Spotted this on Twitter and had to share it here. Created by Mark Miller (@Gonzoville).
If I could carry a sign in an OWS march…
It would read:
One people
One planet
One chance to change
For the better
Pay attention 1%!
I don’t suppose anyone would like to carry my idea in a march?
Mince Soup
This is another one of those “primary ingredient plus whatever you have lying around” recipes. Again, it’s just a few ingredients away from being a stew.
You will need these tools:
1 big pot
1 ladle or spoon for stirring
1 handy heat source like a cooktop
You will need these ingredients:
water
about 500g mince of your choice
sauces/flavour/herbs/spices to taste
vegetables
thickening or noodles optional
Method:
half-fill your pot with water and set it to boil
add mince and stir vigorously to break it into little eentsy-weentsy pieces
add herbs/flavour/sauces
bring to boil, then reduce heat to medium-high and add veg
add anything else that takes your fancy
Can be served over rice, with bread, noodles or on its own. Theoretically can be portioned and frozen - but mine’s never lasted that long.
Slow-cooker Glop
This one’s for the busy people. Slow cookers are handy little gadgets that allow one to, say, set up a pot roast before you leave for work.
Everything I cook in my slow cooker always ends up as Glop
You will need these tools:
1 slow cooker
1 thing to make it go
1 thing to serve/stir
1 method of cooking rice
You will need these ingredients:
500g protein of your choice, preferably in bite-sized chunks
1-2 jars of simmer sauce
vegetables to taste
rice
water
Method:
Place protien in slow cooker with simmer sauce and vegetables. Add enough water to cover and start the cooker
When you come back, prepare the rice
Once rice is cooked, add rice to slow cooker
Stir well
Serve glop
Theoretically, glop can be portioned and frozen, but mine never lasts that long…
Sausage Soup
This is another one of those “scratch” recipes, in which you scratch together whatever you have going and put it in a pot.
You will need these tools:
1 big pot
1 handy heat source, like a cooktop
1 big spoon/ladle
1 knife or other means of chopping things
You will need these ingredients:
sausages
water
sauce/flavour
herbs/spices
vegetables
The quantity of these is up to you. Optional extras include: soup mix, rice, potatoes/potato powder, and anything else you like the look of, really.
Method:
Boil water in pot and add sausages
Once sausages are cooked, cut them up into bite-esque sized chunks
Return sausages to water and add the other ingredients
Serve with bread or on rice or on its own.
This is not cordon bleu. This is not fine dining. It is one stop away from Glop [next recipe!] and a few extra ingredients away from stew. What it is is cheap and easy to make after a long, hard day.
Fried Rice? So Nice!
At last! A recipe with more than just vague hints [seriously, we’re on the internet. You should know how to google stew recipes] and some actual directions.
You will need these tools:
1 large cooking container. Woks are great, but you don’t have to have them
1 means of cooking rice. Rice cookers are great, etc. etc.
1 or more handy heat source(s) like a cooktop
1 big sturdy spoon or spatula. Trust me, I mean it when I say sturdy.
Muscular strength.
You will need these ingredients:
Oil - what type is up to you. Experiment with a few if your budget allows.
Rice - about a rice cooker’s worth when cooked.
2 eggs, whisked or beaten.
½ cup peas or dice-cut vegetables
2 grated carrots
soy sauce to taste
herbs and spices to taste
You might also want to include some of these ingredients:
½ cup cashews or peanuts [or both]
½ cup cooked, peeled prawns or shrimp [Other types of seafood are OK]
½ cup other source of protein and iron [minced meat is good, but if you’re a vegetarian, you can put what you like in]
½ cup diced onion
METHOD:
* Cook the rice and set it aside
* Line up all your ingredients by your cooking implement(henceforth dubbed “wok”), because once you start, you can’t stop
* Pour a generous amount of oil into the bottom of your wok and add your herbs and spices. Turn the heat on to medium-high [the high side of medium]
* Wait until the oil flows readily or the herbs start sizzling before you add anything else
* If you’re adding nuts, add the nuts and lightly brown them. Otherwise add the eggs
* Stir like a mad thing. You want small bits of egg all through your rice, so make sure the bits are tiny
* Add your protein(s), followed by the vegetables, saving the grated carrot until later
* When these look cooked, add the carrot and then the rice
* Around now, it gets to be a solid gold bitch to stir (See what I mean about muscular strength and sturdy spoon/spatulas?) but you still have to add the soy sauce
* Serve on its own or as a side to anything.
Fried rice freezes very well - and you MUST pack it away one way or another immediately after cooking. There is a lot of flexibility in this recipe and it suits all tastes.
You get a lot out of a little with this one. Ideal for trimming that food budget!
How to Stretch a Stew
There are as many recipes for stew as there are people who cook it. You might like a different kind of stew, but the core is the same:
* A lot of water
* Some kind of key protein [meat is traditional, but not necessary]
* Lots of vegetables
* Thickening
One of the key ideals of stew is that it can be stretched. You might portion yours up and freeze it straight after it’s cooked, but even then, you can stretch one portion of stew to make many more.
1) Water it down. Say your stew is stiff enough to make bricks out of. Turn it into a soup by watering it down. As many as five portions out of one! Serving with bread also helps fill those hungry stomachs.
2) Thicken it up. Stew a little too runny? No problem! Add some pearl barley, split peas, soup mix, lentils, rice, or potato powder to the mix. Or any combo of the above.
3) More body. Add more meat or veg, add more sauce, add more herbs and spices. You can always put more in a stew.
Remember - it is not recommended to store your stew in the pot for more than two days. After that, it starts to go off [quicker if you didn’t refrigerate it!] and your health is at risk.
For best economical advantage from a stew, add the date stored to your freezer containers and use the oldest samples first. Even freezing is not forever, so be careful about obeying the recommended storage times in your freezer.
Budget Busting in the Kitchen
Many of you know a few tricks, but these are some of mine. If you only have a little left to spend on food after taking care of all those bills, you need to make it stretch. And you also need to make sure you get a balanced diet. We’ve all heard the urban myth about the college kid who made a buttload of porridge etc. etc.
Anyway, over the next few days I’ll be sharing some budget-stretching recipes, but these are my generic hints and tips.
1) Own a freezer. It doesn’t matter how small it is, you can store a lot of stuff in there, including serving-sized portions of leftovers.
2) Where possible, buy in bulk. Remember economies of scale? Companies save cash by purchasing pallet loads of whatever they need. Obviously, they don’t sell pallets to plebes, but you can do the next best thing once you find where they sell it.
3) Be prepared to shop around. I know, going on a several hour journey to save a few cents isn’t sane, but knowing every last cheap vendor in your area makes a whole bunch of sense. Especially if you have a couple of places that let you buy items by the box load.
4) Change your purchasing to cash only. Cash is way more tangible than e-cash. Cards of any kidney make it easier to spend more. After all, when you hand over money, you get less back - but when you hand over a card, it remains apparently unchanged.
5) Learn how to cook for yourself. Pre-packaged, pre-processed, chemically altered and otherwise “convenient” food winds up being more expensive. Home cooked does take time, but you know exactly what went in there. Plus, if you cook a LOT, you can have plenty in the freezer for those “blah” days when you don’t feel like raising a spatula.
Just doing these five things can change your personal economy. It won’t happen overnight [especially if you have to buy a freezer] but it will make a change.
This video shows actual footage of the strange and elusive Occupy Melbourne tent monster.
I love the ever-living crap out of these guys :) All Occupies should start doing this :)
Ladies - just make sure you’re decently attired underneath. Guys - wear nothing. It’ll serve them right ;)
(Source: citizen-earth)