How I will make $15 in groceries last more than a week

Swedish meatballs in macaroni, using supplies I had on hand, created three nights of meals for me.

I posted on Sunday, March 22 in Facebook that I had only spent  just over $15 on groceries for this week. I'm happy for the positive feedback, and the amazement some of you have expressed on how I am doing that. What's even more amazing, folks, is that although there are a two quick meals at Carls' Jr. and one at IHOP, and three Tuesday nights of skipped meals, I have now made this $15+ in groceries stretch into enough meals to last me for almost three weeks.

And that's led me to pop back onto this poorly neglected blog to share my grocery shopping strategy. It's key to how I've made my food good, and cheap. And some of that $15 in groceries was fresh too.

But I start with what I have. And that may not be fresh, It may instead be a pantry staple, something from the freezer or something sealed in a jar or other container.

I have many of these items listed on my computer. For instance, when I started menu planning the other day, I had brown sugar, ground turkey, kalmata olives and pepperoncinis on the list, among other things. Three items I did not have on the list, but had in the pantry anyhow, were pasta, rice and beans. I also have a whole spice rack full of spices.

So, I then looked through my extensive collection of cookbooks to come up with some recipes. You probably could do this even quicker with some menu planning websites where you type in one or more of these ingredients and it recommends a bunch of recipes using them. Or, if, like me, you pinned a bunch of recipes to Pinterest, you can find something fairly quick that uses your ingredients on hand, I would bet. But I invested in cookbooks, so cookbooks it is for me.

Here's what I came up with:

Two-pepper stew (My planned meal for Sunday)
Salmon burgers with kalamata olives (My planned meal for Monday)
Swedish meatballs (My planned meal for Wednesday)
Brown sugar beans (My planned meal for Thursday)

I don't plan meals on Tuesdays because they are just too busy with Don at school and me in Real Healing at Sandals Church, and I don't plan meals on Saturdays because we eat dinner at church. This did leave Friday to plan for though, and my cookbooks weren't inspiring things with the ingredients on hand. So I turned to my coupons, found one close to expiring for Asian noodles, and came up with a recipe called Far Eastern Ginger Noodles.

To make these recipes, I had to purchase the bell peppers, beef chuck and tomatoes the stew required, a can of salmon for the salmon burgers, and just about everything I'll need for the Far Eastern Ginger Noodles. I ended up not using the coupon, because the brands at the store where I shop weren't the same.

In addition, my grocery purchase included one of my staples, Diet Dr. Pepper. Staple or vice? Gotta have it though.

I put my "save money" radar out on one recipe. The recipe for the salmon burgers I'm following calls for fresh salmon and fresh dill. The thing is, it also calls for both of these ingredients to be put in the food processor and ground together along with the olives. I just can't see paying $9 or $10 for a filet of salmon vs. $2.25 for a can of ground salmon on this. I also don't know if my grocery store had fresh dill, but I don't have any idea why the dill in my spice rack wouldn't work for these burgers.

I discovered an interesting thing on this grocery store trip though. There are two kinds of canned salmon, red and pink. Red salmon is the Alaskan salmon, and it costs more than twice as much, about $6.50 a can. I REALLY don't know why you need to pay that much for a CAN of salmon, but if you are curious, give it a try. I'm sticking with pink.

That's why my whole bill was under $16.

I should also issue a disclaimer or two: The day before I bought these groceries, Don bought eggs, olive oil, peanut butter and bread, which would have added about $12 to my breakfast/lunch grocery bill otherwise. Also, we have a lot of cereal and juice on hand, so we saw no need to buy more the first week. Milk, more bread and more eggs did also have to get purchased for breakfast and lunch meals as time went on, but the total grocery bill for March was only $80.

The two-pepper stew lasted two nights. I served it on rice one night and pasta the other. The next night was Tuesday, so as planned, I had a fiber bar for dinner. Then after determining that Friday night, for a variety of reasons, had to be a night of dining out, I made the meatballs on Sunday instead, and they're lasting for three meals.

