Queercents

One of the challenges of sticking to a food budget is that you sometimes get in a food rut. It’s really easy to budget if you buy the same things each week – especially if you’re a solo homo. But it can also get boring. I mean, how many times can you eat chili, spaghetti, and nachos? One of the dangers with getting into a food rut is that you’ll start eating out to overcome the boredom, and then there goes the food budget.

My mother-in-law gave me a great idea for getting out of a food rut. In an attempt to eat healthier, she has vowed to eat one new vegetable a week. I think it’s a great idea that could be applied to food budgeting. It’s also a way to successfully move to a more vegan/vegetarian diet. If you introduce one new vegetable a week and try a recipe to go along with it, and then rotate it into your menu planning, you could eventually dig yourself out of that food rut.

This week my new ingredient is tomatillos. We’ve been getting them in our CSA basket for the past few weeks. I honestly had no idea what to do with them, and I hate to let food go to waste, so I did a little research. Tomatillos belong to the nightshade family and are related to tomatoes. They have a tangy flavor to them, and they are a staple of Mexican cooking. One of the easiest recipes I found was for Salsa Verde, but you can use tomatillos in a variety of ways. (For more suggestions, click here.) Read the rest of this entry »

It’s summer time, so it’s not surprising that most people carry around bottled water as if it were a pacifier. I live in the desert. Water is a must. But I ditched individual bottles of water a long time ago and made the switch to reusable bottles as a way to stretch my food dollar. The cost of individual bottles adds up quickly, and all those plastic bottles have a negative impact on the environment. I understand that people distrust tap water, but a reusable filter like a Brita pitcher or a Pur faucet filter work just great.

Roland tipped me off to the latest bottled water trend. Apparently, a town in Australia has banned bottled water altogether.

Residents of Bundanoon cheered after their near-unanimous approval of the measure at a town meeting Wednesday. It was the second blow to Australia’s beverage industry in one day: Hours earlier, the New South Wales state premier banned all state departments and agencies from buying bottled water, calling it a waste of money and natural resources . . .

Over the past few years, at least 60 cities in the United States and a handful of others in Canada and the United Kingdom have agreed to stop spending taxpayer dollars on bottled water, which is often consumed during city meetings, said Deborah Lapidus, organizer of Corporate Accountability International’s “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign in the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »

A new shopping trend is sweeping the nation – grocery auctions. By purchasing groceries at an auction, consumers could save 40%-90% on their groceries. Some of the people in the ABC story said that they managed to get great bargains by knowing the store price of an item and keeping their bids below that ceiling. Most of the bidders said that the quality of the food is just as good as what you would find in the store – but that the cans or boxes might have a dent, or the fruit might be bruised. However, bidders in an MSNBC story said that they would even be willing to buy food that was beyond the sell by date in order to get a bargain. Some attendees say that there’s even a social benefit to the grocery auction:

They also often need a respite from grocery shopping’s drudgery. Scouring the supermarket for all the items on your list is not much fun. You may get pumped shopping for shoes and new shirts, but who relishes the chance to buy relish? Sure, you can bid on frozen chicken pot pie over the eBay, but that’s a pretty lonely endeavor. At the very least, these auctions offer another social outlet in tough times. “It’s a fun experience,” says Randy Zimmerman, a mother of seven from Holt. “We goof around with the auctioneers. People are having conversations throughout the auction — it’s a real chance to meet new people.” (Source: Time Magazine)

Read the rest of this entry »

OK, don’t laugh, ya’ll.  But I love me some dollar store action.  I like going in for cleaning supplies, toilet paper, holiday stocking stuffers, and even grocery items.  You’d be surprised at what you could find at the dollar store that will help you stretch your food dollar.

Pantry staples are easy to find at the dollar store. You can get canned veggies, beans, tuna fish, canned fruit, juice, spices, and cooking oil. You can even get those gourmet delicacies – ramen noodles. Some dollar stores carry fresh produce, and some even have dairy. The only thing that makes me hesitate about getting milk or butter at the dollar store is that sometimes the products are really close to the expiration date by the time they hit the shelves. But you’d be checking the dates on the package at the supermarket anyway, right?

Here’s a little game – think of it as a scavenger hunt. Limit yourself to $10 and then head to the dollar store. See if you can put together 2-3 menus with just $10. Then let us know what you cooked up for your dollar store dinner. We’d love to hear what you found.

Summer’s officially here. Aside from seasonal fruit, summer means it’s zucchini season. And if you live in a community where people grow their own gardens, you’re probably up to your eyeballs in homegrown zucchini. Or perhaps you keep seeing it for ridiculously low prices at the supermarket. Either way, what do you do with this cylindrical green vegetable?

Zucchini bread is always an option. I, however, and a very firm believer that vegetables don’t belong anywhere near my baked goods. This goes for pumpkins in pie, zucchinis in bread, and it most definitely applies to rhubarb. Yuck! But I’m an open minded person. And I understand a person’s need to get their bake on. So here’s a recipe from the Food Network that I think you’ll enjoy. It’s got chocolate chips, which may actually outweigh the impacts of putting vegetables in baked goods.

