Black Bean, Corn, & Pineapple Pasta Salad

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I’m in serious clean out the pantry mode right now.  The same way that I’m sure I’m going to challenge myself to a serious closet sifting process once I do end up moving (which may not be in the too distant future — I made an offer on a house yesterday!), just the thought of packing up my house and transporting it is making me want to completely evacuate my freezer and pantry.  Which, if you’ll recall, is no small feat.

So I’m challenging myself with this weird game of taking one item each week out of both the freezer and pantry, and playing my own little version of Iron Chef with it.

This week yielded a yogurt container full of corn that I froze from last summer, and a can of pineapple.

What could possibly marry these two items?  Black beans, FTW.

Luckily this thought occurred to me early enough in the day to get these puppies soaking for a few hours, so that all I had to do when I got home from a crazy day of errands and appointments and house-hunting was boil them up and toss them around with a few other ingredients.

Understandably, the eight-month-old corn was looking a little sad, so I sauteed it in my new skillet until it was a little caramelized, and then supplemented it with some fresh kernels off of an early summer ear of corn that I incidentally had drifting around in my veggie drawer.

This salad really can’t get much simpler.  I cooked up a cup of elbow macaroni, opened the can of pineapple, and tossed this all together with some olive oil, red wine vinegar, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, and the last little bit of jalapeno that I saved from some chili vodka I’ve been infusing this week for a fancy-pants cocktail party my friend Kate is throwing on Saturday.

Oh, and then threw in a handful of soy Bacos at the end for a little bit of a smokey flavor.

A quick dinner before biking back down to the Southeast for an evening campfire at a friend’s house, plus lunches for the rest of the week!


This Week’s Groceries

New Seasons 5/28 (on June’s grocery bill)

  • Jalapeno kettle chips: $2.00
  • Mango juice: $3.99
  • 2 dozen eggs: $5.78 — I’m in charge of the breakfast casseroles for Kate’s cocktail/sleepover party this weekend
  • Hazelnut half & half: $2.99
  • Cottage cheese: $2.69
  • Kale: $2.49
  • Carrots: $2.06
  • Red cabbage: $4.87
  • Green cabbage: $1.96
  • Red onion: $1.04
  • Free range roaster chicken: $15.33
  • Yellow onions: $1.99
  • Jalapenos: $2.50 — All of the following were destined infusing chili vodka for spicy mango-cucumber martinis on Saturday!
  • Red chiles: $1.90
  • Habanero chiles: $0.90
  • Horseradish root: $0.45

TOTAL: $52.94

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $97.06

 

 

 

 


Soba Noodles with Peanut Sauce and Snow Peas

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Tuesday I found myself in need of a potluck offering in a pinch.  See, about five months ago, nine of my friends and I bought tickets to see Roger Waters perform The Wall, live at the Rose Garden.  It was one of those things that was so far out in the future, we kind of all forgot about it and went about our lives all spring.

But then all of a sudden, here we were at May 22, and it was go time.  Playing event coordinator while I drove back from a relaxing weekend visiting Jesse at his job site in Hood River, baked some fresh bread, got my house in gear for the week, and took a quick house-hunting tour around Southeast, I manifested a plan that involved a quick potluck dinner & drinks at our friends’ new house that they just bought and moved into.

I was really aiming for low impact here — not just because I’d already pretty much hit my grocery budget for the month, but because this week has been so jam-packed I literally didn’t think I had a window of time to even swing by New Seasons on my way to grab the fixings for a cheese board, my go-to easy potluck contribution.

No, this was one of those times I’d have to really get creative with my cupboards and come up with a contribution that was 100% already in my kitchen, including some humble cocktail fixings that I’d culled from the odds and ends of bottles from my bar and stray single cans of all-natural soda to use as mixers.

And proudly, I realized as I took an initial survey of my freezer and pantry, I could totally pull off a hearty, summery soba noodle salad without setting foot outside my house.

Drawing my inspiration (and the peanut sauce recipe) from this salad, I pulled out the blender.