We had meatballs on Sunday, March 30 and Monday, March 31, and will now finish them up on Wednesday, since Tuesday is the night we skip dinner all together. We'll move onto the beans this coming Thursday, and I suspect they too will also produce at least one night of left overs. Which means I won't have to go grocery shopping again until next week! Technically, not until next Thursday, as the ginger noodles won't be needed until Monday, April 7, Tuesday, April 8 is a skip meal day, and Wednesday, April 9 is a Carls' Jr. day.

I don't know if I'll be able to pull off $16 for another three weeks of groceries then, but I am looking forward to telling you what's next.

One new recipe for spaghetti

This is my most pathetically maintained blog of four. I'm not posting most of my recipes because I'm not going to be a food blogger. I thought I was going to have a culinary client, an Orange County caterer, at my new public relations business, but that client turned out to be a flake. So no culinary PR or any other culinary writing for now.

However, cooking is still a favored hobby. I do it more than paper crafting. But I do it mostly for myself and Don, and sometimes share cupcakes or other good things with a few people at church or here in Jurupa Valley. So, I'm not usually seeing any reason to share my recipes online. I already have them written down in the cookbook collection, and I have a cookbook organizer to track my favorite recipes within these cookbooks.

Except for times like tonight. I ended up making up a recipe for spaghetti after I was inspired by a side dish in one cookbook and an actual recipe for spaghetti in the other. I didn't 100 percent follow either one of these recipes though. I took one short cut (jarred Ragu spaghetti sauce) I am sure this cookbook author would NEVER have approved of, and one (plastic jarred Kraft Parmesan cheese) I don't think he would have approved of. But we loved it! For us, the anchovies are a crucial addition. It will not be the same without it. But if you for some reason don't like anchovies, you can have this vegetarian style. If you're vegan,  use spaghetti squash noodles, your favorite sauce (Ragu might have cheese in it)  and leave out the Parmesan cheese.

So here is my recipe for spaghetti. It must be posted here, because until I hit the "publish" key, it will never have been published anywere!

2 carrots
1 zucchini
1 Tbsp or so of olive oil, only enough to lightly coat your frying pan
1 can of anchovies
About 8 oz of Ragu spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup of Kraft Parmesan cheese
About 2 cups of cooked spaghetti noodles

Julienne the carrots and zucchini. Heat the oil, and saute vegetables in pan until they are tender
Cut the anchovies in half, separate them and add to pan. Add cooked noodles. Pour in enough Ragu to coat vegetables, anchovies and noodles to your taste. Add Parmesan cheese and stir to coat the noodles completely. 

Serve with more Parmesan cheese. A salad, bread and a glass of white like Chardonnay would be good with this too, but I served it as the only meal item.

Two today!

I'm going to link here a recipe 24 Carrots posted in its own blog for Chilled Fava Bean Soup.

It's not the kind of food you would normally see on this blog, even if I maintained it. While 24 Carrots makes fresh and good food, you've got to be blessed like me to get it cheap. My first exposure to this company was that for awhile, it was donating catered food to the attendees of Sandals Church's Tuesday program. It quit doing that, and I quit going to the Tuesday program, so I miss it. But I've already had one opportunity to have it again, and I hope I have more.

You can't even really make fava bean soup cheap. Fresh Good and Cheap relies on a military commissary for most of its food. The rest of it is purchased locally at Fresh and Easy or the Rubidoux (old town) Stater Brothers. Neither one f thoe stores have a lot of fancy food, although I might find fava beans at Fresh and Easy if I looked hard.

If not, the fava beans aren't likely going to be included. My other local options are some Latino markets. That's it. I'm, for the most part, boycotting all stores in the City of Riverside, so that means I don't shop at my nearest Trader Joes, nor my nearest Sprouts. The next nearest of these, and the absolute nearest Whole Foods stores are kind of far, like Orange County, or maybe, Rancho Cucamonga. Getting there is doable, but not when you have to share a car with your husband, who is not at all into fancy food. And  not when you can barely afford what you do eat.

