a batch of risotto specifically to make them! It's left over food, for goodness sakes! Yummy awesome left over food, but it's leftover food!

I should get into the habit of left over stews and soups. I'm not terribly good at soups, but I never realised until your post that they are a good way to include whole grains and legumes and beans. Hmmm. I like to add barley to my stews, but ony a couple of small handfuls.
:-)
I love talking food.

oh i'm good at soups.. my garlic, potato and carrot one is yum (although there is a reason that garlic is listed first :) its my 'i have to kill this cold' soup and usually works :)

aranccini not only becomes "risotto balls" but they instruct you to make a batch of risotto specifically to make them! It's left over food, for goodness sakes!

omg! it is like 'posh nosh' in real life!

I would love to do one for australia, but my strategy at the moment is really just buy veggies that are in season, buy meat from the bulk butcher, and also make my own cordial and pate. I'm not sure that I could narrow it down to an actual menu plan because the seasonal and opportunistic nature of it is what makes it cheap. I might start writing down what I buy/make for a while and see what comes of that.

This weeks hillbilly housewife projects for me are: making my own bread with the kenwood; and starting a ginger been plant :)

I've got a couple of really good pate recipes. Only problem is they end up making about 1kg at a time.
If you are interest i will post them.

Yup, we're interested!
:-)

yes please, I'm interested. 1 kg is fine, can you freeze pate though? I only have the one basic recipe and have been making it up as I go along from there. My last one was using Shiraz and honey to soak the livers in, turned out pretty good I reckon :)

I came across 'Slow Food for the Poor' (http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/foodchallenge.htm) the other day, which looks to be more appealling (it included butter and olive oil:-) ).

Now this looks far more interesting!
:-)

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Hillbilly Housewife 70 Dollar Menu

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