Frugal snacks from my kitchen

The snack industry is relatively young, if you think about it. 150 years ago, if you wanted a snack, you had your choice of bread (and maybe butter), an apple (if you had an apple tree), maybe a homemade cookie or homemade doughnut, or maybe a glass of milk. I imagine that most of the time, if you declared that you wanted a snack, you'd be told that you'd spoil your appetite for the next meal if you ate anything.

And yet, today, snack foods take up a large chunk of the grocery aisles, and the consumers' dollars. In my own quest to keep my grocery spending in check, I make most of our snacks. I don't make chips or crackers (at least not very often), as those are so time-consuming to make. So I try to find other snacky foods that satisfy the same type of cravings.

Nuts make very healthy snack material. but they're expensive. Seeds, however, have many of the same nutrients and snack appeal, but at a much reduced cost. I've told you that I buy raw sunflower seeds, then pan-roast them at home, myself. I spend $1.34/lb for sunflower seeds, putting them at the high-end of what I find acceptable in expense for snack foods (but still okay with me, as they are so nutritious).

These aren't pumpkin seeds. (But home-roasted pumpkin seeds from your Jack-o-lantern are also a super cheap snack food.) These are the seeds from winter squash, 2 small Delicata squash and 1 acorn squash.

I save the uncleaned seeds in the refrigerator, in a small bowl of water, up to 1 week, until I have enough seeds to make it worth my time to clean them and roast them. It took me a week to cook 3 squash and accumulate enough seeds to roast squash seeds this week.

To clean and roast, I dump them into a colander in the sink, and under running water I separate the pulp from the seeds. When clean, I toss briefly with oil, right in the colander. Then spread on a baking sheet and roast in a 350 degree oven, for about 10 minutes, remove from oven and stir, and roast for 5-minute increments, stirring between, until they are just golden. Sprinkle with salt and they make a yummy and super healthy snack (high in minerals, notably magnesium and zinc). If you have previously been throwing out the seeds from winter squash, then these would be a basically-free snack.

For that salty, cracker or chip-like crispy/crunchy snack, I turn to garlic toast. As I'm cleaning out my freezer, I went looking for bread products in there.

I found 1 hamburger bun, which had been frozen, thawed and frozen again, a potato roll from the sandwich lunch we had a couple of weeks ago, and this half-slice of homemade French bread. In a small dish, I mixed some butter, garlic powder and salt. then spread this on the halves of rolls/buns and bread. Broiled for a couple of minutes, until toasty.

And since I sometimes want a sweet snack, I made muffins, using up the last of the baked acorn squash from lunch and breakfast this week. Quick breads also make good snack material, and are easy to make.

I spent about 1 hour making snacks the other day, and prepared about 2 days of snacking stuff for my family (we're big snackers, here, and there are 5 of us). What I made not only was less expensive than commercial snack foods, but much healthier than anything I could buy in a store.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers with an average cost of $3.00 to $3.50 to feed 5 of us

Inside-Out Chicken Cordon Bleu

Tuesday
BBQ pork sliders on leftover dinner rolls
frozen peas
*leftover gingered pear crisp

Wednesday
pork and beans (using leftover BBQ pork in the baked beans)
roasted squash (one of the squash from "decorating" a side table in family room for Sunday's gathering)
cornbread
*tomato wedges with leftover bacon ranch dressing (from last Sunday's gathering)

Thursday
slider burgers (using leftover sandwich buns from last weekend, and dividing the last 2 hamburger patties, to make 5 sliders)
*with homegrown lettuce, onion  and tomato
leftover pork and beans
*applesauce (from freezer)

Friday
Mexi black bean soup (with green pepper, frozen corn, canned tomatoes, leftover cooked rice, topped with corn tortilla strips made from the very last 2 corn tortillas bought in June)
leftover sandwich buns turned into garlic toast
*blackberry-rhubarb crisp (I'm cutting the last of the rhubarb this week. This crisp was made from fresh garden rhubarb and wild blackberries picked in August and frozen. I used the same basic crisp topping as was in Wednesday's post for the recipe -- Gingered Pear Crisp, reducing the ginger in the topping to 1/4 teaspoon. That topping is pretty yummy!)

Saturday
leftover Mexi black bean soup
French bread
*cole slaw with cabbage from garden
*leftover blackberry-rhubarb crisp

Sunday
black beans and rice, green pepper and canned tomatoes
*garden beans and last of summer squash sauteed in bacon fat
*fresh pear slices
*cole slaw with cabbage from garden
sugar cookies (from last weekend's gathering)

Monday
Inside-Out Chicken Cordon Bleu -- using an oven-roasted chicken leg quarter (1 leg quarter split between the 5 of us). Chicken meat wrapped in ham and Swiss cheese (ham and cheese leftover from gathering at our house, wrapped around serving portions of chopped, seasoned roasted chicken). Spooned some chicken stock over all, and covered with foil, heated in oven for 15 minutes.
*leftover rice, cooked with chicken fat, rosemary and garlic
*sauteed kale, mustard greens and cabbage
*tomato and cucumber salad
*rhubarb-blackberry cobbler