But if you can find and can afford fava beans, please feel free to enjoy 24 Carrots recipe.

With four blogs

I am sure this one is neglected way too much. But as a foodie, I can't help but be excited about the new project I am taking on. I will be promoting one of the largest catering companies in southern California, 24 Carrots. I know one of the owners from church, and I have experience getting people's news into the news. I have worked for a public relations agency, and I've done it on my own. They believe, as do I, that we can work together to promote 24 Carrots in media all over the place, especially Orange County.

For 10 years, I've had a name for what I do, which is Pen Porter. There wasn't much need for me to use that name at first. Until 2006, what I really did was write stories for media. That started back in high school, and was my full-time job for most of the time from 1984 to 2003. When I couldn't wok in journalism anymore, I came up with the idea for Pen Porter. But at that time, my idea was to market stories to national magazines. I did not have much success. Because I lead a fairly boring life, and because I haven't focused much on this aspect of my work much for seven or so years, I've only sold onestory to one national magazine. I have been published in two, but that's because the second one turned a Dameron Communications press release into a feature story, and gave me byline credit, but no financial renumeration.

Even up until last year, most of my paid work has been because of my journalism experience, not my PR experience. I was paid very well in 2012 to write a series of articles about California government for a news-focused website. And that led to another opportunity to do a well-researched, and well-compensated report for another client. I also changed the focus of this blog to food in 2012, somehow thinking it could become a fantastic well-followed food blog. Yeah, right.

My well-paid writing opportunities haven't been happening in 2013. Instead, I have been blessed to be able to promote a few local businesses through media releases. It became clear though that I can do that more effectively if I am an official business. So, on May 6, Pen Porter went from an idea to a business officially registered with the County of Riverside and the City of Jurupa Valley. I was busy with two clients since then, but now I'll be even busier because 24 Carrots needs and deserves a lot of PR!

Cornish pasties, the easy way

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One of my cookbooks, Tastes of Liberty, features cuisines from much of Europe including Great Britain. Since a large part of our ancestry is from there, Don and I are fans of British food. We are especially fond of pot pies. (Ah yeah, so fond we had them for our 10th anniversary three years ago, but that's another story.)

Normally, when we have pot pies, they are the kind that are made somewhere else, frozen, then baked in our oven. Tonight, they were baked in our oven, but they definitely required some assembly beforehand. And that was such a good change, I'm blogging my version of them to have for future reference.

My version is simple. It uses just two ingredients. Because we still have half of both of them, I'm going to post directions that will serve four people.

One two-crust package of pie crusts
One 24-oz can of beef stew

Cut each pie crust in half. On one half of your now semi-circular piece of pie crust, place up to 6 oz. of stew. Fold crust over, and pinch every edge to seal. Bake in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes, turn oven down to 350 and bake for 30 more minutes.

My recipe is inspired by one I saw in Tastes of Liberty. Some food from Great Britain comes from a region called Cornwall, so that food is known as "Cornish." Cornwall is probably best known for its game hens, but it's also home to the original version of these little pot pie tarts I made tonight, and is known there as a Cornish pasty.

The original way, as described in Tastes of Liberty, would be to make your own pie crust  and hand roll it into three 7" circles, to make three tarts serving six people. To that you would add fresh beef round chopped finely by you (not your butcher), potatoes, onions, turnips and carrots. This recipe would have you put all of this into the pastry raw and let it cook as the crust bakes, but I'm really not seeing how that would work, when my precooked, canned stew came out so good. So, I would at least partially cook the meat and vegetables into a stew.

But, the reality for me is Don and I right now have to rely sometimes on canned food. That's a whole lot more canned vegetables than canned meat, so Don hopes these tasty little pot pie tarts appear on the table again, but next time with fresh, cooked meat (he probably would prefer chicken) and canned vegetables.

