Another $5 challenge; Soya Sausages

Now that I have found my entry into using firm tofu and making it edible, I wanted to embark on a voyage of discovery to find a perfect soya sausage. The first stage is to take the block of firm tofu and give it a hiding! Blitz the little fellow!

Being the frugal wee chap I am trying to be, I use either stuff I have in the garden or the odds and sods that lie in the fridge. So this is what I did this first time. Whilst going against the literary edict of keeping the reader in suspense, I am going to tell you right now the resultant sausage was extremely edible. Gourmet? I am not so sure but it was a great start and really pretty damn easy.

I chopped some red capsicum and celery fronds and dumped them in a mixing bowl.

I added some corn which I had briefly cooked and some chopped button mushrooms.

Onto this I threw the blitzed tofu, the product of a 300 gram block, $2.24 Aussie dollars. Also a good swathe of curry powder. Pretty easy to see this is where there would a huge potential in adding other flavours. Ah ha, the future looks bright!

This was mixed together until all ingredients were indistinct.

I was creating a meal so as you can see I had some button mushrooms, beans, celery and cabbage leaves cut in order to make cups. 

A little pumpkin or squash to make a mash, the vegetables all briefly steamed, the sausages formed by hand and fried to a brownish colour and the resultant meal is shown by flash and by natural light. The flash makes the sausages appear a little technicolour, more so than they were.

 Yummo!

So I can now play with flavours and it might be worth trying to add a little flour to the mix with an egg or some breadcrumbs. This may make the shape a little more resilient in the pan during cooking.

The amount prepared served the two of us for dinner and two lunches. Well worth the little effort required and I now have another culinary quest to follow. Onwards and upwards!

Frugality nearly kills me.

The art of frugal living involves making the most of what you have got, thinking outside the square, knowing and having what you need rather than what you want, thinking through the options and making the right choices. Frugality is not specifically about penny pinching. Penny pinching almost killed me.

A wheel barrow gets a lot of use around our place. It hauls wood, brings the shopping in from the car, moves dirt, is used to mix concrete, move plants, haul stones and so on. It was therefore somewhat of a shock when my much traveled wheelbarrow (we brought it to Australia from New Zealand) was unable to have a new tyre fitted and was therefore at the end of its normal working life. Sob, and it had served me so well! A replacement was needed and quickly. A house without a wheelbarrow is like a rose without a thorn, a dog without a tail, a fish without water, a tree without soil.

I confess I let my barriers down, simple as that.
"Who needs to spend a fortune on a wheelbarrow" I thought.
"I will check them out and buy the best for the cheapest price."
 Luckily the local hardware supermart had a good variety to check over. Plastic tray versus metal, Metal handles versus wood. Sturdy enough. Big enough. Got to assemble it myself but for $49.95, what could go wrong?

Exhibit A, the new wheelbarrow.

The assembly was more difficult than expected and one piece just would not fit. Oh well, I improvised and soon I had my new wheelbarrow ready to go. I chucked some firewood in and went for a spin around the block to check out the performance of my new machine. 

Performance? Passable but less than what I had hoped for and expected. Hey, beggars can't be choosy right? Seriously, it is a wheel barrow. What could go wrong really other than a little barrow envy?

As I teetered high on the back of my wheel barrow, my right leg throbbing intensely, presumably broken, other bones sure to go as I continued to fall, internal injuries not yet ascertained but expecting something, I had a moment as my life flashed by in slow motion of what in the hell was I going to say to the staff at the hospital about how I had managed to injure myself.

The silly thing was, in a very short space of time I had realised my new wheel barrow was in fact a lemon and was a hazard. It's one redeeming feature was the large expansive bowl and that is what tempted me into using it again, despite the issues with safety. And that is why I was left hanging mid air ruminating on my life, considering my explanations and anticipating the additional pain that was surely going to come as I succumbed to the pull of gravity. Moreover, my wife was going to give me a rollicking!

"Wheelbarrows for dummies" or "How to chose the right wheelbarrow for you", would have been good titles to read before I had bought my new wheelbarrow. However, in much the same way as men do not need maps, books such as Wheelbarrows 101 are not available. Consider now my newest wheelbarrow, the one that replaced the one with the expansive bowl, the one that nearly killed me.

