Although I love cooking interesting and complex meals for my family, the reality of life is that many nights, the time for meal preparation is sandwiched tightly between my work, my son’s soccer game, a community meeting, a promise to draw pictures with my daughter, and a pretty firm eight o’clock bedtime.

The easy solution is to go out for dinner - or, even quicker (and less healthy), order some sort of take-out or delivered food. The problem here is that it can be quite expensive - and I also have little control over the ingredients, which means that I lose some control over the amount of vegetables and other healthy elements that I want my kids to have.

So what’s the solution? For us, it all revolves around finding ways to get healthy (or reasonably so) home-cooked meals on the table quickly.

One of my favorite pieces of Amy Dacyczyn’s Complete Tightwad Gazette is her framework for a simple, quick casserole on page 625:

1 cup main ingredient
1 cup second ingredient
1-2 cups starchy ingredient
1 1/2 cups binder
1/4 cup “goodie”
seasoning
topping

Main ingredient: tuna, cubed chicken, turkey, ham, seafood, etc.
Second ingredient: thinly sliced celery, mushrooms, peas, chopped hard-boiled eggs, etc.
Starchy ingredient: thinly sliced potatoes, cooked noodles, cooked rice, etc.
Binder: cream sauce, sour cream, can of soup, etc.
“Goodie”: pimiento, olives, almonds, water chestnuts, etc.
Topping: cheese, bread crumbs, etc.

The advantage of this recipe structure is the flexibility. All you have to do is have one item in each category that seem to at least reasonably match well in terms of flavor. Cook any uncooked element thoroughly, put all the items in a large pot, and gently cook it over a steady heat, and just ten minutes or so later, you have an original creation on the table - just as healthy or unhealthy as you want it to be.

Here are a few examples of casseroles using this framework that work well for us.

Chicken-Broccoli Casserole
1 cup diced chicken breast, cooked
1 cup broccoli, cooked
2 cups rice, cooked
1 1/2 cups cream of chicken soup (or a healthier substitute)
1/4 cup mushrooms or black olives (purely optional)
pepper to taste
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Combine all ingredients except cheese. Cook over medium heat, stirring regularly, until hot. Top with cheese and serve.

Tuna-Potato Salad
1 cup tuna
1 cup chopped hard-boiled eggs
1 1/2 cups diced potatoes, cooked
1 1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup black olives
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup mustard (dijon is fantastic!)

This one is a great light supper served cold on a warm summer evening, and works great on sandwiches. Just mix all of the ingredients together.

Ham, Apples, and Sweet Potato Casserole
1 cup ham, cooked and cubed
2 apples, sliced
2 sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup water
1/8 cup light brown sugar
1/8 cup marshmallows (seriously!)

Combine all ingredients except marshmallows, then spread the marshmallows evenly on top. You can either bake this at 350 for about 30 minutes or cook it over medium heat, covered, on the stovetop.

Reuben Casserole
1 pound corned beef, chopped into small pieces
2 cups sauerkraut
1 1/2 cup rye bread crumbs (just toast four slices rye bread and chop ‘em)
1/4 cup Thousand Island dressing
2 teaspoons melted butter or margarine
1/2 lb. shredded Swiss cheese

Combine all ingredients and cook on the stove top in a covered pan until thoroughly warm!

Some Additional Tips
As you can see, this framework is really flexible, enabling you to turn out all kinds of different things. The best part is that it’s often easy to make these work based entirely on what you happen to have on hand - I’ll often assemble dinner based solely upon what I find in the cupboard or what I picked up on sale at the grocery store last week.

Here are some additional tips to make meals with these casseroles more well-rounded or to shave some additional spending from these dishes.

Many casseroles are best served with a vegetable on the side. Depending on the season, we either steam flash-frozen vegetables or fresh ones, or we make a small, simple salad. Usually, this is steered by what vegetables are on sale that week at the grocery store. In other words, let your grocery store’s flyer take the lead here. Use it not only for an ingredient or two that would fit into these casseroles, but also use it for the vegetables on the side.

Rice is my favorite constant element, so we’ll buy it in bulk. I’d be happy to have long grain rice with every meal if I could, and there are many, many casseroles with this framework that a person can make using rice as the “starchy” ingredient. Because of that, rice is something we’ll always buy in bulk - we can use it in so many things and it’s very flexible.

Spicing is key. Almost any dish will either come out bland or come out spectacular, largely depending on how you spice it. Don’t be afraid to be liberal with the spices when you’re cooking anything. Don’t have any idea how to do this? If you’re just getting started, you really only need ten different spices in your kitchen - here’s a guide to those ten key spices and when/how to use them.

Good luck!

Today, The Simple Dollar is featuring a guest post by Jerry Kolber. Jerry is an award-winning writer, producer, and executive producer of film and television including Inked and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. He is a long-time reader of The Simple Dollar and recently launched a site offering insights into eating great food on a budget at ThreeDollarDinner.com.

One of the most interesting things happening as a result of our economic downturn is that grocery stores are thriving, farmer’s markets are doing great, and seed sales to individuals are up 25% this year. It seems like the whole country is following Trent’s advice at The Simple Dollar to cook at home more. Over the past couple of years, Trent’s writing has also influenced me to spend more time in my kitchen, and I am now more likely to have friends over for dinner than go out to eat.

After spending nearly a decade producing shows like Inked, Confessions of a Matchmaker, and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, this year I’m actively making a point to do more of the work I love, writing and producing around the issues of social justice. Trent’s own journey to doing the work he loves – and his writing about the usefulness of being frugal and smart about money along the way – has been an inspiration to me and I look to him for both philosophical and practical advice.

One place I draw the line on cutting costs is on the quality of the ingredients we buy to make our meals. Eating is the only time that you voluntarily select pieces of the “outside world” to take into your body, and the energy of the food does quite literally affect the energy of your thoughts and body. Every time you buy or grow food, you are making a choice about what kind of food system you want to support with your money.

When going to the grocery store, it’s easy to be seduced by the best deal for your wallet. Though I am as much of a food bargain hunter as anyone, I’ve come to learn through years of research into nutrition, the food supply, and self-observation that sometimes the cheapest food actually has hidden costs. Meat, dairy, fruits and vegetable produced on “factory farms” can not only contain chemical residues of antibiotics, fertilizer, and pesticides, the production of these products is also one of the main causes soil and water pollution in America.

