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. 

BEND AND STRETCH

Old Mother Frugal is so old that occasionally there is a flashback to an old favorite TV show called “Romper Room”.

The show comprised of a hostess and she had lots of children on her TV show.  There were props like Mr. Do-Bee, Mr. Music and the Magic Mirror. There were lessons to learn, songs to sing, activities to play with the hopes that your name would be announced at the end of the day.

At some point during the show, the children would all get up from the floor as the hostess began to sing “Bend and Stretch”.  Kids at home would also get up off the floor and participate in the activity too.  “Bend and stretch, reach for the stars….There goes Jupiter, There goes Mars”.

This was a time before Sesame Street.  Yes, Old Mother Frugal is just that old.

So how does ‘bend and stretch’ fit into our lives today? 

If you are frugal, like Old Mother Frugal, you bend to be flexible.  You stretch where you can to save money.

Recently, the local Kroger grocery chain was offering a free box of Annie’s Organic Pasta and (Made with REAL) Cheddar Cheese to loyalty card customers.  

When preparing this boxed macaroni and cheese, only half the cheese packet is used for the recipe.  The remaining half is transferred into a snack-sized, Ziploc bag and returned to the box. This stretches the macaroni and cheese into two meals.

“Bend and stretch, reach for the sky, standing on tippy toes oh so high”… grabbed some elbow pasta from the pantry pouring 12 oz or a generous cup worth of elbow pasta into the box to complete the ingredients for the second meal.  Taped shut, it is returned to Old Mother Frugal’s pantry.

Stretching one meal into two and having two meals for the (free) price of one. Then stretching leftovers into a third meal.  

The leftover ham with mac-n-cheese dinner transformed into a Cream of Potato-Cheddar Broccoli soup to be served with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Bend and stretch!

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip:  It’s never empty when it’s empty.  Before you dispose your plastic container of coffee creamer or laundry detergent, get all that you can out of it.  Add a little water to the coffee creamer and laundry detergent bottles and shake the bottles.  You’ll get more cream for your coffee and more detergent for your laundry. It may be diluted but still good to use.

EGG ON A MOTHER'S FACE

Easter Sunday has come and gone but the hard boiled eggs still remained.

At some point, you may have done this too…boiled a dozen or more eggs in anticipation of decorating said eggs for an egg hunt that never happened or to have as an activity to keep the children busy while the adults prepare dinner.

Old Mother Frugal stocked up on large eggs right before Easter this year.  The prices were amazingly low.  With an overabundance of eggs that can be frozen, Old Mother Frugal had no qualms about what to do with so many eggs.  If need be, they would go into the freezer.

In advance of the Old Mother Frugal’s Grand Little Helpers visit, a dozen eggs were boiled and left in their shells awaiting dye and glitter.  The Grand Little Helpers were so busy with each other that time came and went while the eggs remained in the refrigerator. 

Slowly but surely, the eggs found their place in a variety of recipes.  Sliced hard boiled eggs on a tossed salad or hard boiled eggs made into deviled eggs.

Towards the end, the remaining eggs were transformed into an egg salad for a sandwich lunch.  A little mayo mixed with a little relish and a squirt of mustard topped with fresh ground pepper.  Viola! 

Ready to smear the mixture between two slice of soft, white bread so that with one bite it would stick to the roof of the mouth in need of a glass of milk to wash it down. 

But there was no bread.  No bread?  No bread.  No one was around to witness the figuratively “egg on the face” embarrassing moment. Phew!

There were crackers. When craving an egg salad “sandwich”, crackers were not an appealing option.

A scavenger hunt ensued in the freezer and refrigerator. There they were….a stack of pancakes. The light bulb was not only on in the refrigerator but also in Old Mother Frugal’s head.  Why not make a pancake sandwich!?!

Why not indeed!

It was a little messy. There was little room for spreading the chunky egg salad on silver dollar-sized pancakes.  But in the end, the egg salad mixture was salvaged into a uniquely delicious lunch sandwich.

Bread, on the other hand, can now be found on Old Mother Frugal’s shopping list.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip:  If you have a surplus of egg , consider freezing them for a later time.  The “Incredible Edible Egg” website is a wonderful resource for such an idea.  Check it out at http://www.incredibleegg.org/eggcyclopedia/f/freezing-eggs/.  It contains eggs-actly what you need to know about freezing eggs!

