The Five Dollar Challenge

The Five Dollar Challenge

The five dollar challenge is to create a meal for $5 or less.

Beans and Rice.

1 cup (225gms) Jasmine Rice @$3.95/kg = $1

300gms dried fava beans         @$2.95/kg=$0.90

The resultant meal provided enough for dinner for two, and four other servings which provided lunches and another dinner!

Here’s how:

A picture paints a thousand words or so they say so lets go.

Beans, fava beans, 300gms. Soaked overnight in water. There is a quick soak method where they say to boil for two minutes and then soak for a couple of hours in the hot water, I have tried this method and it did not work for me. Beans were still too hard after final cook. Oh well, they say to taste your food but it was serve or go to bed hungry!

Bring to the boil, do not add salt as it toughens the bean, gently boil for 45 minutes or so.

One cup of jasmine rice to two cups of water, bring to the boil then turn down as low as you can with the lid on. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes but check after 10 minutes or so to ensure it is not going to dry out. Add a touch more water if needed.

Cut some vegetables. I had on hand green onion, brown onion, red onion and leek. You can add what you want and please note, the cost of the vegetables were not added into the overall cost of the $5 challenge meal.

 As well as sow thistle, celery leaves, and a turmeric leaf.

With a little oil in a saucepan, the onions were given a bit of brown and then the greens were sweated down. A teaspoon each of cumin, cardamon and dry ginger were tossed in.

The beans and rice were added to the vegetables and some chopped green beans added. Taste and season as required. I added a handful of raisins at this stage too to add some sweetness. The whole lot  should then be turned and stirred and a little more water added as required and cooked a little more too your own personal taste of "doneness."

The side vegetables were sweetcorn, kale and cabbage with grilled tomato with a wasabi pea crust. The tomatoes were grilled nearly to the end then the crust added. Wasabi peas were ground, placed on top of the tomato with a spray of oil and finished under the grill.

Yummo!

 Variations:

The variations should suit your taste and budget. I used vegetables that were available free or were from our garden which we had grown. This dish works well though for when you see a vegetable that is on special and you can then employ it.

Beans; I used dried beans as they are cheapest. You could use any dried bean but the fava beans were the cheapest too. Chickpeas would work. 

Rice; Jasmine rice was, guess what, yep the cheapest. I bought these from a shop where you could get as much as you wanted from the self serve bins. Way cheaper than the supermarket and you only take what you want not a whole bag load. Brown rice, wild rice, black rice, white rice, red rice would all work beautifully and add different flavours too. Just check the recommended cook time. I cooked the ingredients separately to make sure all items were cooked adequately before bringing together. You could then also cook some of it in advance.

Vegetables to add; This part is wide open as to what you have available, what you are growing, what is cheap and in season. Wild and free greens like sow thistle, nettles, fat hen, plantain, chickweed would be good but anything can be added for colour, nutrients and flavour. 

Herbs and spices; Curry powder, cumin, cardamon, a pinch of nutmeg a little cinnamon would be great. Mixed herbs, thyme and sage would work. Coriander, lime zest, a splash of soya sauce, a slurp of sesame oil sounds good. Don't hesitate to add a spoon of sugar or use a dried fruit like raisins, currants, dates or prunes even.

Free Mulch

Frugality can be applied in all aspects of existence and in fact is best practised as a way of life. Working in the garden is not exception.

“There is no dignity quite so impressive, and no independence quite so important, as living within your means.” 

This was uttered by Calvin Coolidge, who if you do not know, was the 30^th President of the United States from 1923 to 1929.  I wonder how he would feel  now if he could see the current Age of Continuous Consumption and the reign of the credit card.  What an amazing thing the credit card, to make a card of debt sound positive!

Back to frugality in action, this time some suggestions for the garden. Mulch is a very important part of any garden to reduce water loss, stifle the growth of weeds, enhance the fertility of the soil and improve soil structure. However mulch costs  but by thinking outside the square, there are some frugal means to get all the benefits of mulching without it costing much money, a little time maybe but the pockets will not be siphoned free of gold.

Suggestions for cheap / free mulch:

• Bark. We have cold winters so there is a constant requirement for firewood. Living frugally, this is collected throughout the year. As the branches are cut to size, the outer bark is removed and used as mulch. This mulch in particular is much more chook proof as our free range hens have greater difficulty using their feet to move it and it therefore acts as a home for all sorts of small wildlife. These are good to minimise pests.

Bark and some leaves used as mulch here. Note the wood ( free) used to add height and texture to the garden

• Leaves. If there are fallen leaves about  they can be  used as mulch if present in sufficient numbers, these also make an excellent mulch. I always check to see what grows under the trees they come from as some leaves e.g pine needles are quite acidic and could kill certain plants.