The mainstream conversation around “healthy fresh food” is mostly spearheaded by apparently affluent people who seem to have time to pick fresh arugula from their garden each evening. Yet I’ve found that even in Manhattan, the most expensive place in the world to shop for groceries, I can create delicious meals built around fresh, chemical-free ingredients very cheaply. Everything from stuffed burritos, to jaw-dropping macaroni and cheese, pasta with feta cheese, awesome chili, noodles with vegetables and peanut sauce – I’ve come up with simple and quick recipes that let me cook luscious, filling meals for less than a quarter of the cost of a fast food meal.

Earlier this year many people started encouraging me to share this information, so that other people on a budget could see that there was a way to join the food revolution without breaking the bank. With stores like Whole Foods and Trader Joes offering cheap generic organic options on everything from beans to pasta to vegetables, and the rise of farmer’s markets, community supported agriculture (CSA’s) and food coops, it’s never been easier to make an affordable shift to a more traditional diet. And with sales of seeds for home gardens increasing 25% this year, it’s clear that many people are going to rediscover the joy of getting a 10 to 1 return on investment from their own patch of fresh fruits and vegetables. With all of this in mind I wrote a cookbook and guide about how to affordably join the food revolution that is quietly happening in America.

The cookbook - Three Dollar Dinner - is now available at ThreeDollarDinner.com, as is a free 25 page manifesto that explains how I came to care about what I eat. Unlike many voices in the “food movement” I don’t tell you what to do; and I don’t offer recipes that include anything you would consider “gourmet”. I just offer my own perspective in a gentle, fun way. I’m just a regular guy who likes to eat and have figured out how to do it in a way that is delicious, good for my wallet, and good for the planet. I don’t discourage any kind of food. I even include detailed shopping lists for two weeks of recipes.

Regardless of whether you get started with my cookbook, Trent’s recipes here at The Simple Dollar, or wherever you may choose, don’t be intimidated by trying organic and natural foods – you CAN afford to be a part of the real food revolution, and there’s no better time to join in then right now.

Here’s a few recipes from the book to get you started. Note that although I encourage you to experiment with organic ingredients (and have priced them that way) you can make them with whatever you want or have available. I include costs per serving for each recipe; you can simply halve the recipe for two, double for a party of eight, etc. The costs are based on Manahttan prices, so hopefully you can do better.

Chinatown Express Noodles with Peanut Sauce
Cost per Person: $2.12
Total Work Time: 14 minutes
Total Time: 22 to 25 minutes
Total Cost for Four People: $8.48
Calories per Serving: 640

This is a tasty, hearty noodle dish with a sweet and salty peanut sauce. It’s a complete one bowl meal with protein, carbohydrates, fats and even a generous serving of fresh vegetables. With snap peas, it has a nice crunch, or for a more traditional preparation used washed and dried greens like kale or spinach.

Ingredients
For the sauce:
2 tablespoons organic sugar, honey, or agave - $0.30
8 tblspns. organic peanut butter (smooth or chunky) - $1.00
5 tablespoons crushed garlic - $0.20
½ cup organic soy sauce - $0.50

For the noodles:
16 ounces organic pasta - $2.49
1 lb. organic snap peas or greens - $3.99

Directions

Step 1 (2 minutes)
Fill your large pot with enough water to cover the noodles, plus two inches. Bring to a boil by setting on your stovetop’s highest heat. Don’t put the noodles in yet. While you wait for the water to boil, go to step two.

Step 2 (4 minutes)
Snap both ends off the peas – if someone else can do this you can move to step two. Or if you are using greens, wash and dry them.

Step 3 (4 minutes)
Combine all the sauce ingredients in a bowl plus one cup of water, and mix with a fork until it is completely blended. Start with five or six tablespoons of peanut butter, and add the last couple at the end if it’s not too thick.

Step 4 (1 minute)
By now the water should be boiling. Empty the pasta into the boiling water. Cook it for as long as the box or package recommends – typically between 8 and 12 minutes.

Step 5 (5 minutes)
Heat one tablespoon olive oil in your skillet. Sautee the snap peas or greens for three minutes, then add the sauce and turn the heat to low. Mix well. If it’s too thick, add a bit of water.

Step 6 (3 minutes)
At the end of the recommended cooking time, check the pasta by removing a piece or two with a slotted spoon. Let it cool for a moment and then taste it. If it’s too firm, let it cook for a minute or two more. Pasta gets softer as it cooks, so you don’t want it too soft – “al dente” is the perfect firmness, and it means that it has firmness to your teeth.

When the pasta is done, drain it in a colander then put it back in the pot. Add the peas or greens and the sauce and a dash of chili powder. Toss and stir until the sauce is evenly distributed on the noodles. Serve warm.

Kerouac Stew
Cost per Person: $2.20
Total Work Time: 27 minutes
Total Time: 67 minutes
Total Cost for Four People: $8.82
Calories per Serving: 550

Something about this stew reminds me of the cobblestone streets and charm of the old school West Village (aka Greenwich Village to most folks visiting from out of town) when Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were experimenting with words, life, and spirit. This stew combines vegetables, hearty grains, and rich stock to make a filling one bowl meal. It’s another good weekend recipe since it’s better the longer it simmers. With light, fluffy couscous, it’s vaguely Moroccan. If you’d prefer to serve with rice, or slices of crusty bread, go for it.

Ingredients
1 28 oz. can organic diced tomatoes - $1.79
Bunch (6 to 7) organic carrots - $1.99
8 small (or 4 large) organic potatoes (1.5 lbs total) - $1.50
1 organic onion - $0.60
3 tablespoons Better than Bullion or other bullion - $0.35
12 oz. couscous (one box or 2 cups) - $2.59

Condiments
1 tablespoon basil
Salt and pepper to taste
Cinnamon (not essential, but if you have it you can add it)

Directions

Step 1 (10 minutes)
Peel the carrots; cut off ends, and peel with a vegetable peeler. Peel the onion (cut off ends and remove papery outer layers). Wash the potatoes and dry, but do not peel. Now coarsely chop all the vegetables into ½ to 1” cubes and slices (think “bite size”).

Step 2 (7 minutes)
Heat two tablespoons olive oil in your skillet over medium high heat. Add the vegetables and stir for five minutes. Set aside.

Step 3 (3 minutes)
Pour the entire can of diced tomato and juices into your Dutch oven or large pot. Add the skillet vegetables and two tablespoons Better than Bullion and one tablespoon dried basil, plus two teaspoons dried cinnamon if you have it. Stir and bring to a boil, then immediately turn down to a simmer. Let simmer for 45 minutes. Check every five or ten minutes and add a bit of water if it is getting too thick. You can let this simmer for hours – the longer the better, but after 45 minutes check a carrot or potato for doneness.