A good solid sounding name, red handles and a bright blue bowl, it has to be good.

And now consider the new and the old side by side. Sherlock the mighty on the left  and the black death star or trap on the right.  A wheel barrow is a wheel barrow is it not? What is the issue?

Looking from the back first. With the Sherlock we have strong cross braces welded to the frame. The frame itself is rigid. No torsion or movement within the barrow itself even under load. As the operator you do not have to compensate and adjust for a flexible wheelbarrow.

Welded cross brace, two cross braces, solid steel construction.

Only one cross brace that is screwed into place. Frame is flimsy and allows flexibility, not a good thing in this case.

The view of the front tells us something else. Construction is sturdier, the bowl is metal and not plastic again helping with rigidity and the support to the front is placed further forward making tipping the load easier and less energetic.

The side on view again shows the most critical aspect, the feature that lead to my near death experience. Admitedly I am tall at just over two metres in height but even a much shorter person could still run into issues.

The very front section or nose is used to pivot the wheelbarrow when tipping. The nose hits the ground as you lift at the back enabling you to tip the wheelbarrow up to tip out the contents of the bowl. 

With the  blue barrow, the load is positioned over the front wheel and means the tipping is easy and the nose is some distance from the ground as you are carrying or moving the wheelbarrow. The black barrow has the load positioned towards the back making it harder to lift and move and the nose is then only a short distance to hitting the ground when you do not want it to.

So you can imagine with the black wheelbarrow, having realised the carrying capacity was limited owing to weight distribution, flimsy construction and flexibility in construction the only thing a frugal gardener might consider using the barrow for was to collect leaves for mulch. It would utilise the large expansive bowl but at the same time, the concerns of weight were minimal as the load was large but very light.

It was a beautiful day, the sun bright but the day not yet hot. It was such a wonderful morning and I, two barrow man, oh that immense feeling of power and entitlement, two wheel barrows, could life get any better? I ran lightly down the hill to collect the leaves that had fallen under a large tree.

Suddenly the sharp and sudden pain in my leg, the suspension in mid air, the terrible moment as the brain catches up to events and you realise you are in trouble, pain has occurred and is going to occur again and there are only brief milliseconds left to consider saving ones bacon. The front of the wheelbarrow had hit the ground and as a wheelbarrow is designed to perform, it had gone straight into tip mode. As this was not a planned action my leg had smashed into the strut running along the back,as I stumbled forward to lie draped over the back of the barrow with it in full tilt emptying position. Luckily it fell to the side and yes whilst I was bruised and battered, my leg pulsating with pain but no bone protruding through the skin, I landed moderately intact. My leg was not broken I realised soon thereafter and I swore never to use the damn black barrow again.

It took weeks for the bruise and swelling to subside but in short when buying a wheelbarrow, go for rigidity, welded construction where possible, check the load distribution and how high the nose is from the ground as you are moving about. That will narrow your choices down considerably with which one to buy and don't worry about the cost,. A wheelbarrow should last a lifetime and the right one is money well spent, wisely spent and will lead to safe utilisation. When you go out to do the gardening you can expect to get home!

$5 challenge; Vegan Bobotie.

Bobotie ( Ba boat ee) is a South African dish of spiced mince with an egg based custard topping. It is a beautiful dish and one that has many variants. Another reason to like it as if you do not have an ingredient you can substitute another. It can also act as a spiced version of Shepherds Pie and make use of leftover roasted meat.

The price of meat in Australia currently is proving a boon to the farmers and exporters with high prices. However this leaves those living frugally with a  a harder task to make ends meet. ( no pun intended)

Having recently discovered I can make something edible from firm tofu I set about making a vegan bobotie. By eliminating the meat  I hoped to be able to make an inexpensive yet tasty alternative.

I was not being facetious about making firm tofu edible. I love silky tofu in all its various culinary forms but the texture of firm tofu does not in the main agree with me. I can eat it but the enjoyment would be greater if I were to eat a kitchen sponge. This indolence towards using firm tofu changed when I was tempted to try to make some crispy tofu, sweet corn and green onions balls. I wish I had taken photos so I could have told you more about making them.