Leaves can be used even around pot plants

Again a mixture of leaves in the foreground and bark

• Prunings/ Thinnings. As trees are shaped all trimmings are kept to use as mulch. Thinnings from the fruit trees if the branches are thick enough, are dried, chopped to smaller sizes and used on the barbeque to smoke vegetables and meat. Free smoker chips! They are just soaked in water for an hour or so and I place them directly on the grill. Adds a lovely flavour.

Might look a little ugly or untidy to start but it soon settles down. Mulch around the new Camelia's. 

• Weeds or unwanted plants. Never mulch with weeds that you have not taken the seed heads from. Otherwise, I use a range of weeds making sure they are in a position to dry out and not take root. I try to have the roots uppermost.

This is my weed graveyard. I put weeds here to dry out and then often move them at a later stage. This is settling down a lot and will soon be planted with grasses and flax.

These are sedges that were used originally as protection plants in one garden to help build a micro climate for the other new plants. Once the plants became established the sedge clumps were removed and used as mulch.

• Lawn clippings.  I generally dry these out first before using so they do not form a thick layer that rots down and stops water passing through.
• Other. If I purchase product it is usually a bag of sugar cane mulch. I use this in the vegetable garden as it is easy to use, cheap, the organic stuff is free of herbicides and a little goes a long way. In Australia, a $14 bag covers 6 square metres.

Make Mulch, Not War.

Another plant freebee, fat hen or Chenopodium album.

Another prolific weed that makes good eating is fat hen or Chenopodium album. This is a classic story of one man’s trash is another man’s treasure as it is cultivated in India and is also grown specifically in Africa whereas throughout most of the rest of the world, we do our best to eradicate it. 

Archaeologists tells us it was used by the Vikings, the Romans and therefore through out early Europe. It is another plant that I find once harvested needs to be used. Maybe this is one of the reasons it is not a commercially grown plant in the part of the world where supermarkets rule.

As a plant, it is a luxurious looking beast and certainly chooks know of its nutritious value hence the name.

You use fat hen much as you would spinach. You can use it in salads or lightly boiled as a green. The leaves contain high levels of  vitamin A, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, trace minerals, B-complex vitamins, vitamin C, iron, and fibre. One word of caution however, like spinach, the leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid so fat hen should be eaten in moderation. As mentioned previously, cooking breaks down some of the oxalic acid but do not make fat hen vegetable to be consumed daily.

I have never tried them but I read the flowers are edible as well as the seeds. In another “wow it is amazing what you find on the internet” I saw a suggestion the seeds can be sprouted to produce a delicate reddish brown sprout. I might give that  a try if I can collect enough seed. However that might be a hard one as it is a voracious weed and I will eat it happily but I do not want it to spread too much. Eating it is my form of a perfect natural weed control!

Substitute fat hen in recipes calling for spinach. If you want some good recipes if you like Indian cuisine, type bathua, the Indian name for fat hen into Google and follow your taste buds.

Always remember with all weeds taken from roadsides or other land not under your control, ensure they have not been sprayed with herbicide.

Never Buy a Cookbook

Frugality comes in many guises. One form is to simply take what is on offer. It might seem a little cheap but hey, if something is being provided as a tempter and you try but don’t buy, that is life. C’est la vie.

The current age seems fascinated with food; cooking shows, celebrity chefs, diets, diets, diets, gluten free, lactose intolerance, glycaemic index, whole grains, ancient grains, fat free, guilt free. It is difficult to keep up on a budget.

Cook books are in vogue, celebrity chef how to do’s, sumptuous photography, gastroporn rules!. However their luscious presentation comes at a price and not a price I am prepared to pay. In fact what I realised pretty early was that one never needs to buy a cook book to have access to the latest recipes, news of inventive cooking and new food trends. It is all there on the world wide web.

You will develop your own list of go to sites. If you are new to the game, check out the lifestyle sections of on line newspapers. Discover a world of on line food magazines. There are a million food blogs out there. Find the best and most relevant to you. Some of my overall favourite start places are as follows;

Has links to most newspapers of the world and a selection of food magazines.

http://www.world-newspapers.com/ 

http://www.refdesk.com/paper.html

Some great magazine sites to start your journey; 

http://www.saveur.com/

http://www.sbs.com.au/food/feast-magazine

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com//

http://cuisine.co.nz/cuisine.nsf/recipes

http://www.epicurious.com/

Food blogs;

http://www.skinnytaste.com/

https://www.gojee.com/

https://lucysfriendlyfoods.wordpress.com/

A couple of hints;

·         Some sites will not easily permit copying recipes. I simply use the print screen function, paste to the program paint and save the file as jpeg file, this works fine.