As usual, Deb has concocted the perfect balance of sweet, tangy, refreshing, and delicious, so I didn’t do a single thing to change this dressing.  I just threw all of the following into the blender, and hit “go” until all the ingredients were perfectly smooth and incorporated:

  • 1/2 cup peanut butter
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/3 cup warm water
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
  • 1 chopped garlic clove
  • 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
  • 1.5 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • a squirt of Sriracha


I love how cheap these packages of soba noodles are at Fubonn, and so I buy them by the handful whenever I’m there.  Today, I cooked up a full 12 oz. package.  The peas and TJ’s tofu edamame nuggets were my freezer finds, that would round out the body of the salad.

I only had about five of these nuggets left, so I fried them up in the skillet, along with about half the bag of frozen peas.  I chopped the nuggets into little pieces, stirred these into the salad along with a couple of chopped scallions, and poured the dressing over it all, stirring it in until all noodles were coated.


This whole meal took about 25 minutes to make, and after chilling in the fridge for a few hours before heading over to Andrea & Teran’s, made for the perfect pre-show dinner.


This Week’s Groceries

Fred Meyer 5/31

  • Newman’s Alfredo sauce: $2.59
  • Green onions: $0.50
  • Zucchini: $0.55
  • Seafood medley: $3.99 you guessed right, seafood mushroom Alfredo!  I missed out on having this with Jesse up at the cabin (we oversnacked on smoked salmon and crackers too late in the afternoon) so I decided to make it for myself when I got back to town
  • Sliced mushrooms: $1.89
  • Sugar: $2.29

TOTAL: $11.81

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: -$5.77 — Oops!  Got pretty darn close but I did go a little bit over.  I’ll start off next month with a $6 deficit.


Breakfast Spinach Egg Cups

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I have two different breakfast moods.  Sometimes my body just craves something really light and healthy feeling, like yogurt with granola and a sliced banana, or Raisin Bran with walnuts and almond milk.  This is about half the time.  The other half, I finish Workday #1 (enjoying my coffee while I transcribe for a couple of hours before Workday #2) really craving some serious protein, like eggs or cottage cheese or something like that.

And I do let myself indulge in that when I need to, because usually my body tells me these things for a reason.  But making and eating an egg in the morning adds like at least 10 minutes to my routine (plus a dirty pan that I’ll have to clean later…for a single egg?).  Whenever I hear myself say that out loud I always have to stop and be like, really?  You can’t spare an extra 10 minutes from anywhere else to make this happen?  But the answer is, seriously, no.  I run 3 businesses, write two blogs, send out 4 newsletters a week to a cumulative 5,000+ customers, bike for transportation, work out three times a week, have social engagements almost every night, and am in a relationship with someone I don’t live with.  So no, there really is not an extra 10 minutes to spare.

So, here’s one of my newfound favorite quickie breakfasts, which has entered my life by way of the ramekin, a recent addition to my kitchen.

Frying an egg to put on toast is time consuming and needs more of a watchful eye than I can afford while I’m getting ready (though, admittedly, I am fortunate that my bedroom is nearly in the kitchen and I really can multi-task these two parts of my morning); add some sort of vegetable into this and it’s turned into a full-fledged cooking endeavor.  But baking an egg?  Whoa…things just got efficient.

I start with a handful of spinach, and toss it with a little bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Put this into the bottom of a ramekin (no worries if it seems like it’s filled to the brim; this will cook down easily), and crack an egg over top.  Grate a little bit of sharp cheddar on top…

And put it in the oven at 350 along with two slices of homemade bread (this week: rosemary jalapeno!).

How long does it take to bake?  Exactly as long as it takes me to shower and put on clothes (14 minutes).  That way, I pull it out of the oven, and it feels like someone else just made breakfast for me.  Plus, because I can get fresh local eggs for less than $3/dozen, and make my bread from scratch each week, the total cost of this meal probably amounts to somewhere around 75 cents!