The essential thing was the tofu was blended to a paste and then other ingredients were mixed in. After the addition of a small amount of flour the paste was made into balls and these were baked in the oven with a dusting of oil spray to get them nice and brown. Oh my oh my! They were delicious that night as well as cold the next day.

Back to the vegan bobotie. There are two basic parts to the bobotie; the "meaty" mix and the topping.

The meaty mix.  Remember this a vegan version so lentils replace the minced meat.

Ingredients:

1 cup ( 220g) of brown lentils @ $4.27/kg                  $1.00
1 tin diced tomatoes                                                     $0.59cents
1 large carrot chopped into small pieces  @$1.29/kg  $0.30cents
1 large  brown onion chopped @$0.99/kg                   $0.20cents  
a handful of raisins or sultanas  
a teaspoons of all or a selection of herbs; thyme, cumin, garam masala, chilli, turmeric , ginger, mustard.

So you do all the usual palava; brown the onion, add the carrot, add the tin of tomatoes, add all or some of the herbs and spices, throw in the washed lentils, add water or stock to make a thick stew like consistency, throw in the raisins and bring to bubble and simmer for 30-40 minutes or put in a covered dish in the oven at 180 degrees C for 45 minutes or so.

Topping:

1 block of firm tofu                                                    $2.25
splash of soya sauce
1 tblspn of curry powder
1/4 tspn of nutmeg
a few almonds

Meanwhile, back at the kitchen bench, take your block of firm tofu and wipe the excess moisture off and plop it into the food processor with some nutmeg, a slurp of soya sauce, a teaspoon of curry powder and whizz away.  The resultant custard is the topping for the bobotie.

Smear this over the meaty mix in the now lid less casserole dish and you are ready to pop it back into the oven for a further 20 minutes or so. I did place a few almonds in the mix for show and gave the top a light spray of cooking oil to help it to brown up. Yes, I did find one paltry radish in the garden so I put that on too.

Ready to go back in the oven

Browned and cooked ready to serve up.

Served with some kale and parsley.

 The result was very nice.  As for the five dollar challenge? Pretty close I think but it is hard to price out the various herbs and spices. The addition of the almonds might just take it over the $5 mark. Also it is easy to add or subtract these depending on what you have available.. A good dollop of curry powder would suffice without all of the other things.

So I was very happy to successfully make a tasty inexpensive meal for two, plus lunch for four the next day for around the $5 mark. Plus I have a new found respect for firm tofu, I just hadn't been treating it right!

Cheap vegetable and chicken stocks

I am not a great fan of shop bought stock. It is convenient but I find the level of sodium contained within is way too high.  Campbell's vegetable stock contains 540mg of sodium per 100mls or per half cup. Massel's vegetable stock which is salt reduced contains 174mg of sodium per 100mls.Too high levels of sodium are linked with heart and kidney disease. When you start to go low sodium it is incredible how thirsty you are next morning after a meal out of takeaways. That is from the sodium.

One litre of Campbell's vegetable stock costs $4.25 AUD. If you were making a soup at home say for a family of four and used one litre, that is the price of the soup before you have added anything else.

Making vegetable stock at home is not hard. It is especially easy if you have a vegetable garden. Whilst I throw many vegetable scraps into the compost container, I keep the good scraps in a container in the fridge until I am ready to make stock. The use of seasonal weeds adds flavour for no extra cost.

Chop and onion up finely, heat some oil in  decent sized saucepan and cook until at least slightly browned. Do not use olive oil for this as it's smoke point is 180 degrees Celsius. If the oil temperature goes over this the oil breaks down and some of the by products are known carcinogens. Rice bran oil for one has a smoke point of 230 degrees Celsius.

Throw in your vegetable scraps e.g pea pods, celery ends, carrot tops, carrot ends, potato or other peels. Chuck in your other greens.

A collection of greens. In this case there is sow thistle, plantain leaves, celery leaves, kale flowers, chickweed, rosemary stem, grapefruit leaf ( any citrus is fine).

Cover with water and bring to the boil. Turn heat down to a low simmer and let is bubble away for about 20 minutes. Do not go on too long as it can get bitter especially if you use a lot of weeds. One counter to this is to add a teaspoon of sugar.