·         Ensure you have a good filing system on your computer to easily find recipes. Personally I have found the easiest way is to start a filing system based on the main ingredient e.g lamb loin chops or beef mince. When I take something out of the freezer or buy something on special, I can simply go to that file for some ideas of what to do with it. I have embellished this by also adding files such as breakfasts or soups and may have one file in a number of different locations. I have amassed a mountain of recipes that have really proved their worth as far as giving me ideas and meaning I cook to what ingredients I have rather than selecting a recipe and then buying the ingredients. This way I can use items I have bought on special or utilise the glut of food that might come from the garden.

Not only has searching out recipes been a lot of fun that has allowed me to venture deep into the on line world of food all over the world but it has allowed me to sell and give away most of my cook books. It is amazing how much space they occupied!

Making the Most of Abundance.

One good tip to being frugal is to have a garden. That story is for another time because being the boring old fart that I am, I have put some time into it and worked out some dollars and cents on the issue, how much money it can mean to you.

The problem for the home gardener is like the lyric from a Johnny Mathis song," Too much, too little, too late"...well the song is a love song actually but at least that part of the lyric has relevance for the home gardener. You grow too much, you grow too little and it is always too late to change what you need to, to fix the problem.

Okay, Christmas has just passed and New Year so I had not been as diligent at looking after the garden so when I finally popped my head between the leaves of the cucumber plant to look down into the green forest beneath I was surprised by finding not a few small cute lebanese cucumbers but a dozen marrow sized cucumbers. Luckily I love cucumbers and they tasted great but there were still too many to cope with without wasting them. So what to do?

There is always  relishes and chutneys to make. Easy, but we didn't have everything we needed and town is too far away for a causal jaunt just to get a few supplies. After looking online, I decided to make cucumber noodles!

First I have to cut my own noodles. Peel the cucumber a little, I used a zester to scrape away some of the skin. Then cutting carefully leaving all the seeds behind I had numerous large slices of cucumber. Again carefully I sliced these finely into a collection of noodles.

These were dropped into boiling water  for just over a minute then drained and quickly cooled under cold water.

Later, I heated some oil in a  fry pan and threw in the cucumber noodles with a few tablespoons of chopped mint. These were sauteed for a minute or so and a small glob of butter added for the last 30 secs of cooking. These were served as a side. Beautiful, wow, yahoo, shadang! Definately will do that again. Having tried cooked cucumber, I am using cucumber pieces in a stir fry tonight.

Making the most of what you have without letting it go to waste, frugality 101!

 Dinner. Beans, potato,corn from the garden, a roast vegetable warm salad with feta cheese and the cucumber noodles. On the side is a wild leaf salad of chickweed, nasturtium, carrot thinnings, sow thistle, vietnamese mint and a few cherry tomatoes from the garden. Full of flavour and yummo!

Free Food a Pigs Thistle. Eating Sow Thistle, puha or Sonchus Oleraceous.

A weed that is widely distributed, is a powerhouse of antioxidants and is a good source of iron, is the sow thistle, Sonchus oleraceous. I have seen is for sale in New Zealand but otherwise it is usually one of those plants which is available to collect freely.

In one of life’s many oddities, a perfectly edible plant is listed as a weed. Great tomes have been written on how to eradicate it during the growing of more popular crops.

The culinary history of sow thistle is old.  It is recorded by Pliny that before the encounter of Theseus with the bull of Marathon, he was regaled by Hecale upon a dish of Sow Thistles. Theseus was the mythical founder and King of Athens in ancient Greece.   It is eaten in Europe as a component of salads, cooked with spaghetti in Italy, and is part of a nutritious and heart warming stew in New Zealand. The indigenous people of New Zealand, the Maori, show perfectly the ability to think outside the square when it comes to food and make the most of frugality. Both pork and sow thistle were introduced during the European invasion of the country. Maori took the pork bones, traditionally a waste product for the English and sow thistle or puha to make puha and pork bones, a rib tickling comfort stew.

The jagged edged leaf really is quite distinctive. This is a sow thistle, a baby growing amongst Nasturtiums.

A baby growing amongst chickweed and grass on a path. The leaf in this case has a purplish tinge.

Just on identification, Sow Thistle is an annual and has a tap root. You want the one without prickles on the leaves although the prickly species is edible also. A look a like to sow thistle is a perennial and has an extensive root system. Forget that one. If collecting sow thistle from public places always ensure the plants have not been sprayed with insecticide and always wash thoroughly if collecting from road sides.

Use the youngest plants, up to a foot high in salads or cook briefly like spinach. The flowers can be added too. If you can find enough you could try this;

Sow Thistle Salad :  a large bunch of thistle leaves, a quarter of a cup of ground sesame seeds and two tablespoons of shoyu soy sauce or light soy.  Cut the thistle into 2 - 3cm lengths and blanch briefly in boiling water. Drain immediately and then leave for a couple of minutes for any excess water to run off - do not squeeze. Mix it all in a bowl. Maybe throw the flowers on top for artistic and nutritious effect.

