Making crackers, eating through the freezer, and generally being odd

So I’ve been challenging myself to eat through my pantry and freezer.  I’m waiting to go shopping until my next garden fresh box arrives at the community centre.  My best money-saving and waste-reducing shopping strategy is to wait until my garden fresh box arrives, and then plan my meals and pick out my items at the grocery store based on what food is in the box.  I’ve also been wanting to eat through the freezer/pantry because I don’t want any food to get feezer-burnt or stale, and as a single person who buys and cooks in bulk, it’s easy to let food go to waste if you don’t consistently eat up what you’ve got.

I’ve lost count of how long it’s been since I last went grocery shopping and I can’t believe how many meal ideas I’ve been able to come up with, solely focusing on what I have.  I’ve had lots of tasty, nutritious soups, lasagna, and cabbage rolls (all made from scratch by yours truly) and I ate up some meat and vegetables that I had preserved from January’s fresh box.

I also had plenty of baking supplies.  Why go out to the store to buy crackers, bread, and pizza dough when I had all the ingredients to make these items?  I made them all myself - delicious bread, outstanding pizzas, and Alton Brown’s seedy crisps.  These crackers are super easy to make.  I made a couple of mistakes - I used hard whole wheat flour, added a touch too much salt (I think Alton’s recipe is a tad too salty) and would probably increase the amount of sesame seeds and make extra sure to roll the crackers as thin as possible.  That being said, the crackers had potential, and were fun to make, so I will try making them again.  With some blue cheese and honey, they were still salvageable.

There is so much joy in using up what you have.  It really pushes you to try new things.  Another tasty gem was my homemade pizza, topped with roasted garlic and olive oil (my go-to substitute for pizza sauce when my pantry is devoid of tomato paste), with sweet corn, green beans, tuna and sundried tomatoes. Drool-worthy.

I also made up a couple of soups.  I discovered a container of frozen black beans in the freezer (I like to soak an entire bag of beans and freeze what I don’t immediately need for easy use - it’s much more convenient than doing it batch-by-batch) and turned it into black bean soup, a la Martha Stewart (omitting the garlic-pepper sauce for garlic, onions, and spices such as cumin, coriander, pepper and cayenne) and I made my favourite carrot ginger soup, using up January’s supply of carrots.

I’m probably an odd person.  Most people seem to crave convenience and choice.  Entire companies and industries are devoted to maximizing convenience and choice for consumers. For some reason, I seem to thrive by limiting both convenience and choice when it comes to cooking.  I guess I like the challenge.  I like being pushed into DIY, where I get to try something new, learn new skills, and use my creativity to come up with a meal seemingly out of nowhere.  Maybe that makes me a little strange, but it also means that I get to enjoy freshly-baked pizzas with roasted garlic, and “seedy crisps” with honey.

Humble ingredients make a delicious, nutritious, cheap and eco-friendly breakfast

I just love finding new DIY tricks to circumvent the need to buy overly processed, overly packaged foods, and this homemade granola is a perfect example.  Although I’ve rolled my eyes a few times at Amy Dacyczyn’s “recipes” I love her homemade granola.  As always, there are many different variations to making granola - see, for example, Chatelaine or Martha Stewart or Alton Brown. My conclusion from looking at all these recipes, as well as Dacyzyn’s own, is that any granola recipe includes three steps:

1. Combine dry ingredients - rolled oats, a little salt, some cinnamon and nutmeg if you like, as well as your nuts and seeds.  I added ground flax seed, wheat germ, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and a walnut pieces.

2. Gently melt your liquids and sugars. For my recipe, it included 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of honey, and 1/4 cup of canola oil, but there are many other variations that omit the oil and include maple syrup, so check out the recipes posted above.

3. Bake in an oven (again, temperatures and times seem to vary a little, but just make sure your oats get toasted evenly until they are slightly crunchy.  I baked mine at 350 for about 15-20 minutes, stirring often.

4. Add your raisins or other fruits.  I had some cranberries in the freezer, so I used the residual oven heat to bake them.  The cranberries made an amazing contribution to the granola.

The great thing about the homemade granola is that it tastes delicious, and it’s also extremely healthy.  When combined with milk, you’re getting calcium, protein, and fibre as well as other benefits depending on what kind of fruit you add (and the variations are really endless.)  After eating a bowl of store-bought cereal I am usually hungry within an hour, at best.  After eating a bowl of this granola, I can actually get through until lunch time without needing a snack. It’s great!