The secret now is to add a handful of dried mushrooms. Here in Australia these are found in the Asian food section of the supermarket, are Shitake mushrooms and cost about $1 for the bag. I would get at least five stocks from one bag.

Give a good stir and let simmer for a further 10 minutes then drain either with careful lid technique with the saucepan leaving the solids behind or throw a sieve.

The resultant amber fluid looks beautiful. Okay, I am sad! I have not seasoned the stock as I will season whatever I am cooking it with later. That way to if you freeze some stock, you know you are getting the basic stock each time.

A thing of beauty!

For the chicken stock, the difference is the addition of chicken bones and bits.It depends on where you get these but you could use a chicken carcass, chicken frame, chicken leg bones, even chicken necks. I routinely use chicken leg bones as we make our own dog food using the meat taken from chicken legs. Chicken legs here in Australia vary between $2.99 and $3.99 per kilo when on special. They are almost always on special but even when they are, we buy extra and freeze them so we are always using cheap chicken legs.

We boil up the chicken and obviously use the resultant liquid for stock. Once the chicken meat has been removed when the legs are cold enough to handle put the bones and odd bits into a roasting tray and roast in the oven for around 20 to 30 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. i.e a hot oven. You want these bones browned but definitely not burnt. Then add a good layer of water into the pan, roast for another five minutes then carefully pour everything including the bones into a decent sized saucepan.

Cover with water, throw in all the vegetables as you would in the making of vegetable stock and boil slowly for about 30 minutes. Using aforementioned lid technique or a sieve, pour the resultant liquid into a container. Let cool then place in the fridge overnight. In the morning you can scrape the lid of fat from the surface leaving you with a beautiful basic chicken stock with low fat.

It is amazing how useful good stocks are in adding flavour to soups, stews, casseroles, stir fries, even as a replacement for water when cooking vegetables. And you know where it came from, what is in it and it did not cost you much other than time and love.

Dirty Rice and it's Done Dirt Cheap Revisited:Vegan $5 Challenge

In a previous blog, I visited the culinary heaven of Creole cooking and found Dirty Rice was a ripper as an inexpensive meal.

http://frugallivingmadeasy.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/dirty-rice-and-its-done-dirt-cheap-5.html

I wanted to revisit the recipe to provide a meat free alternative. There are several reasons to do this;

• There is a world that exists beyond meat. The eating habits of Western society are extremely meat centric. To live without meat takes a change in mind set and I wanted a new culinary challenge to face.
• Supermarkets, in fact shops generally, are many miles from where I live. Coping with doing without sometimes is a necessity. Being able to cope is a liberating and positive feeling.
• Cheap meat of any quality is generally hard to find. To remove meat from the menu even for a night or two each week is a good prospect for the frugal minded.
• I write another blog prompted by a health scare. To cut a long story short, to see if going without meat for a period of time makes any difference to my blood profile is a direct experiment and one I can write about!    http://shaunashcroftangioblues.blogspot.com.au/

Vegan Dirty Rice.

Makes enough to serve six and prices are in Australian dollars and are current as of April, 2015.

The browning of the rice comes from the mushrooms and stock.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups white rice, 450gms at $3.95/kg  equates to $2.00
• 150 grams (6) mushrooms @6.99/kg      equates to $1.00. Mushrooms were on special. Frugality means taking advantage of specials! At the normal buy price of $9.99/kg, price would have been $1.40
• 1 stalk of celery                                                      $0.10
• 1 onion                             $0.99/kg                         $0.20
• ½ a green capsicum         $3.98/kg                          $0.75
• 4 cloves of garlic              $6.99/kg                        $0.30
• ¼ tsp cayenne pepper
• Large teaspoon of thyme.
• Squirt of tomato sauce or chutney or tomato paste or tomato itself.
• Tsp black pepper
• 4 cups homemade vegetable stock. The next blog will cover making this vegetable stock and chicken stock the frugal way!

Total basic cost $4.50 or thereabouts.

How to make dirty rice:

• Prepare your ingredients first. It takes all the stress and strain out of preparing this dish and any stir fry for that matter.
• Either put the mushrooms and celery into a food processor and make a coarse mix or chop very finely using your manual dexterity.
• Chop the onion finely.
• Chop the  capsicum reasonably small but large enough that you know what it is when you come across it in the dish later!
• Chop the garlic.