THE UN-FAJITA FAJITA

Old Mother Frugal’s freezer is overrun with sliced peppers.  There are green ones, orange ones and red ones because whole peppers were on the “Manager’s Special” clearance table at the local grocery store.

It didn’t take long to slice, bag and tag them. They sit as the top layer of my deep freezer chest in the garage. Found a recipe for crispy chicken fajita wraps and what a perfect use of these discounted sliced peppers!  The peppers now have purpose.

Needing a fajita seasoning recipe, Google provided several from which to choose and all the ingredients were in Old Mother Frugal’s pantry.

It took some searching, but there was a rotisserie chicken breast in the freezer too.  No cooking required, just defrost and dice into cubes for this recipe.

An unopened package of flour tortillas lay in wait on the pantry shelf.  Twelve to be exact.  Twelve crispy chicken fajita wraps ready to be stuffed.

As each tortilla wrap was warmed, stuffed and folded into a rectangular burrito shape, it was becoming evident that the yield was not going to be twelve.  By the time six were made, the total was going to be eight wraps. 

Was there too much filling in the wrap?  Why wasn’t the yield twelve?  They looked lovely, all eight of them but they weren’ twelve.  Twelve.  What went wrong?!

And then there was the answer…the sole reason for undertaking this cooking project, the sliced peppers.

None of them made it into the recipe.  All those beautiful, colorful sliced peppers just became a forgotten ingredient.

Old Mother Frugal no longer had the expected “crispy chicken fajita wraps” but in its place were eight chicken and cheese burritos.  How frustrating!

Too late to un-wrap eight burritos and add peppers.  Instead, they were wrapped for the freezer with a memo to self.  Cook peppers and onions.  When ready to serve for dinner, the peppers and onions will be placed on top of the burritos. 

Instead of hiding these colorful sliced bell peppers inside the tortilla wrap, they will now be on full display outside the wrap making for a beautiful presentation when serving the meal.

The cooking project didn’t end as originally planned but it did have a happy ending!

SOUND THE BUGLE!  Today’s tip: The meal had a projected yield of 12 wraps and the yield was short. A side dish of beans and a salad can be added as healthy extenders to make this a meal to feed 4-6 people. Three adults/teens will each have two wraps and younger children can have one each and a side dish.

THE YEAR-LONG PANTRY CHALLENGE 2016

The freezers and pantries were full and restlessness about meal preparation began to brew within.  How to make meal prep more interesting? It was December 5, 2015 when Old Mother Frugal made the commitment to a year-long pantry challenge. 

The concept of the “pantry challenge” was to not be wasteful and use what’s on hand, only purchasing those items that were “must have” to the shopping list.  Some pantry challenge participants shop weekly, others shop monthly.  For Old Mother Frugal, always on the prowl for a great sale, shopping took place more often than weekly.

Items considered by many as “must have” could include perishable items such as fresh fruit, vegetables, eggs, bread, milk and orange juice.  Some omit bread from the list and bake their own. With an ample supply of canned or frozen vegetables (either homegrown or purchased from the store), participants omit fresh vegetables from their shopping list.  As you can see, the “must have” list becomes quite personalized based on a variety of factors.  Time and pantry items on hand were two most popular determinates to the challenge.

Reflecting on the year, it has been a series of culinary challenges.  Dusting off an old bread machine, a loaf of bread was made for the first time in twenty years.  It had flaws but was edible. Homemade flour tortillas made its way into the meal prep rotation.  Some delicious homemade burritos came from this culinary pantry challenge. Yet to be conquered… pizza dough, but it’s on the list.

Another component to a pantry challenge was nothing went to waste.  All leftovers get used in some capacity, even if that means carrots were pureed and added to waffle batter.  A little cinnamon and nutmeg, raisins if desired, and suddenly carrot cake waffles were on the breakfast table!

Old Mother Frugal tried yet again to grow a summer vegetable garden.  Results were mixed.  Half dozen zucchini were harvested from the little plot of land.  Teeny-tiny potatoes, a dozen cherry tomatoes,  half dozen mini-eggplant, maybe three edible larger tomatoes.  Deer and squirrels were my albatross.  Old Mother Frugal could not survive on her home grown garden. 

