this past week's Cheap & Cheerful suppers

Potato-Spinach-Ham Casserole

Wednesday (about $1.60 for 5)
garbanzo bean soup, made with ham stock, garden parsley, carrots, ham, garbanzo beans, onions and celery
cornbread

Thursday (about $1.80 for 5)
Potage à L'oseille (sorrel and potato soup made with garden sorrel, potatoes, thyme, shallots, garlic, bay leaves, milk, stock, nutmeg, butter, dash of rosemary vinegar to replace white wine called for, salt/pepper) followed, but adapted, this recipe -- to suit my own ingredients
rhubarb crisp with a custard sauce (a thin almond blancmange)
French bread, slices of cheese, zucchini bread and butter pickles

Friday (about $2.15 for 5)
cheese, green pepper, onion pizza
carrot and celery sticks
deviled eggs (I looked at each plate and thought we needed one more item, so made some deviled eggs at the last minute)

Saturday (about $1.75 for 5)
bean, rice and cheese burritos with avocado, and food processor salsa
cabbage and herb slaw
brown rice with salsa topping

Sunday (about $2.75 for 5)
turkey in gravy
bread, onion, parsley and sorrel stuffing (garden sorrel and garden parsley)
brown rice (didn't make enough stuffing, so added some leftover brown rice to dinner)
cranberry-orange-celery gelatin salad (made with frozen, homegrown cranberries, 1 small orange and 2 large stalks of celery, along with a bit of sugar, lemon juice and plain gelatin -- pretty yummy, would've been awesome with the addition of chopped walnuts or pecans)
watermelon pickles

Monday (about $1.95 for 5)
hummus on fry bread
ginger-soy carrots
open-face plum pie (garden plums, frozen, 1/4 cup sugar, orange zest, 2 tablespoons flour)

Tuesday (about $3.50 for 5)
ham, potato, spinach, egg casserole (a modified version of a popular casserole, less cheese, no milk, one less egg)
cabbage slaw
watermelon pickles
prunes (from garden)
leftover plum pie for 2 people


Some nights, supper was much more expensive than other nights, about double the cost from least expensive to most expensive. However, we averaged about $2.20 per dinner for 5 people, not including beverages (milk for 3, water for 3). I think that's pretty good for our family. We do eat large lunches, probably equal in cost to our dinners.

On the odd night that I need to add something to one person's meal (usually my husband's), I add a slice of bread and butter, or a scoop of brown rice. We all eat about the same sized portion of protein and fruit/veggie. I adjust the carbs and desserts from one family member to the next.

What was on your menu this past week?

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Deconstructing a recipe for Sorrel Soup

I made a sorrel-potato soup last week that called for several ingredients that I didn't have on hand. I made reference to one ingredient, the white wine, in yesterday's post.

Here's the breakdown of the actual recipe's ingredients, and what I wound up using.

The recipe:

1 tablespoon butter, unsalted
2 bay leaves
1 cup shallot, diced
1 tablespoon garlic, minced
1/2 cup white wine
2 cups chicken stock
5 cups Yukon Gold potatoes, diced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon thyme, minced
4 cups heavy cream
3 cups fresh sorrel, chopped
1 pinch ground nutmeg
salt
white pepper


Here's what I used:

1 tablespoon butter, salted
parts of several bay leaves scrounged from a jar of pickling spice
1 cup of shallots, minced (I have shallots from the garden last summer. If I didn't have shallots I would have used minced onion, green onion, onion powder or dried onions)
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 cup rosemary-thyme vinegar, cut with 1/4 cup water
2 cups of turkey stock
5 cups of russet potatoes, peeled and diced
1/2 tablespoon fresh garden thyme (no lemon thyme, and only had 1/2 tablespoon this early in spring)
2  1/2 cups 1% milk, with 1/4 cup of extra butter, and 1  1/2 cups of water (being lactose intolerant, I didn't want to overdo it on the milk part, so used some water in this substitution. Otherwise, I would have used all milk, with extra butter, in place of heavy cream.)
3 cups fresh sorrel (It's spring in the garden with plenty of sorrel. But if I didn't have any sorrel, but had spinach, then I would have made this as a spinach-potato soup.)
1 pinch ground nutmeg (I did have to run a whole nutmeg over a rasper, but in the end had ground nutmeg)
salt
black pepper

(also added a pinch of onion powder and extra garlic powder at the end of cooking, to season)

*in bold type, these are the substitutions that I made to the original recipe ingredients.


Basically, the only ingredients that I had, as stated in the recipe, were the shallots, the sorrel leaves, the nutmeg and the salt. For everything else I found the next best thing to substitute with.

Some notes on substitutions:

when needing cream, milk and extra butter can substitute. If the butter "floats" to the surface at the end of cooking, a binder of flour and water can be heated in the finished soup. But this is not always necessary, for a family meal. No one in my family objected to a little melted butter around the edge of the bowl.

when needing wine in soup, vinegar and water make a good substitution, especially if the amount of wine is less than 10-15% of the liquids called for.

different poultry stocks can be used interchangeably, when the amount of stock is small compared to other liquids and ingredients.

potatoes are potatoes, especially if the soup or sauce is to be blended at the end of cooking.

there are many members of the onion family. Shallots, chives, yellow onions can be used interchangeably, with exception to recipes like French onion soup. Somehow, French onion soup made with chives does not sound visually appealing to me. And onion powder or dried onions can stand in, in a pinch.

at the end of cooking a soup, sauce or gravy, if it tastes "flat" try adding a pinch of onion and/or garlic powder for a boost in flavor. Alternatively, try a tablespoon of soy sauce. (I add soy sauce to many gravies, for that boost of flavor.)


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