Step 4 (5 minutes)
After the stew has been simmering for 45 minutes, in a smaller pot or saucepan, bring 3 cups of water to boil. Add one tablespoon Better than Bullion and 12 oz. box of couscous (2 cups). Stir and immediately remove from heat; let sit five minutes.

Step 5 (2 minutes)
After the couscous has sat for five minutes it will have absorbed all the water. Fluff it with a fork, and serve each person a cup of couscous and a couple of generous spoonfuls of the stew.

Sunshine Risotto
Cost per Person: $1.63
Total Work Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 35 to 40 minutes
Total Cost for Four People: $6.53
Calories per Serving: 500

Risotto is the unsung sweetheart of the Italian kitchen. It’s not nearly as hard to prepare as some chef’s would have you believe, and I simplify the preparation even further. Purists may disagree with how I am about to tell you to make fast and delicious risotto, but you can’t argue with the golden delicious orbs of creamy goodness that you will soon enjoy.

Risotto is a rice dish that basically makes itself creamy without having to add any cream or cheese, though you can add both for taste and luxuriousness. This preparation with its lightness and splash of lemon makes me think of the summer I never spent in Italy. You can add a half cup of fresh or dried finely diced mushrooms but I make it just as it is below.

Ingredients
Two cups arborio rice (MUST be arborio) - $2.25
Four tablespoons butter or olive oil - $0.30
One cup grated parmesan cheese (3 ounces) - $2.00
Two big handfuls of greens - $0.98
Four cubes of beef or vegetable bullion - $0.40
One organic onion - $0.60

Condiments
Lemon juice
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Directions

Step 1 (2 minutes)
In a large pot bring six cups of water to boil with the four cubes of beef or vegetable bullion. While waiting for boil, go to step 2.

Step 2 (7 minutes)
Heat one tablespoon olive oil over medium heat in your skillet. Roughly chop the onion (peel off papery outer layers, cut off ends, and discard – then chop). Begin to sautee the onion, for about 3 minutes, keeping an eye on the pot of water.

Step 3 (20 to 25 minutes)
When the water comes to a boil, reduce to a simmer. Then add the two cups of rice, and your sauteed onions. Continue stirring frequently for about twenty to twenty five minutes, until liquid is mostly absorbed. While this is simmering, go to step 3.

Step 4 (3 minutes)
Toss two big handfuls of greens (arugula is great, but spinach works too) with about a tablespoon of olive oil, a dash of salt and a dash of pepper. Add balsamic vinegar if you want. Keep stirring your rice every couple of minutes.

Step 5 (3 minutes)
When the rice has absorbed the water and is creamy, add one cup of parmesan cheese and mix in along with two tablespoons of lemon juice. Taste and season with salt and pepper to your liking. It should be slightly salty with a hint of lemon.

Serve the risotto with a side of greens. Mmmmm.

Garlicious Mac-a-Cheese
Cost per Person: $2.40
Total Work Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 35 to 40 minutes
Total Cost for Four People: $9.60
Calories per Serving: 500

Mac and cheese in a box is the classic “I’m eating on a budget standby.” But since you end up adding milk anyways, all your paying for is dried cheese and less-than-excellent noodles. You can make delicious garlicky macaroni and cheese all by yourself at home, for about the same cost and about 100 times the deliciousness and healthiness (yes, even healthier than Annie’s Naturals, though that’s not a bad choice if you’re really in a hurry).

This is called Garlicious Mac-A-Cheese because that sounds like a superhero name, and I’d let this Mac and Cheese duke it out with any other mac and cheese any day of the week.

Ingredients
8 oz. macaroni (whole wheat or white elbows or penne) - $1.69
1 free range eggs - $0.32
1 organic onion - $0.60
1 6 oz bag organic or natural shredded cheddar - $3.99
Three tablespoons crushed garlic - $0.25
1/2 cup breadcrumbs - $0.25
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese (3 ounces) - $2.00
1 cup organic milk - $0.50

Condiments
Salt and pepper
Mustard

Directions

Step 1 (3 minutes)
In a large pot bring water to boil and add the pasta. Cook for as long as box suggests (usually about 9 minutes). Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Step 2 (4 minutes)
Scramble the egg in a large bowl for about fifty whisks. Add the milk, two tablespoons mustard, four teaspoons salt, and all the cheddar cheese to the bowl and mix. Grease your large casserole dish (should be about 9 inches by 7 inches, but exact dimensions don’t matter).

Step 3 (3 minutes)
In a small bowl mix the 1/2 cup parmesan with 1/2 cup breadcrumbs.

Step 4 (35 minutes)
When pasta is done cooking, drain it in a strainer. Now add it to the bowl of milk and cheese and egg, mix gently and then pour into the casserole dish. Top with the parmesan/breadcrumb mixture and put it in the oven for thirty minutes.

Step 5 (3 minutes)
The top should be brown and crusty. If it’s not, you can put your oven on “broil” and toast the top by placing the casserole under the broiler flame for 2 or 3 minutes. Handle with care – it’s hot.

Serve and watch as they pass out from the overwhelming pleasure of Garlicious Mac-A-Cheese.

I love to cook. Along the way, I often discover excellent shortcuts and money-saving tactics for home food preparation. I get excited, and I immediately want to share the idea, but it’s simply not enough to warrant a full article on its own.

So, I usually save it. I jot the idea down somewhere in my notes and move on with things.

Today, I decided to dig through my notes and pull together several of those useful frugal cooking tactics. Hopefully, these tactics will find use in your own kitchen.

Make Your Own Cream of …. Soup!
One staple of many inexpensive recipes is canned soup, usually of the “cream” variety - cream of chicken soup, cream of mushroom soup, and so on. Some people, particularly those who are focused on eating healthy, try to avoid these ingredients, since such soups are usually laden with salt and preservatives.

Thankfully, it’s pretty easy to make this soup yourself - and it’s a perfect substitute for the canned soup in those recipes. Just mix together 2 tablespoons of butter (or margarine), two tablespoons of flour, half a cup of milk, and (optionally) a quarter of a teaspoon of salt over medium heat. The easiest way to do it is to put in the butter first, wait until it melts, then sprinkle in the flour while stirring, then slowly add the milk while stirring.

If you want to make cream of chicken soup, add in half a cup of chicken broth or chicken stock.
If you want to make cream of mushroom soup, add in half a cup of milk and quarter of a cup of finely diced mushrooms.
If you want to make cream of celery soup, add in half a cup of milk and a quarter of a cup of finely diced celery.

