But alas, it's just me and the Man in our little 650 square foot home, on this $100 a week grocery budget, with no real chance of world domination any time soon, so we find our fun in other ways.
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| IPA for the Man, tempranillo-shiraz for me... out of the Entertainment budget. |
Last night, we thought about grabbing a pint at The Flying Pig, a new-ish neighborhood pub, but since the Man wasn't feeling social, we dimmed the lights, cranked up some music, drank, and debated the merits of Gloria Estefan's Spanish language Latin and/or Afro-Cuban influenced music, which I think is pretty amazing, and which also is not to be confused with her pop stuff from the 80s like The Conga.
We had plans for me to teach the Man some basic salsa steps, which also didn't come to fruition last night, but he did bust a move that we have come to dub *The Office Party*, which is something akin to White Man's Overbite with either a mental or literal silk tie knotted around your head, Rambo style. This never fails to make me cackle.
At any rate, breakfast this morning was a half batch of my Yogurt *Buttermilk* Pancakes. Having limited budget and space, I tend not to buy limited purpose ingredients like buttermilk. I've found plain yogurt to be an amazingly versatile ingredient - mixed with a little milk, the enzymes and active cultures in the yogurt function much like buttermilk in pancakes, baked goods, and even fried chicken; mixed with a little mayo and other seasonings, it makes a great crema for fish tacos; mixed with a little jam or honey (like we did yesterday), it's great breakfast food, and every once in a while, it makes a great mask for your complexion.
HALF BATCH OF YOGURT *BUTTERMILK* PANCAKES
Makes 6 pancakes
- 2/3 cup all purpose flour
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon milk
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 3 Tablespoons yogurt
- 1+1/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon + a pinch of kosher salt
- 1 Tablespoon melted butter plus more for cooking
1) Mix all ingredients in a bowl until they are just smooth and incorporated.
2) While your batter is resting, heat your pan or griddle to medium.
3) Melt a little butter on your pan, and pour the batter in 1/4 cup portions. This will make a roughly 4.5" to 5" diameter pancake.
4) When the pancakes start to bubble over about 1/3 of the surface, and not until then, flip the pancakes. I think this usually takes 2.5 to 3 minutes.
5) Once flipped, however, it only takes another 25 to 30 seconds for the pancakes to complete cooking. If you let them cook too much longer than that on the second side, you'll have overdone pancakes.
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| moist, tender, melt in your mouth pancakes... |
Here's a link to sequential pics of a full batch.
3 pancakes each for the Man and me, plus coffee, I figure...
BREAKFAST: $1.00 total, $0.50/serving
Lunch was leftovers from last night's Spicy Korean Style Braised Chicken dinner. While the Man gets the last two pieces of chicken, I am content to eat some steamed rice with the leftover braising liquid -with all the little bits of sweetened and softened onions and peppers - and a little bit of kimchi, which reminds me of so many of the meals of my childhood. Eating kimchi for lunch is one of those fringe benefits of being underemployed from home.
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| This is pretty much what the Man's lunch looks like, only in a plastic container, and likely jostled around a bit by the time he eats it. Pickles packed separately. We don't want those getting nuked. |
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| My lunch. That's kimchi at 11 o'clock. ^^ |
LUNCH: $0.50 for the rice and kimchi.
On Sunday, we went out for Korean BBQ with my parents, and as moms are apt to do, my mom sent us home with the leftover kahlbi and a bag full of limes one of her neighbors gave her. So tonight's dinner will be that leftover kahlbi (GKAHLbeeh) sauteed with some fresh Shiitakes and white onion, some crunchy slaw using the last of the Napa cabbage and soy sauce (another thing I have to replenish this weekend), and the last of the jasmine rice.
It's nice when life hands you limes (and a doggy bag of KBBQ).
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| There are a lot of gnawbones for Honeydew under that pile of meat... :) |
I'll be back later to post a pic or two of dinner, but in the meantime, our cost...
DINNER: $2.50 total. $1.25/serving.
Most of those limes will probably go toward the Man's own margarita mix sometime next week.
Saturday: $24.00
Sunday: $13.00
Monday: $11.00
Tuesday: $7.00
Wednesday: $10.00
Thursday: $4.00
$70.00 so far with one day left to go. Off to deal with more tax bullshit and give myself positive affirmations.
You're good enough, you're smart enough, and you're not so much of a vain, anal-retentive, self-conscious control freak biatch that you can't make that youtube cooking segment you've been talking about doing for months. And gosh darnit, people *like* you.
Back later with dinner pics,
shinae
@7:12 PM, a pic of possibly the quickest full dinner I've made all year, 15 minutes from start to finish:
Does your breakfast total include the syrup and butter costs? Plus, you got free food from your mom so that kinda skews your total, unless you get free food from her every week. ;)
ReplyDeleteYoutube video sounds fun!
I didn't factor in the syrup, which was probably less than 50 cents worth, but a couple things:
ReplyDelete- I round up on just about everything, so it's probably been factored in over the course of the past week anyway
- I figure over the course of the month, I will be replenishing pantry items here and there, and so that's another way the condiments get factored in.
But the budget does assume a fairly well stocked pantry before beginning. It probably costs a couple hundred dollars to stock the pantry with seasonings, but I imagine most readers already have spices and seasonings to begin with.
And, yeah. The leftovers from eating out skew the total, but life happens that way. Sometimes you get blessed with a little extra. :)