The Staff of Life

Bread of some description has been eaten by almost every culture everywhere since the dawn of time. Your grandmother almost certainly baked bread, and her grandmother, and hers before her, and on and on. So why don't we?

I think a lot of people are under the impression that making bread is difficult, that it requires expensive equipment, that it's messy and tedious, that it takes hours of work, and that it's just not worth all that time and effort. All those things couldn't be further from the truth.

The reality is that baking bread does take a bit of practice, yes, but the learning curve is short and even "failures" are cheap and never catastrophic (as opposed to experimenting with, say, pastry or a crown roast or deep-frying). And the end result is bread that's better than any you could buy, for a small fraction of the cost.

Let me give you a couple of examples. My cocodrillo bread recipe makes two enormous, craggy loaves that could be sold next to the $6 artisanal rosemary sourdough boules in any swanky bakery in America. It's beautiful, complex, and delicious. It requires just minutes of hands-on time and costs well under a dollar per loaf to make. Or, even simpler, the honey-whole-wheat bread I made last weekend, which runs in the 40-50 cents per loaf range and makes for a great everyday bread.

Both recipes will soon be available at MET, but in the meantime, why not set yourself a bread goal? Even if you don't swear off buying bread altogether like I have, you could start out baking every other weekend and see how you like it. Or you could make all your sandwich bread at home. Or make it your goal to master one kind of bread per month -- whole wheat this month, oatmeal bread next month, pumpernickel the month after that, and so on.

Give it a try!

Grapefruit Marmalade

A couple of days ago, I succumbed to the Bargain Sirens' song and came home from the grocery store with an 18 pound bag of grapefruit for $5.00. I'll probably eat a few of them with breakfasts the next couple of weeks, but most of them are going to become marmalade. If I buy ten pounds of sugar and use ten pounds of grapefruit, I'll end up with maybe 20 pints of marmalade that'll last a couple of years on the shelf. Waste not, want not! If you live in Louisville, you may end up with one of those jars!

Here's the recipe... or as close to a recipe as I can get.

1. Wash, then thinly slice or chop grapefruit, removing seeds
2. Boil in 1/2 gallon water for ten minutes, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 40 minutes
3. Return to a boil, add sugar, and boil until the mixture reaches 222 degrees Fahrenheit, about 15-20 minutes.
4. Ladle into jars and hot-water process for ten minutes. Let sit undisturbed for at least 12 hours, then check for a good seal. Wash and label sealed jars and store in a cool, dark place for up to two years. Unsealed jars should go into the refrigerator and be eaten on homemade bread as frequently as possible.

Kitchen Keeping Tips #5 -- Waste Not, Want Not

I just finished reading a long thread on the Chowhound boards about culinary gems that usually get thrown away. It was a great reminder to me to return to my blog and continue the Kitchen Keeping series with a post about using everything in your kitchen.

To me, frugality is, in large part, about stewardship. My desire is to make the best possible use of the things I buy, so when I shop, I think in terms of how I can use up every item, true -- but throwing food away is not the only issue! Anyone on a budget hates throwing away food. My previous posts on planning and shopping can help you cut down on (or even eliminate) food waste.

But what if you were discarding stuff that you thought of as trash, but that wound up actually being a highly valuable asset to your cooking? Here is a list of things I never throw away:

1. Stale or old bread. Dried out bread (or heels or crusts) should be ground and stored in a bag or canister in the freezer. You can dry it out in a low oven for easier grinding. Dozens of uses: as filler/binder in meatballs, as a crispy coating for any meat, as a thickening agent in soups, etc.

2. Vegetable scraps. Carrot ends, celery leaves, parsley stems, and onion and garlic skins go into my stock bag to be either made into a delicious veggie stock or added to chicken scraps to make a rich chicken stock. If you're just making a veggie stock, you can add any other kind of veggie scraps you have on hand. I wouldn't add potato peels, but other than that, the sky's the limit. Also, re-think what "scraps" are. Don't toss radish tops, use them like you would any other green. Don't throw away broccoli stems, peel them and thinly slice or shred to add to stir fries or salads.

3. Bones. Seriously, if you roast a chicken or use bone-in chicken parts or have a ham with a bone or beef or pork ribs or anything else with a bone in it, for the love of flavorful cooking, do NOT throw those things away!! Even if you don't have the time to use it right away, at least put it in the freezer and mark your calendar. If you have beef or pork bones, toss them in a vegetable soup to add richness (not to mention nutrition!). If you have chicken bones or a whole carcass, throw that in a pot with your veggie scraps (along with skin and, if you're lucky and you have a good chicken, the neck and innards), cover with water and simmer for a few hours, and you'll have the most delicious stock you ever tasted! If you have a ham bone, put it into a pot with any kind of beans, some carrot and onion, and let it simmer all day. You'll be amazed at how much flavor you can get from something most of us would just throw out.

