Navajo Fry Bread

I got this recipe directly from the women at the boarding school at the Navajo Nation.


6 cups flour (White Whole Wheat)

6 tsp baking powder

Approx. 1--2 cups warm water

Mix together flour and baking powder. Slowly add water a bit at a time until you have a workable dough, not sticky, just pliable. Using a 1/4 or 1/3 cup measure scoop out a ball of dough and roll it until smooth. Continue until all the dough is formed into small balls. Cover the dough and let sit for 20 minutes. Fill a large frying pan with canola or vegetable oil about one inch deep. Heat the oil over medium heat. While the oil is heating take up a ball of dough and gently flatten it between the palms of your hands. Holding it between the heel of your hands flip it back and forth across the heel of one hand and then the other, turning it continuously until it has stretched out into a larger circle. (Think small pizza crust. If this proves too hard you can use a roller but you will lose some of the lightness and be careful not to roll it too thin.) Once the oil is hot slide the stretched fry bread into the pan. It will rise in the pan and get bubbly, once the bottom is firm and a bit golden flip it and cook the other side. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle with kosher salt immediately after it's cooked. Continue until all the bread is cooked. Once you get good at tossing you can get the next few done while the first are cooking and have them ready. The oil can be poured out into a jar and reused for other batches.

Serve topped with these beans, shredded lettuce, and shredded cheese. These are great for serving large crowds, very inexpensive to make and filling.

Handmade

When societies were largely agrarian and most people lived in a rural setting getting real food was no problem at all, except for drought and flood and infestations of course. The point being that at one point the entire occupation of mankind was largely to do with food production and most of it was produced at home. While that is largely impossible these days there are still some ideas that can be reclaimed to fit real food into a modern setting while on a budget.

For starters, everything can be made from scratch. It's not all that hard for most items once you try it a few times and become good at it. If you try the first time and decide that that was just far too time intensive and difficult and give up, you aren't giving yourself the time to get better. When I was a newlywed we traveled to the Navajo Nations Reserve with a relief organization just before Christmas. We took food and coal and individually gift wrapped stuffed animals for every child at a boarding school there. The Navajo Nation is the largest and poorest reservation in the US. They largely still live in traditional round houses with dirt floor and wood fires. Anyway they fed us lunch one day. It was a simple meal of Navajo fry bread with pinto beans and cheese and lettuce on top. It was amazing, I feel in love with it and I begged for the recipe. They of course all looked at me strangely and said, "You crazy woman we don't have a recipe we learned from our mothers who learned from their grandmother's who learned from their grandmother's. We can't just write it down, but we'll show you how." Maybe they just looked like they were saying that in their head, but they did let me join them in the kitchen and watch.

The dough is pretty simple, but the way they flopped it between the heels of their hands to make these perfect circles that were thinner in the center than at the edge was not so simple. I tried, I tried again, I was terrible. I finally got one to look sort of right. They were flipping out a piece every 30 seconds I think while I struggled to get the feel of it. I tried again when we came home. The first batch was a total flop, the second barely better. Every few months I would pull out the, now lost, grease stained scrap of paper that I had scribbled the proportions on and tried again. One day a few years back I made a batch of fry bread and suddenly realized that I had finished the whole thing in very little time. In my excitement I called my husband at work to tell him, thus confirming for him for life that he did in fact marry a total nerd. Of all of the things I have tried, that was one of the hardest, but now if I have a large group of friends coming over for dinner I can baked up this bean recipe in the crock pot at a total cost of $3 for the beans onion, garlic and tomato. I can make up the fry bread just before people arrive and grate cheese and cut lettuce. Total cost $6 for flour, oil, lettuce, and cheese, and 15-30 of our closest friends are stuffed and happy and excited about the interesting food as well. For dessert I can just make some more and sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on them.

We all know that baking from scratch is cheaper, and usually better, We just have a hard time fitting it into our days because we're so busy. I know some people who have a baking day and do all of their baking for the week on that day. Mine is Friday. There are others who not only plan their meals but set aside three hours one day to prep all of the meals for the entire week, thus eliminating chopping and measuring from their daily schedule. My mom has done something like this for years. When I was getting ready for the baby's arrival I put together crock pot recipes and combined all of the ingredients ahead of time and froze them so all I had to do was put the combined ingredients into the crock pot in the morning and dinner would take care of itself.

