March 5, 2014
The last time I made a chili, it was turkey chili and an unmitigated disaster. Five years later, I’m ready to get back on that horse and modified a Michael Symon pork recipe. Five bowls later? SUCCESS.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon chili pepper
1 tablespoon sweet smoked paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2.5 pounds pork, small cubes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound slab bacon, cut into ½-inch dice
1 onion, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 jalapeno chilies, seeded and very finely chopped
2 red bell peppers, cored, seeded and finely diced
1 12 ounce bottle amber ale or porter
2 cups Chicken Stock
28-ounces canned diced tomatoes with juice
1 can tomato paste
Garnishes:
Shredded cheddar cheese,
Sliced scallions, white and green parts,
Diced red onions
Directions
In a large bowl, combine the red chili, paprika and cumin and toss with the pork; season with salt and pepper.
In a large enameled cast-iron Dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over medium-high heat. Add half of the pork and cook, turning as needed, until browned on all sides, about 8 minutes. Transfer the pork to a plate. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil and brown the remaining pork. Transfer to the plate. Add the bacon to the pot and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until browned and slightly crisp, about 7 minutes. Add the onion, garlic, jalapenos and bell peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes.
In the crockpot, combine the pork, any accumulated juices, vegetables, ale, chicken stock, tomato paste, and tomatoes and set to low heat for 2.5 hours.
If the chili is more watery than you prefer, mix a tablespoon of flour with some of the chili juices in a separate bowl until it’s smooth, and add to the chili.
Notes
The original recipe was all stovetop but I needed the greater capacity of the crockpot. Our Dutch oven is too small!
And next time, I’ll try adding some ground pork, either substituting 1/3 of the regular pork cubes or just adding it to the pork cubes. I bet that would reduce the need for thickening.
Cost: Reasonable
10 servings for approximately $10.
I used the 2-lb chunk of pork shoulder I’d frozen from the last sale at $1.49/lb. Whenever we go to the Asian market, I try and pick up some bulk meat at a reasonable price for experiments like this. If they didn’t turn out, I didn’t waste too much money which would tick me off.
Other staples:
Canned tomatoes, Target price is $1/can or less. Bacon, the regular stuff is cheapest from Costco. I crave the amazing Zingermann’s applewood smoked bacon but it’s basically like drugs: we can’t afford a Zingerman’s lifestyle. But it’s soooo good.
Vegetables, from the produce market any combination of 5-lbs of produce tends to average $0.75/lb. It’s awesome.
Chicken stock, homemade. Delicious.
Spices, we have these on hand but good grief, they’re expensive on refill.
January 15, 2013
Our food spending this year was astronomical.
That is, in some ways, surprising.
I eat a lot less than before. No stress eating either. You’d think that’d reduce food costs somewhat but it really didn’t matter: PiC more than makes up for my here again, gone again appetite. While I skip meals when flying solo, being with him means at least one meal will happen a day. And if I’m Chef, even if I’m not hungry, I’m still compelled to make a real meal. Maybe to avoid the judgment when it’s looking like the five KitKats and a mini Snickers bar style dinner but also because cooking’s therapeutic. Besides, for someone that loves every single thing I try my hand at, even the things I think suck? Who would mind?
Anyway, the point is: this year’s food budget? Mostly for two people? Was, in a word: dammmnnn.
We spent nearly the exact same amount on Groceries as on Eating Out. Groceries included frozen meals, convenience foods, snack foods, fresh food, canned food.
With so many 12-14 hour days, there was just no time or energy to do fancy or creative meals on the weekdays. Instead, we’d make up big meals on weekends, freeze portions for later, experimented with new “quick” recipes. Not all of the experiments were successful, not in my opinion, but I evidently married a man who’d eat anything I make. Super helpful when you have a complex about food waste!
The ugliest pot pie ever. But it sure was tasty…
When I cook, I do a fair amount from scratch. Lots revolves around chicken, the affordable protein we love. I make stew, pot pies, roast our own chickens, and once every several months, put up chicken broth. We try different grains in bulk, and avoid red meat*. All of this nets pretty minor savings, but I enjoy the cooking and we both like simple healthy meals at home. Bonus: It keeps my roasting skills polished. No horrific dried out turkey for Thanksgiving for us, my favorite meal of the year. Can you imagine ruining 20 lbs of turkey?
*I love steak but have an irrational fear of ruining it so I refuse to cook it. PiC does not love it like I do.