Once you have all of the ingredients in, let it simmer over low heat for three minutes while stirring. The amount in the pan is usually just a bit more than a can’s worth of cream soup and it substitutes perfectly (and often tastes quite delicious). It’s also quite a bit healthier and, from my calculations, cheaper, too.

Utilize Leftover Fruit Juices
Sometimes, especially during the winter here in Iowa, we’ll pick up no-sugar-added canned fruits, particularly pineapple, because the fresh fruit options are questionable at best and the frozen fruits are often laden with sugar.

Often, though, when the can is empty, we’re left with half a can full of juice that would normally go to waste. Instead, we’ve found it’s a great idea to put that juice to use as a marinade. We save the juice, then the following night, we mix some soy sauce, some pepper, some olive oil, and a bit of garlic with it. Then, we soak our main entree (often, chicken breasts or chops or fish fillets) in the marinade for an hour or so, then grill it.

Delicious, particularly when you consider that the backbone of the marinade would have been thrown away in most homes.

Leftover Meat As Pizza Topping
Quite often, when we eat something like a roast or a whole chicken, there’s quite a bit of meat left over. Sometimes, it makes sense to freeze the meat, but quite often, it simply seems like it’s going to go to waste - we can’t put it in the composter and there’s only so much of the same thing you can eat as a leftover.

One great (surprising) tactic is to simply take the leftover meat and chop it finely, then freeze that chopped meat. Then, the next time you prepare a pizza, thaw the contents of the bag and use that as a key pizza topping.

Almost any meat works here: roast, fish fillets, chicken breasts, and so on. Each one makes for a distinctly different pizza, plus the pizza is usually so different from the original dish that you rarely notice that it’s the same thing you had a few days ago.

Use the Freezer!
If you don’t have enough food to fill your deep freezer, start saving your milk jugs right now. As they empty, rinse them out, fill them up with water (up to about an inch below the top, then cap them and stick them in the freezer.

Why do this, you might ask? It’s simple. Once the new items have been cooled down to the temperature of the freezer, they will help maintain the cold temperature of your freezer. In short, your freezer will run less often, and it won’t lose nearly as much cold when you open the door.

Even more important, during a power outage, a full freezer will warm up much slower than a partially full one. The items you stored in there will act as cold sinks, keeping all of the frozen food colder for longer than if the freezer was empty.

Even better, those frozen gallon jugs make for great ice packs for coolers. Just pull one out, split it open, and use it for ice when you need it.

Quick and Easy Meatballs for Pasta
One simple regular dish we like to make is the standard meatloaf. It’s often the center of our meal, with vegetables and other items as side dishes. Most of the time, we make a very basic meatloaf…

2 pounds lean ground beef
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup uncooked rice
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/4 teaspoon rosemary

Just mix all this up, put it in a loaf pan, and bake it for an hour - easy as pie.

However, we often don’t eat the whole meatloaf, even after leftovers. We could, of course, grate it up for pizza, but there’s a much better use for that meatloaf.

Just take the leftover meatloaf, cut it into 3/4 inch cubes, and add it to spaghetti sauce. These make for wonderful meatballs and, when they’re coated with the sauce, you don’t even remember that it was originally meatloaf. This is a great way to make homemade meatballs for your pasta dinner.

Rick writes in:

You talk all the time about buying fresh foods, but they’re always more expensive than the canned versions and other foods I buy. What am I missing?

Much of the time, Rick is right. If you just walk into a grocery store, pick a fresh vegetable at random, and compare it to the canned version, the canned version is usually cheaper.

So why buy fresh? Fresh produce and meats taste better, have no preservatives, and are more nutritionally powerful as well. Plus, if you use some careful, clever tactics, you don’t have to pay a lot of money above the cost of canned produce. Here’s how.

Use the flyer
If you’re buying fresh, the store flyer is your best friend. I do much of my grocery shopping at Fareway and, before a trip, I parse the flyer carefully.

What do I look for? I usually start by identifying what fresh produce is on sale that week. Then, I take those items and figure out a meal plan based around them. For example, this week green onions are on sale there, so I would seek out two or three recipes that utilize green onions - scrambled eggs for breakfast one day, a meatloaf another day, and maybe some sort of stir fry on a third day. This way, I can buy lots of green onions on sale and actually have a plan for using those onions.

Most stores tend to have several produce items on sale each week, so you can just pick three or four that seem interesting to you, then plan two or three meals using these items. There’s no easier way to get inexpensive fresh fruits and vegetables into your diet.

Know what’s in season locally
Another great way to find good prices on fresh produce is to figure out what’s in season in your area. If a particular fruit or vegetable is in season locally, it’s often on sale (and very, very fresh) at your local grocery store because there’s an abundance of it available.

You can get started by utilizing this helpful list at Sustainable Table that identifies what’s in season in each state during each month.

Leverage the farmers’ markets
Become a regular attendee at your local farmers’ market. There are several good reasons for this: you can regularly find good bargains there, you can build relationships with some vendors and thus get choice produce, the produce available there is very fresh (and thus tasty and very healthy), and there’s a wealth of information to be had, too. Don’t go with a shopping list - just take a cloth bag, some cash, and a sense of adventure.

Here are several tips for getting bargains at a farmers’ market.

Talk to your friends that garden
Quite often, even people who have small gardens have a surplus of produce when the peak of their harvest rolls around. My father, for example, often harvests fifty pounds of tomatoes a day during the peak of the tomato harvest.

If you have a friend that gardens, quite often you can make great trades for some of that excess produce, or perhaps buy it at a very nice rate. One way to help is to offer to tend their garden for them while they’re on vacation in the summer - if there’s anything that will need to be picked while they’re gone, they’ll often give some or all of it to you for the service of keeping things tended.

… or start your own garden
You can do simple things like growing a tomato plant in a pot in your home, starting a window sill garden, or even tilling up a small patch in the back yard.

A tiny garden, just consisting of a few plants, doesn’t require a lot of maintenance, just a bit of healthy outdoor activity once a week or so. Plus, when the vegetables come in, you can have ultra fresh produce. Trust me, there are few things better than picking vegetables out of the garden and immediately using them in dishes - a pasta sauce made out of tomatoes that were in the garden a half-hour earlier is sublime.

Look for bulk savings
Quite often, you can buy bulk amounts of fresh produce for substantially cheaper (per unit) than individual items. Look around and see what’s available.