I said I'd tell you what I do if I want to spend less on food so here it is. We eat soup, stew, lentils, rice, and beans. I make powdered milk biscuits (And channel Garrison Keillor the whole time I'm doing it) to supplement the simple meal of Lentil Barley Soup and salad. We eat porridge for breakfast, instead of commercial cereal. We eat eggs and toast for dinner. Basically we eat peasant food, and it's amazingly good for us.

I love it when my internet service is down. I use the time in productive and creative ways and never once run over to the computer to check and see if I can access my mail yet, not once. NOT! But I have service again, you probably didn't even notice I was gone, and guess what I saw all over the place when it came back.

THIS!

Think how rich I could be right now if I had trademarked Real Food. Their idea of real food is only slightly divergent from mine and it looks like it could be fun. Except for the part where I mostly dislike mayonnaise so Helman's isn't likely to have approached me as a sponsor.

More on Real Food on a budget coming, I hope, later today.

A pause to clarify and dig a little deeper

The tests on pesticides were done in the US regarding US produce and produce imported to the US. So Kate in Spain, I don't know if it applies to the produce you buy or not. I understand that Europe has become more stringent about pesticide use so it may not be an issue.

*********************
Dear people on a food budget of $50/week or less for a family. The time has come to embrace cabbage, and rice, and lentils and beans. Really, cabbage is a very inexpensive vegetable, even in Canada. It is a very good source of a lot of nutrients especially if you mix up the colors. For inspiration as to how to prepare the cheapest vegetables at the store, often the most nutrient dense as well, such as cabbage, turnips, beets, chard, kale, and parsley we can look to the recipes of northern Europe. For example, coleslaw. I promise that you can make these things taste good and I will try to write down some of these recipes soon.

Lentils are very inexpensive, rice can be bought in 10lb bags at Asian stores for less than $15 and lasts for months. So are beans. Lentils can be cooked and used as a ground beef substitute or to stretch your ground beef farther. They are actually a lot healthier than meat. As are beans and rice which are a complete protein together and significantly less expensive. People in our culture today seem to think that meat is necessary every day when that's far from the case.

I'm not just pretending to know about this. A many years back when the GH was between jobs I was standing in line at the food bank. I was trying to make healthy meals out of the random weird things that were donated, I spent less than $20 a month on food to supplement that. Honestly, because I have an obsessively well stocked pantry I had a lot of staples to deplete before we ran out. Guess what was in there. That's right, beans and rice, and lentils, and whole oats and barley. So I have been there. Personally I would rather make sure that my family gets their antioxidants and fiber and complex carbohydrate than chicken and steak. I'm that convinced that it's important for their health.

Produce on a budget, the real food guide to cheap fruits and vegetables

I'm sitting here looking at the flyer for our local farmer's market store, called Henry's. It's not really a farmer's market, but most of the produce is local, and they have an extensive supplement section and bulk foods and spices section as well. This week mangoes are 3 for $1, seedless water melons are two for $5, green and red seedless grapes are 87 cents/lb. So are peaches, vine ripe tomatoes and potatoes. Twelve ounces of berries are $3. Granted, it's summer, and I live in California where a lot of food is grown, but fruits and vegetables are by far one of the least expensive parts of our diet. When you consider that they are at least half of our diet, this saves us a lot of money. The typical dinner plate should be 1/2 salad or vegetables, 1/4 meat or other protein, and 1/4 carbohydrate/starch. One serving of meat is 4oz. That means it should fit into the palm of your hand. Most Americans eat too much meat, which isn't good for us. Simply adjusting to more salad and less steak can drastically reduce your food spending per month and drastically improve your long term health.

I take $20 a week when I go to the Farmer's market. (The real one, not Henry's.) I buy from the local organic producers. I get fresh quality, I get what's in season, and that $20 worth of produce usually lasts more than one week. I usually spend another $10 or so on fruit that I can't find at the Farmer's market.

So here are some tips for saving money on fruits and vegetables.

