Use It Pho Bo

I am happy to report that I came out of grocery shopping this week about $45 below budget. I've done better, but we were out of some of the bigger-ticket items this week so I think $45 is pretty OK.

Here's the first recipe I made this week, using stuff from my fridge and freezer:

Use It Pho Bo

For the soup:

• 14 cups water 
• 3 pounds beef soup bones 
• 1 1-inch piece of ginger, sliced
• 1 onion, sliced 
• 1 tbsp salt 
• 3/4 tsp anise extract or 6 pieces star anise
• 1 1/2 cinnamon sticks 
• 2 bay leaves 
• 1 tbsp sugar 
• 4 cloves 
• 2 tsp fennel 
• 1/4 cup fish sauce 
• 1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 pound boneless beef sirloin, cut into thin strips
• 3 oz dried rice or mung bean noodles 
• 1 cup fresh bean sprouts 

Serve on the side:

• 1/8 cup green onions, sliced
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro sprigs, roughly chopped
• 1 jalapeno pepper, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves 
• Lime wedges
• Plum sauce
• Sriracha hot sauce

Put the beef bones in a pot with the water. Add the ginger, onion, salt, anise, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and sugar. Place the fennel and cloves into a tea baller and drop into the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for two or three hours, checking occasionally and topping off with a little more water if needed. You want the stock to boil down a bit so it will be rich tasting, so don't add a whole lot of water.

Now strain the stock and return to the pot. Bring to a simmer.

Soften and cook the noodles according to the package directions (this will vary depending on what kind of noodles you're using). Now add the beef strips to the pot and let cook for maybe a minute or two. Don't cook too long because you don't want them to end up tough and they will cook quickly.

Add the bean sprouts and noodles. Serve with sliced green onion, cilantro, jalapenos, basil and lime wedges on the side, and plenty of plum sauce and hot sauce to liven it up.

What I had to buy:

• Ginger - $.25
• Bean sprouts - $1.29
• Green onions - $.50
• 1 jalapeno pepper - $.30
• 1 lime - $.25

Total amount spent this week, on this meal: $2.59. Everything else was already in my fridge and freezer.

Now, it's not entirely true of course that this meal only cost $2.59, because those soup bones and meat slices cost money and were not destined to be thrown out. But because we food stockers often forget about and/or fail to make use of what we stash in our freezers, I'm going to exclude the cost of anything that I already had on hand. The idea is to make use of what I've already got, so I'm going to focus on keeping those weekly expenses down instead of thinking about how much I spent on all those items I've stocked up on in the past.

So like all the recipes I will post here, feel free to include/exclude items if you have them. You don't *need* basil and you could get by with a different kind of hot sauce, if you have it, for example. Buy as little as possible. Put any kind of beef you have on hand in the pot, or even skip the stock making step altogether and use a canned stock flavored with some ginger and anise. Improvise and keep your expenses down!

What's in the fridge? January 12, 2014

Tomorrow is grocery shopping day. Here's what I already have in my fridge:

• One green bell pepper (I bought too many for blog night)
• One butternut squash (we were supposed to make it on Christmas, and I think it *might* still be good)
• One large tub of plain yogurt
• Some rapidly going-south basil
• A bag of questionable but potentially saveable spinach
• 3/4 tub of sour cream
• 1/2 jar green olives left over from New Year's Eve
• Parmesan cheese

In the freezer:

• A bag of soup bones
• Two bags of chicken thighs
• A bag of grilled chicken breasts

And in the pantry:

• A bag of tortilla chips
• A package of rice noodles
• Half a bag dried black-eyed peas
• Some potatoes
• A package of gnocchi
• A bag of instant potato soup 
• A can of cream of mushroom soup

This is not everything in my pantry or freezer, because I'm a coupon/sale shopper so I stock up on stuff. This is just the stuff I honed in on this week that I thought I could combine with the perishable items in my fridge. So here's what I've decided to make:

• Monday: Pho bo (soup bones, basil, rice noodles)
• Tuesday: Slow cooker butter chicken and curried potatoes (chicken thighs, yogurt, spinach, potatoes)
• Wednesday: Tipsy chicken with scalloped potatoes (bell pepper, chicken thighs, olives, cream of mushroom, potatoes, sour cream, soup mix)
• Thursday: Gnocchi with butternut squash sauce (Gnocchi, butternut squash, spinach, Parmesan cheese)
• Saturday: Taco salad with black-eyed pea dip (tortilla chips, grilled chicken breasts, black eyed peas, sour cream)

Just a couple of notes: You will notice there is no meal listed for Friday or Sunday. That's because at our house, we always have chili on Fridays, and Sundays are Travel by Stove (blog) nights. So if you want to see what I make on Sundays, pop over there and say hi.

Otherwise, that's the plan for this week. My usual shopping budget is $230 a week (I know yikes! There are six of us so food shopping is a big expense) so the goal is to come in below that, preferably considerably so. I'll let you know.

What is The Use it Project?

We throw away a ton of food.

Americans do, in general. But our family does, too.

I don't just mean the stuff I dump down the sink after dinner. My kids are picky eaters, and I refuse to cater to picky eaters. So I make Indian curries, exotic meals for my other blog,  Thai food, vegetable dishes, stuff that's good for you and stuff that tastes good ... to grownups. My kids don't like most of it and it goes down the drain.

But there's other stuff, too. That bag of apples I bought last week when my kids were on an apple kick that they've since abandoned. All that stuff I bought for Saturday's meal, just before my husband decided he was going to invite his buddies over for a barbecue instead. All that stuff I was going to use for one of those Indian curries, but then I ended up being too tired to cook and just boiled some  ravioli instead. Or maybe it's a bag of spinach that I only used half of. A lot of the time, that stuff just gets forgotten, and then it gets thrown out.

That's the kind of waste I'm going to try to avoid this year. That's why I started this blog. No, it's not because I really need another blog. It's because I need to challenge myself to stop throwing stuff away and to make use of what I already have in my fridge--before it starts growing little blue sweaters.