Double roasting. The honey cooks faster and make it look like it’s burnt but it’s just extra delicious, extra crispy skin. I’m loving the new roasting pan.
We had convenience and frozen foods as patches for no-cooking days, and traveling weekends when no cooking would happen. Pretty sure we also paid for groceries for other people on occasion. That’d be included in here. Couponing is an as-and-when activity instead of a weekly past-time.
Eating Out included: fine dining, treating friends to meals or snacks or anything food, special occasion meals, casual dining, fast food, drinks.
For day to day life, where we used to have a cap on the number of times we’d eat out or order in, this year has been rough enough that I finally just stopped fussing about sticking to an artificial number. Yes, it’s more expensive, yes, it’s not always the healthy choice and no, I’m not going to sweat it. Bottom line, we needed to eat, our working weekdays were far too long some days to do anything but come home and forage, and we could afford it.
A deconstructed kebab from Tuba Restaurant. We get to try new fancy-ish stuff in the city when visitors come to town!
Food, all kinds of it, both “high-end” and the remarkably pedestrian stuff we enjoy, was a spending priority for us, a clear trade of money for time or mental health, clocking in at about $6500.
It’ll be interesting to see this coming year’s spending. I have more opportunity to make time to cook on weeknights now, and if we eat out, it’s on weekends instead. Will it balance out or stay the same?
December 20, 2010
After some months in which PiC was so over-generous in treating his family that I cannot even write down the numbers here, PiC and I are well into our new quest to keep our grocery and eating out bills down to an almost unimaginable $400/month.
Much like 444 Express, we’re making an effort to go through the foods in our cabinets, and I’ve been keeping certain staples in stock for our new go-to recipes that are delicious, versatile and last a heck of a long time.
I adapted this Full-Bodied Tomato Soup from Not Quite Nigella, tripling the garlic because we loooove garlic. Dropping the meatballs keeps the cost down to about $5 per large pot of six or ten servings and we really didn’t notice any difference. We did add a half cup of orzo to the last batch and it took over the entire soup like a mad mutation. By the third bowl, it was just a pasta dish. I’m not sure we should do that again.
I’m sort of considering adding some of our 99 cent per box tofu to the next serving, just to see if it’s weird or if it works. Thoughts? In original form, the soup was excellent by itself or as a side to my constant stream of cheese quesadillas. Mmm….
Managing to continually rotate a menu that includes fresh produce without wasting food due to spoilage is tougher than it should be with modern conveniences, but between a busy work schedule and my inherent laziness about eating balanced meals if I’m tired, I admit to failing more often than not of late. Still, we’re fighting the good fight, and the more new recipes I find, the more interested and invested I can be in the process.
December 19, 2010
Apparently, the only bakeware in this place is a cookie sheet and pie tin. This fact never fails to surprise me when I desperately need a slice of cake or cupcakes. Thank goodness for the pie tin, though, it’s a fair enough substitute vessel for the following simple lemon cake recipe I stole off the internet (Yahoo Answers). It’s not a pretty picture but it fits the silliness of cake in a pie tin:
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, well beaten
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup sugar
Mix together sugar and butter.
Add eggs and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice; mix well.
Add salt, flour, and baking powder to mixture.
Add milk.
Bake at 325°F in a well greased loaf pan for 1 hour or until golden brown.
Mix 1/3 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup sugar.
Use a toothpick to poke holes in top of cake and drizzle lemon juice and sugar mixture over the top of the cake when removed from the oven.
Serve warm or cool.
Baked in a pie tin, it only took 37 minutes to reach perfection and another ten minutes of cooling while soaking in the lemon&sugar mixture. We ate half of it immediately. #pigs
It’s strange how little things like finally having enough staples on hand to bake something from scratch, despite flailing for a thing to bake it in, makes this place feel a little bit more like a home to me.
It’ll be a year in April, and it still feels like I’m a stranger in a foreign land, most days.
August 22, 2010
There will be no more waste.
Life’s been rather chaotic with the odd unexpected meal out, travel that comes up faster than expected, and a few weeks of poor meal timing led to a day when fridge clear-up was more than throwing out scraps gone off before we could eat them. We’re blessed with good food and the good fortune of never wondering where our next meal is coming from, I can’t stomach the thought of taking that for granted and wasting any more food through carelessness.
We’re now being much more careful about eating up leftovers within a day or two and stretching the ends of each batch of food creatively, not just by starting up a whole new meal.
