Tuesday Megalinks

I’m trying something new on Thursdays, so Tuesdays are now officially reserved for massive link lists. Which brings us to …

David Lebovitz: 8 Tips for Using Olive Oil
A smashing post from a crackerjack food blog. David's trick's are applicable to nicer oils as well as the $18 jug from Costco.

Festival of Frugality #91: Stop the Ride
Stephanie's done a peachy job compiling this week's festival. Her day-to-day blogging is spiffy, too.

Get Rich Slowly: Ask the Readers: Tips and Tricks to Save on Food? AND How to Feed Yourself on $15 a Week
JD’s entries are just the beginning. Scroll down for dozens of grocery shopping strategies and some surprising budgeting numbers.

Men’s Health: 10 Best Foods You Aren’t Eating
Not the usual blueberries/broccoli list, and something called “purslane” makes an appearance. Apparently, it’s a vegetable. Who knew?

Serious Eats: Nutrition Sells – One Small Step for Mankind
Proof that people buy healthy foods! Woo! Be still my blogging heart!

Zen Habits: Simple Things You Can Do to Lose Weight
Groovy entry on slow, steady pound droppage. The comments and links at the end are just icing on the blog-cake.


And one more.

Jon Stewart - Daily Show 9/20/01

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Chili-Spiced Potatoes: They’re Like Candy

Many years ago, over a pleasant Christmas dinner with cousins, my large, low-voiced Uncle J quietly uttered this bon mot, apropos of nothing: “Potatoes. They’re like candy.” At the time we fell silent, and maybe nodded. Today, it’s an oft-repeated familial adage, especially when the Irish-y starch appears on a holiday menu. (Which, really, is every holiday.)

I was reminiscing over the incident last week when a shocking realization hit me: this blog has run for two-and-a-half months without a potato recipe.

Subsequently, I can no longer shame my Celtic kin, disgrace my County Mayo ancestors, and bring dishonor to the country that makes up 1/4th of my origin. Today, by the power of my pale, befreckled Gaelic roots, I present: CHILI-SPICED POTATOES. (You’re fáilte.)

Adapted from a Kathleen Daelemans recipe, these spuds work best as a smoky, slightly salty, low-fat alternative to curly fries. Chock full of tuberiffic flavor, you can adjust the spice to your preference and prepare the rest of your meal while it’s roasting dans l’oven, too.

What’s more, the potatoes seem to appeal to all ages. I recently served them to my friend C’s daughter J, a notoriously picky eater whose diet formerly consisted of breast milk and soggy Cheerios. After scarfing down the first serving, she kept asking for more.

Which just goes to show: potatoes. They’re like candy.

Chili-Spiced Potatoes
Serves 3
Adapted from Kathleen Daelemans.

5 or 6 small red potatoes, washed and cut into ¾” pieces
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
Black pepper
½ Tablespoon olive oil

1) Turn oven to 350 degrees.

2) Stick all ingredients in a bowl. Stir thoroughly, so each potato is coated with stuff.

3) Run a finger over a potato, to ensure you like the level of spicery and salt. If you don’t, add more. (Go easy on the salt, though, or they’ll end up inedible.)

4) Spread everything on to a cookie sheet. (No overlapping.)

4) Bake for 30 minutes, then flip potatoes and turn oven up to 450 degrees.

5) Bake for 15 more minutes, or until outside is crispy golden brown. (Test one to make sure they’re done, but this timing worked for me.)

6) Let cool and serve.

Approximate Calorie, Fat, and Price Per Serving
244 calories, 2.77 g fat, $0.41

Calculations
5 or 6 medium-small red potatoes: 673 calories, 1.3 g fat, $1.09
1 teaspoon chili powder: negligible calories and fat, $0.04
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt: negligible calories and fat, $0.03
Black pepper: negligible calories and fat, $0.02
½ Tablespoon olive oil: 60 calories, 7 g fat, $0.04
TOTAL: 733 calories, 8.3 g fat, $1.22
PER SERVING (TOTAL/3): 244 calories, 2.77 g fat, $0.41 `

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Broiled Eggplant Japonaise: Brutti Ma Buoni

If there was ever a case for not judging a book by its terrfiyingly scalded cover, Broiled Eggplant Japonaise is it. DAMN, this is good. Traumatizingly ugly, but good.

