Two blogs on budget cooking easy to digest
In the blogosphere, home cooks from Louisville to London are documenting their efforts to eat frugally down to the penny, some more successfully than others.
There is a site that promises $5 dinners, another whose author makes 99-cent meals -- that is, meals made with ingredients from dollar stores.
More than a few offer tips on how to get free or deeply discounted foodstuffs. Some are targeted to frugal-minded vegans.
The I Think I Have a Recipe for That blogger is on a $70-a-week food allowance. The $200 Mission blogger's budget is $200 a month. And the Thirty Bucks a Week blogger -- well, you get the picture.
It's enough to make your eyes glaze over.
But before you log off and call for takeout, here are two sites worth bookmarking: Cheap Healthy Good (cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com) and Casual Kitchen (casualkitchen.blogspot.com).
These blogs -- both of which started before the economy slid into the toilet -- prove that eating well on a budget doesn't have to involve processed foods or 101 renditions of taco pie.
Here's a look at the people behind the blogs.
Who: Kristen Swensson, 31
Where: Brooklyn
Day job: Writer for VH1
Started: 2007
Why the blog?:
Swensson had dropped 30 pounds a few years prior and wanted to keep them off by eating out less and cooking more. Not only is it working, she's saving major bucks. "I did the numbers once and it's ridiculous. [My boyfriend and I] save something like $1,400 a year, each of us, by making our lunches," she says.
What you get:
Witty writing and recipes culled and modified from other sources. Two friends also post regularly on vegetarian cooking and city living. Recipes are neither extravagant nor dull. Each includes nutritional information and cost per serving.
Just a taste:
"Sometimes, in my darkest hours, when all else seems lost, I turn to Rachael Ray. I have conflicting feelings about RR, mostly because she invented 'yummo,' which should be banned from all lexicons, everywhere. Still, she knows how to please a crowd. And I respect that.
I respect this Pasta Puttanesca, too... Beyond the salty, briny wonder, the best thing about it is the serving size. It will feed roughly 3,000,000 people, and impress at least 2,999,990 of them."
Top three tips for cooks:
1. Buy produce in season. It's generally cheaper and, "you don't necessarily have to blow much money on organics," Swensson says.
2. Plan, plan, plan. Take time before the week begins to plan your meals for the week, scan circulars for sales and check your pantry to see what is needed.
3. Stick to the outer aisles of the supermarket. The middle aisles lean heavily toward the processed, pricey junk.
Who: Daniel Koontz, 39
Where: Bloomingdale, N.J.
Day job: None currently.
Started: December 2006.
Why the blog?:
Koontz, a former stock analyst on Wall Street (he quit his job last June), kept hearing friends insist it was cheaper to eat out in Manhattan than it was to cook. He wanted to prove them wrong. "I also wanted to show that you didn't need this gigantic kitchen with a huge island to cook," he says.
What you get:
Lengthy but logical posts on cooking frugally that get you thinking differently and planning better in the kitchen. Koontz is a big fan of lists -- 10 tips to save money on spices, seven ways to get faster at cooking and so on. No drool-inducing photos, unlike other food blogs, and less recipe-focused than Swensson's blog, but effective nonetheless.
Just a taste:
"Just as with cookbooks, you can ask the 'Will this be part of my critical few?' question when considering the purchase of any new kitchen gadgets. Will you actually use that gleaming new garlic press, or will it sit unused and forgotten in a drawer -- next to the fondue forks you use once every three years?"
Top three tips for cooks:
1. Embrace "part-time vegetarianism." Veggie-focused meals can cost half that of meat-based meals, Koontz says.
2. Make "scalable meals." When you come across a dish that is easy to double, double it. "It's two times the food for 1.2 times the work," he says.
3. Stick to whole, or what Koontz calls "first order" foods such as vegetables, legumes, eggs -- foods you consume in the form you bought them. Avoid "second order" or processed foods.
Bonus tip: Exploit what you already have. Koontz says 20 percent of the spices and other ingredients in your pantry go into 80 percent of your recipes, so build your repertoire around that 20 percent.