4. Cereal. Almost any kind of cereal can be used to make muffins, and there are dozens of good recipes online. Yesterday I made honey-walnut-banana muffins because I had a couple cups of Kashi cereal sitting around, four black bananas in my freezer, and a few tablespoons of walnuts languishing in a bowl on my counter. Something I would have otherwise pitched out became my breakfasts for this week AND next week!

5. Milk. People: ignore, forget about, and reject the date on your milk carton, ok? The milk I put in my tea on Friday was three and a half weeks past the date, and it was just as sweet and fresh as the day I bought it. Here is the trick: every time you get milk out of the fridge, give it a quick shake before you put it back. It will last a good month past the date on the carton, easily. And if you forget to shake it for a few days and the last of the jug goes sour, bake something. Sour milk is perfect for biscuits, scones, cakes, pancakes, even homemade bread.

Next up: a fun new project...

Garden 102 -- Planning

Look. I'm just going to go ahead and put this out there: in my opinion, the REASON you have a garden is for TOMATOES. Period. If you have other stuff, great. But you could be a legitimate, passionate gardener and grow nothing but fifteen varieties of tomatoes.

It could have something to do with how I was raised -- I remember as a child walking through a veritable jungle of seven-foot-high tomato plants by the dozen, suckering or watering or spraying blossom-set, filling five-gallon buckets with gorgeous Romas and Brandywines. Tomatoes were always the main crop for my parents, and they still are!

But ultimately, you have to decide what your family will eat, not just this summer when your determinate 'maters are all turning red at once, but into the fall. What will you preserve? How can you take advantage of limited space to make the most impact and extend your harvest into next summer?

For those in need of specifics, here's what I would plant if I were feeding a small family (mom, dad, two or three kids) from a 15' x 20' plot, with plans to can, freeze, etc. in the autumn:

at least ten tomato plants, including at least 5 sauce-type tomatoes (Roma, San Marzano, etc.), a few different heirloom varieties for slicing (Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, etc.), and one or two (at the most!) cherry or grape tomatoes for eating out of hand (Sweet 100s or a similar variety). It sounds like a lot, but if you're planning on preserving, having this much crop will keep you in canned tomatoes until next year, which is the goal, right?

a half-row or a full row of green beans. I prefer pole beans over bush beans, because they're more vertical and thus easier to harvest from. Good for baby food.

a half-row or a full row of peas of any variety. English peas also make good baby food.

a half-row of zucchini. Zucchini does not preserve well, although it is good chopped or shredded in pasta sauce, which you'll make from your sauce tomatoes. It's also EXTREMELY prolific!

a half-row or full row of cucumbers. I like English or seedless cukes. These only keep if you pickle them! The large ones at summer's end can be used to make cinnamon pickles, which sound very strange but taste a bit like candied apple rings. They're delicious!

several hard or winter squashes. Pumpkin, butternut squash, acorn squash, etc. all keep very well in dry, cool, dark places and make great baby food. These can be trained against a fence or planted in the back of a flower bed if you prop a trellis against your house! Try to keep them out of your normal gardening space, because they take up quite a bit of room and take a LOOOOONG time to mature.

a half-dozen or so pepper plants. More if you're planning on doing hot peppers (chillis) for salsa as well as sweet peppers (capsicums) for eating. If you plant both sweet and hot peppers, for the love of your blessed tastebuds, PLANT THEM ON OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE GARDEN. Most of you have probably never experienced the delight of biting into a bell pepper that was as hot as a jalapeno. It's called cross-pollination, people, and I'll never forget THAT science lesson ever again.

eating greens like lettuce and spinach, plus "cooking greens" like chard (silverbeet), collards, or kale. Do several plantings of these -- plant a yard or two early in the season, again two or three weeks later, again after another two or three weeks, etc. This will keep you supplied with greens all season long rather than having a single huge harvest.

root vegetables: carrots, onions, turnips, garlic, and radishes.

herbs: basil (LOTS), chives, parsley, rosemary, thyme.

flowers. No, really! Flowers encourage bees, which encourage pollination! But be strategic. Marigolds are great at keeping away bugs, so I'd plant those for sure.

If I had more space, I'd add: broccoli, eggplant, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and melons. Actually, I'd probably just add more tomatoes... but that's just me.

If I knew I'd be in the same house awhile, I'd also add rhubarb, a rare perennial in the bunch.

Garden 101 -- The Basics

I assume you've already decided you'd like to garden. This is a great decision -- it'll save you money while you save the planet. You can't get more locavore than eating out of your own garden!

So, what do you need?

Dirt. (Ahem. "That's soil," my grandfather would say right now. "Dirt's what's under your fingernails.") Preferably the highest, sunniest spot in your yard. Full or nearly full sun is extremely important. Big containers (don't buy, scrounge) on your patio, balcony, or deck will also work. Turn or till this dirt a few weeks before the official "frost-free" date for your area, working in soil amendments (like compost, peat moss, or other rich organic matter). Turn or till again shortly before you plant to aerate the soil so the new plants can root deeply.