One option is to split that large produce purchase with a friend or a neighbor. If you’re both buying carrots, for example, why not buy a large bundle for a cheaper per-unit price and split it? It can be very advantageous to coordinate on occasion.

Another option is to buy produce with some long-term storage potential for yourself, like potatoes, turnips, or carrots. These items can often be stored in the cupboard for long periods without going bad, which means you’re not forced to use them over and over again.

If all else fails, choose frozen vegetables over canned ones
If you still find that there’s a significant “produce premium” for you and decide to buy prepackaged vegetables or fruits, seriously consider buying frozen vegetables and fruits instead of canned ones. Frozen fruits and vegetables are substantially more nutrition-rich than their canned cousins and the prices per ounce are usually very comparable.

Good luck!

Spring is awakening here in Iowa, and for us that means getting outside, doing some yard work, and getting some early work done with our garden. With a three year old and a one year old in the house, we try to get everyone involved in the gardening process.

My wife journals extensively, so for this post, I’ve borrowed some of her writing about the garden to help describe some of the early steps for our 2009 garden. She also explains quite well how exactly we get our children involved with our gardening plans.

Sarah’s journal, March 18
Today I took the kids to do some shopping. I was just intending to get peat pellets to start the seeds in, but when I got there I saw a whole set-up with 72 peat pellets in a tray with a lid for $6. The tray is reusable, so next year I can just buy the pellets.

In addition to the pellets, I also bought a bunch of seeds. I had Joe (our son) help me with this part. His current favorite vegetable is cucumbers, so we bought a packet of those. I also had him decide whether to get muskmelons or watermelons (he chose muskmelons). Katie’s (our daughter) favorite vegetable is broccoli, but I couldn’t find any seeds for that. I will have to go to another garden store for those. In addition to the cucumbers and muskmelons, I bought pole green beans and three kinds of tomatoes –Burpee’s Big Boy Hybrid (“outstanding flavor”), Super Beefsteak (“large and disease resistant”), and Super Sweet 100 Cherry (“extra-prolific cherry”). We’re planning on turning a bunch of the bigger tomatoes into sauce, which is why I got two kinds.

Along with the vegetables, I bought a packet of marigolds. My sister, who worked at an organic flower garden for a while, claims that marigolds keep away some bugs, so I always use them for borders in my vegetable gardens.

All together, the cost before taxes for all of this was $13.50 ($6 for the tray, and $1 each for the seed packets, except the cucumbers, which were $1.50).

Here’s our peat tray and some of the seeds we selected for use this year. The almanac was a Christmas gift - it’s a pretty good guide for identifying when exactly to plant in our area. We use it hand in hand with weather forecasts to make a good guess as to when it’s safe to put plants in the ground so they won’t be destroyed by frost.

In addition, we also have a few leftover potatoes from last year’s crop:

We’ll simply cut this potato up into pieces and plant the pieces directly in the garden. The potato sprouted perfectly in a bag in the pantry, where it’s fairly warm and quite dry.

We get the kids involved by having them make several choices about what we plant. Last year, for example, our son Joe was wild about planting carrots, so we planted quite a few carrots in the garden. This year, he was much more enthusiastic about the melons, but our daughter is crazy about broccoli.

By growing things that the kids are excited about eating, they become excited (by extension) about the garden as well.

Sarah’s journal, March 19
Today I worked on clearing the garden of last year’s dead plants, and I also did some weeding. The nice thing about clearing out old dead plants is that it’s really easy to have young children help. Basically, they can’t pull up the wrong thing. If it looks dead, pull it up.

After pulling up dead plants in both the vegetable garden and the ornamental gardens in the front, I’m realizing that our one barrel composter isn’t going to be nearly big enough for all of the garden waste we generate. I’m considering starting a plain old ordinary compost heap behind the vegetable garden.

I also checked out the perennials that we planted last year. Some of the herbs seem to be coming back, and the strawberries are definitely coming up. In fact, I’m a little worried that the strawberries will try to take over the garden. I don’t see any asparagus yet, but I think it’s a little early for those.

I also set the chicken wire around the garden back up. I’d hate to have the young perennials eaten before they have a chance to get going.

In the evening, I had Trent and the kids help me add water to the peat pellets. The tray required 10½ cups of water, so Trent brought water over in measuring cups, the kids poured it in the tray, and I helped make sure Katie didn’t pour the water over herself and the kitchen floor. We couldn’t plant the seeds yet, because it takes peat pellets a while to soak up water.

Here’s our mostly-cleared garden as it sits right now.

We didn’t get the covering off the ground last fall before the first blizzard came through, dumping more than a foot of snow on us which remained for months. We hoped that the covering would be in good shape in the spring - and it is pretty good, at least usable for the coming year.

Soon, we’ll strip the covering off the garden, spread some compost, and till the whole thing just before planting. Since we do not own a tiller (and don’t have extensive need for one), we’ll either borrow a small one from a neighbor or perhaps rent one for a day from the local hardware store.

The waste headed for our barrel composter…

Our composter is a great size for catching a small amount of yard clippings and all of our vegetable table waste, but it’s not exactly big enough to deal with a huge amount of garden waste. Thus, we’re discussing getting either a second barrel composter or perhaps a small chicken wire composter.

In this picture, the compost is just beginning to work. We’re keeping it moist with very warm water and occasional spadefuls of dirt are tossed in to add microbes to continue the composting process. Our goal is to have nice, rich spreadable compost just before we begin to plant next month.

Sarah’s journal, March 20
The kids are at daycare today so that I can get a little bit of work done around the house before going back to teaching. This also lets me do some more of the time-consuming tasks that the kids would get bored with, like planting the seeds (they don’t really have the fine motor skills to help with that yet).

I started by planning how many of each kind of plant I want and deciding where to put them in the tray. I printed out a map of the tray using a spreadsheet program, which I taped to the front so that I can easily see it while I’m planting seeds. I’m saving the extra seeds that I’m not using, in case something doesn’t grow, or I just decide later that I want more of that particular plant. Some plants, like lettuce, can also be planted a second time during the year.

I also pulled out the Farmer’s Almanac that we got for Christmas and looked up when each thing that I’m growing should be moved out to the garden. I wrote those dates on our calendar in the house, as well as one that we’ve got hanging in the garage with the garden tools.

Here’s our planted tray.

We started a bit later than usual this year with our seedling prep - usually, we’re getting this started much earlier in March. However, last year we lost a lot of plants to a late frost and we’re fairly timid about it. Plants will likely go in the ground much later this year, which does push our harvest well into August and early September instead of harvesting in late July and early August as we did last year.

