Our Frugal Secrets: a Baked Potato Bar and Soups

Looking back at the first week-and-a-half of our organic food stamp challenge, three meals stand out in my mind. The first, the most universally popular, was also the easiest and the cheapest. (Let that be a lesson to us all.) No, not rice and beans. A baked potato bar! I got the idea from Jenny Rosenstrach and Andy Ward, who write a family recipe column for Bon Appetit magazine.

Here's the non-recipe recipe:

Baked Potato Bar

1 russet potato for each person

Toppings: grated cheddar cheese, sour cream, one onion (which you caramelize slowly on the stovetop), black beans, anything else you have in your fridge that might be good on a potato. (I am a veggie freak so I usually add cooked broccoli, sautéed spinach, or some other leafy green, but we didn't have any of these in the fridge this time.)

In a 450-degree oven, bake the potatoes, placing them directly on the oven rack. (No need to wrap them in foil.)  Let bake for 50 minutes or until tender. Meanwhile, if you really want a cheap treat, cut one onion (any kind) into thin slices and cook slowly in about 1/4 cup olive oil in a large skillet over low heat. (Add some salt & pepper, too.)  Stir occassionally so onions don't burn. It'll take 20-30 minutes, but the results are astonishing: a sweet, golden brown delicious goopy mass of onion.

When the potatoes are done, slice each one horizontally and butter both halves. Serve with toppings.

The results surpised me. Don kept saying, "this is so delicious!" and even picky eater Madeleine "mmmed" and ate most of her potato. (I agree with Rosenstrach and Ward: The secret is letting the kids put their own toppings on. Giving them agency makes them more excited to eat the result.) Because of our lack of green vegetables, I also served a side of edamame. (Frozen edamame, which we buy at Whole Foods, has become my secret vegetable weapon. Like most kids, Madeleine loves it.)

The cost for this meal was less than $6. ($2.50 for 3 organic potatoes at our local farmstand; $3 worth of toppings and about 50¢ worth of edamame).

Another winner was Saturday night's repast, which we shared with my dad and his wife. In the afternoon, I hunkered down and made Mark Bittman's 1-hour veggie broth (which costs about $4 to make organically) in preparation for a roasted garlic soup. Knowing that Don isn't as fond of garlic as I am, I hid from him what kind of soup I was making until the last possible moment. (But I also knew that roasting garlic mellows the flavor, making it sweeter and nuttier than raw garlic. I hoped to change his perception of garlic.)

vegetarian broth costs about $4 to make

The recipe for Vampire Slayer's Soup, from Rebecca Katz's excellent new cookbook, The Longevity Kitchen, is quite simple. 

Prep time: 20 min.; Cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients

4 heads garlic ($3.83)

2 tablespoons + 4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil (about 20 cents)

1 cup diced yellow onion ($1.10)

2 teaspoons minced garlic (included in above price)

1 cup peeled and finely diced Yukon gold potatoes ($1.62)

1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme (we went without this)

1/3 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 1/4 cups veggie broth (roughly $2 worth of broth)

Cut the tops off of the heads of garlic and discard. Drizzle each head of garlic with 1 teaspoon of the olive oil, then sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Wrap the garlic in parchment paper in one bundle and then wrap in aluminum foil. Bake for 45-50 minutes; the aroma will tell you when it's ready. The flesh should be soft and golden brown. Remove from the oven to cool. 

Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and sauté until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the minced garlic, potatoes, thyme, pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and sauté for 5 minutes. Pour in 3/4 cup of the broth to deglaze the skillet, stirring to loosen any bits stuck to the pan. Simmer until potoates are tender and the liquid has mostly evaporated. Remove from heat.

When the garlic is cool enough to handle, squeeze the flesh into a bowl and mash with the back of a spoon to form a paste.

Pour the remaining 2 1/2 cups of broth into the blender. Add the roasted garlic and the onion-potato mixture and blend until smooth. Transfer to a soup pot over low heat and stir in 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cook just until heated through. You may want to add a spritz of lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Serve garnished with chive oil.

Lucky for me, everyone—even Don—loved the garlic soup, which cost $8.75 total to make. Don made a big green salad ($2 worth of lettuce) with a variety of raw veggies shaved or sliced on top (50¢), and we toasted some homemade bread (recipe coming next week). Total cost of meal: less than $12

But my favorite dinner of the week was Don's ultra-frugal Sunday evening meal. He had been puttering around in the kitchen all afternoon—making a week's supply of granola and more vegetable broth—but it wasn't until right before dinner that I realized he was also making a Syrian lentil soup and brown rice pilaf. Both were perfectly spiced, super tasty, and nourishing. (Note to parents: 8-year-old Madeleine pronounced both disgusting. We're working on her table manners.) It's our practice to never force her to eat food she doesn't like, but she does have to try it.

Syrian lentil soup and brown rice pilaf

Lentil Soup from a vegetarian cookbook called The World in Your Kitchen

Ingredients

1 cup brown lentils (red or green are OK too)

3 cups stock or water

2 onions, finely chopped

1 carrot, sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 teaspoon ground cumin

juice of 1 lemon

olive oil

salt & pepper

lemon wedges

1. Place lentils in a pan with stock or water, add one of the onions and the carrot and bring to a boil. Then turn down heat and let the soup simmer for 20-30 minutes until lentils are very soft.

2. Transfer the mixture to a blender or push it through a sieve or you can simply beat it well in the saucepan with a wooden spoon

3. Return the soup to the heat and add the cumin and lemon juice for seasoning.

4. Let it simmer for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oil and fry the remaining onion until it's translucent. Add the garlic and cook this until both ingredients turn golden brown.

5. Serve the soup in bowls garnished with the onion and garlic and with lemon wedges for extra zest.

Four things this organic food stamp challenge has taught me so far.

1.) You simply have to plan, shop, and cook a lot on the weekend. Most people rarely have time on weeknights to cook vegetable stock and soup (not to mention homemade bread, which often requires overnight fermentation).

2.) I'm lucky to have a partner who likes to shop and cook as much as I do. Planning, shopping for, and cooking healthy meals would be much harder if I were a single mom. (Or even a single person without kids.)

3.) It's much easier to cook at home if you live near grocery stores. We don't have a car, but we're within walking or biking distance of a Safeway, a farmstand, and two other grocery stores (Fred Meyer and New Seasons Market, a Portland chain that focuses on locally grown and organic food and that's a whole lot cheaper than Whole Foods). In other words, we live in the opposite of a food desert.

4.) Leftovers, leftovers, leftovers! We both make a habit of turning last night's leftovers into today's lunch. What if there are no leftovers? That'll be the subject of a future post.