Chapter Two: How To Eat Rich On A Poor Budget (~jinghan in response to “Poor.”)

Since I’ve had the fortune of thinking about and experimenting with the cost of food without the actual stress of needing to spend less than $30 a week, I thought I would share some of my favourite recipes with you all. If there are inaccuracies with my cost approximations that might have something to do with different costs in America as compared to Australia and other general ignorances of mine, feel free to point them out to me.

My thoughts were sparked by Shannon’s comment: “The moment when you realise you can’t afford to buy $2 burgers from McDonalds is the moment you realise how poor you are.” (If you don’t mind my seeming to criticise you, Shannon) I want to say that I don’t believe a McDonald’s burger is not going to be the best value for your $2. One thing that I think is true is that you will certainly be eating much more for the same money if you buy raw ingredients – one pound (sorry, I mean half a kilo!) of lentils at $2 with just a few additional ingredients will feed you for 5-8 meals if you use it all up at once (depending on your apetite and love of dal.) Plus buying pre-made or processed foods is going to have a lot more profit margins you have to pay for.

That said, some processed ready-to-eat food does appear pretty cheap, but my guess is that they are full of filthy cheap ingredients (like palm oil! D<) that either have the nutritional value of cardboard or are slowly clogging something in your body. So my second point is, you want to start eating food that (tastes good of course!) but will also make you feel healthy and keep you going during the day rather than merely full.

Final warning is that 90% of what I eat is vegetarian nowadays, partly because I don’t know how to purchase/cook meat, partly because it’s cheaper and partly because I’m disapproving of the conditions we put bred-for-meat animals through before killing them for meat. So if you are a carnivorous type I apologise, and you are on your own. However, I do try and have protein, vegetable and carbohydrate in all my meals. (But I am far from being a health expert! So do not take this as health recommendations.)

Enough bla from Jinghan! Recipes time! (All costs are approximate)

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 Red Lentil Dal: (approximately $2 worth of ingredients, for 2 – 4 single meals) 

adapted from: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Red-Lentil-Dal-101019

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil (bottle of vegetable oil: $3-4, lasts 3 months if cooking with it regularly for one person)
• 2 cups chopped onions (about one onion: $0.30)
• 3 garlic cloves, minced (I usually buy a bag of garlic since I use it in everything: $3, lasts 1.5 months with regular usage. If you don’t use garlic profanely like me maybe just buy a few bulbs since they start sprouting by the end of 1.5 months: something like $0.50 each)
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup dried red lentils ($0.60)
• 3/4 teaspoon of turmeric, 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger ($0.10 if you can find it loose-packaged at eg. food co-op otherwise something like $3 for a small packet/jar that will last you forever. If you’re not ready to make that investment yet maybe start with just using cumin, and then invest in ginger and then turmeric. ground ginger is good for gingerbread too. )
• salt and pepper
• 1 cup rice ($1-2 per kilo, lasts too many meals to count, I usually cook 1 cup of rice and have enough left for a second meal/second person, except on days when I am really hungry.)
• Other things you can serve it with: 1 tomato chopped, 1/4 cup cilantro/coriander chopped, 1 jalapeno chili seeded and chopped. However, my personal preference when it comes to adding a vegetable is to cut into small branches a quarter or a third of a cauliflower ($2-3 for the whole thing) boil for 2-3minutes until tender and put on the rice and pour the dal over the top.

What to do: 

(Get started on cooking your rice first – I use a rice cooker and have been miserably terrible at cooking rice in a saucepan in the past so I’m going to trust that you can do that better than me.)

Heat oil in pan over medium heat, add I cup onion and I minced garlic clover and saute until tender and golden brown, about 10min. Set aside. (Or at the same time.) Combine 3 cups water lentils remaining 1 cup onion, 2 minced garlic cloves, turmeric, cumin and ginger in medium saucepan. Bring to boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until lentils are tender, about 15mins. Mix in sautéed onion mixture. Simmer 5min to blend flavour. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serve over rice and cauliflower. Or over rice and topped with tomato/cilantro/chilli. Keep leftovers in fridge and reheat in microwaves as necessary.

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Good for everything tomato based stirfry-that-is-more-like-sauce. ($3 worth of ingredients- serves 1 large or 2 average single meals) 

Ingredients: 

• 1-2 eggs (not needed if serving with quinoa, about $3-5 per dozen depending on whether you can afford to care about the living conditions of the chicken they came from, will last you 6-12 meals, are a good source of protein and iron, but apparently you shouldn’t eat more than a few a week because they are high in cholesterol but I can think of less healthy things that people eat more often than that)
• 1 zucchini ($0.30 – $0.60 depending on season/mood of your supermarket)
• 2 tomatos ($0.15 – $0.50 depending on season/mood of your supermarket)
• 3-6 cloves of garlic minced (depending on your like of garlic, bag of garlic: $3, lasts 1.5 months with regular usage. or something like $0.50 for one)
• quarter onion (optional, $0.30 per onion)
• soy sauce ($3-4 for large bottle, lasts a long time)
• salt and pepper
• serve with: scrambled egg and rice, scrambled egg with pasta or quinoa (quinoa is a brilliant source of protein and iron, and you cook it just like rice but with two parts water to every one part quinoa, use about 1 cup if you want to have some leftovers for the next day, it’s $5 per half-kilo but will last several meals because it is quite filling and rises to 3 times its original volume)