When I say “ugly,” I don’t mean “slightly unattractive," “aesthetically challenged,” or “appearance deficient.” I mean “Chinese crested dog mated with an Orc.”

I mean “the August 22nd Rangers-Orioles game.” (NOTE: This is a baseball score.)

I mean “all the clothes on Go Fug Yourself, but especially this Chloe Sevigny hat.”

I mean "the political prospects of closeted Idaho senator Larry Craig."

In other words, Serious Eats was not kidding when it compared this dish to a bowl of slugs.

Yet, if you can get past the hideous, hideous façade, it's a pleasant surprise – a filling, easily prepared, vegetarian-friendly meal with honest-to-goodness Asian flavor. For health/availability reasons I cut the oil by a third and used a large regular eggplant. Still, damn tasty.

Behold, if you dare...

Broiled Eggplant Japonaise
3 servings
Adapted from Serious Eats/Jacques Pepin.

2 tablespoons Canola oil
1 gigantic eggplant
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
Salt

1) Turn on your broiler and cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.

2) Cut the stem ends off your eggplant. Proceed slicing the eggplant into long strips, each about 1/2-inch in thickness. Drizzle the oil on the cookie sheet and mix it around with the eggplant. Sprinkle with a little salt. Broil for about 4 or 5 minutes per side, until eggplant is tender.

3) While eggplant is cooking, mix garlic, soy sauce, sugar, and tabasco sauce in a large bowl.

4) Once eggplant is finished, throw into the bowl with the marinade and toss gently, so eggplant is covered. Serve.

Approximate Calorie, Fat, and Price Per Serving
181 calories, 9.9 g fat, $0.57

Calculations
2 tablespoons Canola oil: 248 calories, 28 g fat, $0.08
1 gigantic eggplant: 230 calories, 1.8 g fat, $1.39
1 clove garlic: 5 calories, 0 g fat, $0.05
1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce: 13 calories, 0 g fat, $0.14
1 teaspoon sugar: 46 calories, 0 g fat, $0.01
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce: negligible calories and fat, $0.03
Salt: negligible calories and fat, $0.02
TOTAL: 542 calories, 29.8 g fat, $1.72
PER SERVING (TOTAL/3): 181 calories, 9.9 g fat, $0.57

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Thursday Linkacalifragilisticexpealidocious

Boston Magazine: Murky Waters
Prevent salmonella, fishy scallops, and a whopping case of indigestion with this brief guide to buying good seafood.

Frugal Babe: Kitchen Envy
How do you know you've been struck with this terrible affliction?
1) You daydream not of George Clooney or of fronting U2, but of Viking appliances and granite countertops.
2) You plan parties exclusively in your friends’ homes, permission or no.
3) You are human.
12-step program coming soon.

Frugal Upstate: Return of the Lunchbox Report
In a day and age where pretzels with cheese dip counts as a nutritious school-backed meal, packing lunch for kids is mos def the healthier option. (There’s a “thinking outside the lunchbox” joke in there somewhere, but I can’t find it.)

New York Times: The School Cafeteria, On a Diet
Speaking about school lunches…

A Good American Wife: Meet Walt
Anne had a baby! Please welcome Walter Lawrence to the world, ladies and gentleman.
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When Food Frugality Pays Off: See Ya, Sallie Mae

Next week, barring disaster, I will pay off college. Undergrad and grad school, both. I'll be 30 in November.

Before we get into how eating frugally and healthily helped that happen, we must do this:

*Happy dance!*
*Happy dance!*
*Happy dance!*

Okay. Sweet. On with the show.