This Week’s Groceries

Trader Joe’s 5/14

  • 1/2 gallon milk: $3.29
  • Mayonnaise: $3.99
  • Whole wheat fusilli pasta: $1.39
  • Red pepper spread: $2.29
  • Sharp cheddar cheese: $3.13
  • Cottage cheese: $1.99
  • Olive oil: $5.99
  • Crumbled feta: $2.99
  • Pear champagne salad dressing: $2.99 — I usually am a die-hard homemade dressing advocate, but this is going to be so great to keep in my fridge at work so in the mornings all I have to do is put all the salad ingredients together in a Tupperware with some sort of protein for a easy healthy work lunch

TOTAL: $28.05

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $31.21

 

New Seasons 5/15

  • Whole wheat couscous: $4.31
  • Pinto beans: $2.33
  • Chickpeas: $2.30
  • Granola: $2.63
  • Cucumber: $0.99
  • Celery: $3.22
  • Garnet yams: $1.31
  • Corn: $0.99
  • Sweet onion: $0.97
  • Shallot: $0.72
  • Radish bunch: $1.49
  • Salad greens: $3.15
  • Roma tomatoes: $0.86

TOTAL: $25.17

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $6.04


Chicken Soft Tacos with Buttermilk Cilantro Slaw

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Tuesday I had one of those days where I feel like I’m living someone else’s life.  I spent all day doing things that my schedule doesn’t usually consist of — things like going to yoga, and meeting with an SEO consultant, and then driving to Beaverton to meet my real estate agent for the first time(!).

 

All these things have been creeping into my life slowly, like a few weeks ago when my friend Erika texted me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to join her at this yoga class she goes to every week at the gym we share, but never cross paths at.  It was my first time ever doing yoga (am I the last person on the planet?  Or at least in Portland?), and admittedly, it does feel pretty zen.  I don’t think it’s zen in the way that yoga is supposed to make you feel zen though, because I’d much rather bask in the 1,000 things zooming through my mind than clear it, and I’m pretty bad at remembering to breathe in my daily life as it is, so it’s not the meditative aspect of it that appeals to me.  Honestly, I just really love being sore the next day, which I have been all three weeks that I’ve gone.  No, the zen I get from it is the weird kick in the pants of, for the rest of the day, thinking, I am one of those people who goes to yoga at 10:15 on Tuesday mornings.  I ordered my own mat yesterday on Amazon, NBD.

And the SEO thing, that’s been in the works for awhile.  It’s one of the perks (or in my opinion, most awesomely exciting aspect) of this 8-month business class series that I landed a scholarship for through the SBDC, which essentially grants me free access to all of these rad consultants through the organization, everything from accountants to inventory management specialists to all sorts of other helpful one-on-one consulting for my business.  But still, it feels really exciting to have a totally free hour-long meeting right in the middle of my Tuesday afternoon to breeze in and work on some exciting projects we have in the works for the online shop and migrating the Yarnia blog over to CustomYarn.com.

And then — a real estate agent!  Because I’m buying a house!  This was the cherry on top that really made me have to stop and be like…WTF, who am I?  How did I end up in this person’s sunny, 70-degree Tuesday?  We talked about what I’m looking for in a dream house, all the factors that need to be there from the get-go, and what can be amended after the fact, and then I drove back to Portland in horrible Tuesday afternoon traffic (is this what everyone’s been talking about?) while I finished my iced Americano and listened to hard rock really loud.

And in between all that, I found the perfect little window to swing by New Seasons and pick up groceries for the week.  I had these shrimp tacos on the brain — an easy, leftover-friendly dinner that I could whip up for me and Jesse without much effort, since my “day off” of appointments and errands left me working on that day’s transcription until almost 7:00 p.m. once I got home.

I didn’t actually go for the shrimp — they had some at New Seasons, but I also had a few portions worth of roasted shredded chicken in the freezer, and I’m in super-frugal mode these days, saving up for a down payment, and the shrimp seemed like an unnecessary luxury this week.

I threw these into the skillet and defosted them on medium-high heat with about a cup of homemade chicken stock.  Once the stock had melted and the chicken had started to break apart, I added some cayenne pepper, salt, cumin seeds, and about a cup of V8 to the mix, and let it all simmer for about 45 minutes, adding more V8 as the stock cooked down and absorbed.

I wanted to bulk up the protein part of this meal so I’d have a couple days of lunches left over, so I also made some of my favorite black beans; I’d started a cup of these soaking earlier that morning.

