Chili con veggies

Tip of the day: Keep the price down on a meaty dish by adding a lot of vegetables.

Starting this week, I'll be once again embarking on the journey that is full-time employment, which will mean coming home to make dinner at the end of a long day of work. I'll also be faced —for a little while, anyway — with the challenge of being between paychecks, which happens to follow a non-paid vacation. Will this drive me in the direction of cheap, boxed convenience food for the next couple of weeks? Not a chance.

Take tonight's chili, for instance. Most people will tell you that chili is either beans or meat and beans. And that's it, they'll say: anything else is sacrilege. But when you're broke — or don't really feel like just eating a big bowl of meat — adding veggies can really give you more bang for your buck, both nutritionally and wallet-wise. You'll still get your spiced ground beef, but you'll also be able to make a larger amount of the dish with less of it. The added vegetables will also add a lot of flavor.

I often feel like I'm preaching to the choir with tips like this. My readers (all four of you) are either vegetarian or understand and embrace the value of fresh produce. You are not the target audience of V8's most recent ad campaign, which promises two servings of fruits and vegetables in their juice to those who "just don't like the taste of vegetables." But I want to continue to emphasize the value of vegetables in a healthy, frugal, seasonal and organic, not-from-a-box diet — in case it's not already obvious that it's the cornerstone of the way I eat and the way I would like to see everyone eat! And in case you happen to be a reader who hasn't been won over quite yet.

One of the highlights of this chili is that it's a fairly quick and easy dish to throw together. After doing the prep work of chopping the veggies and browning the meat, it cooks mostly unattended. It's also cheap — and that's even if, like me, you're using some grass-fed meat from happy cows, which can sometimes be pricey. Furthermore, it lends itself nicely to doubling or even tripling, to use as lunches later in the week or to freeze for future occasions.



Chili con veggies
serves 2

1/2 lb ground beef, preferably grass-fed
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1 or 2 carrots, diced
1 large clove garlic (about 1 tbsp), minced
1 tomato (about 1/2 c), chopped
1 (14 oz) can kidney beans
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
salt and pepper, to taste

In a large pot or skillet, brown the ground beef. In a separate pan with a little olive oil, saute the onion, bell pepper, carrots, and garlic. When the beef is done, add the vegetables, along with the tomato, beans (and liquid), and the spices. Stir and bring to a simmer over medium-low heat. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15-25 minutes. (The longer it cooks, the more the flavors develop.) Serve with lime wedges, plain yogurt or sour cream, or your favorite chili toppings.

And vegetarians, it goes without saying that you can swap out the meat for more beans. Try pinto or black.


cost:
grass-fed ground beef - $3.00
organic onion - $0.50
organic bell pepper - $0.55
organic carrots - $0.25
organic garlic and tomato - from the garden
can of organic beans - $1.09
spices - I buy in bulk, so the small amounts needed for this recipe are very inexpensive, as well as difficult to calculate

total: $5.39 (without spices)
per serving: $2.70

Cellophane noodles with sunflower sprouts and egg

Tip of the day: Learn to cook.

This may seem like obvious advice, being that this is a cooking blog, but I don't just mean be able to read a recipe and put all the ingredients together to make a meal. I mean really get to know your food. Learn what goes with what — which herb goes well in what sort of dish, which sauce can go on which pasta, what flavors taste amazing with other flavors. Learn cooking times and cooking methods until what you're doing in the kitchen when preparing a meal is almost entirely automatic. Doing this can really help when you've got an odd assortment of food in your fridge or your cupboards are feeling practically bare — it'll save you the expense of going out to eat!

The dish pictured above was made up entirely out of my head. No recipe, other than the vague memory of recipes that inspired the final outcome. I've had some leftover mung bean noodles sitting in the fridge for about a week, and it was high time I got around to using them up. I'd originally used the noodles to make pancit, a Filipino noodle dish, but I hadn't been entirely happy with the results. (It's hard to get food to taste just like your mom's!) So I wanted to try something new.

The noodles were a little firm from being in the fridge for so long, so I refreshed them with some boiling water. Then I stir-fried them in a pan to cook off any remaining water. I mixed up a sauce that I normally use to dress stir-fried asparagus or long beans, from Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, which involves oyster sauce, patis (fish sauce), and sugar. I didn't measure — I just added different amounts till it tasted good. After removing the noodles from the pan, I threw in some sunflower sprouts and wilted them with the sauce. I added that to the noodles, but then decided there weren't enough greens in there, so I just dumped what little was leftover of the sprouts, uncooked, and mixed them in.

Something seemed missing. One of my favorite breakfast foods is a bowl of rice with a fried egg on top, sprinkled with a little oyster sauce. An fried egg seemed like the perfect topping for this very simple, light noodle dish.

It was really good. 

I've been doing a lot of cooking like this lately: taking whatever I've got around the kitchen and throwing it all together to make something delicious. I'll write more in the future about the kinds of things I've been whipping up, so that you can learn to do this, too.

Bulk up

Tip of the day: Buy in bulk.

I may not have to tell you that the bulk aisle is a great place to save money while buying organic. Taking a little extra time to scoop out your own dry goods means you buy only what you need, which can result in a lower grocery bill. If you reuse your bags, it also cuts down on packaging. Plus, there are all sorts of interesting things in the bulk aisle that you may have never thought to try before, from different kinds of beans and grains to a wide range of dried fruits to vegan gummy bears — and again, because you get to choose how much you buy, you can test run a serving or two instead of immediately committing to an entire box of something you might not like.

I love the bulk section for spices. Don't let the price on the container scare you. It might say $12.45/pound of whole peppercorns, but are you planning on buying an entire pound? This past weekend, I bought "0.11 lb" (according to my receipt) of organic peppercorns for $1.37, which filled up my pepper grinder with more to spare. If bought prepackaged in a jar, 2.65 ounces can cost as much as $14. My favorite spice to buy in bulk is whole nutmeg — which gives you better flavor when you grate it yourself, rather than using already-ground. Two organic nutmeg seeds, at $17.99/pound, cost me a grand total of eighteen cents.

Buying in bulk means you need to have places to store all these goodies. Leaving them in their plastic bags is an option, if you plan to use up the contents quickly. I would recommend getting some plastic, glass, or ceramic containers, which will last longer, keep your foods fresher (and sealed away from pests), and free up the plastic bags to be reused on your next shopping trip. Buying containers can be a little costly, depending on where you buy them and what they're made of, but it's an up-front investment that will serve to benefit you and your wallet over time. Alternatively, you can also reuse jars from spaghetti sauce (if you're not making your own yet!) or mayonnaise, although they won't be big enough to hold items you'll want to have large amounts of, like flour or sugar.

But you don't have to take my word for it:
• Buying from the Bulk Bin Saves More Than Just Money, from Eat.Drink.Better.
• Save Some Money in the Bulk Aisle, from Let's Be Green Together
• Bulk Food: A Simple Way to Save, from The Co-op Food Store