The Meat-Eater's Guide to Crafting a Meatless Meal, pt.2

Meat Eater's Guide for Meatless Meals, part 1

Meat Eater's Guide for Meatless Meals, part 3

Meat Eater's Guide for Meatless Meals, part 4

Meat Eater's Guide for Meatless Meals, part 5

When you operate with a low grocery budget for a long period of time, one of the concerns that becomes deeply-rooted is how the budget will impact family members' health and well-being. Will this be enough for my family? Will everyone feel full? And more importantly, will they get the nutrients that they need? Do my children and husband have enough to eat? These thoughts have filled my head for many years. And since we've eaten meatless a lot more than I ever did growing up, I've had to pay extra attention to the protein content in our meals.

For most of us, you really don't need to do a bunch of calculations each day to ensure a good amount of protein in your diet. We can kind of use an educated guess whether or not a meal looks like it's got enough protein or not. It's pretty simple when you're serving an animal-based protein, like beef, chicken, or fish. We all know what a serving of meat looks like. With meatless meals, it's not always so obvious. My best trick in getting enough protein (without going crazy making calculations) is to simply bump up all of the meatless meals just a bit.

What do I mean by bumping them up? I try to add something extra to every component of a meal. 

As I'm planning meatless meals, I make an effort to toss in some extras that pack some protein, like using an egg-rich Yorkshire pudding as the bread/starch side dish (adding 6.8 grams of protein for 1/5 of a recipe), choosing a high-protein vegetable like peas to go with an entree, or making a batch of milk-rich cornstarch pudding or a bunch of custard cups of egg custard for dessert, or adding a tablespoon of Parmesan to each serving (3 grams protein per tablespoon) or large dollop of plain yogurt on top of most anything (about 1  1/2 grams protein). Even a slice of pumpkin pie adds over 4 grams of protein. I aim for 3 to 4 different, good sources of protein in each meatless dinner. This pretty much ensures that I'm getting a balance of all of the necessary amino acids without having to look up tables and charts.

Here's how that might play out with my family.

My family loves broth-based vegetable soups, such as our fall favorite Cabbage Patch Soup (with about 15 grams of protein when made with lentils, add another 3 grams protein when topped with Parmesan). When this soup is on the menu, I often serve it with either wedges of Yorkshire pudding (almost 7 grams or protein) or open-faced toasted cheese sandwiches (adding about 10 grams protein), plus our favorite pumpkin pie (4 grams protein). This sort of simple soup and bread/sandwich dinner with pie dessert has 26 to 32 grams of protein. 

http://www.gallowaysnewwest.com/products/dried-beans-peas/

I'd like to note, while mentioning lentils, some beans have more grams of protein than others. The best way to make this comparison of the different bean types is by grams of protein for every 200 calories. So, here's the list starting from the top with the most protein and working down.

1. lentils come in at number one for protein content. For every 200 calories, you get 15.6 grams protein
2. split peas, with 14.1 grams protein in 200 calories
3. large white beans, with 14 grams protein in 200 calories
4. cranberry beans and 
5. kidney beans both have 13.7 grams protein in 200 calories
6. lima beans, with 13.6 grams of protein in 200 calories
7. black beans, with 13.4 grams protein in 200 calories
8. pinto beans, with 12.6 grams protein in 200 calories
9. and last in this little list --navy beans, with 11.8 grams protein in 200 calories

(information for this list courtesy of myfooddata.com)

That's a substantial spread in protein content between the top of the list and the bottom, a difference of 3.8 grams of protein in a serving. That's a little more than half of an egg's worth of protein, simply by choosing a different type of bean. Lentils are my preferred bean for their quick cooking. The extra protein is something of a bonus.

https://groovy-historian.com/2017/01/24/how-grain-shaped-history-by-the-hungry-historian/

While we're talking lists of best bang for the buck with protein and similar foods, I thought it would be interesting to look at a list of grains by their protein content.