These get fresh water, and boil on medium-high heat for a good hour, along with a big dried ancho chile, cumin seeds, salt, nutritional yeast, and a bit of brown sugar.

Once the beans are soft enough to eat, I start thickening the broth with some corn starch.  Here’s what I do to avoid the gross clumps that form when you just sprinkle corn starch or flour in: take a little cupful of the broth, and mix a spoonful of corn starch into just that small amount, using a fork against the sides to work out any of the clumps that may form.

This will make a pretty thick, creamed-up-coffee-colored concoction.  Then pour that back into the pot, give it a stir, and it will work its thickening magic evenly and without clumps!

I like doing this way more than straining the beans, because as the sauce continues to reduce and thicken, you’ll be left with a delicious, flavorful, syrupy pot of black beans with the consistency of Boston baked beans, but waaaaay healthier!  These are so yummy I could eat them just by themselves with some brown rice and pico de gallo and be perfectly content.

But, I also like to outdo myself.

So in addition to this, I whipped up a delicious multicolored buttermilk slaw to accompany the tacos with a fresh, spicy crunch.

I bought not one but two heads of cabbage for the occasion (and hey, cabbage is cheap and lasts forever in the fridge), and chopped up enough to fill the bowl.

I shook up a little buttermilk dressing in a jar, consisting of mayo, buttermilk, cayenne pepper, white vinegar, a little white sugar, and salt, and tossed it all together.

Then I added half a chopped jalapeno, and about half a bunch of chopped cilantro, and stuck it back in the fridge to mingle for a bit until dinner was ready — this also included warmed corn tortillas, some red-and-brown rice, sliced avocado with lime, and fresh pico de gallo.

Dinner was so delicious, in fact, that I completely spaced on taking pictures, but here’s the lunch I’ve been enjoying these past few sunny days at work as leftovers — heated up in my makeshift double-boiler, and wrapped up in warm corn tortillas.  Delish.


This Week’s Groceries

New Seasons 5/8

  • Corn tortillas: $1.49
  • Cayenne pepper: $0.90
  • Buttermilk: $1.79
  • Dozen eggs: $2.89
  • Pico de gallo: $2.99
  • Spinach: $3.50
  • Green cabbage: $2.07
  • Red cabbage: $3.74
  • Cauliflower: $4.67 — for cauliflower leek soup later this week!
  • Limes: $0.38
  • Avocado: $1.50
  • Bunch cilantro: $1.49
  • Leeks: $3.23
  • Jalapeno: $0.35

TOTAL: $30.94

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $59.26


Simple Lentil Stew with Couscous and Sauteed Asparagus

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I think the coming months will involve a lot of beans.  Why, you ask? Well, here’s the thing. I want to buy a house. Like a real, actual house. And it’s not going to be a total fixer-upper, and I’m going to do it all by myself. So even though my grocery budget it obviously one of the facets of my life that’s already super frugal and monitored by a watchful eye, I feel like I’m on a mission now, with this semi-arbitrary timeline I’ve concocted, of having a new house to move into by the end of the summer. (Yay for arbitrary timlines! Remember Yarnia’s grand opening?! Totally arbitrary.)

So even though I don’t actually plan on paring my food budget down below six dollars a day, I do feel like I’m entering into this more extreme version of frugality in the rest of my life — curbing the blase Amazon Prime purchases (free shipping can turn a rational person insane), really buttoning down going out (i.e. burritos instead of brewery sandwiches, cashing in on all my Groupons, and making better use of my flask when we go out to shows) — which just sort of makes me feel like I should also be eating beans and rice for most of my meals, so that I can eke out enough money within the next five months for a serious down payment.

Lucky for me, beans are awesome and I know how to cook them. I didn’t even really have to buy that many groceries this week — most of my haul was replacing staples that I’d run out of and needed to wait for my monthly budget to replenish, like an expensive jar of tahini, grains and spices from the bulk aisle, and coconut oil, as air popped popcorn with this magical ingredient has become somehwat of a nightly ritual for me.

In fact, this entire meal was concocted out of what I already had in my fridge, starting with a chopped onion, a few sliced carrots, and some minced garlic.