But the benefits don’t stop there - this cereal is very eco-friendly.  You eliminate the waste that comes with buying boxed cereal, and if you buy your nuts, fruits and oats in bulk (and why wouldn’t you) and use re-usable bags at the bulk food store, then the cereal becomes even more environmentally friendly.

I store my granola (and other items, as you can see) in glass mason jars.  I realized a while ago that I was crazy for buying tupperware, which is expensive and wears out overtime, when I could buy glass mason jars, which will last forever, at the thrift store for 29¢ a piece.  Use a funnel, and glass jars are just as easy to use as tupperware.

If you want to reduce your cost and save even more packaging, use homemade brown sugar.  I stopped buying packaged brown sugar, and I am loving the switch.  Just combine a little molasses (I use about 1/2tbsp, but you can increase this amount if you want it sweeter or darker) to one cup of sugar.  Molasses is very healthy - it’s a great source of calcium, for example, and you will find that your sugar actually tastes a lot better. It’s cheap and far better than buying those plastic bags of brown sugar in the grocery store.  Plus, it reduces waste because you just make it as you need it, so it won’t dry out.

On the left you’ll see powdered milk.  I’m experimenting here.  Not just because powdered milk is a lot cheaper than liquid, but because I’m always looking for ways to reduce my waste.  My building does not recycle waxy boxboard, so milk cartons go in the trash.  My alternative is to buy it in bags, which also end up in the trash.  The days of plastic milk jugs seem to be long gone.  Dacyzyn recommends mixing powdered milk with a regular milk so that you can adapt to the taste, so I might experiment with that.  I am not particularly fond of the taste and texture of powdered milk. (If anyone has a solution I’d love to hear it.)

Please share your favourite breakfast strategies and recipes for homemade granola or other cereals!

How a mystery delivery led to the best soup I’ve ever made!

A few weeks ago, I opened my door to find two cloth bags full of delicious vegetables - parsnips, carrots, rutabegas, ambercup squashes, beets, garlic, potatoes and onions.  There was also a newsletter from a local CSA (community supported agriculture) farm.  At first I thought perhaps the food was meant to be delivered to someone else in my building, but after calling the farm and checking on their website, I realized that they didn’t deliver.  Then I wondered if maybe someone was making a delivery to a neighbour and had gotten the apartment number wrong.  But with no method of contacting them, I didn’t know how to correct the mistake.  After 24 hours and no word, I thought that perhaps the vegetables were a random act of kindness.  Regardless, I decided at that point that the vegetables were mine to enjoy.  So thank you to my mystery vegetable delivery person!

I’ve made several delicious dishes with my mystery delivery, including two soups.  I first made a Carrot Parsnip Ginger soup, and I thought it was the best soup I’d ever made, until I made the Ambercup Squash soup, which trumped its deliciousness.  Both soups were absolutely spectacular, but the Ambercup Squash soup certainly triumphs over anything I’ve ever made before.  It was so good that I had three bowls in a row.  I’ve never eaten three bowls of soup at once before.

So here’s the recipe.  Unfortunately I didn’t track exactly how much spice I used, because when I cook, I just go by what feels right.  But I’ve tried to estimate.  Experiment and you’ll come to your own conclusions about what works.

image courtesy of www.beawkuchni.com

Amazing Ambercup Squash Soup

Ingredients

2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1-2 large cloves garlic, minced

3 medium red potatoes, cubed

1 medium Ambercup Squash

splash of cream (optional)

4 cups homemade chicken stock

1 tbsp curry (or less for those who don’t want too much spice)

1-2 tbsp fresh ginger (minced)

1/2 tsp tumeric

1/4 tsp freshly grated whole nutmeg

1 cinnamon stick

salt & pepper to taste

Directions

Prick the skin of the squash with a fork and place, whole, on a sheet pan in the oven at 400 degrees for approximately 45 minutes. When done, skin will have begun to blister.  Remove squash from oven and slice in half.  Remove seeds with a spoon, preserving seeds if desired.  The squash should be soft enough that the flesh is easily removed and the skin peels off and flakes away.