1. Only purchase what's in season. When it's in season you can also buy more than you need and preserve it, canned, frozen or dried, to enjoy it into other season's as well. Fifty years ago people still ate according to the seasons. There were cookbooks devoted to the preparation of seasonal produce. Why do you think the French invented onion soup? They had to eat something in the winter and onions keep a long time. Apart from preserves, berries were only eaten during the summer, squash and apples in the fall, potatoes, leeks, onions and other root vegetables throughout the winter, baby greens in the spring. My husbands brought into our marriage a cookbook from a monastery in France called the 4 seasons. It's a collection of vegetarian recipes all tailored to the seasonal availability of produce. (It also contains my favorite recipes for custard and pears flambe. (I've got a little project I working on that may be helpful in this respect too. I can't say any more than that because it's still in the works but I'll keep you posted.)
2. Buy local, go to farmer's market's, join a food co-op or direct market organic delivery service if there are any in your area. Here are some places to start looking. Food coops are groups of people who organize to purchase direct from the growers at bulk prices and then split up the orders between themselves. They usually require a onetime membership fee, less than $30usually, and depending on the size you may have to take one day a week or month to join your fellow co-opers and divide up the orders to take home. They are easier to find in urban areas. Some are so well organized that you can order what you want online, the order is prepared for you and once a week you can pick it up at a home nearby. (How I miss Vancouver.)
3. Organic food is usually more expensive. When I'm on a budget I will limit my organic purchases to those things that tests have shown often have large quantities of pesticides on them still when they reach the shelves. Or I'll skip them altogether. The 10 most contaminated foods are:strawberries, green bell peppers, red bell peppers, spinach, cherries (US), peaches, cantaloupe (Mexican), celery, apples, apricots, green beans, grapes (Chilean), and cucumbers. For the entire study and alternative foods go here.
   
4. Join a gleaner's club. Lot's of people have trees that produce fruit but don't have the motivation to harvest it. Gleaner's clubs gain permission to harvest the fruit themselves. Most of the time they donate it to food banks but you can keep some of it yourself. Or, just ask that next door neighbor with the cherry tree if they mind if you pick their cherries for them.
   
5. Of course, no discussion of cost effective produce can forget to mention growing your own. Depending on where you live, how long of a growing season, and what it costs to water, growing your own vegetables can save you lots of money leaving your budget free to purchase what you can't grow. You can even plant your own fruit bearing trees, ask your local gardening expert what grows best in your area. Even if you don't live somewhere with dirt of your own to plan a garden in, there are a lot of things that can grow in containers on apartment balconies, front steps, etc. I live in a ground floor apartment with a concrete patio. This year I took one of the kids wooden toy boxes that was falling apart and they never use, reinforced it with a few screws and filled it with gravel, pine cones and potting soil. Right now I have tomatoes, oregano, and basil growing in it. In another container I have planted lettuce seeds, and in another I have mint, in another cilantro, and in another rosemary. Here is a handy guide to container gardening. The added bonus of growing your own food is that your children can be much more excited to try it when they've watched it grow.
6. The last thing I'd like to mention is an idea Rose had in this post. She concluded that the most cost effective way to have fresh nutritious produce in the winter was to sprout seeds in her kitchen. Seeds for sprouting can be found anywhere, even the Target garden section. Here is an online source for purchasing a sprouting starter kit. That $40 will provide everything you need to start and last up to a year. Sprouts taste good raw and can also be sauteed, stir fried, baked into breads and casseroles and provide a lot of protein and nutrients. The quick guide to sprouting is to soak seeds in a jar for 8 hours keeping them in a dark place. You can tie a piece of cheese cloth across the top of the jar if you have no strainers in order to drain the water. Continue to keep the jar in a dark place and rinse with clean water at least twice a day. In about three days you have sprouts and you can eat them.
   

I'm sure more of you have great ideas for combining economy and fresh food. Please share in the comments so we can all learn from each other.

Does real food cost more?

While I was mulling over the topic of budget considerations when it comes to real food I received a lovely email from Rose asking questions on that very topic.

But, I do wonder how much your wonderful diet ends up costing you. (And I know, I know, we would all save a lot of money on doctor bills if we all ate well!) But really, I wonder what the ballpark food budget is for your family, because when I hear you mention Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, I immediately think ‘Expensive!’

I want to eat much, much better even than we are eating now, even with me cooking all of our food from scratch. But it seems I am always caught between the four variables of nutrition, taste, cost, and convenience. Something has got to go.

Since she's probably not the only one with similar questions, I thought I'd answer her here. She also shared with me post that involved some very creative solutions that she has already come up with and she said I could share it with you, so I'll do so a bit later.

So, I quickly went through and added up everything that we spent at a grocery store over the month of April. (Because I had those records handy.) Since I only had totals, not receipts, those numbers indicate everything we would have spent on food, toilet paper, detergents, toothpaste and whatever else. Also, I realized that we threw a very big party for the Genius Husband's birthday in April for a large group of people and I know we spent close to $100 on that alone. S0 the total for April was $544.67. Subtract $100 for party expenses and it's just over $400 to feed a family of 4 for a month and keep their hair, teeth, butts and house clean as well. Oh, and diapers for 3 short people and quarters for laundry ($10/week) should be figured in there as well.

