For the Love of Food

This was a very delicious meal, but, unfortunately, not as filling as I would have hoped – I really needed to use more potatoes than I did to make this work as a meal that doesn’t leave us hungry next time.
Shopping list:
1kg Potatoes from Marktkauf: €0,70
300grams Feta from my local butcher: €4,50
250grams Tzatziki (homemade – see recipe in “Eating Greek on a Food Stamp Diet”) : €0,27
Oregano,Salt and Pepper: €0,25
Olive Oil: €0,50
Recipe:
I boiled the potatoes with the skin on in a large pot of water until they were tender. I then drained the water and let them cool. I heated up 2 tablespoons of olive oil in my cast iron casserole dish. I added the potatoes and seasonings and stirred every once in a while until the potatoes were golden. I crumbled feta on top and them mixed it again to let the feta slightly melt.
Serve with tzatziki sauce!
Cost:
€1,56/serving

These ribs really came out excellent. They’re really simple and can be made at home in the oven.
Shopping list:
2 pieces of döner bread split in half from my local Turkish market: €0,40
1kg Ribs from my local butcher: €2,95
100 grams of Tomato paste from Norma: €0,18
Salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, fructose to taste: estimated at about €0,25
1/4 a teaspoon of liquid smoke (got it as a gift from the US, so I have no idea what it would cost): estimated at €0,25
1 alcohol free beer (1/2L) from Marktkauf: €0,65
1 regular beer (1/2L) from Marktkauf: €0,50
Serving:
1/2 a piece of toasted döner bread (€0,10), 250grams of ribs with homemade bbq sauce (€0,91)
Cost:
€1,01/serving + plus one €0,65 alcohol-free beer for myself and one €0,50 beer for my husband (1/2L)
Recipe:
I am still tweaking this recipe, so this is the jist of it:
I mixed the tomato paste with water and the seasonings and brushed it on the ribs right before broiling. Then, as the ribs were broiling, I brushed them every 10 minutes after baking for 20 minutes. For a total time of 1 hour.

I’d like to welcome you all to the first installment of Taste&Create (T&C).

What it’s all about: community, sharing, tasting, and blogging.

This is a gathering point for the food-blogger community to come and have their recipes tested by their peers.
How you can T&C:

1. Leave a COMMENT by August 28th, 2007, and include:
• your name
• the name of your blog
• your blog’s address
2. I will email you by September 1st with your partner’s info.
3. You will:
• Browse through your partner’s yummy blog entries, and pick out one dish that looks really interesting to you
• Create the dish you’ve chosen
• Taste it and tell us what you think (aka – blog about it)!
• Don’t forget you have to include a photo – so snap away!
4. Email your entry by September 16th, 2007 with
• your name
• the name of your blog
• the name of the dish you created and a permalink to the original recipe on your partner’s blog
• your permalink
• sum up the dish in 1 phrase
• send your emails to: myamii@rezimo.com
5. In your post please include a link to this post and/or include the T&C logo, so we can get the word out and have others join in the fun.
6. Your personal blog entry doesn’t have to be in English, but please make sure that your “summed up phrase” is.

This was a really easy meal to make. I could have saved more money by buying the schnitzel un-breaded and breading it myself, but I had enough money, and the butcher always does a much better job than I do.
Shopping list:
1 Cup of Rice from my local asian store: €0,24 (cooked in water)
450grams of Schnitzel from my local butcher: €5,81
1/2 a cup of Oil for frying: €0,07
Green beans are from my garden: €0, I don’t know what they would cost at the open air market
Recipe:
I cooked my 1 cup of dried rice in water according to this recipe.
I heated up the oil and fried the schnitzel in it for about 10 minutes on each side.
I steamed the green beans for about 5 minutes.
Cost:
€1,53 a serving