You are ready to go.

• In a good sized pan heat some oil. Add the onion and cook until the onion is translucent. Takes about two minutes.
• Brown mushroom and celery mix. Don’t burn it.   This takes about three minutes.
• Add the capsicum and garlic and any seasoning and cook stirring for another three minutes or so then add the rice. Stir to coat the rice well with the contents then add the stock.
• Bring to the boil then very slowly simmer for twenty minutes with the lid on. Stir to ensure heat is not making it stick to the bottom of the pan( turn pan down if this happens) but stir as little as possible and infrequently as possible. i.e leave it alone!Turn off the heat, lift the lid and fluff it all up with a fork.
• Put the lid back on and leave for ten minutes

Making the Most of Things: Eating skins, the peel good factor

It is possible I will expose myself as a philistine, but I have rarely understood why anyone would peel a tomato or scrape out the seeds and discard them.  A tomato is like a woman- to be loved in totality.

Virtually every vegetable and fruit outer layer or peel/skin is edible and more often than not is a concentrated nutrient version of the flesh contained inside. The potato is a good example of the fact the skin has more nutrients per gram than the equivalent amount of the flesh. A simple guide to frugality, do not lose the peel!

Wash.

The skin of a fruit or vegetable is like the packaging and is the first barrier to the outside world. Treat it with respect.Unless you know exactly the journey your fruit or vegetable has taken on its way to your plate, wash them well.

Fruit and vegetables are now responsible for more large-scale outbreaks of food-borne illnesses than meat, poultry or eggs. Overall, produce accounts for 12 percent of food-borne illnesses and 6 percent of the outbreaks, up from 1 percent of the illnesses and 0.7 percent of outbreaks in the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Source Foodpoison Journal

• They are often treated with chemicals a long the way to reduce the incidence of insects eating them and to make them last longer in storage. 
• In areas where water is scare, the water used to supply the plants may be of questionable quality. 

Whilst organic locally produced fruit and vegetable is the best option, it is not always practical nor sadly affordable.Washing will significantly reduce the likelihood of problems occurring.

Making them Palatable.

Just because it is edible, doesn't make it palatable. I found one recipe for utilising banana skins in cooking but this was using the skin as a wrap for the contents and the author noted he could not eat the skins. However there are plenty of other uses for the skins of bananas including a cure for warts and a treatment for heamorrhoids! Check out the website below if you are interested.

http://blog.trashbackwards.com/2013/05/16/20-uses-for-banana-peels/

To eat other skins may take a change in attitude but are quite nice eaten as part of the fruit. Most people eat the skins of apples, peaches, pears and nectarines.  Kiwi fruit, apart from the hard knob connection hub to the plant is nice as are the skins of mangoes. Frugality sometimes takes a change in perception.

Citrus skin contains many super phytochemicals but again, eating the skin directly is not for the faint hearted. However, using the zest as flavouring, as a topping, as an addition to other foods is well tolerated. There are  ways to get the value from the skins without using them without alteration.

If you insist on peeling your vegetables consider utilising the peel in other ways.

• Make nachos using roasted potato skins instead of corn chips. 
• Use the skins of questionable palatability  in stocks and gravies.e.g chokos, broad beans, mature pumpkin
• Use the blender to hide the skin in soups or smoothies.
• Cut off some the skin to minimise the assault on your sensibilities e.g. eggplant
• Find recipes from other cultures that utilise the skins e.g. broad beans from the dailymail/uk A classic way to cook them is the way they do in Turkey, where they are served as a meze: Sauté a little chopped onion in olive oil a heavy, lidded saucepan until it softens, turn the heat down then add the beans - whole and washed - a good few squeezes of lemon juice a little sugar and salt, then leave to stew for about 15 minutes. Add enough water to come half way up the beans, some chopped dill leaves and let it simmer gently. Now cover the pan and cook for an hour until the pods are very tender. Leave to cool. Chill, then add more chopped dill. Serve with thick yoghurt into which you have stirred some chopped garlic. By the way, this is an authentic Turkish dish, and friends assure me it is supposed to that rather off putting colour.

