Recession Recipes and Living Tips

The Media screams "Recovery" from every corner, but I'm still sitting here, with my MA, in the unemployment line. "I got yer recovery right here pal."
As a poverty stricken former-student and current unemployed academic, I have weathered many a hard time. I once lived for over a year on $20 a week. So here are my favorite low cost recipes and tips for the adventurous hobo.

First of all:

1. Remember that if you make it yourself it is typically cheaper. Bread, biscuits, soup, desserts, etc. all cost considerably less when made from scratch. However, they do require more time and knowhow.

2. Think of the basics. Traditional "peasant" foods tend to cost little and supply vital nutrients (we'll get to some examples in a sec). Beans, grains, legumes, and vegetables can be purchased in bulk at a discounted rate and usually have a high yield, which means they stretch over several meals.

3. You should know that putting together a good meal out of very little is an outstanding life skill, so you may be as depressed as I am about not having a paycheck, but you can at least walk away with a nice little certificate of achievement from the School of Hard Knocks.

4. Communal living really is an ideal situation for low wage earners. If you can find someone, anyone, willing to split costs on groceries, you'll be better off. When I had roommates, we would rotate making and sharing meals and would pitch in to buy ingredients in bulk. Why not find a friend or neighbor willing to go in on a sack of flour or a bag of rice? When the times get rough, go co-op.

5. A greener lifestyle is not only good for the planet it's good for your bank account. You might be shocked to hear this, but I don't own a car. I have never owned a car and I am glad I don't own a car. I save thousands of dollars a year on insurance, gas, maintenance and loan payments. I also do not contribute to carbon emissions through car waste. I ride my bike, walk and use public transit and I have no problem getting around. Also, I buy second hand clothing and furniture, another win-win for the planet and the wallet. I use energy saving lightbulbs, turn off and unplug unused electronics and use a pressure cooker to conserve natural resources and save on my electric bill.

6. If you're unemployed, like me, why not take all this free time to learn a life skill? If you thought you didn't need to know it before, taking the time to learn to bake your own bread, sew on a button, knit a hat or cut hair can actually save you money. I cut my husband's hair with an electric hair clipper that I purchased for $20. He was lucky that I am somewhat skilled at this, but we cut down on cost substantially. That little investment has already paid for itself. Think about all the things in daily life that have been taken over by corporate brands. Do we really need to buy all of our food prepackaged and ready-to-eat at a higher cost with less nutritional value?

7. The freezer is your friend. Buy in bulk, cook in bulk and freeze for future meals. Soups can easily be made in double batches and frozen in single servings. Homemade pizza dough, bread dough, cookie dough or any other kind of dough can be made and then frozen.

• 8. Eat by season. Foods in season tend to be cheaper. So, in Fall squash, apples, cabbage, dark greens, pumpkins, leeks, artichokes, beets, celery root, turnips and carrots are in season. Sounds like some good soup fixins.
  
  On to the recipes:
  
  Sweet and Sour Cabbage
  
  I made this just the other day, and boy was it a lifesaver! I was looking for something easy on the pocketbook, yet interesting. This is a traditional Eastern European recipe of Germanic origin (read: peasant food). The cabbage was most likely flavored with bacon or fatback, but for our purposes a little olive oil will do.
  
  Ingredients:
  1 large head of red cabbage $1-3.00
  1/4 cup olive oil (this is the pricier ingredient. A good olive oil costs $7-8, any oil will do)
  2 cloves of garlic $0.50 a bulb
  2 small apples $1.00
  1/2 cup apple cider (a half gallon bottle costs aroun $3-5.00)
  1/4 cup apple cider vinegar (one bottle costs $1.25)
  1 Tbsp salt
  1 tsp coriader
  2 tsp fennel seed
  1/2 tsp cinnamon
  
  
  Slice the head of cabbage lengthwise and cut out the core. Peel back the top leaves and discard. Roughly cube the cabbage and rinse thoroughly. Sprinkle with salt and let sit.
  Peel and core the apples (I prefer Granny Smith for their tartness), dice.
  Dice the garlic.
  Put oil or butter in a deep pot and heat on medium high heat. Brown garlic.
  Add remaining ingredients EXCEPT for the vinegar.
  Boil covered for 15-20 mins.
  Add vinegar and heat until liquid has evaporated.
  Be careful to not overcook the cabbage or it will become bitter.
  Here is my result:

Mmmmmmmmm, Cabbage.

Next: Squash.

Squash is pretty cheap, tasty and very high in nutrients. As it is October, I think it's a good idea to include my favorite squash recipe:

Butternut Squash with Brown Sugar, Butter and Cinnamon. (this meal costs about $3)

slice the squash lengthwise, put inner side down in a buttered baking dish. Put in oven at 400degrees. Cook for 15 mins. Turn squash and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Continue baking until brown and delicious.

SOUP:

I cannot say enough good things about soup. I'm going to get a tshirt that says "I Heart Soup." You just gotta love soup. Every culture on the planet has soup. I might even venture to guess that the first real form of cooking in human history was the making of soup. You have a pot, you have some water and you have a few tasty things to dump in, and BAM! You have a meal. What's not to love. The following are a few of my (cheap) favorites.