In a large stock pot, heat olive oil over low heat; cook onion, stirring occasionally, adding a little sprinkling of salt, approximately 1/2 tsp.  Add ginger, garlic and spices and stir.  Add the chicken stock, potato and squash.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer gently, until the potato is cooked and flavours have blended together, about 1/2 hour.  Check seasoning, adding more salt or spices if desired.

Remove from heat,  let cool ever so slightly.  Remove cinnamon stick and blend in a blender in batches. Return to pot, warm and serve.  If desired, stir in a splash of cream (this is optional.)

***

This soup is incredibly nutritious and very, very cheap to make.  It’s an ideal healthy and affordable dish for fall & winter.

Eggplant & Sweet Corn Pita Pizza

Thank you so much for everyone’s best wishes for my blogiversary!  It was so nice to read all your warm wishes and kind comments. I really mean it when I say the best part of writing the blog is having the support of all of my readers.

I hope you were able to enjoy my trip down memory lane and revisit some older posts in absence of fresh material this last week.  I’ve been so busy with so many different projects, I’ve barely had time to breathe.  

But I guess this means it’s a perfect opportunity for me to post this recipe that I’ve been saving: Pita Pizza.

I love making pizzas, but when you’re in a pinch, you might not have time to make the dough yourself. In fact I almost never have the patience to do it, and I usually resort to making a yeast-free baking soda dough.  I’m usually willing to sacrifice some flavour and texture in order to get dinner in my mouth earlier. One day last week I got really impatient and decided to skip making the dough altogether - I decided to try making pizza using pita bread.  (Ahem, store bought pita bread.)

This might not be news to everyone, but I was astonished at just how delicious the pita pizza turned out to be.  And I credit part of its crispy, crunchy deliciousness to my pizza stone.

Actually, I technically do not own a pizza stone.  My pizza stone has long since cracked.  It was replaced by a lovely terra cotta saucer, which was purchased at a hardware store for under $10.  After a quick wipe down, it’s flipped over and placed on the bottom of the oven.  And it works perfectly. Thank you to my soulmate, Alton Brown, for this amazing tip.

As for toppings, the sky is the limit, but I thoroughly enjoyed using these two time-savers.  One is a make-ahead roasted garlic puree.  This is made with whole roasted fresh garlic, squeezed out of its peel and mashed up with some olive oil. It’s a perfect pizza spread and it lasts in the fridge for days!  The other time-saver is oven-dried tomatoes.  With minimal work you can have a delicious topping suited for pizza, salads, pastas, or paninis.  Make the garlic puree and the dried tomatoes at the same time, and you maximize your oven’s energy efficiency.

So, do you want SQ’s recipe for the pizza in the picture? Of course you do - it was amazing! I mean, really, really tasty.

Here is the break-down:

Eggplant & Sweet Corn Pita Pizza

Sauce: Roasted garlic puree and extra virgin olive oil

Toppings: Thinly sliced eggplant, fresh sweet corn, oven-dried tomatoes, and a small handful of bitter salad greens, tossed in a light vinaigrette. (This goes without saying, but make sure to add the salad after the pizza has finished baking!)

Cheese: Baby parmesan and chevre

Spices/herbs: I added a little thyme, parsley and also some paprika, but you could experiment here.

Bake on the pizza stone at about 400 degrees, until nice and crispy-crunchy, and a slightly golden colour.  To cut, use a knife or pizza cutter and serve.

Do you make substitutions in the kitchen? What is your favourite food that does double duty?

Four weeks of frugality: Eating great, spending less

This month I have been on my strictest grocery budget ever.  In fact I’ve actually gone the last four weeks spending a total of $142 on food and personal care - that’s just over $35 per week.  If we subtract personal care items out of there (cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc) I actually spent just under $122 or around $30 a week on food.  Admittedly, there were several days when I ate at my parents’ place, so I did not eat at home for every meal.  But what I did do was eliminate fast food altogether.  Actually, I did splurge once when I was traveling to a wedding, but apart from that one occasion, I did not buy so much as a cup of coffee.  So suffice it to say, there were  a lot of meals that I prepared and consumed at home.