Tuesday
*ham-bean-veggie soup (I had the ham bone from September's baked ham in the freezer. I made stock with it, picked the last of the meat off the bone, and then added cooked beans, garden carrots, potatoes, and Swiss chard, along with seasonings)
*curried pea and peanut cole slaw (using Lisa's recipe -- thanks Lisa!)
*leftover rhubarb-blackberry cobbler

Wednesday
*turkey and dumplings with garden beet greens, Swiss chard, onion, potatoes and carrots (turkey in stock in freezer), plus frozen peas and barley, topped with biscuit dough
*marinated beet salad over garden greens
*Asian pear slices
*apple pie


*indicates part or all of this menu item came from the garden or orchard

This is frustrating me to no end -- I can't seem to clear space from the freezers. Every day, I take a couple of things out of the freezer, but then later in the day, I add more. It has gotten so bad that I can't find things in there. I'm sure I have one more loaf of bread in the freezers, but after several searches yesterday, I came up with nothing. I am going to really work at using up some of the freezer contents. I know, too much food should not be a problem. Rant over.

I was thrilled on Tuesday to realize that I had all of the ingredients (cabbage from garden, frozen peas, canned peanuts and dressing ingredients) to make Lisa's Curried Pea and Peanut slaw (from March of 2014 -- recipe here). I had chives from the garden to add to Tuesday's version. It was delicious. Whenever I taste this, I wonder to myself why I would ever want to buy a deli salad at the grocery store.

In estimating costs per meal, I come up with about half of our food costs cover dinner for all of us, and the other half is split between breakfast and lunch. We are currently averaging about $6 per day for 5 adults. So our Cheap & Cheerfuls are costing about $3 or just a bit more, for all 5 of us. When our oldest was a baby, we spent about $30 per week on groceries (and had no garden). We now spend about $50 per week, are feeding 5 instead of 3, and have a garden and orchard. If we didn't have the garden or fruit growing on our property, I imagine that I would be spending about $100 per week. Growing our own produce has a big impact on our grocery bill.

The other huge money saver is that we buy the cheapest cuts of meat that our family will actually eat. I buy whole turkeys, chicken leg quarters (cheaper than whole chickens for me), 10 or more lb pork loins to divide into meal-size chunks, bone-in half hams, bulk ground beef, ground beef patties from a wholesaler, and frozen cod pieces. We get a variety of animal protein for minimal cost. But there is often some work involved, such as cutting up a whole pork loin, or roasting whole turkeys, or breaking up a 10-lb package of chicken leg quarters. It's well-worth the work. Boneless, skinless chicken breasts sell for about $1.79 to $1.99/lb, on sale. By buying the leg quarters, I spend 49 cents/lb. There is the waste of bones and skin to take into account. I estimate those parts to be about half of the total weight of the chicken. So, even if I double my 49 cents/lb to 98 cents/lb as cost of actual meat, I'm still coming out way ahead on price per pound for meat only. Plus, I use the bones and skin to make stock, and I save any fat from the meat to use in cooking. I do the same with bone-in hams. I use the bones to make stock, and render and save the ham fat to use in cooking. I make use of every bit that I purchase.

Our meals are humble -- no fancy ingredients. Suppers are often as simple as beans and rice or homemade soups plus bread and salad, and a homemade dessert. But everything is always fresh-tasting and delicious. I make my own short-cuts, such as pie pastry, made in bulk, that I keep in the freezer. And I've memorized many basic recipes, such as biscuit dough, so I can make dumplings without having to look up a recipe. Or alter that same biscuit recipe to pop a batch of scones into the oven. Or make drop biscuits minutes before dinner is on the table.

To make scratch-baking as easy as possible, I do a few things. I keep all of my baking ingredients very handy to the kitchen work area (the pantry is right next to the prep area). And I keep the most often used measures in the ingredient containers, themselves. For instance, I have a 1 cup measure in each of the flour containers, as I use flour most often in increments of cups. And I keep a 1/2 teaspoon measure in the salt jar, so I can easily measure 1/2 teaspoon or "eyeball" measure 1/4 teaspoon. I keep a 1/4 cup scoop in the sugar, as I most often use sugar in increments of quarter cups - 1 scoop - 1/4 cup, 2 scoops - 1/2 cup, etc. It's faster and easier, for me, than getting out and washing the measuring scoops and spoons for each recipe. I also keep a set of cups and spoons at my prep center. And I have separated all of the measuring spoons, so I can grab the one I need, but still have the rest to use later in the day. I wash them in the dishwasher, usually at the end of the day. Dollar Tree is a great place to buy cheap measuring spoons and cups, so I have several sets of each.

I guess you could say that I'm one of those throw-everything-together-as-quickly-as-possible sort of cooks/bakers. I don't worry about perfection in daily meals, and everyone seems happy-enough with my humble meals.