Turn pork chops into juicy "carnitas" tacos

These are my original recipes, created by slightly modifying one of my cookbook's pork chop recipes and then majorly modifying another cookbook's recipe for carnitas. You will get at least two nights of meals from this. Since we are a family of two, we started with eight pork chops and were able to stretch the second night's meal into leftovers on a third night. If you eat light, make side dishes, or start with more than eight pork chops (or larger pork chops) you can feed more people, or have leftover pork chops before you move on to the "carnitas" tacos. You also can make a two-for-one meal by roasting pork according to your favorite pork roast recipe, then using the taco recipe here.

Spicy Pork Chops with apricots

8 pork chops

2 teaspoon each ground cumin seed, coriander and ginger

1 tablespoon olive oil

3/4 cup slivered dried apricots

3/4 cup orange juice

Mix the spices and coat each pork chop with the mixture

Heat the olive oil in a 12" skillet. Fry four of the chops for five to seven minutes on each side. They need to be not just brown on both sides but in the middle too. If you fry them on too high of heat they will not be moist on the sides, or they will not be done in the middle. The thicker they are, the lower the heat needs to be.

Meanwhile, in a saucepan, combine the apricots and orange juice. Bring to boil, then simmer for about five minutes. You will have a thin syrup. Remove the pork chops, and place four them on up to four plates. Leave the pork chop fat in the pan, and mix in the juice/apricot mixture. Boil for one minute, then pour it over the plated pork chops.

Do not wash or rinse the pan before moving onto Step 1 of the next recipe. You will be refrigerating the four remaining pork chops after they're cooked unless you plan to eat both dishes at the same meal.

Orange carnitas

Fry the four remaining pork chops. You can grate some orange peel or add a little more cumin. You can also add orange juice to the pan if you wish, or more olive oil.

Slice the cooled pork chops.

Slice a small onion and fry them in olive oil until translucent.

Add the sliced onions and pork chops to a can of black beans and 3/4 cup of orange juice. Boil the mixture until the pork chops are fully heated, and the entire mixture is the desired consistency.

Place the mixture into up to eight warmed tortillas.

Add toppings. I added green onions, salsa, cheddar cheese, sour cream and radishes. Lettuce, carrots and black olives - whatever you like on tacos - would be good.

Can this become a well-read food blog?

I apologize to any faithful followers (if there are any left) for how much I have neglected this blog. Maybe about a year ago or more, I had high hopes this blog would become something of a more professional blog. If I am going to make it as a well-known niche blogger, I expect it to be this niche blog (my food blog) because I actually have more expertise in cooking than I do in paper crafting (the main focus of my other blog.)

However, for the last 10 years (this month) I have been very involved in TwoPeasinabucket.com, which is one of the largest online communities for scrapbookers. I have been a scrapbooker for 12 years. So, in my (too much) leisure time, I spend a lot of time online with other scrapbookers, learning, growing in my expertise, and sharing what I know with others. That sharing is primarily through Two Peas, and now Facebook groups for two art journaling communities I belong to. But it is also somewhat through the other blog. Which means that blog is the one that is getting attention, while this one is neglected.

I had been meaning to come here for several days, because this blog is still my go to place for when I create an original recipe and need to store it somewhere where I won't lose it. If it were not my original recipe, that place would be Pinterest for online recipes, and my "cookbook organizer" for those recipes I saw in one of my cookbooks. But this recipe I will be posting (next entry now) is for a combination of two cookbook recipes. I have to put "see my blog" in the cookbook organizer.

Today, I am toying again with what it would take to make this blog into something that pays money. I realize I probably won't become a celebrity blogger, but I think I have some REAL friends who could be persuaded that this is the blog they want to read. And I think if I work hard at it, I can make it good enough that they will tell their friends. So here's to my new dream of being a food blogger.