Although I admit it was difficult, I have been eating very healthy food. I don’t think I’ve ever been so creative with my meal planning in my life.  I pushed myself to come up with dishes using the ingredients I had.  In this respect, the frugal budget has probably pushed me to eat better and learn to be a better cook. Here are some of the tasty dishes I enjoyed on a strict grocery budget:

Breakfast items:

Plain yogurt with wildflower honey and chopped walnuts

Fruit shake with frozen fruit, yogurt, soymilk, and ground flax seed 

Oatmeal

Main courses - Lunches & Dinners

Spinach and lentil soup

Stuffed peppers with rice, kale & spinach

Corn & jalapeno soup

Homemade pizza with summer squash, roasted garlic, goat cheese and olive oil, served with corn on the cob 

Similar ingredients, different style - a whole wheat pasta with summer squash, roasted garlic, goat cheese and parsley, with garlic toast

Curried chick peas and tomatoes

Warm spinach and chick pea salad with sundried tomatoes and green onions

Warm mushroom salad on a toasted baguette

Black bean burritos with chopped peppers, green onions, fresh herbs and homemade salsa

Greek salad w/ homemade vinaigrette

Hamburgers (store bought) w/ caramelized onions and my own secret sauce, served w/ homemade potato chips

Spinach salad with homemade dressing

Rice & bean salad with sundried tomatoes, feta cheese and scallions

Madras root vegetable curry with rutabaga, sweet potato, carrots and potatoes - with freshly ground & toasted spices

Snacks

Sliced apples w/ wildflower honey

Herbed cream cheese using fresh herbs and garlic on rye crisp bread

Fresh salsa and homemade tortilla chips

Homemade chip dip with chips

Fresh spinach dip and rye crisp bread

Silky smooth roasted red pepper hummus topped with roasted red peppers

Drinks

Iced green tea with freshly squeezed lemon and honey

Mojitos with simple syrup using fresh mint

Hot mint tea with fresh mint leaves

Water flavoured with cucumbers or limes

This, of course, is not an exhaustive list, but it provides some examples of meals I’ve made while eating a pretty extreme food budget.  I will be supplying some of the recipes to my favourite dishes, but please let me know if there is something in particular you would like the recipe for!

Do you track how many coffees or meals you consume outside the home? What’s the longest you’ve ever gone with eating only home cooked meals and beverages? 

Corn & jalapeno soup - SQ’s own recipe!

I discovered four cobs of sweet corn in my Garden Fresh Box on Wednesday.  I happily ate one with a generous squeeze of lime, kosher salt and some of my hot smoked paprika that is part of my huge collection of spices from The Spice House.  It was very tasty indeed, but I decided to use up the rest in a corn and jalapeno soup.  

I decided to be brave and work without a recipe for this soup.  I figured I knew what flavours worked together - corn, jalapeno, cilantro and lime.  And, it turned out, I was right.  My only mistake was that I added a little bit too much water, but this problem was solved by reducing the soup down by simmering for a few hours.  If I were to do it again, I would use four cobs of corn rather than three, but hey, that’s what I had to work with.

This soup is incredibly easy to make and it is very flavourful. Perfect for people who enjoy lots of spice and also for those on a frugal budget - the soup required very few ingredients.  And it’s a great way to use up extra cobs of corn.

Ingredients:

4 cobs of corn (although 3 will suffice)

1 yellow onion, diced

1 jalapeno, diced and seeded (or partly seeded)

1 clove garlic, minced

6 cups water (approx)

1 lime

olive oil

s&p

1 tbsp tumeric (approx) for colouring; curry powder would also work

dash cayenne pepper

handful cilantro, chopped

1/2 cup sour cream (optional)

Directions

Boil the corn in water until tender, about 5-6 minutes.  Remove corn and reserve the water.  If you reserve the water, it will eliminate your need to use a stock. When cool enough, cut the kernels off the cobs, reserving the corn cobs.  Make sure to cut in half before attempting to cut the kernels; this reduces the risk of hurting yourself.  Warm the olive oil in a large pot and add the diced onion, stirring until softened.  Add the diced jalapeno (seeded if desired - I included a few seeds for extra heat) along with the minced garlic, salt and black pepper and a tablespoon of tumeric and a dash or two of cayenne pepper. After one or two minutes, add the corn kernals, breaking them up gently with a wooden spoon if stuck together, and stir.  You may also add a little fresh lime juice at this time. After a few minutes, strain the water that you used to boil the corn in and add the water to the pot.  Straining is important because it allows you catch any of the little hairs that may have stuck to the corn when you first boiled it. Bring up to a boil and then reduce the heat to let it simmer for at least 30 minutes.  Make sure to taste the soup along the way, adding more tumeric if the soup looks a little grey and adding more spice to taste. Remove from heat, remove the cobs, and let the soup cool slightly. Then puree in a blender.  Once smooth, return to the pot, straining if necessary, and warm again, adding a bit of sour cream near the end, if desired.

