Food Bytes

Unlike our Ms Bridge, I am a HUGE fan of cabbage! It is good for you, and it goes well in soups, boiled with ham or beef, and in stir fry. It has a peppery taste when raw, and along with celery adds something essential to a good soup. One of my favourites is borscht. I like to have about 5 beets, even more since everyone in the family likes it sliced and sprinkled with salt before the soup is made. Boil them for a long while, cool with rinses of cold tap water, and if well-cooked, the skins will just slide off. You can wear gloves to save your hands, or just bear the pink! I might try butter on my hands next time. Anyway, I make it vegetarian with whatever I've got, but hopefully that will include green cabbage and celery, carrots, onion, potato, and perhaps a bit of turnip/rutabaga, left over parsnip, peas, green beans, lima beans, whatever. I also like a can of stewed tomatoes and a can of baked beans in tomato sauce (not with pork). For seasoning, I like garlic, salt n pepper, dill, and maybe some paprika, parsley, etc. You can also use commercial stock if you don't find it is flavourful enough, but I find it is usually okay without, or add a can of tomato soup. This is great the first night, and all the next day, and you can leave it out overnight as it has no meat nor dairy. It's also good hot or cold, and is extra special with sour cream. Or yogurt if you are virtuous. :-) I don't know how much it actually costs, but I know it is cheap for the volume.

It is also super healthy, you can serve with toast or bread and butter, I like to invite people over for a borscht night if I'm making a big pot, it goes a long way!

Not all of us share Elizabeth's sophisticated modern tastes. Heck, some of us even like the coffee at Tim Hortons better than at sophisticated coffee shops too.
I find all of the cookbooks in the "Company's Coming" series offer great meal and dessert ideas that use inexpensive and easy to find ingredients. No wonder they're bestsellers!I still use government pamphlets I got back in the seventies "Thrifty Meals with Canned Vegetables", there was a classic.
I wish both provincial and the federal governments would go back to producing those recipe, cooking and canning pamphlets which were designed to showcase local produce, support local agriculture (and the local cannery, frozen veggie plant etc) and encourage healthy eating.
Cabbage is not a favorite veggie in our house- but at least once a year I use it for a down east boiled dinner (to celebrate St. Patrick's Day if nothing else) and to make sauerkraut (a favorite with garlic sausage and perogies).

Beans, baby, beans!

As a semi-vegitarian I've tried to eat more of them (gradually of course) over the last several years. They taste best when you soak dried beans and cook them slowly. My favourites are kidney beans (for chili), garbanzo beans (for curry, dip, etc) and black beans (for beans and rice, refried beans). The protein and nutrition content is great and hardly any fat.

During my recent pregnancy I increased my bean meals a bit when I read that pregnant women were often constipated and sometimes got hemeroids (yuck!). I can't promise it as I cure, but I never had those problems. Unfortunately now that I'm breastfeeding I've gone off beans entirely to minimize gas for my baby. Some might not believe it, but I miss my beans!

Pizza of course is the poor person's food. Not the gloppy meat 'n' cheese lover's rounds ordered delivered in cardboard and tasting like a greasy slice of that carton, but honest to goodness homemade pizza in the tradition of Guiseppe Cashiere, my husband's grandfather.

A goat herder, he arrived in the USA at 16 and to cut trees in West Virginia - and died in the '70's as a self-made millionaire. He could never understand the North American obsession with pizza, his family's everyday food to stretch a little to feed many.

Their dough was homemade, as was the tomato sauce and the olive oil. The cheese was a 'condiment' to the bread and sauce beneath, as was the infrequent sausage. The herbs such as basil, oregano and rosemary all came from the garden - and all of which grow well in Canada's summer and on a sunny window sill in the winter.

Pizza is incredibly inexpensive to make and once tried in the Cashiere fashion, it can become a very healthy, and popular, staple in your household. I make it once a week, and since there are but two of us here, it is reheated for yet another meal. We have an annual dinner party revolving around 3 or 4 differently topped pizzas - and are asked, "When's the pizza party scheduled as we don't want to be away?"

Caitlin - though I may have disdained it as a child, I like cabbage now that my tastes have grown up! One my my favourite things to do with it is sautee shredded red cabbage in butter, and add diced apples, a touch of brown sugar and a bit of cider vinegar. Thanks for all your great suggestions!

When times are tough, the comfort foods come out. Stews with readily available root vegetables and cheaper cuts of beefwith dumplings. Cornish Pasties are wonderful and inexpensive. shepherd's pie made with ground left over roast beef (not with ground beef).
and am i the only fan of tuna casseroles???

Red cabbage is fun to use in soup - it dyed everything purple once - good times.

Don't forget our French-Canadian classic: Split pea soup! I make it in the slowcooker with a leftover ham bone, and pick up a loaf of fresh bread on the way home from work (discounted of course, because it's the end of the day!) The bubbling soup is waiting for me when I arrive, and it's one of the tastiest and cheapest meals I can think of.

I'm with JP. Beans. I don't plan far enough ahead to soak my beans, but a couple of tins of bean medley (~$1 each) and anything I find in the garden, fridge, pantry or freezer. Add a little pasta and your done.