Onion Soup:

• Ingredients:
• 4-5 Onions (a sack costs around $4)
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup butter or oil
• 1/4 cup tamari
• 6-8 cups water + 1/4 cup

Peel the onions and slice thinly in rounds. Heat oil in a pot. Add flour, oil and 1/4 cup water. Stir until a thick paste. Cook the roux until it turns a golden brown. Add onions and continue to cook while the onions carmelize. Once carmelized and cooked down, add the rest of the water, and garlic. Simmer for 30 mins. Add Tamari, you can adjust to taste. The tamari give the soup a beefy taste and mimics the traditional french soup. For added authenticity, put a toasted slice of baguette covered in cheese (or cheese substitute) and ladle soup over the toast. Voila! Cheap and easy.

A Gourmet Swansong

The first "food" magazine I ever read and subscribed to was Gourmet. I remember my father reading the tome to fine dining and I remember flipping through and marveling at the photographs of table spreads. This was before my venture into vegetarianism, but I always thought the pictures in Gourmet magazine set the standard. This was the goal. Someday I too, with a little guidance from personalities such as Wolfgang Puck, Jacque Pepin, Julia Childs, and M.F.K. Fisher, could prepare entrees that resembled sculptures, pastry more like architecture than creme puff, and culinary maneuvers that required hours of special training in slicing and dicing.

From my high school years, I began tackling the art of spongecake, the exact science of pudding, the engineering of the potato. I learned how to stack and chop, how to julienne, how to properly roll dough. And I found that I never had enough culinary knowledge. Instead of going straight into working in a kitchen, or attending technical school, I went to college and got a Master's in English. My love of literature, at that time, outweighed my love of cooking. That is when I found Gourmet magazine. Here was a publication that combined my two loves, beautiful food and beautiful writing. I would come home from my job as an underpaid vegan chef, lie on the sofa with my magazine and sink into the cushions, lullaby-ed into relaxation with the sonorous cadence of food writing.

So imagine my bewilderment when it was announced this week that after seventy years, Gourmet is closing shop. In the age of free food blogs, and whittling audiences interested in the pretension of epicurean delicacies, the Old Dame simply cannot keep her footing. One more loss for print journals everywhere. My shock comes not as a vegetarian, but as a writer and a reader. While Good Housekeeping continues to sell well, some of the more established, intellectual mags are losing ground.

I struggled with Gourmet and its meat-heavy topics, but I always found my place at the table, a recipe for "braised pork shanks in wine sauce", became roasted portobellos in wine sauce, steak was supplanted with tofu, etc. In recent years, Gourmet did include options for vegetarians and vegans, featuring a vegan Christmas menu in their 2007 holiday issue. One could say the magazine wrote the book on the "foodie" movement, with leading voices and revolutionary cooks contributing to discussions as diverse as food politics, alternative diets, and classic cookery. In fact, Gourmet's attention to political issues in the "foodie" community made it stand out on the newsstand as a periodical dedicated to debating food culture, practices and controversies.

Similar, smaller magazines have met their fate recently. The progressive Herbivore magazine which folded and converted to an online vegan store, comes to mind. Other magazines, especially small press, independent and progressive journals are meeting a sinister ending as economic depression forces readers to turn down subscriptions in favor of online discussion boards and blogs.

This is not to say that we didn't see it coming, or that no one could have foreseen the eventual demise of print journals. However, there remains a sadness for me, in wondering who will pick up where Gourmet left off. True, Gourmet was a publication that appealed to mostly upper middle class readers, people who wanted to throw extravagant dinner parties, (I remember in a recent issue, the advice for throwing a party in the recession era was to serve blinis and caviar...Ha) people who could afford to drop a few hundred on a single meal. But beyond the elitism, there was true artistry, writers who were passionate about their topics, and readers just as passionate. I suppose that is what I miss most of all, the passion of people with strong convictions and a firm grasp of language, and I'm not so sure I've encountered many blogs that incorporate both.

The fall of Gourmet points out the problem with a blog-only readership. With a blog there is usually only one voice, one opinion, one side of the story, while print journals offer a diverse range of perspectives. I am fan of blogging and reading blogs, but my research and reading does not stop when the computer goes into hibernate mode. As food journals become nothing more than time saving tips for working moms (i.e. the Rachel Ray empire) I worry about the future of haute cuisine, not in the elitist sense, but in the way that Gourmet brought the concept of quality to the general public.

There's nothing wrong with buying nice wine, fresh produce and taking the time to prepare a meal, rather than attempting to feed your family in "thirty minutes or less."
We Americans spend so much time and energy on our cars, our clothes, our homes, but we don't have a food culture that tells us to invest in quality fuel for our bodies. What I loved about Gourmet was the insistence on quality.
Perhaps we are taking a step down. Perhaps this means nothing to the food-loving community. Perhaps there will be new, better, brighter journals on the horizon with plenty of support for slow, local, organic, vegetarian options.

Still, I will miss the inspiration most of all, Gourmet was my go-to when I didn't have a clue what to make, or when I wanted to challenge myself, or when I wanted to surprise my partner with a fancy dinner for two. The internet makes this possible, but in a more structured, search engine way.

Gourmet, my darling, you will be missed.