The trick to making this soup really tasty is adding a very generous squeeze of fresh lime juice at the end, along with a little chopped cilantro.  If added towards the end, the lime juice will give the soup lots of flavour and will not curdle the sour cream.

I hope you enjoy trying this one. Please let me know if you have any questions.

What’s your favourite thing to make with corn in the summer?

Help me eat up my veggies!

I picked up another Garden Fresh Box from the Guelph Community Health Centre yesterday - check out these delicious looking vegetables! All this for only $10.  What you see above is a “small” size. It looks like it will be more than enough produce for the rest of the month.  

Meal planning is very different when you are handed a big box of vegetables.  You need to come up with meal ideas based on what’s in the box.  I like the challenge, and I like knowing that my meals are based around fresh, local, seasonal vegetables.  Here are a few ideas I’ve come up with so far, based on these ingredients:

• Corn and jalapeno soup
• Curried root vegetable soup (using the potatoes and carrots in the picture, as well as the sweet potatoes and summer squash I have in the fridge)
• Warm spinach and chickpea salad with sundried tomatoes
• Kebabs with homemade tzatziki sauce (using the garlic and cucumber)
• Salad of cucumber, green pepper, tomato and green onion with tzatziki
• Potato salad with dill
• Corn on the cob with lime and hot paprika
• Rutabaga and apple casserole

If you have any ideas of other food items I can make with the ingredients you see here, feel free to share! In particular, I am interested to know what I could make with the rutabaga.  Other than the casserole, I’m pretty much clueless. My only other idea is to make English Brown Pickle (Branston Pickle) which I used to eat adoringly in Somerfield’s “cheese plougman’s” sandwiches when I lived in England.  But these require quite a bit of work in addition to several ingredients I don’t have.  So any ideas you have are more than welcome.

In addition, I have no idea what to do with the red kale.  Normally I would put it in a stir-fry, but after all my soups and salads are made, I won’t have many other ingredients left over for a big stir-fry.  What are your favourite recipes using kale?

If I can’t figure out a way to eat the kale quickly, I will likely freeze it, along with some of the spinach. Although it’s difficult to tell from the photo, that is one massive bag of spinach!   There is a good description of how to freeze greens at pickyourown.org. 

Finally, the little ziplock bag you see is full of chickpeas and what I believe are mixed beans. They are beans with little sprouts attached.  Apart from soaking and then cooking these beans and mixing them with some kind of rice dish, I’m clueless.  Do these beans all require the same amount of cooking time?

I can’t wait to hear your suggestions!

How the “reduced to clear cart” creates a lovely lunch: mushrooms on toast

When shopping at the supermarket, I make a point of checking out the “reduced to clear” cart. It frequently has some good items for 50% off or more.  I’ve mention before that I buy ripe bananas at 50% off, which I use to freeze for baking and fruit shakes. Sometimes they have other decent produce there as well. On the weekend, I found a mini baguette that was still quite soft and was reduced to clear. It originally had a price tag of 79¢, and with 50¢ off, it was only 29¢! I used the baguette to make crispy chips (see instructions here) to serve with a whole roasted head of fresh garlic from the market. Very luxurious indeed. I only used half the baguette, giving the chips a total cost of 10¢ - much less than the cost to purchase a bag of pita or a box of melbas, my other options for serving with a garlic spread.  Homemade baguette chips are tasty, crunchy, and you can save any extras for later snacks with cheese, or with soup.

What did I do with the last half of my bread? I turned it - along with some of my leftover mushrooms - into mushrooms on toast. Served with a side salad (recipe coming later for that one - it’s a gem) it made a perfect light, vegetarian lunch.

Mushrooms on toast (inspired by a recipe by Gordon Ramsey in Fast Food.)