There’s a chicken roasting in the oven now only because it was defrosted before weekend and before we brought home unexpected bounty from a BBQ on Saturday. The rest of this week, we’ll polish off the fresh roast bird and broccoli slaw mix, a variant on Smitten Kitchen’s recipe.
I’m planning more creative meals as well, to stoke appetites and make eating as fun as it used to be when we experimented more.
On the grocery front, I spent $50 today, stocking up on sale fish, which PiC is this very moment dealing out into smaller portions and freezing for later. I’m dating everything that goes into the freezer so we can easily rotate protein into the meal plans regularly. We also now have what would be a year’s supply of cereal, if he weren’t such a cereal glutton, for PiC, plenty of frozen veggies for the end of the week when we tend to run out of fresh, and a back-up chicken for roasting. We’re set for the next few weeks in a way that won’t have us throwing out heaps of wilted or food gone off.
Well-Heeled asked me a while back how I managed home-cooking so often but it was down to better planning and dedicating most of at least one weekend day to cooking more than any special Suzy Homemaker ability.
I’m also very lucky to have PiC who is generally fully capable and willing to do the Costco and other grocery runs with or without me, sous chefs happily, and puts up with any number of odd kitchen stocking requests. A full partner is invaluable in managing a kitchen and household!
August 3, 2010
If you’re not in the mood for something super savory, or don’t have time to cook up a full meal, I’ve put together a quick and easy recipe that only takes about twenty minutes from concept to sitting down at the table. No photos this time because the pasta never makes it to the table in time for a photo shoot!
Pick your pasta: I love mezze penne and I love al dente: 7-9 minutes.
1/2 c sweet peas: 3 minutes or less in the microwave. I use frozen peas with pearl onions. The steam in a bag type is a total cheat, but they still taste quite good.
1/2 tomato, diced
2 handfuls of finely shredded cheese per bowl.
Olive oil
After cooking the pasta, toss with some olive oil, the peas, and half the tomatoes. While the pasta’s still hot, start adding the shredded cheese so that it gets webby, but add with a light hand. I’m normally the kind to pile on cheese like there’s no tomorrow but this dish is best with just enough cheese to bind the pasta lightly. Top with the remaining diced tomatoes and serve.
I’m pretty sure this pasta would be great with asparagus as well, but I almost always have peas on hand and asparagus has been selling for $3/lb these days.
Next time, I’ll finely dice mozzarella with fresh basil to top the pasta as a caprese salad garnish.
June 14, 2010
If I could carry a tune, I’d be singing the praises of this, the Corningware Simply Lite 3-quart dish and cover.
I alluded to my medical/physical condition in this post, but didn’t elaborate because I don’t want this to become a whine-fest. It might be helpful to know that fatigue, joint pain, muscle pain are all major players and are all chronic, now they’ve figured into my life for over a dozen years.
It’s become pretty severe. I can’t hold up a pot half filled with water with one hand, lift two five pound roasting birds out of the oven. Heck, some days, opening the beknighted refrigerator doors causes pain to spike into my shoulder. My cake and cupcake bake-a-thons are definitely a thing of the past. And this from the girl who once prided herself on doing anything her big brother could do, physically.
The biggest immediate effect it has on my financial life is aside from popping way more pain meds than I’m happy about, now that I’m cooking and cleaning every day, in other words, really running my own household, I need everything to be as light, durable and low maintenance as possible. It’s amazing how easily I forget my limits and cook too long, wash too many dishes during the course of cooking or clean-up and cause excruciating, emanating pain that doesn’t subside for hours. Days, even.
I refuse to let this prevent me from making my lasagna!
The hunt was on for the durable cookware, piece by piece, without breaking the bank or straining my joints. On that odd shopping trip to Target where I didn’t find much of anything else, we discovered Corningware’s Simply Lite line. Every other dish was already too heavy for me to handle, empty. By darn if the casserole dish in the size I wanted didn’t feel like holding a stack of paper plates. Perfect!
Unfortunately, Target wanted $27.99 for it. I couldn’t bring myself to shell out that much cash, so I thought: Macy’s sales+ coupons + gift card? Except a quick iPhone search listed the sale price as $36.95. Even worse. The lightbulb finally clicked on and I realized that if it was available on Amazon, I might find a better price, use my Swagbucks earned Amazon GCs, AND get the goods delivered within a couple days. Win, win, win, and WIN. The last win being getting what I want.
I’m sharing the link in case anyone might want to experience the wonder for themselves.