Between a small scholarship, tuition reimbursement from my job, and eight years of incremental Sallie Mae payments, I started the year with a little more than $15,000 in college debt. Being fairly oblivious, it never dawned on me to dump it until I perused Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. It’s the kind of life-changing book that advocates debt awareness and financial responsibility, and it convinced me to tackle my loans before I even finished reading.

So, in addition to moving to a cheaper place, cutting cable, and living off the salary I made three years ago (and banking the difference), I decided to chop my food bill. To my surprise (not really), of all my self-imposed cash conservation rules, the chow-related ones were hardest to follow.

This is partially because I’m thrifty, but not a cost-cutting psychopath when it comes to my gaping maw. I eat, I take trips where meals are a key component, and I go to roughly 12 billion baby showers a year, where I purchase layette sets in exchange for massive plates of chicken francese. So, yeah - chopping the comestibles budget was not easy. But I managed, and axed a few calories, to boot. Here’s how:

1. I started brown-bagging it to work. When you’re employed in the smack center of the most expensive five-block radius on Earth (Schtimes Square, Schnew York), your lunch budget is secondary only to rent. The average mid-day meal goes for about $7.50 around here, meaning it’s easy to blow $1700 bucks annually on sandwiches and soup. Plus, overeating is endemic, as you’re constantly striving to get the most food you can for your precious salary. Since starting to pack from home consistently a year ago, I estimate I’ve saved about $1300 along with several inches off my rear end.

2. I began shopping exclusively from the supermarket circular. The Boyfriend and I save an average of 21% off our weekly grocery bill this way. (I did the math!) We usually spend about $51.55 for food that would have normally cost $65.25, which saves us $13.70 per week, or $712.40 a year. As an added bonus, our fruit and veggie intake has about doubled, since produce is a loss leader and constantly on sale.

3. I switched to water. Admittedly, I was never big into fruit juice or soda, but I like Crystal Lite a LOT. The chemical aftertaste appeals to me in a way I can’t explain and don’t want to. Happily, agua is just as thirst-quenching, not to mention free. Oh, and it doesn’t contain any of these: Maltodextrin, Citric and Malic Acids, Raspberry Juice Solids, Aspartame, Red 40, Calcium Phosphate, Acesulfame Potassium, Blue 1.

4. I became a Trader Joe’s convert. Not for food, you see, but for booze. Where else on god’s green earth can you get a glass of semi-decent Sauvignon Blanc for $3? Despite lines that stretch to Peoria, The Boyfriend and I visit TJ’s wine store regularly, saving between $5 and $10 per bottle. We purchase less beer now, too.

5. I launched a blog about frugal, healthy food. Finally, an activity that encompasses my passions: eating, giving unsolicited advice, and linking to George Clooney pictures. But seriously, I find it’s much easier to save money and think nutritionally when I feel some responsibility towards others for being consistent, accurate, and informative.

Besides these five steps, I also:

• Stopped frequenting Jamba Juice and Starbucks
• Snacked increasingly on fruits and whole grains
• Relied more on generic foods
• Cut my meat intake
• Obtained a Costco membership
• Shopped using a grocery list
• Began cooking in bigger batches
• Stocked a decent pantry
• Emphasized whole foods and meals cooked from scratch
• Started a price book

Sadly, my restaurant expenditures have not changed. I’m still dining out or ordering in twice or thrice (that’s right, THRICE) a week, which wouldn’t be terrible except for my fancy-schmancy tastes. While I don’t begrudge myself the occasional date night, there’s gotta be a way to slash the bills. It’s something to work on for the future.

In the end, though I made some mistakes, it worked. College is (almost) paid off, man. While I’ll miss Sallie Mae’s jumbled interface, bad-deal consolidation offers, and bizarrely middle-aged “college student” photos, I’m glad our relationship is over. It’s time to concentrate on new things now, like saving for a house, going to India, and of course, linking to George Clooney pictures.