2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra to drizzle on bread

1 small onion, sliced

1 clove garlic, smashed

5-6 cremini mushrooms 

s&p 

pinch of sugar

splash of apple cider vinegar

fresh parsley, chopped

Sauteé sliced onions at medium heat in a pan along with a little olive oil. Add a sprinkling of salt, freshly ground pepper, and thyme if you have it. Add the smashed garlic. Sautee for about 3-4 minutes, decreasing the heat if the onions are browning too quickly.  Add a pinch of sugar and stir.   Then add sliced cremini or portabello mushrooms, along with a tablespoon or two of butter. Stir and add a splash of apple cider vinegar or sherry vinegar. Sautee for a few more minutes. 

Remove the garlic clove. Then remove the mixture from heat and place in a bowl with fresh chopped parsley. Toss to cover.

Meanwhile, slice a small baguette or crusty loaf in half, drizzle with olive oil, and place under the broiler until crispy.  Top with mushroom-onion mixture and add an extra drizzle of olive oil.

Served with soup or salad, this makes a complete lunch! Served alone, it would be a tasty snack. 

Serves one.

Lentil Walnut Burgers: Your frugal vegetarian alternative

For the last several weeks the meals I have cooked for myself have mostly consisted of sandwiches and spaghetti with sauce from a can.  Being busy is one reason for my culinary lapse, and frankly I’m proud of having (mostly) abstained from resorting to fast food. Traveling is another reason. And so is being newly single. I’m not sure why, but cooking for someone else tends to provide the incentive I need to put effort into trying different meal options and calling upon my inner culinary goddess. Before I met Josh I admit I relied on store-bought curry sauce and prepared hummus and I ate a lot of cheese and crackers, gatorade, and you guessed it, sandwiches. But a woman cannot live on sandwiches alone, and I’m determined to continue to try new recipes, make wholesome meals and improve my cooking skills, while living frugally.  I also want to make sure that I have easy, healthful and delicious meal options around the house for when I’m busy, so that I don’t end up living off of grilled cheese.  I believe there is great joy to be had in good food, and the only way for me to take part in that pleasure is to cook quality meals for myself.

I tend to cook mostly vegetarian, although I haven’t been a full vegetarian for nearly 10 years.  I enjoy vegetarian food, find it takes less work to prepare, and it is cheaper. I also do not know of a place in Guelph or surrounding area that provides good quality, fresh meat or fish without charging a fortune. (If you have any suggestions, I’d gladly hear them.)

I love veggie burgers but like all processed foods, they are expensive. And besides, cooking inspires some ancient DIY drive in me.  I love trying out homemade replicas of items most people are accustomed to buying at the store. I’d love it if I could empty my home of anything processed and rely only on wholesome basics.

That’s why I jumped at the chance to try making my own veggie burgers. I found this recipe in the LCBO’s Food & Drink magazine (summer, 2009). I enjoy the LCBO’s magazines because they have a nice variety of fresh, healthy, easy recipes, and best of all, the magazines are free!

These burgers are incredibly healthy, packed with protein as well as fiber, and you are free to up the vegetable content by adding any variety of toppings and side dishes.

The burgers were tasty, and held together reasonably well (although like all lentil burgers, some crumbling is inevitable.) I did find them a little dry, and I think this could be amended by upping the mushrooms and slightly decreasing the amount of lentils. I would also consider adding cheddar cheese right into mix for added flavour, and more fresh herbs.  

For toppings, you are free to be creative! But choose something moist and flavourful, to help balance out the dryness of the burgers.  The recipe called for tzatziki sauce, but I did things a little differently. The first time I ate one of the burgers I added lettuce and cucumber, warmed feta cheese, sauteed mushrooms and onions, tomato relish and a homemade sauce made of mayonnaise, lemon and chopped garlic.  The second time I ate one of the burgers, I added all of the above, but substituted the sauce with another homemade concoction made with mayonnaise, chopped green onion, and tomato relish. I also added a couple slices of tomato.

For sides, you could try sweet potato fries or zucchini fries (which I was going to try but decided homemade veggie burgers involved quite enough effort for one evening) and any variety of summer salads, such as the one I suggested here. I just had mine with potato chips for a quick lunch. (I know I’ve boasted before about how I normally skip out on processed snacks, but when you’re grocery shopping while famished, your cravings are bound to prevail, hence the chips.)