Seeds. You can buy plants, too, but seeds are MUCH more economical. If you live in the Northern Hemisphere and haven't bought seeds yet, get to it! You'll need to start seeds indoors very soon in order to get them in the dirt... er, soil in time to produce well over the summer.

A plan. Ah, now here's where it can get tricky. Winter is the time when gardeners plot and scheme, and the winter is already half gone! You'll need a basic idea of three things: what grows in your area, what you want to grow, how much space you have. Once you have that figured out, check out the upcoming "Garden 102" and "Garden 103" for more planning advice.

That's it! Simple, right? Once you have dirt, I mean soil, seeds, and a plan, move on to Garden 102.

Welcome to MadEnough Tips!

Hey all, I decided to start a new blog to cover specific tips, recipes, strategies, and other stuff that would either take up too much room on my main blog or would be too specific to have a broad appeal. You know, I have to think about the masses of readers out there, right?

Check back regularly for gardening advice, canning tips, recipes, and much more.

Love y'all!

Laura

Kitchen Keeping Tips #4 -- Making the Most of Your Pantry (Pantry Philosophy Edition!)

What is a pantry, and what goes in it? Why should you have a well-stocked pantry?

Your pantry is any storage area in or adjacent to your kitchen where you keep dry goods (like rice, pasta, beans, grains, flour, etc.), canned goods, and other nonperishables. For the purposes of this post, your freezer counts as part of your food storage. If you have a deep freeze, that counts, too.

In the past, I've given a pantry list, along with ten pantry-only recipes and a 30-day menu plan, as shower gifts for brides-to-be. I figure it's incredibly practical. How many times have you come home, hungry and exhausted, from your family vacation, only to be greeted by an empty fridge? And if your schedule looks anything like mine, there are times when you literally have no time to grocery shop. A well-stocked pantry will get you through those moments with minimal stress.

Think about a steaming bowl of spicy, savory pasta puttanesca. Or a rich, comforting risotto. Or Cuban red beans and rice. Or a quick vegetarian black bean chili, served over creamy polenta. You can make all of these things in thirty minutes or less, with only ingredients you have in your pantry, if you stock it according to the list in the previous post.

But just how do you do that without breaking the bank?

It's simple. Make a list like the pantry list below of all the items you do not have, and keep it with your shopping bags (you do use cloth shopping bags, don't you?) or in your purse. Each time you go to the grocery store, pick up one or two of the items, or more if you can find them on sale. You're going to be saving money by using my shopping plan anyway, so you'll be well able to afford those few extra items -- and they're cheap items!

The next time you're in the neighborhood of an ethnic grocery (there are Indian, Korean, and Mexican groceries close to me, so that's where I go), pick up some of those ingredients as well. Indian groceries are a fantastic source for cheap spices, lentils, and basmati rice. Mexican groceries often have canned and dried beans that are much more reasonably priced than a regular grocery store. An Asian market is obviously the best place to buy your everyday rice, and is a surprisingly reliable source for fresh, unique produce.

If you're a meat-eater and own a deep freeze, look into sourcing meat directly from local producers. If you put half a beef or a whole pig -- butchered and custom cut, of course -- into your freezer once a year (almost always at a dramatically lower price per pound than comparable meat at the grocery store), you can keep eating the meat you enjoy while saving literally hundreds per year.

Now, how much to buy? The answer to that involves three considerations: how much money can you save by buying in bulk, how much space do you have, and how quickly will you go through pantry items?

I have a very small kitchen, and all of my pantry items are in one standard sized cupboard and one small cupboard above my stove. Plus, I'm cooking for one most of the time. So buying beans or rice or flour in fifty-pound sacks isn't practical for me. I don't have any place to put that amount of food, and there's no way I could get through it all before it got bugs or went rancid and I had to throw it away, which negates any savings I could get by buying such large amounts.

But let's say you have six kids, your house has a root cellar, and you bake all your own bread and eat rice and beans twice a week. For you, buying rice and beans and flour in fifty-pound sacks would probably be a great plan, and the best use of your money!

Here are some good rules of thumb for determining how much to buy:

1. Buy as much of the product (rice, pasta, beans, flour, etc.) as you can store, in the largest package possible. It's more economical to buy staple foods in large quantities than small, not to mention the environmental benefit of reducing packaging materials.
2. Balance that with how much you can use before the item gets rancid (a consideration with whole grains and nuts), attracts bugs, loses potency or flavor (as with baking powder, herbs and spices, tea and coffee, etc.), or gets freezer burn in the case of your "freezer pantry."
3. Plan. I cannot over-emphasize this. PLAN to use each item in turn as you plan your meals. Focus your meal plans on your pantry stocks rather than on meat -- in other words, if you use a flex-plan like I outlined in my Shopping post, plan to have rice one day a week and pair it with a meat that was on sale at the grocery this week (or go meatless and do rice and beans!). Another day, have pasta with another meat that was on sale (or, again, go meatless). Have a meal that puts a homemade bread at the center, like pizza, crusty bread with soup, or hot sandwiches.

Whew! That was a LOT of info, but I hope it was helpful!