But once more, for old times’ sake:

*Happy dance!*

`

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Tuesday Late Links

Real Simple: Organizing Your Recipes – 8 Foolproof Methods
These are much better than my place-recipe-on-table-and-let-spills-completely-obscure-the-directions method.

Time: What Doctors Don’t Say About Obesity
Physicians of the world are avoiding the harsh reactions to reality. Not cool.

Paid Twice: eBaying for Coupons
I keep hearing about this, but never knew the best strategies for going about the process. PT shoots and scores.

Get Rich Slowly Forums: How Much Do You Spend on Food?
Good question, long thread. How do you measure up?

Bean Sprouts: 90th Festival of Frugality
Tons of solid food links this week, including a nice shopping-around post from A Penny Closer and a kickass budget/health analysis from Wenchypoo
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Behold! The Great Zucchini (Bread)!

Oh, sweet September. As the days grow shorter and humidity takes a nosedive, we look forward to your month-long bacchanalia of pre-playoff baseball, meteorological schizophrenia, and heaping gobs of use-or-it-goes-bad-tomorrow zucchini.

So – yeah. What to do with all these green things? Beyond pretending they’re lightsabers and dueling it out Kenobi-style, ratatouille comes to mind, as do mounds of squashed-up pasta. But mostly, I’m thinking zucchini bread, which, like its banana and pumpkin kin, tends to be heavy on sugar and nuts.

Enter Cooking Light. Of their five different recipes, this one looked the most promising. And for the most part, it came out pretty darn good, especially when toasted. Yet, I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. Maybe a dash of ginger, a kick of cloves, or a half cup of dried cranberries would have given the bread some chutzpah, some moxy, some joie de vivre. It wouldn’t have affected the price or calorie content too terribly, either. Barring that missing ingredient, though, I’d make it again.

Working off of user reviews, I did add ¼ teaspoon nutmeg. Also, since I only had a 9x5 bread pan, I made one loaf and poured the rest of the batter into a cupcake tin. Six mini-muffins took 30 minutes, while the big mama went for 50 or so.

Cooking Light was kind enough to provide nutritional information (150 calories, 4.3 g fat per slice), so only the price calculations are shown below.

Lighter Zucchini Bread
2 loaves, 12 servings per loaf (serving size: 1 slice)
Adapted from Cooking Light.

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup egg substitute
1/3 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 cups shredded zucchini (12 ounces)
1/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted
Cooking spray

1) Preheat oven to 350°F. Coat 2 (8x4-inch) loaf pans with cooking spray.

2) Mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and baking soda in a large bowl.

3) In a separate bowl, mix egg substitute, canola oil, lemon rind, vanilla extract, and egg. Stir in sugar. Stir in zucchini. Everything should be well combined. Dump in flour mixture and stir until barely combined. Add walnuts and stir lightly.

4) Dump batter into 2 (8x4-inch) loaf pans, taking care to split it evenly. Bake at 350° for 60 minutes or until the loaves pass the toothpick test. Remove from oven and let cool in pans for about 10 minutes. Remove loaves from pans and let cool completely on a wire rack.

Approximate Calorie, Fat, and Price Per Serving
150 calories, 4.3 g fat, $0.18

Calculations
3 cups all-purpose flour: $0.16
1 teaspoon baking powder: $0.03
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon: $0.03
¼ teaspoon nutmeg: $0.03
1/2 teaspoon salt: $0.01
1/4 teaspoon baking soda: $0.01
1/2 cup egg substitute: $1.09
1/3 cup canola oil: $0.25
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind: $0.34
2 teaspoons vanilla extract: $0.25
1 large egg, lightly beaten: $0.17
1 1/2 cups sugar: $0.44
3 cups shredded zucchini (12 ounces): $0.98
1/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted: $0.40
Cooking spray: $0.09
TOTAL: $4.28
PER SERVING (TOTAL/24): $0.18

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