The sheet of paper there is a chart that shows what each spot in the tray contains.

This simply helps us keep track of the planting. Also, here’s our garden calendar - the calendar itself is actually a free bank calendar with a bunch of astrological information already on it.

Notice we’ll be planting the lettuce on Friday or Saturday. Lettuce is hardy and will survive a spring frost or two. Our April calendar has quite a few dates marked in a similar fashion.

In a month or so, we’ll offer an update discussing the planting process.

Homemade pizza night is a weekly occurrence at our house. For us, there is simply nothing that quite matches homemade pizza for appealing to all of us - it’s infinitely flexible, incredibly cheap, fun to make (and it gets everyone involved, even the small children), and quite delicious. Best of all, if you plan ahead a bit, it doesn’t take long to make, either - you can have a made-from-scratch pizza on the table in a half an hour if you’ve done some reasonable prep work the night before.

Here’s a step-by-step guide (along with some surprising and unusual hints) for making some great homemade pizza for your family.

What You’ll Need

For this, I’m going to make a pretty simple American-style pizza with my family’s three favorite toppings - Italian turkey sausage, turkey pepperoni, and black olives, with a mix of mozzarella and cheddar cheese on top. Here’s what you’ll need to make it yourself:

A nifty checklist for you:

flour
water
olive oil
dry yeast
salt
tomato sauce
oregano (and other spices to your liking)
whatever toppings you desire (we’re using turkey sausage, turkey pepperoni, and black olives)

What’s nice is that all of these things, aside from the toppings, can easily be found in a well-stocked pantry and refrigerator. When we want to make homemade pizza, quite often we don’t have to buy a single thing - it’s all already on hand. Even more importantly, we usually use only a tiny fraction of the items - a single container of salt, for instance, would provide enough salt for many, many pizzas. As a result, the actual cost of assembling a pizza is pretty low - my estimate for the pizza assembled here is in the $5 range since most of the items are fractionally used and the rest are picked up in bulk when they’re on sale.

Making the Dough
You can do this the night before.

The first step in the process is making the dough. Sure, you can pick up a kit if you’d like, but it’s about the same amount of effort in the kitchen (and notably cheaper) to just do it yourself from scratch, plus you don’t have to worry about remembering the kit.

Here’s what you need:

3 cups flour
1 cup water (or other liquid - see below)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt

Pizza Tip #1 Instead of using water, I often like to substitute about two-thirds of a bottle of beer for the water. It adds a great flavor, color, and aroma to the crust.

First thing - warm up the water (or other liquid) in the microwave until it’s nice and warm to the touch - not scalding, but not room temperature, either. Then simply drop all of the ingredients into a mixing bowl.

Pizza Tip #2 Add some additional flavor to the crust by adding in some optional items before you begin mixing the dough. Things I enjoy adding include oregano, black pepper, red pepper flakes, parmesan cheese, garlic, basil, parsley, onion powder, and rosemary.

All you have to do is mix this up until it begins to form a ball. It’s much easier to do this with a stand mixer, which I’m lucky enough to have:

In the end, you want a ball of dough that’s just barely sticky, but not sticky enough to actually leave any residue on your hands. If it’s not sticky at all, add a tablespoon of water and mix it some more. If it’s too sticky, add a tablespoon or two of flour and mix some more.

Once you have the ball, knead it a bit with your hands. Smell it. You can add more flavorful additions if you want as long as you work them into the dough right now. Here’s what my ball looks like.

Then, when you’re satisfied (and ready to simply eat the dough right now), put it back into the bowl and let it rest in a warm, dark place for an hour or so. I usually let my dough rest on the stovetop with a towel over the top:

If you’re preparing the crust the night before, instead of letting the dough rise in a bowl, pat some flour on the outside of the dough ball (to keep it from sticking) and wrap the dough in Saran Wrap or a Ziploc bag with air sucked out and put it in the fridge. It will raise very slowly overnight and be perfect in the morning.

Preparing the Crust
You can do this the morning before.

One big step many people skip in the pizza-making process is pre-baking the pizza crust. Baking your crust in the oven for six minutes or so before putting on toppings prevents the dreaded “doughy crust” that often is the downfall of an otherwise delicious homemade pizza.

So, preheat the oven to 425 F, get out your pizza pan or cookie sheet (I actually just use a big cookie sheet), sprinkle a healthy dose of flour all over it (or use a cooking spray like Pam if you prefer), then spread out the dough over the pan. If you want, you can toss the dough, but I often mess up the dough when I do that, so I usually just stretch it as much as I can in my hands before I put it down.

I then spread it to the edge of the pan, then roll it back just a bit to form a crust edge, like this:

Then, just toss the crust into the oven and bake it for six minutes or so. When it’s done, there will be a few bubbles - just pop them with a fork. You can then put the crust in the refrigerator if you baked it in the morning.

Making the Sauce
You can do this the morning before.

Another thing people often do that’s a big waste of money for pizza is buying a jar of sauce from the store. For less than a dollar, you can make an awesome sauce at home.

It’s easy - just open up a can of tomato sauce, pour it in a bowl, and start jazzing it up. If you use nothing else at all, use a minimum of half a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon of oregano, and a quarter teaspoon of black pepper.

However, I strongly encourage you to experiment. Try more oregano, more black pepper, red pepper flakes, parmesan cheese, garlic, basil, parsley, onion powder, or rosemary. Add some of everything you like, stir it, taste it, then add some more. Don’t be afraid to play around.

Once you’re happy, you can store the sauce in the refrigerator all day - or you can go right ahead and start assembling the pizza.

Assembling and Baking the Pizza

You have the crust done. You have the sauce ready to go. Now comes the fun part - assembling and baking the pizza.

I tend to layer things as much as possible - sauce, then toppings, then cheese, then a bit more sauce, then more toppings, then more cheese. You can do whatever you like, of course, but I do recommend having a bit of sauce on the bottom to hold the crust to the toppings.

The best part about the toppings is that the kids can get involved. My son can spread sauce, sprinkle cheese, and toss on toppings - and even my one year old daughter can help a bit.

Pizza Tip #3 When you’re finished assembling the pizza, sprinkle some oregano on top of the cheese just before you toss it in the oven. It brings out the flavor of the cheese like nothing else.

Here’s my assembled pizza:

I bake pizzas in the oven at 400 F for about sixteen minutes, then check them to see how done they are. Depending on the amount of toppings (and whether the crust was cold to begin with), I may have to add a few minutes to the baking time.