1. kamut comes in at number one for protein. For every 200 calories, you get 8.7 grams of protein. Kamut is an ancient grain that is gaining in popularity. In my search for flour and whole wheat berries, I came across kamut in a couple of places online.
2. whole wheat pasta, with 8 grams protein in 200 calories. Pasta in general is high in protein
3. wild rice, with 7.9 grams protein in 200 calories.
4. teff, with 7.7 grams protein in 200 calories. Teff is another obscure grain that is gaining in popularity. While whole wheat flour was about sold out everywhere in April, I did see teff flour.
5. quinoa, with 7.3 grams protein in 200 calories. Quinoa is not a true grain, but it is eaten like a grain. Quinoa has all of the essential amino acids. You can cook it as a side dish, like rice, marinate it as a salad base, or add it to soup. It's one of my favorite "grains" for it's nutrition and versatility.
6. buckwheat, with 7.3 grams protein in 200 calories.
7. whole wheat flour, with 7.2 grams protein in 200 calories (the protein content does vary in wheat, but this is an average given by eatthismuch.com)
8. oatmeal, with 7.2 grams protein in 200 calories.
9. couscous, with 6.8 grams protein in 200 calories
10. all-purpose flour, with 6 grams protein in 200 calories
11. millet, with 5.9 grams protein in 200 calories
12. cornmeal, with 4.8 grams protein in 200 calories
13. brown rice, with 4.2 grams protein in 200 calories
14. white rice, with 3.6 grams of protein in 200 calories

Not a grain at all, but we eat potatoes in the same category as grains for side dishes. Potatoes have 5.27 grams protein in 200 calories, so slightly more than brown rice.

(information for this list from myfooddata.com)

This is interesting, right? While eating the same number of calories in your grain dishes, you can choose to get twice as much protein in each serving. By combining strong grain choices with bean choices, one could add as much as 8 or 9 grams of protein to a meal. That's as much extra protein as is found in 1.5 large eggs, without eating anything extra but just making stronger choices.

Before I go today, I wanted to point out a great calculator tool for recipes. There are a few different calculator tools, but I find this one to be very user-friendly. When I'm wanting to know any nutritional content for a home recipe, I can pop the ingredients into the tool, specify servings, and get the nutrients calculated for me per serving. I used it to calculate the protein for my mom's Yorkshire pudding recipe and the pumpkin pie that I often make.

Foods to include in the pantry (and fridge) for bumping up your meatless meals:

• dried beans, especially lentils
• canned beans
• bean flour to use in baking, such as garbanzo bean/chickpea flour (11.8 grams protein in 200 calories)
• whole grains (and their products), such as quinoa, whole wheat pasta, teff flour, oatmeal
• Parmesan cheese -- doesn't have to be the fancy shredded Parmesan. The powdered stuff has protein, too.
• Greek yogurt
• eggs
• extra firm tofu

Meat isn't only about protein content. When eating meatless, it's important to maximize all of the other nutrients that one normally gets from animal sources.  Till next time . . .

The Meat Eater's Guide to Crafting a Meatless Meal, pt.1

Meat Eater's Guide for Meatless Meals, part 2

Meat Eater's Guide for Meatless Meals, part 3

Meat Eater's Guide for Meatless Meals, part 4

Meat Eater's Guide for Meatless Meals, part 5

You would have to have your head in the sand to not realize that there are meat shortages looming. Supply chain issues will continue to be a problem as processing plants grapple with the problem of keeping their employees healthy while maximizing production. The tremendous quantity of our country's meat processing in the last several decades has hinged upon workers in very close proximity to one another for long shifts, working as quickly as they can. There's little real social distancing in one of these plants. 

In addition, this is an underpaid segment of workers in our country. Many of them absolutely need to go to work, even when they are sick, as they truly need the income to pay basic bills. The way to offer safety to those who work to provide meat for our tables may be to slow production, which in turn will lead to less meat in our stores and higher prices for what is there. 

We may very well have reached the tipping point for how we eat as Americans. The changes that are instituted in this current crisis may reflect a greater awareness of the immorality of asking workers to risk their health in order for us to have meat on our tables every night. Eating meatless a few nights per week can not only save us some money, but it can help spread the smaller supply a little further.

Eating meatless doesn't mean staring down at a plate of beans every night. In fact, if all you ate were beans, your diet would be deficient in many key nutrients. To healthfully eat meatless, we need to pull together meals that incorporate multiple meatless sources of nutrients.

When talking about eating a vegetarian meal, the primary nutrient most of us consider is protein. After all, meat is the comparison food for newly-hatched vegetarians, and meat is mostly the muscle tissue of an animal. Animal muscle is primarily water, at 75% of weight, followed by protein, at 20%. 

For myself, protein is the first thing that I think of when I think of meat, followed by iron, zinc, and vitamin B-12. There are a few tricks to getting enough iron, zinc, and B-12 from vegetarian sources, and I'll get to those in a later post.

Focusing on protein, when I pull together a vegetarian dinner to satisfy my meat-eating family, I try to incorporate at least 3 different sources of protein from the different food groups that are protein-rich (i.e. dairy/eggs, grains, beans, nuts/seeds, and to a lesser extent, some vegetables/mushrooms).

Here's an example of one of our recent meatless dinners and how the nutrients stack up. A few nights ago, I made TVP and Parmesan spaghetti in a tomato and herb sauce. 