 But seriously get used to eating the phytochemical rich skins. You can always discard them once they are on the plate if you do get a skin that is overly hard or dry.

A word of warning about potato skins. Potatoes contain glycoalkaloids which in higher concentrations can be toxic. A green potato often has higher than desirable level of these chemicals but if you remove the portion of the skin it should be fine. If a potato tastes bitter however, discard it. Potatoes are nutrient accumulators. Personally I would not eat potatoes grown in old car tyres. Cadmium which is used in the black pigment leaches into the soil and is accumulated in the potato as far as I am led to understand.

Potatoes from the garden. Nadine and purple congo varieties.

$5 challenge, smoked tofu and smoked eggplant.

Just as life has ebbs and flows and the wild variability brought about by the seasons, I too have phases and moods. Too many my wife will tell you quietly but at the moment we are trying a phase of eating without meat. We figured we had become meatcentric and for reasons of health, economics and to a degree animal welfare, we thought we would tread the vegetarianism and vegan road, where and when we can.  Hey, life is dull without change however permanent or not.  There are a few exciting challenges brought about by this decision and one is how to make good use of the barbecue.

Smoked tofu and smoked eggplant.

I have made a "tray" for the trivet or cake rack to sit on by folding some aluminium foil. This helps to deflect any direct heat and if the food was going to "leak" it would keep the barbie clean. The rack or trivet is then positioned on top of this and placed on the barbecue so it is being affected by the heat but not directly with the flame underneath. This is a Weber Q so this spot is dead centre on the grill . Any barbecue with a lid will have some means of being able to cook under indirect heat.

A block of silken tofu is placed on the rack as are two slim otherwise unprepared eggplants, 200gms.

I am Mister Cheap so my smoking material in this case is peach wood. Every time I prune or trim one the the fruit trees, I keep the branches and let them dry out. To use these for smoking simply place them in water for an hour or so then place them directly on the grill surface.

The pre-warmed barbecue has the lid closed and I set the timer for fifteen minutes just so I am reminded to check everything is okay. It is easy to become distracted and we are dealing with fire! The barbie is on low.

You couldn't do this inside!

At fifteen minutes everything is fine, smoking away and the branches are not on fire. I let it go for a further twenty minutes and call it a day and remove the food to the safety of the kitchen to cool.

Smoked and ready for the next stage.

As a matter of interest I am doing this at lunch but I will do the next stage at dinner time. It is easy to get this all organised ahead of time.

Slice the eggplant and carefully cut the tofu into bite sized chunks. Dredge the tofu in cornflour.
I figure this needs a sauce so chop and onion and cook until slightly caramelised, throw in a can of tomatoes and the spices and herbs you want. This has a teaspoon each of ginger, cumin, turmeric and garlic plus a splash of worcestershire sauce.

The sauce is on and the eggplant is being fried in a splash of rice bran oil as is the tofu. Having realised the meal will be a little light, I have spread a wrap with some horseradish sauce, layered sliced tomatoes on top, sprinkled dried basil over this and placed it on a pizza stone in the oven at 200degs C.

The tofu is carefully turned to brown it all over the the egg plant slices treated similarly.

So here is how the tucker turned out.The sauce is centered so you can have as much as you want when you want. So you have from bottom left the tomato slice, the eggplant slices, the tofu and some beetroot relish that was in the fridge and a few slices of pickled ginger.

The tofu was amazing. I think cooking it on the BBQ helped to take the water out of it so when fried it was crunchy with a beautiful soft gooey inside. The eggplant really held the smokey flavour well and was excellent. The rest was really nice also and there was plenty for two of us with left over slice and sauce for lunch the next day.

• Tofu, silken, block of 300 grams  $2.52 and that is Aussie dollars
• One wholemeal wrap $0.37
• three tomatoes $4 per kilo, 250 grams=$1.00
• one onion $1.12 per kilo, 100 grams = $0.12
• eggplant $3.899 per kilo, 200 grams=$0.80
• tin of tomatoes, $1.00
• TOTAL $5.81

Okay, I didn't quite succeed in the $5 challenge but if you had tomatoes growing in the garden that would make your sauce and wrap topping. Plus there were leftovers so that has to be a bonus. Give me a break!

If this is the future for us, bring it on! The flavours really were amazing.