Here’s the finished pizza…

… and all that’s left is to slice it up! We slice this pizza into twenty four small, roughly square shaped slices and we usually get through twelve of them at mealtime, leaving half of the pizza for lunch leftovers for the next day or two for my life. Not bad at all for a family meal that everyone can help with that costs only $6 or so.

Good luck! (And leave your pizza tips in the comments!)

I enjoy preparing complex dishes, but many evenings, the focus around our house is getting a tasty and healthy (and inexpensive) meal on the table quickly. We have a three year old and a one year old at our house, so our goal is to established a fixed meal time, put something on the table that will meet all their nutritional needs and still be pleasing to their (and our) palate, do it quickly, and do it inexpensively. This fills all of our bellies with some good fuel, keeps money in our pocket, and also gives us plenty of family time in the evenings.

So, how do we pull this off night after night without regularly resorting to prepackaged food bought with coupons? Over the years, we’ve developed several tactics for making this work - and it works so well that we often prepare the same things for guests when they come to visit.

Here are nine tactics we turn to time and time again.

1. Make your main dish as simple as possible.
A chicken breast. A fish fillet. A basic hamburger. Eggs. A very simple stir fry. A pot roast. Pasta with tomato sauce. These are the things that make up our main course most nights. Nothing complicated at all - just a very basic food.

There are some big advantages here, though:

There are a wide variety of such basic items. Our meals are far more varied than you might think. We rarely repeat out foods for weeks at a time.

These items are stunningly simple in their basic preparation. Once you’ve grilled a chicken breast a few times, it becomes incredibly routine. You don’t have to focus on it any more. Instead, you can focus on the little details (below) that transform it from boring to amazing.

These items are inexpensive when bought in bulk and frozen. We look for versions of these items that meet our quality standards on sale, and when we find them, we stock up big time. Then we just unthaw them by setting the items in the refrigerator the night before - they’re ready to go at meal time the next day.

2. Use simple tactics to add variety and flavor to the main dish.
In other words, be creative and liberal in your seasoning of the food and do it well in advance so it can soak into the food. Most of the time, we’ll actually season the food in the morning (see the next tip) so that it’s ready to go when we walk in the door in the evening.

Even better, because the main entrees are often such a blank slate, we can create a huge variety of very different flavored dishes starting with the same simple main course.

Here are a few ideas for the most common items.

Chicken breasts We just put chicken breasts in a Rubbermaid container in the morning along with whatever seasonings sound interesting. Want lemon chicken? Dump in some lemon juice, some pepper, and a few lemon slices. Italian? Put in half a cup of red wine vinegar, a third of a cup of olive oil, and a lot of seasoning (a bit of lemon juice, garlic powder, oregano, red pepper, black pepper, parsley flakes, and anything else you like). There are infinite possibilities here - just play around.

Hamburger Just mash up hamburger meat with whatever flavorings you like: barbecue sauce, blue cheese salad dressing, ranch salad dressing, Italian salad dressing, black pepper, red pepper, paprika, salt, celery seed, brown sugar, ketchup, onion, dill, caraway, turmeric, scallions, ginger, dill, cumin, coriander, bay leaves - just try different things and find out what you like. I like to let the hamburger soak in this for several hours in the refrigerator before making the patties, though.

Fish fillets Much like the chicken breasts, just toss the fillets in a Rubbermaid container along with some seasonings. Italian dressing is one place to start, as are citrus fruits and pepper. I like using Parmesan cheese and olive oil, for one, with a healthy dose of pepper. The key is to just try different things and let these things sit together for a long time to meld their flavors.

3. Do as much as you can in the morning before you leave.
One big advantage of preparing the entrees in the above fashion is that much of the work can be done in the morning before you leave. For similar reasons, we also enjoy using our slow cooker - we can just toss things together in the morning and be ready to go when we get home.

I find that doing as much of the meal preparation as I can in the mornings while the kids are eating breakfast at the kitchen counter is a great way for me to get going with something productive in the morning while carrying on conversation with them and making sure they’re eating their breakfast.

Here are a few tactics for getting things done in advance in the morning (and the night before):

Main entrees Marinate and/or spice them and put them in a Rubbermaid container in the refrigerator for the day.

Homemade pizza This is one of our family’s favorite foods. One great way to make it easier at night is to make the dough the night before, let it rise in the refrigerator overnight, then spread it out on the pan the next morning. Preheat the oven to 425 in the morning, then bake the crust for seven minutes or so. After that, you can go ahead and put any toppings on you want (like the sauce) or you can just stick the crust in the oven. Doing this “pre-bake” makes for a superb crust … actually, a “homemade pizza” guide might make for a great post.

Crock pot meals If you can possibly make a meal in the crock pot, do so - it’s such a huge time saver on busy evenings and the meals turn out quite well if you use quality ingredients to begin with. For us, it’s very simple - we have a lot of great five ingredient crock pot meals that we love making.

4. Use flash frozen vegetables (but not fruit) as a side dish.
For a long time, I was very insistent on eating fresh vegetables as a side dish. This is a good tactic to use during the summer months when you can get ultra-fresh produce from the farmer’s market or from your own garden, but during the winter, “fresh” produce often isn’t very fresh.

The solution I’ve discovered - for vegetables at least - is frozen vegetables. While not quite as good as truly fresh vegetables, they’re quite often tastier than the vegetables you find in the fresh food aisle during the winter months.

Frozen vegetables are easy to prepare - they can very easily be steamed and this can be done in the microwave if you want (some even come with the capacity to steam in the bag). Flash frozen vegetables are also pretty inexpensive, especially if you wait for a sale and stock up - we often get bags for $0.75 or less, which provide a large portion of vegetables for all four of us. Even better, they’re easy to spice up a bit - just add a bit of pepper (or a bit of another appropriate spice or two) as soon as they’re done steaming (or even during steaming) and you’ll wind up with a tasty result.

A big tip: check the ingredients before you buy. If you see any ingredients besides just the vegetables in the bag (or perhaps a few basic spices), don’t buy it. Avoid any that have high fructose corn syrup - there’s no reason to have that in your vegetables. In fact, this is why I avoid most frozen fruits - they seem to often have sugar or corn syrup added for no real reason other than to add a cloying sweetness.

5. Utilize the simple main dish in a second dish later in the week.
Let’s say we’re making chicken breasts for the family. We unthaw twice as many as we would eat and season half of them as we desire. Then, we bake all of them in the oven (not adding any cooking time at all), then put aside the cooked breast for a couple of days to use in another dish, like chicken stir fry or a chicken pot pie.