That got sauteed up over medium-high heat (in my new cast iron skillet!  LOVE!).  After about ten minutes, when everything was nice and shiny and translucent, I added a cup of dried grey lentils, a cup of homemade chicken broth, a few teaspoons of curry powder, two teaspoons of salt, and a few big glugs of V8 juice.

This is my new favorite way to make tomato broth.  I used to try to keep tomato paste on hand, but could never make use of it (or remember it was there, since tomato paste is packaged in ludicrously small quantities that allow it to get nestled in the back of my fridge), before it got moldy.  Canned diced tomatoes can be awesome when you want some texture in your dish, but sometimes the aluminum taste of canned food makes me nauseous.

But a few weeks ago when I was making some crock pot collard green rolls, I found a recipe that called for the rolls to be submerged in V8, which led me to purchase my very first bottle of the stuff — a huge, 2-liter bottle that seems to keep in the fridge for (so far) at least a month, and is comprised of nothing but yummy tomato-and-other-veggie juices.  I think I’ve found my perfect solution to the tomato base problem.

The lentil stew now gets covered, and simmers for about 45 minutes, while you make the couscous.  And then do whatever you want for 43 minutes, because couscous is the easiest grain you could choose to accompany a stew.

I wanted to have some leftovers, so I poured two cups of water into the pot, along with two teaspoons of my Penzeys Tandoori seasoning, a teaspoon of salt, a handful of raisins, and some pine nuts, and brought this all to a boil.  As soon as it had reached a boil, I added two cups of whole wheat couscous, gave it a stir, removed it from the heat, and let it sit with the lid on for five minutes before fluffing with a fork.

While I was doing all this, Jesse was busy making some stuffed mushrooms that we were prepping ahead of time for a dinner party at our friend’s house this Thursday night (and of course, a bunch of extra ones that we got to eat ourselves tonight, so we wouldn’t be anxiously hoarding them at the party).

These stuffed mushrooms — which I’m warning you, will disappear instantly — feature a perfect harmony of spinach, feta, and onion.

Leave it to a carpenter to be able to dice an onion smaller than I'd ever have patience for. What can I say? The man has precision.

 

Oh…and bacon.

And what’s great about these stuffed mushrooms is that you actually don’t chop up the stems and add them to the stuffing, they’re just discarded…which in our case meant halved, and sauteed up with some fresh, local, on-sale asparagus in garlic butter and fresh ground salt and pepper.

Quite a meal, if I do say so myself.  I’ve been doing yummy, crunchy vegetable salads at work all week, with hard boiled eggs and alfalfa sprouts, all wrapped up in some multigrain tortillas.  So that means I get to save my leftovers for at least 2 dinners this week.  So between that, our dinner party on Thursday, and a memorial for our friend on Friday (in which there will be copious amounts of food as usual, if I know anything about this crew of friends, as well as rumors of 100 delicious wings donated by what was our friend’s favorite restaurant, Fire On The Mountain), I think I’m pretty well set for this week.  T minus five months.  Let the games begin!


This Week’s Groceries

New Seasons 5/1

  • Coconut oil: $6.99
  • Tahini: $8.99
  • Yellow popcorn: $2.51
  • Whole allspice: $2.10
  • Cardamom cinnamon tea: $4.84
  • Mango Ceylon tea: $2.50
  • Nutritional yeast (small flake): $2.97
  • Almond flour: $4.15 — I’m still not done trying to make gluten-free crackers!
  • Soy Bacos: $0.88 — I love putting these in my salad dressings
  • Neufchatel cheese: $2.39 — For the stuffed mushrooms
  • Half gallon milk: $3.39
  • Half & Half: $2.29
  • Plain yogurt: $2.99
  • Mixed greens: $3.50
  • Cucumber: $0.99
  • Asparagus: $3.10
  • Bunch radishes: $1.49
  • Yellow onion: $0.94
  • Shallots: $1.20
  • Garlic: $0.96
  • Ginger: $0.63

TOTAL: $59.80

REMAINING FOR THE MONTH: $90.20


How did the rest of my Project: Food Budget-ers do?