Cheap Eaten

[pepperhead212]

I used up just over a pound of mizuna, today, that I harvested from the hydroponics last night. Here's an example, though there was a lot more this time!
Mizuna from hydroponics 1-6-2020 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

This was based on Indian dishes I've seen with ground up spinach as the liquid base. Here, I jammed the mustard greens into a plastic bowl, added a little water, covered, and nuked it for 3 minutes. I then uncovered it, let it cool some, put in the vita-mix, added 5 c water, and blended a few minutes, while getting other things ready, and it was totally smooth.

In the IP, I sautéed some onion in some ghee for a few minutes, then added the garlic, and 2 types of sambar mix, and cooked 1 more minute. Then I added the purée, rinsed the VM out with some more water, and added that. Then I added 1 c toor dal, ½ c masoor dal, and ½ c red quinoa. Salted it, then I pressure cooked it for 8 min., and let it reduce 15 min. Then I made the tarka, stirred it in, and simmered 5 more minutes. Here's the leftovers:
A sambar made with puréed mizuna. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

[peebee]

Hey Worth I tried baking corn tortillas like you said & they came out super crispy, so easy. I'd looked online for other recipes & they say to spray with oil or bake @ 400 degrees. You said old torts were better & the date on the package was late Nov last year. Smelled & touched them, they were fine no mold & I'm still alive.

[brownrexx]

Last night was chicken Marsala, mashed sweet potatoes and cole slaw. I have never made mashed sweet potatoes before but I had half of a cooked potato left over from making that sweet potato pie 2 days ago so I added butter and milk and mashed it. It was pretty good.

20200131_172137 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

[arnorrian]

Serbian (vegan) baked beans.

[worth1]

I made a very nice wee little beef, potato, onion, mushroom soup thing with a small leftover piece of New York Strip steak about the size of a deck of cards maybe a little bigger.
Cooked the baby sliced portobello mushrooms in butter for just a wee bit and put them in right before serving.
I can't stand over cooked shrunken mushrooms.
Also made a roux for it.
Smallest soup I have ever made in my life.

[worth1]

Here it is.

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[imp]

arnorrian those beans look yummy, what all is in there? Pretty picture, too, lots of colors.

[arnorrian]

Traditional ingredients in there are large white kidney beans, yellow onion, leak, vegetable oil, ground and whole pepper, sweet paprika, bay leaf, salt, garlic, MSG/salt/dried vegetable mix. I also added some hot sauce and some chili relish.

[worth1]

Nice 22 ounce bone in beef rib eye with a little smoked salt and olive oil ready for a pre heated cast iron skillet.
Cost $10.00.
Sides will be super deluxe mashed potatoes English peas and mushrooms & onions.
And as always gravy.

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[bower]

Tasty looking stew there Worth.
I just resized a few pics of my recent cheap eatens...
Decided to try prep for chinese dish with the boneless chicken breast they sell in bulk - about $7-8 for five when on special. I usually use this for lemon pepper chicken but ended up with extra packs of it and need another recipe for variety.
So I chopped up all the chicken in one pack, and sauted with ginger, garlic and cayenne to 'just done' stage.
The original recipe, you do the (briefly marinated) meat first, then the vegetables, and finally add the meat back in just before the sauce. So I reckoned, why not prep the meat, freeze portions, and add it frozen to the vegs made anew. Time will tell if this works well and doesn't toughen up, I have not yet tested. Of course I finished the dish and ate some right away. Have cashews, they were great in it and really tender.

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I also picked up some mussel meat on special - two packs for $10 and that is a lot of meat per pk. Never had this product before but getting desperate because I can't get fresh mussels in shell at this supermarket any more. So I tried it out in a pasta sauce. Still getting a lot of mileage out of that package of sweet peppers! Parsely and baby leeks from the greenhouse snow cave.

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[MissS]

Both of those look fantastic Bower. I have never seen a package of mussel meat before.

[imp]

I haven't seen mussel meat down here either.

Aldi's had chicken wings on sale, so made some lightly breaded chicken wings fried in lard. Came out good. Tried some canned squash and it was awful and will not buy it again. Wednesday is supposed to go from 72F to 30F with possible snow or sleet, so will ave a pot of hambone and beans fixed up for the chillies willies!!

[worth1]

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[imp]

Going to make some chicken fried steak fingers and baked potatoes, not sure what else as yet.

[Rajun Gardener]

I boiled crawfish for the time this season yesterday, it was awesome as always this time of year. I peeled about 7 pounds to make an etoufee and used the mushrooms and onions for flavor. I didn't have to season it and it's a little on the hot side for most people but it was delicious.
The crawfish shells are so soft in this cool weather compared to later in the heat and they are loaded with fat. We used to be able to buy the fat in small containers before the govmint decided it was bad for us. The fat makes the gravy rich and so tasty. There's a few ways to make etoufee and this time I used a French method with 4 onions diced fine and sauteed in butter and olive oil till they broke down as a thickener then added a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste, 6 cups of water, 1 cup of shrimp stock and let it simmer till it thickened up again and finally dumped the peeled crawfish and fat into the pot with another cup of water to simmer down to the perfect consistency.

This is called the "after the boil" dish, some people make soup or chowder with it since we also add potatoes to the pot.

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[worth1]

Crawfish season already.
Time to get some to eat and go fishing with.
The more early in the season the better they are because they are more easy to peel.

I took the leftover gravy peas and mashed potatoes and put it all in the mashed potato kettle.
Then last night I added a stick of butter and set it on the stove to slowly warm up.
Then mixed it up.
Man was that the bomb the only thing that would have made it better would have been corn.
Had it with the leftover steak which was tinder big time.
As always the steak was consumed rare.

[imp]

Not only sounds and looks tasty, Rajun, but pretty too! That gravy looks good.

[worth1]

All I could think about all day long is how good this concoction would be with sweet corn in it.
Drove right past the turn off to the house and bought some canned sweet corn at the store.
Have another steak and enough of the mashed potatoes sweet peas mushrooms, onions and gravy for one more meal at least.
The steak I can go another day if I eat only half of it.

[worth1]

So I may wrongfully assume you have heard of the dreaded KFC Famous Bowl.
Here I present the not so famous WLD Famous Bowl.
It has gravy sweet peas, sweet corn, mashed potatoes, mushroom, onion, chicken fried steak made from rib eye.
Spices are garlic powder black pepper salt and a sprinkling of chili powder on top.
This is a really big bowl and will have it for supper tomorrow too.

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[brownrexx]

We mostly eat chicken and seafood but tonight I made one of our rare beef meals. I wanted to try making beef stew in my Instant Pot. It turned out to be really tasty. I also sautéed some baby Brussels Sprouts.

20200205_174432 (2) by Brownrexx, on Flickr