For protein, I used 3/4 cup of dry TVP (a bean food), about 7 oz (not quite half of a 1-lb package) of dried spaghetti (grain), 1/4 cup of powdered Parmesan cheese (dairy) both stirred into the sauce and as topping, and 5 small slices of half wheat/half white sourdough bread made into garlic toast (grain). 

The total amount of protein for all four plates was about 91.5 grams, or an average of not quite 23 grams per person. In general, I eat less than my husband. So I gave him a larger serving of the pasta dish and 2 slices of garlic sourdough and myself a smaller amount of the pasta dish and 1 slice of sourdough. That means my husband had about 26 grams of protein, while I had about 20 grams. 

Incidentally, if I were to have made this same dinner from 12 ounces (the amount I normally use for our family of four) of 70/30 ground beef (the cheapest blend of lean to fat ground beef), tomato sauce, and spaghetti noodles, the total protein content would have also been about 91.5 grams.


Warning: Digression Approaching

Here's an interesting factoid: sourdough bread actually contains more available protein per weight than commercial yeast bread. The reason is two-fold. First, most sourdough bread is made simply with flour, active culture (the starter), water, a smidge of sugar and salt (my recipe for a two-loaf, 5 to 6 cups flour batch calls for 2 teaspoons of sugar), and no fat. In contrast, most yeasted breads contain far more sugar plus fats to ensure a tender loaf. So, the ratio of higher protein ingredients to lower protein ones in sourdough is favorable compared to most white or wheat bread. (Obviously, one could make a yeast bread with additional protein ingredients, but I'm just referring to your standard sourdough vs. yeast bread, here.) The second reason for the higher protein content in sourdough compared to yeast bread has to do with all of the "work" that goes into making sourdough. The "work" or steps of resting, folding, and the feeding in order to activate natural yeasts for a good rise also activate the dough's gluten content. (source: https://www.cookinglight.com/eating-smart/nutrition-101/is-sourdough-bread-healthy) You simply get more protein-bang for the buck with sourdough. 

Digression Complete

Back to the topic. The USDA recommends 0.8 to 1 gram of protein for every 1 kg of body weight (about 2.2 lbs). The low end being for a sedentary individual and the high end for an active one. A simple formula is to multiply your body weight (in pounds) by 0.36. By that formula, an average adult woman weighing 125 lbs, would need a total of 45 grams of protein per day, while an average adult man weighing about 160 lbs would require about 57 grams of protein per day.

To illustrate how these needs can be met on a meatless day, here's a typical vegetarian day of meals and snacks for me:

I'm petite, average build, and somewhat active. On the night we had the spaghetti meal, my dinner of 20 grams of protein was about 45% of my total requirement for the day. (By the way, my husband's plate was also about 45% of his total requirement for the day.) That left 55% of my protein needs to be met through breakfast, lunch, and a couple of several snacks per day. I get about 16 to 17 grams of protein in my breakfast of a cup of homemade yogurt and 2 pieces of sourdough toast. I consume about 13 to 15 grams of protein in primarily vegetarian lunches of beans/TVP/rice/veggies/peanut butter/bread/fruit. And there's another 15 to 16 grams of protein in my snacks throughout the day (including a daily cup of soy milk made into soy cocoa). This gives me a total of 44 to 48 grams of protein in addition to my TVP spaghetti dinner of about 20 grams. That puts me over my daily protein requirement by 19 to 23 grams. 

Variety, variety, variety
Some days, my eating is more protein-rich than others; but I'm fairly certain that I meet my needs on a daily basis. Variety is truly the key to healthy eating, in general, and crafting protein-rich meals, in particular. But, honestly, the task of getting enough protein into the vegetarian meals I prepare is not as complex as this post may make it seem. I'll tell you the hows and whys in part 2.

Till next time . . .

Did You Overbuy a Bunch of Food Items? Freezing Commercially-Canned Food

So, you stocked your pantry with commercially-canned foods, and now, you can't use them all before their expiration dates. Maybe you were preparing for a situation where you would need more easy to prepare foods, or perhaps you found an awesome sale on canned tuna. The result is the same, if you buy more canned food than you can use before the expiration date, you'll need to do something to salvage all of that usable food. Besides having a canned-food orgy, there is a way to save it all, at least for another few months. You can extend a canned food's safe-to-eat-by date by several months by freezing it. There are a few basic rules to follow for safety:

1. open the can and transfer the product to a freezer-safe container or bag. Do not freeze food in the can.
2. drain products that are packed in water, juice, or oil before freezing. This liquid can be frozen and saved, too, of you think you'll have use for it later. However, there are exceptions to the draining rule. I find that our family likes the texture of canned tomatoes frozen in their juice.
3. canned meals, such as soups, stews, and pasta dishes in sauce, are best kept in their liquids.
4. mark frozen meat products with a clear expiration date.
5. do this BEFORE the printed expiration date on the can.
6. for the most part, the suggested time limit for freezing concerns best quality and not safety.

canned meat, such as tuna, chicken, ham     before expiration date, open can, drain, place in freezer bag, squeeze out excess air and freeze for up to 3 months. Best practice -- use a Sharpie to write "expiration date: XX/XX/XXXX (date that is 3 months into the future from point of freezing)."

canned vegetables     according to eatbydate.com, unopened canned vegetables, when properly stored, can safely be consumed up to 1 to 2 years beyond the expiration date printed on the can. However, if you'd like to freeze the canned veggies, open can, drain, place in freezer bag, squeeze out excess air, and freeze for up to 2 months.

canned olives     canned olives freeze quite well. Simply drain, pat dry with a paper towels, pack in freezer bag, squeeze out excess air, and freeze for up to 6 months.

canned fruit     drain the juice and pour into a freezer-safe container and freeze, Place drained fruit in freezer bag, squeeze out excess air, freeze for up to 2 months. The juice and fruit can be thawed and recombined or the juice can be used separately for another purpose. (We like to save canned pineapple juice to add to a pitcher of orange juice or use in marinades.)

canned fruit sauces, such as applesauce     transfer to an airtight container and freeze for up to 2 months.

canned milk     canned milk can be frozen, but the consistency will change somewhat when frozen. Milk solids tend to separate from the liquids in freezing. And for some, this makes the thawed product less appealing. However, frozen/thawed canned milk still works great in cooking, such as for making soups and sauces, baking, etc. Best practice -- for canned evaporated milk, open the can and pour into ice cube trays. Freeze solid then transfer the frozen milk cubes to a freezer bag. Freezing milk in small portions makes it easy to grab just how much you need for a particular recipe without thawing too much.

For sweetened condensed milk, freeze in small containers or freezer bags and not in ice cube trays. The high sugar content in sweetened condensed milk prevents the cubes from freezing solid.

Both types of canned milk will keep, frozen, for up to 3 months.

canned pasta meals, soups, and stews     empty contents of cans into freezer bags or airtight freezer containers. Freeze and use within 2 months, for best quality.

jarred or canned sauces     for tomato-based pasta sauce, transfer to a freezer-safe container and freeze up to 3 months.

Gravy and other opaque/thickened sauces tend to separate when frozen. However, it can be frozen and remedied once thawed. Transfer contents of can or jar to a freezer container and freeze for up to 3 months. Once thawed, reheat and whisk vigorously, adding some liquid as needed.

Canned jellied cranberry sauce separates and becomes watery once frozen and thawed. It is still safe but you may need to heat it to melting, then cool to recombine. To freeze, transfer to freezer container and keep frozen up to 3 months.


For myself . . . A couple of times per year, I check expiration dates on my canned foods. When I find something nearing its expiry, I make a choice to use it right away or go ahead and freeze the contents. It's surprising how suddenly a bunch of cans of pumpkin about to expire can sneak up on me.

In addition, I frequently find myself with a half-can of something leftover, which I will freeze to use another time.

No Egg, No Milk, No Butter Chocolate Cake

This is another wartime recipe that would have been baked to add cheer to a family meal using the very basic of ingredients. 

I've substituted vegetable oil for the recipe's original recommendation for Oleo. Oleo required fewer ration points than butter, so was often the preferred solid fat for families. Oleo was a white solid fat, like Crisco, that came with a small capsule of yellow coloring that would be kneaded into the white fat to make it resemble butter. A little while ago, an elderly friend of mine from church recounted her impressions of Oleo. 

"Oleo was ghastly. It was supposed to taste like butter. But for a girl who spent her early summers on grandpa's farm, I knew butter. And this was not anything like creamy, sweet butter. It was greasy and tasteless. It was my job to mix in the yellow color. I was 8 at the time and this job was often relegated to children. I hated the feel of the Oleo on my hands. Yes! I mixed it with my bare hands."

In my rendition of the cake, with using oil instead of margarine (Oleo), the mixing process is also simplified, as I don't need to use a mixer. 

Sugar was rationed during WWII, limiting each household member to 1/2 pound, which is about 1 measuring cup. Cake recipes that might have previously suggested more sugar were adjusted to spare as much of the family's sugar ration as possible.