It seems that zucchini flowers, those beautiful large yellow blooms were edible.  An online search pulled up a mixture of cheeses that one would use to make stuffed shells. Harvesting five blossoms, they were stuffed and baked for a light yet delicious lunch one summer afternoon.

If Old Mother Frugal thought she was frugal before, the budget just tightened up a bit. Unless food was at rock bottom prices as in “haven’t seen it in years” kind of sale, it was not purchased. Meats were only replaced once there was nearly none left in the freezer or met the criteria of the aforementioned sale. This philosophy carried throughout the entire year. A bonus of this pantry challenge was that the monthly food budget began to shrink. 

The monthly budget at the end of 2015 was $160/month for two adults.  At the start of the New Year decreased to $148 each month.  As months went along, it became evident that the budget could be slashed yet again to an average of a little over $100/month for two adults.  Some months were more, some months were less.

It was shortly into the New Year when “ugly” produce and fruits were actively and intentionally added to the grocery cart.  That would be those items tagged and bagged for quick sale and heavily discounted in price.  They were usually ripe and ready to be used or frozen.  For Old Mother Frugal this not only saved money but kept some good food out of landfills.  The year didn’t begin with saving food from the landfills but it is a shopping practice that will continue for Old Mother Frugal.  Food doesn’t have to look perfect when bought to taste wonderful at the table.

At mid-year “Feeding the Nations” put out a global initiative for another type of pantry challenge. Could one eat rice and beans for one meal Monday thru Friday during a specified week?  Money was donated to the organization in the amount of what one would have spent on groceries for that meal by eating rice and beans.  Up for the challenge, lunch became the “rice and beans” meal.  A few days of soup; a couple days of black bean burgers and before long the week of rice and beans lunches had come to an end.

There is an organization in England called “Love Food, Hate Waste” which has a world-wide community of followers.  Their mission is the name of their organization.  Nothing more need be said, right? An educational resource of being not wasteful with food, it kept this one person accountable to the task at hand and food out of landfills. 

Due to a variety of special dietary considerations, one may read this and think it not possible to eat frugally.  If one does not waste the food that one has, one has successfully eaten frugally.  Old Mother Frugal looks to the New Year to continue the journey of frugality with food.

With a series of “new to me” cookbooks purchased at local thrift stores, new culinary themes with a frugal bent are in store for next year.  And maybe… just maybe… that homemade pizza dough that has eluded Old Mother Frugal will finally be conquered, at long last.

SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip:  During this holiday season, save bones from your turkeys, your lambs and your hams to make broth.  Ham bones can be used a second time mixed with beans and water for flavor. Before you discard food as trash, give it another look.  If you can’t use it now, store in the freezer for use at a later time.  Broths freeze well and can be used to make soups or to cook rice or beans for added flavor.  Once a week, empty out your refrigerator, place leftovers into a pot of water and simmer it down for a soup.  As it cooks along, add salt or pepper as needed. You’ll never eat the same soup twice!

                                      CARROT CAKE WAFFLES

                                          LEFTOVER PICKLE JUICED CUCUMBERS

                                         BREAD IN THE SHAPE OF A TURTLE

                                         APPLE SLICES DRIED IN THE OVEN

                                         POP TART made w/LEFTOVER PIE CRUST

                                         REFRIED BEAN w/CHEESE BURRITOS
                                     

                                                   PIZZA TURNED CALZONE

                                         PICKLED WATERMELON RINDS

                                          HOMEMADE POTATO PEROGIES 

                                      

                                     STUFFED ZUCCHINI BLOSSOMS

                                         CRUMBLED CAKE BECAME TRIFLE 

                                                   CHOCOLATE ZUCCHINI MUFFINS

                                                    HOMEMADE NOODLES
                                 

             
                                          REGROWING CELERY

                                         HOMEMADE KETCHUP AND BBQ SAUCE

                                          FRUIT FLAVORED WATER

                 

                                     LOAF OF BREAD FROM BREAD MACHINE

                                     

                                      HOMEMADE RICOTTA 

 

                                     HOMEMADE FLOUR TORTILLAS