So, as promised, now that I’m back from vacation, I am going to share my food stamp recipes and shopping lists/prices with you as well as any “tips & tricks” I can think of.
For breakfast I kept things simple with oatmeal.
I never liked oatmeal as a child b/c my mom always cooked it in water and it was just so plain and “goopy”. Now that I can’t eat sugar, that eliminates every boxed cereal that I’ve come across so far (even cornflakes have sugar!!), so I have moved to eating cold oatmeal with cold milk and, occasionally, strawberries when our plants produce enough at one time.
My husband doesn’t eat breakfast…how he manages to make it all the way to noon time without eating is just beyond my comprehension, so i just have to worry about myself for breakfasts.
Shopping list:
-I need 1 500gram package of oatmeal for myself in 1 week as well as less than 2 liters of milk.
-500 grams of oatmeal at my local Norma cost: €0,29
-1 Liter of milk at my local Lidl cost: €0,55
-1/2 Cup of strawberries (for the week) cost: €0,00 from my garden and would have cost about €0,63 at the Open air market
Serving:
My serving consists of 71 grams of oatmeal (€0,04), 243 mL (1 Cup) of Milk (€0,13), and some strawberries.
Cost:
So, that brings my serving to €0,17 or €0,26 if you buy strawberries instead of growing your own.

So, for the first time ever, I have been tagged by another blogger!! I am so excited! Arianne from Kitchen Shenanigans has asked me to post 8 random facts about myself. Thanks Arianne for finding me and tagging me! I am then supposed to tag 8 other bloggers (see rules bellow!).
So, let’s see, what can I come up with?? What do you not already know about me? Quite a lot, I suspect!

1. All the products in my refrigerator, pantry, and on my counter top have the labels facing out – I have to know what is in each bottle. It really drives me up the wall when I open the refrigerator and find a jar of jam facing the wrong direction. Yes, we only have 2 jars of jam in the refrigerator, so it’s not too difficult to know what it is, but, for me, it’s a matter of principle.

2. I played soccer for 12 years and loved every last minute of it!

3. I am obsessed with drawing floor plans of homes. I wanted to be an architect until I took geometry…let’s just say math isn’t my strong point…. In fact, I have tons of home/floorplan drawings I keep in a folder. I plan on starting a new blog about them…so keep your eyes open!

4. My husband and I have been living in our apartment while renovating it for almost 3 years now…and it’s really wearing on my nerves! It started off only needing to have the windows replaced (by someone else), the wall paper taken down (by us), and new laminate flooring layed down (by us). Then…the plaster started too fall off of the walls with the wall paper…and we realized that the electrical needed re-doing, and we needed new doors of an un-standardized size, and the bathroom needed to be ripped out, and, and, and…we are almost done..honestly.

5. I’m a Linux user…don’t get me started on Windows or Apple…especially Apple… I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux for about a year now, but have been a Linux user since 2003.

6. I’ve driven – yes, driven – a subway, street car (tram), bus (an accordion bus!), and a dump truck with a trailer attached to it (making it as long as a tractor trailer truck)! My favorite of them all?? Subway driving…so peaceful – and, man, can those things go fast!

7. I was vegetarian for 2 years. What happened? I moved somewhere where I can buy meat from farmers that treat there animals respectfully, don’t feed them unnecessary products (like hormones or antibiotics), and don’t add preservatives or colorings to the meat once it’s been processed.

8. I like to paint!

Tag – You’re It!:

1. MattBites
2. The Meatwave
3. What’s For Lunch Honey?
4. the beet goes on
5. Cream Puffs in Venice
6. everybody likes sandwiches
7. Kitchen Wench
8. Sweetnicks

Here are the rules:
Each participant posts 8 random facts about themselves. At the end of the post, eight more bloggers are tagged. Go to their blog and leave a comment telling them they’re tagged!

Each spring I meander down to my local open air market and buy myself a basil plant. I replant it, water it, and enjoy the many delicious meals that it livens-up. Yet, every summer it would flower and then slowly stop producing leaves until the stem hardens and the plant eventually dies and it’s back to dried basil until next spring.

While my mother-in-law was here, she shared a great tip with me about plants in general: when they go to seed, they have completed their genetic duty and can die happily.

What does this mean?

Well, “to go to seed” a plant need to flower and produce seeds (at least most plants do). So, to keep it from thinking it’s has no need to live anymore, just snip off the flowers and it will keep producing more delicious foliage until winter’s frost comes! And, the snipped flowering basil tips makes a really great and quite fragrant centerpiece!