The recipe says to grill the burgers on a barbeque. I do have a barbeque patio but just decided to fry them in a pan instead, and that worked fine. The best way, I think, is it fry them at a fairly high temperature in oil, to get a nice crispy coating. My second burger had been refrigerated over night, so after searing it on both sides, I covered the pan and cooked it on low to make sure it was heated throughout. This worked out well.

I froze two of the veggie burgers, placed in between wax paper and inside plastic bags. I’m guessing that if I thaw them out, they can be grilled as normal. Since the veggie burgers were pretty dry, I didn’t see any problem in freezing them. If they work out, I will likely do up a big batch to have an easy to prepare meal waiting for me on any busy or late night.

Here’s the recipe:

Lentil Walnut Burgers

1 cup red lentils

2 cups water

1 tbsp olive oil

1 cup finely chopped onion

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp ground cumin (freshly ground is best)

1/2 tsp each s&p

1  cup finely chopped walnuts

1 cup finely chopped cremini mushrooms

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh cilantro

1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs

1 . In a small saucepan, bring lentils and water to boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer, cover and cook until all the water has been absorbed, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool.  Saver Queen’s note - you could also use canned.

2. In a skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat; cook onion until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in garlic, cumin, s&p; cook 1 minute. Stir in walnuts and mushrooms; cook until mushrooms are completely tender and no liquid remains, about 5 minutes. Let cool slightly. Stir in cilantro, bread crumbs and lentils to combine. Form into patties.

3. Grill over medium heat on greased grill, turning once until crisp and golden on each side, about 12 minutes.

4. Serve on grilled whole grain buns with grilled onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and tzatziki.

Makes 4 burgers.

These burgers are a also a great frugal alternative to store bought veggie burgers. If you or a family member wants to join in on BBQ fun but is a vegetarian, then you will find these burgers an affordable option. Your most expensive part of the burgers will be the walnuts, which can be purchased in a bulk food store, and since the walnuts need to be chopped, you can opt for pre-chopped walnuts or walnut pieces, which are less expensive than their whole counterparts. Mushrooms and lentils are cheap, and you can even make your own buns if you so desire, or serve in homemade pita bread!

***

Saver Queen’s update: I made these again for my Mom and Dad.  Instead of just one cup of chopped mushrooms I added about 2.5 cups and reduced the amount of walnuts. I also slightly upped the cumin and added extra cilantro. Bingo! They were very moist and delicious. My parents loved them! I served them after a busy day and my dad, a runner, had just returned from a high powered workout, so these healthy, high-protein burgers hit the spot.

Saver Queen’s summer salads

This past winter, my main trick for eating healthy and tasty food on a budget was to make a lot of hearty and yummy soups.  Now that spring and summer are here, I’ve moved on to salads.  Making salads that combine protein and veggies are easy. A few combinations and you have yourself an entire meal! The best part? It’s an incredibly frugal way to eat nutritious foods.

I found this one by googling for barley and discovered a great recipe from Whole Foods (see below).

Ingredients

3 cups water 
1 cup pearled barley 
1/2 cup chopped green onions 
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper 
1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped 
1/3 cup basil leaves, chopped 
2 tablespoons mint leaves, chopped 
1/4 cup avocado oil or canola oil* 
1 clove garlic, minced 
1 to 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice 
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Method

In a saucepan, combine water and barley. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer until barley is tender, 40 to 45 minutes. Drain barley and set aside. 

Place green onions, red pepper, parsley, basil and mint in a large bowl. Add cooked barley and toss to combine. 

In a small bowl, whisk together oil, minced garlic and lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then drizzle over barley salad, stirring to combine well. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature or cold.

Saver Queen’s adjustments

I lacked lemons, green onions, red pepper and basil, so I subbed in green pepper, mushrooms, tomatoes and just used mint, parsley and bottled lemon juice instead. I also used olive oil instead of canola.  The recipe has 4g of protein per serving, which is not bad for a vegetarian dish! I have served this before with salmon, but it would also work well with a few other salads. 

I love digging out staples hiding in the pantry, like barley, lentils, and dried or canned beans, because they can usually be combined with whatever veggies you have around to create a great dish.  These frugal staples are not only cheap, they are tasty and nutritious.  It’s a great way to pull together a light, meatless summer meal that’s easy on the budget.

What’s your favourite summer salad?