Pork Bones and Puha:  A kilo of pork bones or if you can’t find these, a chunk of pork shoulder. Simmer in water for 1.5 hours then add chunks of potato and sweet potato. Simmer for a further 20 minutes or until almost done to your liking then add as much young puha as you have. Cook for a further 5 minutes.  Season to taste. If you have older puha, obviously wash and then give it a light bashing with can, rolling pin whatever. This can be added at the beginning to the boiling water but you will remove it either prior to serving or before adding the spuds and things. Whatever is easiest. Serve in soup bowls with  slabs of bread.

Sow thistle is related to the dandelion. Like the dandelion sow thistle is a mild diueretic. Like the dandelion the roots can be consumed either to eat or to roast and make as coffee from.

And if you don’t want to eat sow thistle, throw it to your chooks, they love it! Rabbits too appreciate the plant so much it is called Hare thistle in some places.

Free food if you can get it: Nettles

A move to the country after years of living within the confines of city and suburbs opened the door once again to nature. The sort of nature enjoyed as a child;wondrous, marvelous, full of miracles and worlds within worlds. Making sense again of the natural world led us try try planting vegetables and herbs we had previously not tried, and the resultant success and failures enabled us to make the best of our new situation. 


When some plants did really well and tasted so good, it made one wonder why these were not available at the shops. The surmise was they did not travel well or did not last long enough to be commercially viable.  It also meant looking at other plants that were documented as being edible but were not available even as seed. Many weeds fall into that group. 
The good thing about weeds is they are free.Whilst in some countries these plants may be cherished, here in Australia they are considered the feral gatecrashers to the garden party. Yet many are good eating, often have medicinal qualities and other valuable attributes overlooked in the modern blinkered convenience rules world. Remember the word weed is a human concoction to describe a plant that grows where it is not intended. It says nothing of the value of the plant itself. Therefore we have the wonderful quandary for frugality in that weeds are free and have no value and yet they  are very valuable.

Urtica dioica,, the stinging nettle

Lets take a look at nettles. In some areas these are common in other areas not so. From the literature nettles have traditionally been used as food, to make tea,  to make paper, cloth and  ropes, to make fish nets, used  as an expectorant, as a diuretic, in wound treatment, treatment of gout, as a laxative, treatment of prostate cancer, treatment of hepatitis and gall bladder inflammation, treatment of worms and the important one, to make BEER. You can still buy beer made from nettles in the North of England.
 Nettles are very high in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, phosphorous, manganese, silica, sodium, sulphur and tannin. Vitamin C, beta carotene and the rest of the B group of vitamins are also in high concentrations.
Nettles tend to grow in soil rich in phosphates and nitrogen and are often associated with clay or compacted soil. Nettles can therefore tell you something about the quality of the ground. Whilst they are considered a weed, they do not grow easily everywhere.

The oddest use is in the treatment of severe arthritis where the patient has his or her skin flayed with the nettle. This increases circulation, and stimulates the lymphatic system, the nerves and muscles. As one author noted, it may be the pain of the nettles that takes away the pain of the arthritis! The leaves as you may unfortunately know produce an unpleasant stinging sensation which can be reduced by rubbing a dock or plantain leaf on the zone, or heating the area. The sting is caused by small hairs containing formic acid or methanoic acid which spike and irritate the skin. However, I cannot see a nettle clinic opening any time soon.

The formic or methanoic acid is neutralised by heat and drying so dried nettle or cooked nettle contains no danger. The leaves need to be dropped into boiling water for thirty seconds. 

Nettles boast a very high amount of protein compared to other plants given at a rate of 10%.

To use to eat:

Use only the young leaves. The older leaves feel develop a grittiness caused by cells that are an irritant to the kidneys.

You can use nettle leaves anywhere you would use spinach. Simply add the balanced leaves to salads. They are great steamed with beans and rice. Add them to soups. You can make a nettle soup with nettles, onion and potato with some stock and maybe a pinch of nutmeg They can be added to celery, zucchini etc to fill out the meal. To make beer, you can find plenty of recipes on the net.

Other uses:

If you can’t bring yourself to eat them, they are very rich in nitrogen and make a great addition to the compost heap or to make a green nutrient rich tea with which to feed your plants. Remember to remove any flowers and seeds if you do not want to spread the nettle. Nettles prefer to grow in rich soil that is not acidic.

Wear gloves to collect nettles although it is said if you grasp the nettle firmly by bare hand, the hairs are broken and cannot puncture the skin. I have yet to confirm this last observation!