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)
OWS - I Love That You’re Doing Stuff
I love reading the posts about Occupy re-taking houses that were illegally foreclosed upon. I love hearing that Occupy helped prevent an illegal foreclosure.
I love that, despite all the setbacks and prohibitions rising up against it, the People’s Library is still going strong.
I love that people are sharing ideas to get their communities pointed in one direction against a common foe.
But, as I always tell myself [and others] when cleaning up a big mess - there’s always more.
The 1% stopped you from feeding and sheltering the homeless, but you can still feed them. You can still work together with them to take over foreclosed homes and use them for shelter.
You can still band together and shout, “Show me the mortgage!” in the yards of homes that are about to be foreclosed upon.
You can (probably) walk amiably up to Mayor Bloomburg’s(?) house and then whip out the castanets and start making noise.
You can hang out in the public areas of City Hall.
You could possibly file a complaint against the city while you’re there.
You can occupy the lobbies of every last evil corporation in your area and stay there until you’re seen by the people in charge. And always - remember to be polite and civil when voicing your grievances. Remember to point out that being evil is just sowing the seeds of their own destruction. Be logical and coherent. And if you’re afraid you’re not either, hand them a copy of How and Economy Grows and Why it Crashes with a sincere, “You really need to read this book. It’s important. Your life and livelihood depends on it.”
And if they agree with you - ask them what they’re doing to solve the problem. Ask them how they think it’s going to work. Share the results.
I love OWS. It’s doing something to solve the problem it sees. Even if it’s not enough, it’s better than the nothing that was being done previously.
Glop
This is a family recipe that can be traced back to MeMum [Hi!] who could not make tuna rissoles to save her life. After a very trying day, she just gave up and fried the entire mess and called it Tuna Glop.
I’ve changed things around a bit and created All Purpose Glop
You will need these tools:
1 mixing bowl
1 method of mixing
1 satisfyingly enormous frying pan
1 spatula or big spoon
1 handy heat source, like a cooktop
You will need these ingredients:
Any leftovers you happen to have hanging around that will go together
Some variety of carbohydrate [rice or mash is a favourite]
Some variety of binder [eggs are good, but if you know an egg replacement, let me know!]
Cooking oil
Vegetables, herbs, spices and/or sauces to taste
Method:
Break any proteins up into small pieces [same for larger veg]
Mix carbohydrates and binder in a bowl
Add proteins and vegetables
Mix in well
The goal consistency is thick cake batter, not bread dough. Add ingredients until you get there
Oil pan and heat it to medium heat
You have two options at this point - (1) Fry serving-sized patties/pancakes of the stuff or, (2) bung it all in and stir/flip bits until it’s all cooked
Whether you serve this as a side or on its own is entirely up to how long a day you’ve had.
Do occupy wall street protests represent your views economy?
They allow you to reload and re-vote.
Re-vote often. I think that’s how the right wing has their view in the lead.
