A PENNE FROM GRANDPA

Come travel back in time with Old Mother Frugal to the 20^th Century as we depart the time tunnel at Station 1964.  

Back when Old Mother Frugal was…well, not old.  Not a Mother but definitely frugal.  There was no money except for any spare change Old Grandfather Frugal would allocate to three kids. He and Grandma had lived through and came out the other side of The Great Depression.

Station 1964 takes us to Mulberry Street in New York City. An area of the city affectionately known as “Little Italy”.

Back when there was a flat, not an apartment.

Back when there was a telephone, not a landline.

Back when the clothes dryer was a rope and a pulley strung outside the kitchen window into an alley connecting to another tenant's kitchen window.

Back when the icebox was replaced with a refrigerator and an electrical cord to keep food cold.

Back when the brown radio was always “on” and there was no television for kids to watch.  You watched your grandparents live in a few hundred square feet of space.

Back when pasta was called macaroni.  It was sold at the Italian store below the apartment and you selected your variety of macaroni from a glass canister.

“Witcha shapa do you want” bellowed Old Mother Frugal’s grandmother.  The store sold all sizes and varieties and she expected three kids to come to a mutual decision.  Bless her heart.

Ravioli wasn’t sold in the glass containers. Silver Star ravioli was only sold in boxes, stored in the freezer of the Italian store.

During some visits, we were given a directive of “no raviol today, only macaron”.  Ravioli mustn’t have been in her budget. She also never pronounced the sound of “ee”. It was always silent when she spoke in English.

The selected macaroni was then wrapped in white, waxed paper and given to customers who then took it and placed it in their shopping bags made of twine. Back upstairs to the kitchen in the apartment where it was prepared for dinner.

Now it’s the 21^st Century. 

It’s taken over 50 years but Old Mother Frugal has scooped into pounds of semolina and all-purpose flour for a MYO ravioli experiment.  Any time pasta doesn’t fall apart in a pot of boiling water is a successful experiment.  Bravo!

So here it is, recipe for pasta…what you do with it, let your imagination run wild. 

This is what you need for each one serving of pasta.  

If you are making two servings, use 2 eggs, 1 cup of flour, so on and so on. 

Double or triple as needed.

·         1 large egg

·         3 ounces (about 1/2 cup) unbleached all-purpose flour ( I used half semolina/half AP flour)

·         1 teaspoon olive oil

·         1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

It has been Old Mother Frugal’s experience that pasta can feed an army.  If you make ‘one serving’ expect to feed “two people”. 

And as my Grandma used to say… “Mangia”.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Ravioli can be made without fancy or special pasta making equipment. If you have a rolling pin, you can make pasta. Ravioli can be made in advance and frozen by placing them in a single layer on a baking sheet.  Flash freeze and when frozen, transfer to a Ziploc bag to store and cook at a later time.

THE ELEPHANT WALK

Morning walks should be a peaceful time. But Old Mother Frugal’s mind gets bombarded with ideas during this time of peace and tranquility which jolts me into action once back in the kitchen.

A “pantry challenge”.

It consumed my walk this morning.

If you are unfamiliar, a pantry challenge is when one prepares meals only using what is in one’s pantry (that would be dry goods pantry/refrigerator/freezer).  If you must supplement, it would be for weekly perishable items.

In that Old Frugal Mother mind, there has got to be a better way....a more organized way to corral pantry madness.

The refrigerator is a side-by-side so the freezer has 4 shelves.

The pantry challenge will be to only use the freezer items from the top shelf for the 1st week of the challenge.

The next week, create meals from the 2nd shelf of the freezer.

When that is used up, move onto the 3rd shelf, etc.

How do you eat an elephant? 
 One bite at a time.

That is going to be Old Mother Frugal’s approach to my pantry challenge. Create meals from one section of the freezer at a time.

Here is what is crammed onto the top shelf of the freezer:

-  8 chicken wings uncooked
-  Leftover mini-meatballs in spaghetti sauce
-  2 cups of cooked chicken
-  Turkey mini-meatballs
-  3 cups cooked rice
-  1/2 carton vanilla ice cream
-  1/2 package of frozen mixed vegetables
-  12 oz package of frozen pollack fish fillets
- One package turkey bacon
- One package Barber Chicken/Spinach Florentine breasts
- 3 cups of cooked/mashed sweet potatoes

The only thing that stumped Old Mother Frugal during the walk was the ice-cream. What to do with ice-cream?  Well, besides the obvious of eating it as ice-cream but where’s the fun in that?

