Hello friends and foes, les liaisons dangereuses y amigos!
I had hoped to give you an update before the 6th of this month, but I’ve been dutifully working on my thesis before tomorrow’s first meeting with my advisor in the new year. Blessed with a quiet home, good tea and coffee, and bountiful blankets for snuggling, I’ve been able to get a lot done. Today I hope to read many more articles, finish a book (or two) and, of course, write write write! But first, a cheery update re: what I’ve been up to lately.
As this post’s title suggests, my chief kitchen (my chef chef?) concern in 2010 (at least the early part) is finding a way to provide fast, delicious, healthy, vegan meals for myself and Nate …on a budget. Last year my strategy toward eating well & saving money was to to cook exclusively from fresh, raw ingredients–from scratch–all of the time. I was so committed to saving money on the grocery bill that I regarded even a can of beans a luxury and insisted on preparing my own from dry in the crock pot.
While using raw ingredients (including dry beans) definitely saved me money at market, I, like many women, was missing something huge: I wasn’t counting the cost of my time in the kitchen. A good 2-3 hours start to finish every night has a cost–a time expenditure, yes, but also a cost on one’s mental, physical, & spiritual energy. I was so caught up in a routine & way of thinking such that even if I had been at work, school, and volunteering all day, I would still come home, running on empty, and prepare a big lush meal that I barely had the energy to enjoy once I’d finished. While I might have been saving money in the grocery store, I probably expended way more in crucial non-cash resources.
So I’m doing something different this year. I’ll still try to delight you with my elaborate creations on a regular basis, but they’ll be more likely to feature a canned or frozen or prepared ingredient. I’ll still focus on organic, fair-trade ingredients, but will now have to navigate my desire for something prepared/more easily accessible with my desire to avoid a lot of excess packaging. Of course, if you have any ideas towards these ends–especially recipes–please send them my way!
Here’s one of my early examples in 2010: spicy chick’n pizza. Ingredients: one store-brand organic pizza crust, one jar of non-GMO pizza sauce, chopped shallots, chopped onions, chopped garlic, frozen organic spinach, chopped organic mushrooms, and two Boca brand vegan spicy chick’n patties, chopped. Assemble (15 min), bake for 10 minutes (while reading an article), let sit for 5, voilà!
Cost: $5.59. About the same price as an Amy’s Kitchen organic frozen pizza, only double the size. About half the cost of a commercial delivered pizza, but way more nutritious and delicious (and organic), taking no more time than you would if you drove to pick up your pizza or waited for them to come to you. Win!
Further win, in the Italian theme: our cat Unix as stromboli (paradoxically, wrapped in an American flag throw)! She’s been doing a lot of burrowing lately.
Questions:
1) Can you eat a cat stromboli (or some part thereof) and still be vegan?
2) How many of your foes read your blog? Are these serious foes (like out to hurt you) or just intellectual foes (out to beat you in a spelling bee)?
3) What experience did you have that made you start to take your time in the kitchen into account? Sounds like there’s a good story there.
Thanks for the post!
Chris
I know exactly how you feel. It is much easier for us to cook whole foods when 1 – our garden is in full swing and 2 – I’m not taking classes. It’ll be interesting this spring because my class load is SO big that Aaron will have to take over some garden and cooking duties.
I’ve found Meijer to be the only grocery store that has a complete selection of affordable organic foods. And all the organic canned goods are also vegetarian. They even have organic spagetti-os — which is kind of a time warp for me. Sometimes we do something like baked potatoes topped with Meijer brand organic vegetarian chili. Of course we still depend largely on our favorite cookbooks (particularly New Farm) which have quick easy meal ideas — biscuits and “gravy” and “sloppy joes” and mac n’ cheez. I’ve noticed that most of these recipes use things like TVP and nutritional yeast — which still may count as very processed foods… We’ve come to love the “whatever” casserole, which is made with “whatever” we can find in the cabinets! ;)
Good luck!!
I can attest; the spicy chik’n pizza was marvelous. Far superior to the buffalo chicken take-out pizza I used to scarf down at LAN parties in high school.
You are so right to point our Meijer’s selection–in fact, that’s where I got all of the ingredients for the pizza! We have a special place in our heart for Kroger because it carries the soymilk that we love so dearly and often has great manager’s specials, but it adds about 20 minutes to the shopping trip because of the drive.
But the deals at Meijer can’t be beat, especially when they put stuff on sale. I couldn’t believe those organic pre-made pizza crusts at less than $2 a piece on sale! And they’re so shelf-stable that they can hang around for a while. The only thing I would change about Meijer would be to have a better selection and sales on national brand organic foods such as Amy’s Kitchen. They don’t carry Amy’s soups etc and the frozen foods are always so expensive. I know that stuff is always going to be expensive, but sometimes Nate and I buy it instead of going out to dinner, as a special treat.
I am looking forward to having a garden in the huge backyard here! Kale’s gonna be coming out of my ears. :)
Oh–and the Farm cookbook! Love that one! That cheezy mac kills.
chris, you make me giggle. unixera stromboli is a delicious treat reserved only for those who relish mouthfuls of dyed acrylic and cat hair. With these people, should they exist, the question is less vegan? and more institutionalise?
But in all seriousness, it was actually Nate who suggested we try something different. He noticed how run-down I was getting trying to
put a feast together every night and reasonably pointed out the huge time expenditure involved, both in producing the meal and cleaning up after it. The way we do things here: I cook the meal, he cleans up after it. So if I cook a feast, not only does it take a lot of work to make, but it produces a lot of dishes that Nate ends up doing well into the night! Now that we’re eating simpler, quicker meals that use less dishes we’re both happier.
It took Nate broaching the issue to help me approach perhaps the biggest biggest ideological/personal difficulty in making this switch: namely, acknowledging that fast, easy meals are as valuable/meaningful as elaborate ones. You see, I’ve always used my talent in the kitchen as a way to be creative and show love. And if I’m not working as hard, I reason, it’s not as much love. But is that really a good way of looking at it? Of course not! It still takes effort to put even small meals together, and now my energy is freed up to do other things related or unrelated to the meal. In the past week that we’ve been doing this experiment evenings at our place have been a lot more relaxed. :)
thanks for asking! much peace, friend. :)