For some of you this will be quite high, for a lot of others this will be fairly low. I chose April because it is a pretty good representation of what happens when we're not counting pennies. On penny counting months I can bring our grocery bill way down with a few simple adjustments that I'll share later.

I don't have a Whole Foods near where I live. Jimbo's is our local equivalent. Yes, it's very expensive to shop there. It's lovely to shop there because they have already done the work of label reading so most of what they stock is good for you food, though you still have to think. Organic Evaporated Cane Juice is still sugar after all, even though it's less processed. You know what? I rarely ever shop there. When I do go it's for a very specific item, usually on sale, though not always. I window shop at their deli for inspiration, sometimes purchasing one thing and then going home to figure out how to make it myself. That's how I learned about Avocado Pie. I bought a piece, read the ingredients list and experimented at home. Jimbo's is for things I can't find elsewhere, like millet in bulk, and black lentils.

Okay, now let's talk about my favorite store, Trader Joe's. I shop there all the time because the prices are so good. I can buy a dozen local brown eggs for 99 cents. I can get hormone free milk and cheese for less than I can buy regular milk and cheese at a national chain grocery store. I can get bars of single origin organic dark chocolate for less than 2 dollars. In fact they have a 10 pound bar of Belgian dark chocolate that they sell for $20. That's a lot of chocolate. The price for crackers, cereal, sauces, cookies and most every thing else is the same or less than grocery store prices and they all have real food ingredients. TJ's is the only place where I can purchase a very nice organic Italian wine for $3/bottle. (Tommolo Montepulcian0 d'Abruzzo bottled by Chiusa Grande if you go looking.) They also sell pretty big bottles of pure Maple syrup for $7. I can buy a loaf of sprouted grain bread for just over $2. (Remember higher fiber bread is more filling, you don't need to eat as much.) If you are going to purchase really high quality meat and gourmet foods you can also find them there and pay more for them, but not as much as you would at a gourmet foods place. There are some things we get at Trader Joe's that are treats, special foods for special occasions. They cost more than getting the regular version would at a store, but we think it's worth it. These are things like ice cream, which we only eat once a week so it lasts a while, apple smoked nitrate free bacon, we only have bacon once a month or less, fancy cheeses, which are still not that expensive compared to other places, and chocolate, alcohol, etc. If you are going to purchase prepackaged food, their's is better for the same amount of money.

Okay, enough about TJ's because not everyone is lucky enough to have one nearby.

Now, to address the 4 things that Rose very neatly summarized that she feels a tension between; nutrition, taste, cost, and convenience. In my opinion food that tastes better is a natural by product of eating foods that have more nutrition in them or are at least less processed, (cookies made with real butter always taste better than cookies made from margarine don't they?) and that the two go hand in hand. This may not be your experience in which case I respectfully suggest that perhaps you haven't yet had enough experience of real food.

Looming largest are the issues of cost and convenience and how do you get good tasting and nutritious food without sacrificing either of those? Well the truth is both of these things have to give a little from time to time, it can be a bit of a lifestyle adjustment if you need to stay within budget, but it doesn't have to be extreme. (My mother made the tiniest little food budget stretch far enough to feed us and many guests as well without resorting to KD in a box and it tasted good and was real food.)

Tomorrow I will talk about how to get Whole Foods quality without paying too much for it.

Amazing Bean Salad

I just made this salad tonight for the first time and it's incredible.

Warm Garbanzo Bean Salad

1/2 medium yellow onion chopped very fine

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp whole cumin seeds

15 oz/1can garbanzo beans

Heat 2 tbsp Canola oil in a skillet on medium heat. Add the onion, garlic, and cumin and cook until translucent 3-5 minutes. Add the beans and heat until warm through, about 3 minutes. Add the juice of 2 limes and cook for 1 minutes longer. Remove from heat and add salt and pepper, 2 handfuls of cilantro leaves, and a splash or two chili oil. Eat warm. So good.

Homemade chili oil is just olive oil that is sealed in a jar with chili peppers long enough for the flavor to get into the oil.

I am writing what will probably be a series of posts on how to eat real food on a limited budget. I will be posting it very soon.