Another possibility is zucchini au gratin. It’s got less carbs that potatoes au gratin, but it’s definitely high in fat. That means it’s delicious! I modified a recipe from the Food Network. I hope you love it as much as I do. It would pair well with pork chops and peach cobbler. I mean heck – if you’re gonna heat up the kitchen anyway, may as well get a two-fer out of the deal. Read the rest of this entry »

The Fourth of July is right around the corner. That means it’s time to light up the grill. And does it honestly get any more lesbi-licious than a dyke standing over a grill? I don’t think so! We’ve actually been firing up the grill since the beginning of May. Pretty much all of our dinners are cooked outside these days because it’s just too damn hot to turn on an oven or stand over a pot at the stove.

Here are some of my favorite vegetarian recipes for the grill. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Grilled Corn on the Cob
Ears of corn
Butter
Parmesan cheese Read the rest of this entry »

I love strawberries. Seriously. When I go to the farmers’ market and see the strawberry lady who drives all the way from Oxnard, CA every week, I want to marry her and have her strawberry babies. OK, not really. Oh wait, yes I do!

Strawberries are particularly cheap this time of year. You could get a whole flat of these red beauties at the grocery store for pennies. But how will you use up all that fruit before it starts to rot? I mean, a girl can only eat so many pieces of strawberry shortcake, right?

One way to use up the fruit is to slice it all up, put it in a mixing bowl, sprinkle it with a little sugar, then bag it up in quart-sized storage bags. Label it with the date, then stack these in the freezer. You could also do this with peaches, blueberries, or raspberries. Just be sure to rotate these out of the freezer before they get freezer burn, and you’ll have fruit for smoothies, fruit salads, and sangria.

Homemade jam is another way to utilize seasonal fruit. Read the rest of this entry »

Summer is here! We’ve been really lucky that so far the summer seems to be pretty mild here in Arizona. We can actually enjoy our dinner out in the arbor, and it’s not already 100 degrees at 10:00 AM. Our garden is really going bananas, and we’re already up to our ears in tomatoes and zucchini. Our watermelon vines are about to take over the yard. And pretty soon we’re going to have our own homegrown corn. Summer doesn’t get much better than this.

One of the greatest things about summer is fruit. If you don’t have your own fruit trees, you’re bound to get amazing deals on peaches, strawberries, blueberries, and everything else under the sun just by taking a stroll through your local farmers’ market. Here is one of my favorite summertime recipes that utilizes seasonal fruit.

Blueberry Peach Cobbler – Get ready for a party in your mouth!
Filling
2 1/2 pounds ripe but firm peaches (6-7 medium)
1 cup fresh blueberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cornstarch
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 tsp cinnamon
Pinch salt Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s edition of Stretch Your Food Dollar is about to depart from the usual format. I’m not offering shopping tips or recipes this week. Instead, I want to ask our readers a question that was spurred by an IM conversation I was having yesterday with a friend. My friend is a grad student who is slaving away for less than pennies to finish up her dissertation. When I asked her how she was doing, she said “OK, just struggling to put food on the table.” She admitted that she went to the food bank earlier in the week to get groceries, but then said she felt there were people who were more deserving of the assistance. I told her she was a starving student who is woefully overworked and woefully underpaid. If she’s not one of the “deserving poor,” then who is?

Our culture is permeated with a Puritan work ethic that deems the poor to be “lazy” and “undeserving.” But here’s the rub – people are loosing their jobs by the thousands and home foreclosure rates continue to rise. Our homeless shelters are over capacity, and it’s not because people are on the street due to laziness. They’re full because people have lost their homes, despite their best efforts to keep a roof over their head. Anyone who has been following Alex’s Financial Implosion series probably has a good idea that a lot of people are on the brink of homelessness due to forces entirely out of their hands.

So here’s my question for Queercents’ readers. If you’re having a hard time stretching your food dollar, are you willing to go to the local food bank for assistance? Or do you feel like other people are more “deserving” of aid? How “poor” do you have to be in order to be “worthy” of a helping hand?

Eating on a tight budget is nothing new for Queercents readers. We’re all trying to stretch that food dollar. Author Jerry Kolber is really taking that challenge to the extreme. In his new book $3 Dinner, Kolber shares recipes and shopping tips to help you make 30 dinners for under $3 a piece. The majority of the recipes feature organic ingredients, because Kolber says, “I was getting tired of seeing everyone talking about organic this, and healthy that, and all from this mildly elitist perspective that organic somehow equals luxury. Organic food is what we used to just call food, and it should be readily available to everyone without having to spend $20 on a book and tons of money on ingredients.”

I caught up with Jerry last week to ask him about the book. Here’s what he had to say:

1. You say that “organic food” used to just be called “food,” and that you shouldn’t have to spend a ton of money to eat healthy. I couldn’t agree more. But what tips do you have for people who don’t have a farmers’ market they can go to for cheap produce?
Cheap organic produce is definitely the hardest thing to come by in some parts of the country, especially where there are not plentiful farmers’ markets or organic selections at grocery stores. Besides farmers’ markets, I suggest looking into Community Supported Agriculture, in which a number of city dwellers pool their resources to receive weekly delivery of fresh, local, organic produce from a small local farm. It not only gets you cheap produce, it supports the farmer. This week – a LIGHT early season week – I received 4 heads of lettuce, 3 pounds of greens, fresh herbs, bok choy, and assorted other produce, at about 50% of the price of a farmers’ market. If you don’t have a CSA, you can start one. Another option is a food co-op. You can check out both of these at www.localharvest.org. Read the rest of this entry »