I'm thinking of waffles. I'm thinking that in place of milk and sugar, using the vanilla ice-cream. It's that kind of creativity that makes a pantry challenge fun...or a flop!

There may be some odd combination of food items being served up on the dinner table at Old Mother Frugal’s house next week.  Bacon wrapped meatballs, anyone???

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Periodically go through your freezer and look for those small packages of Ziploc bags that contain tiny remnants of leftover food and create a meal. The easiest meal would be soup. But consider taking a protein (meat/bean); a vegetable; a carb (potato/rice/bean) and mixing them together in a sauce to make an elegant yet economical crepe dinner.  Any leftover crepes can be used as a dessert or a breakfast crepe the next day or stored in the freezer for another meal.

CROQUET OR CROQUETTE

Old Mother Frugal has gotten the word out to family members that she will gladly accept unused holiday ham bones.

What may look like an ordinary bone ready for the trash heap lies within a bounty of meals. It’s no wonder the holiday ham stores sell them for a pretty penny.

After a holiday meal, one of Mother’s Little Helpers saves a ham bone in their freezer. Upon arrival, Old Mother Frugal is informed that the ham bone needs to vacate their freezer for one of my own.  It’s usually large and oddly shaped. It takes up room where something flat and rectangular could fit more comfortably in their freezer.  It’s hard to hide the excitement.

After several months of said ham bone taking up precious space in my own freezer, the time had come to give it a final eviction notice.

The challenge became “what” to do with this ham bone.  Quickly more ideas came to mind than meat on the bone.  First, remove any excess fat from the ham bone.  Set aside, it will be needed to flavor a cup of pre-soaked Great Northern Beans.  One cup of dry beans will yield about 2 and ½ cups of cooked beans. 

Cooked white beans are of great fiber value. Eaten as a side dish or added to soups/chili, it can also be a healthy extender in recipes that call for mashed potatoes.  Mash the cooked white beans, flavor if warranted, and use in place of potatoes.  This tip will come in handy when making ham croquettes aka ham “patties”.

Next, remove all usable meat from the bone.  This particular bone yielded 2/3 lb of ham which when placed in a measuring cup, was 2 cups of cooked ham.  It doesn’t require much ham to make a flavorful dish.  These 2 cups would go far.  But just how far could Old Mother Frugal stretch this ham bone?

With the meat removed, finding the joint on the bone became easier to locate.  Once the bone was divided into two sections, it could be used simultaneously in separate recipes.

The Great Northern Beans went into the pressure cooker along with the ham fat for flavor.

One cup of diced ham became four ham patties with the addition of smashed beans to replace mashed potatoes in the recipe.

The drained liquid from the beans was about 10 cups of bean broth which was reserved to make a pot of Ham and Bean soup using one of the two bone pieces and ½ cup of ham.

A box of Pillsbury Pie Crusts was donated to Old Mother Frugal’s kitchen by another family member.  Half of one crust became the top crust for two individual personal-sized ham pot pies. A roux of butter, flour, broth and milk formed the gravy for which ½ cup ham and frozen mixed vegetables would co-mingle in a ceramic pie dish.

Once the Ham and Bean soup was cooked and the bone piece was removed, it was transferred into another pot with the other bone piece for a pot of Split Pea Soup.

What resembled a trash heap of ham scraps remained on the cutting board.  Old Mother Frugal’s eyes turned to a pile of Russet potatoes.  Loaded baked potato soup was the next recipe for which to use the ham scraps.  In lieu of bacon as the starter, ham scraps and diced onion were sautéed to begin what became a very flavorful pot of soup.

At the end of the morning, five entrees blessed the kitchen table from one free ham bone.

1.       Great Northern Bean and Ham soup

2.       Ham Croquettes (4)

3.       Personal-size Ham Pot Pies (2)

4.       Split Pea Soup

5.       Loaded Baked Potato Soup

The soups will freeze well if they aren’t consumed before they reach the freezer. 

The two pieces of ham bone still have meat affixed to their bones and full of flavor.  Back into the freezer they go for another eviction notice. Smaller in size now, they may not have the intense flavor as when they were first used, but they still can lend flavor to beans or soup.

Those holiday ham bones are a gold mine of flavor and meals for your family beyond glazed ham slices.  Croquet may be an outdoor game.  But croquettes, they are delicious ham patties inside your stomach!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip:  Soup can be a year-round meal that is economical, nutritious and satisfying to eat.  Whether saving meat bones or vegetables scraps and corn cobs, use soup as a first-course or as a meal to fill your family’s hungry stomachs.