Let’s say we’re having hamburgers. We cook up a batch that’s seasoned and an unseasoned batch, then we crumble up the unseasoned burgers and use the meat as pizza topping a few days later, allowing us to have homemade pizza with a hamburger topping without using a skillet to brown the meat.

Using these kinds of techniques adds virtually no time to the meal preparation at hand, but it certainly saves time with a meal later in the week.

6. Drink water, but make it lively!
Water is the default beverage at our dinner table. It’s essentially free and provides necessary hydration. Yet, for many, it’s boring - it doesn’t provide the flavor of other beverages you might consume with dinner.

There are several subtle things you can do to make water more interesting, though. The biggest one is citrus - a slice of a citrus fruit (lemon, lime, orange, etc.) and/or a dash of a citrus juice into your water can make a big difference. This pairs very well with white meats of all kinds.

A simple herbal tea is another great beverage to accompany a meal. Simply heat up the water, steep it with the tea, and you’ve transformed the water into something compelling.

Even the simple touch of adding ice to water can make it seem a lot more refreshing and enjoyable as a partner drink to your dinner.

7. Use a simple formula for casseroles of all kinds.
We picked up this useful tactic from Amy Dacyczyn’s excellent Complete Tightwad Gazette. She offers a framework recipe for a basic casserole:

1 cup main ingredient
1 cup second ingredient
1-2 cups starchy ingredient
1 1/2 cups binder
1/4 cup “goodie”
seasoning
topping

Main ingredient: tuna, cubed chicken, turkey, ham, seafood, etc.
Second ingredient: thinly sliced celery, mushrooms, peas, chopped hard-boiled eggs, etc.
Starchy ingredient: thinly sliced potatoes, cooked noodles, cooked rice, etc.
Binder: cream sauce, sour cream, can of soup, etc.
“Goodie”: pimiento, olives, almonds, water chestnuts, etc.
Topping: cheese, bread crumbs, etc.

This formula works really easy for turning almost anything you have on hand into a very tasty casserole. You simply just mix together these items in a casserole dish, toss it in the oven, and bake it until it’s done. One tip - one good binder is leftover chicken stock with a bit of corn starch in it.

8. Clean out your cupboards and/or pantry.
Another great way to line up some inexpensive and simple meal ideas is to simply clean out your cupboards and pantry. This is a great weekend project, actually - it helps you discover lots of items that you have on hand that you may have forgotten about and also helps you organize things in a way that makes it easier to find the things you need.

When you’re discovering these useful items that have disappeared in the back of the cupboard, plan around them, right then. Jot down ideas for meals that revolve around these items, then when you put things back, keep those items near the front so you can find them quickly.

The end result? You’ll be making interesting meals without the need for a grocery store run and the items will be easy to grab quickly as they’ll be at the front of the cupboard.

9. Do a dinner exchange with your neighbors.
Even after all this, there are some nights where you’d just like a home-cooked meal on your table with no fuss at all. One very creative way to do this is to do a dinner exchange with a neighbor.

It’s pretty easy. Find a neighbor that has a similar-sized family to you. Then arrange it so that once a week or once a month, you make a double portion of your evening meal, place half of it into containers, then take it to that neighbor’s house. All they have to do is meet you at the door, take the containers, and serve - it’s like free delivery.

Then, that family does the same for you, perhaps even with the same containers. They make a double batch of their dinner meal, then bring you containers with enough of that meal to feed your family. Easy as pie.

While this doesn’t particularly save you any money, it does save you quite a bit of time.

Good luck preparing a tasty, healthy, and inexpensive meal tonight for you and your family!

Meet Clara. She’s a 93 year old great grandmother. She’s also the host of one of the most compelling things I’ve ever seen on the internet.

Clara was a young woman during the years of the Great Depression. During those years, she learned a lot of survival skills - among them was the ability to create a tasty meal for the absolute minimum cost.

Today, Clara’s a spry ninety three year old who is still able to get around in her kitchen and is also a good storyteller, so she’s sharing her stories and her Depression-era recipes on YouTube.

Part of the reason that I liked these videos so much is that in some ways, Clara reminded me a lot of my own great grandmother, who passed away in 1999 at the age of 89. I miss her every day, still - she was an amazing woman with a nice touch in the kitchen and a good story always on her lips.

Not only are Clare’s recipes well worth trying, Clara’s stories and her humble mannerisms make this series come together into something special. There are currently ten videos in her YouTube channel - below, I chose four of them to highlight. I strongly encourage you to watch them all if you find the ones below even half as interesting as I did.

Clara’s pasta with peas is a very clear example of the simplicity of these Depression-era meals. It simply consists of a simple stew (just water and milk as the liquid backbone) of potatoes, onions, peas, and a bit of tomato sauce (with some salt and pepper) cooked together with pasta, providing you plenty of nutrients - and it’s incredibly cheap. Her tip about saving energy (and money) by simply turning off the heat and letting the pasta finish cooking from its own heat is excellent, too. The highlight, though, was Clara’s tale about Depression-era bootleggers hiding illegal liquor in the garage of her neighbors.

Clara’s depression breakfast is actually more of a snack, as it consists of very simple sugar cookies (flour, eggs, and sugar) which you can dip in coffee, which she demonstrates how to make in a Depression-era coffee pot. She also goes through a bunch of old photographs and tells a number of wonderful stories about her family and friends, providing visual glimpses into the Depression and pre-Depression eras.

Clara’s peppers and eggs is actually an incredible breakfast, one that I’ve come to enjoy. It’s about as simple as it sounds - she’d just take bell peppers (saving the seeds for next year, of course) and slice them, then cook them along with scrambled eggs with some toast on the side. She also tells tales of how people swapped food (especially in schools) and the prevalence of home canning and basic farming (chickens, for one) during the Depression. This video actually has a second part, where Clara makes a very simple homemade bread from flour, water, and yeast.

Clara’s poorman’s feast consists of lentils, rice or pasta, salad, and inexpensive cuts of meat - steaks that were cut very thin to make them stretch. She tenderizes the meat by soaking it in lemon juice and olive oil and fries it and simply boils the lentils and rice together to make a healthy backbone. For the salad, she recommends fresh endive and drenches it with olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, and lemon juice.

Thank you so much, Clara, for sharing these videos with the world on YouTube. If you liked these videos, be sure to check out Clara’s other videos including Sicilian fig cookies and egg drop soup among other foods - they’re timeless and have provided me with hours of entertainment (and cooking).