Many kitchens found themselves lacking an ingredient or two at any given time, so just made do with substitutions as needed. Vanilla was sometimes in short supply during WWII. If vanilla extract was not available, a baker might use a teaspoon of bourbon, strong coffee, or simply leave it out. Synthetic vanilla flavoring grew in popularity and found its way into wartime cupboards.

Outside of wartime, baking chocolate was the preferred product for flavoring chocolate baked goods. However, during the war, chocolate rations were thought of as essential for soldiers, both to boost morale and to provide a portable energy food. As a result, baking chocolate was difficult for a home-baker to source, and cocoa powder combined with a little fat became a ready substitute.

Enjoy this super easy and very frugal chocolate cake!

1  2/3 cup flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

4 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (known to us as baking soda)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup water

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vinegar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (or bourbon, maple syrup, or strong coffee)

Use an ungreased 8 or 9-inch round layer cake pan or square 8 X 8-inch baking pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In the baking pan, mix the dry ingredients together, whisking to break up lumps with either a fork or wire whisk. Add liquid ingredients and mix in well. Bake for 33 to 40 minutes, until the center springs back when depressed with the press of a finger.

A dark chocolate glaze can be made with a couple of spoonfuls of cocoa powder, and about 1/4 cup of confectioners sugar, pinch of salt, and water to thin and blend. Heat this over Medium on the stove or in the microwave, stirring well to combine. The glaze should be the consistency of a thick syrup.

A glaze would have been more economical of rationed supplies (no butter or milk and less sugar overall) than a frosting and was often preferred for that reason. But also, cakes were often served simply, unadorned with icing, serving slices alongside a thin custard, a dish of fruit sauce, or just plain.

10 Protein-Rich Foods That Are Shelf-Stable For Your Pantry and Can Be Bought Online and Shipped

I discussed buying TVP the other day in the context of possible meat shortages and the alternatives for good protein sources. Today, I thought I'd share some of the other alternatives to fresh or frozen meat, specifically ones that can be bought online and shipped to your home, which by definition would need to be shelf-stable. 

For those of us who are staying in for the time being, this is a way to get meat and meat-alternatives delivered to your door. And for those of us who wish to have a couple of back-up items, these foods can stay in a pantry or on a closet shelf until needed. Most of these foods keep for at least 1 year, but attention should be paid to expiration dates on packages.

So, here's my list of 10 other foods (in addition to TVP) that are high in protein, shelf stable, and can be bought online.

• canned meat/fish, such as tuna, salmon, chicken, sausages, ham, Spam
• powdered Parmesan cheese, cheddar cheese powder
• dry and canned milk
• dairy and non-dairy liquid milk in aseptic packaging (the kind of package that is shelf-stable, like what kids' juice boxes are packaged in)
• powdered non-dairy milk, such as soy milk powder
• soy, whey, or veggie-based protein powder to mix with water or add to milk or smoothies
• peanut butter and other nut butters
• nuts and seeds
• dried beans combined with grain products, as well as bean flours to use in baking 
• shelf-stable tofu (not the water pack variety), such as Mori-Nu brand

Many of these foods can be found on common shopping sites such as Walmart.com and Amazon.com as well as in local stores. Some of the more specialty foods can be found on smaller, health food sites or through a manufacturer shopping portal.

No-Yeast Pizza Crust, Using My Sourdough Starter

A week ago, I posted about my new sourdough starter that I grew from just water and flour. I grew the starter, day by day, over the course of a week, adding more flour and water in morning and evening for seven days. Sunday evening, I used some starter to begin a batch of sourdough bread, using the recipe on this page. 

To make sourdough bread without any yeast whatsoever, I needed to begin the dough the day before I wanted to bake. By Monday morning, the sponge was ready to add sugar, salt, and additional flour. I turned half of the dough into a loaf of bread and used the other half to make pizza crust.

If you know sourdough, then you can imagine the cheesy taste it has. As a pizza crust, this was amazing. I will make sourdough pizza crust even after I have a lot of yeast again. The crust is tangy, crispy, and chewy.

The one major difference between making sourdough pizza crust and yeast-raised pizza crust is time. The sponge for the dough needs to sit overnight. Then the next day, after the rest of the ingredients are mixed in and the dough is kneaded, it needs to rise for a couple of hours. And finally, after the dough has been pressed into a circle on a greased baking sheet, it needs to rise for an hour to hour and a half before spreading with sauce, adding toppings, and baking. As the crust does not rise much at all once in the oven, a good period for rising before baking is necessary with a sourdough.

Like I said, I would make this even if I had lots of yeast to spare.

To TVP or Not to TVP: That is the Question

Does anybody, here, use TVP in their meals regularly?

TVP stands for Textured Vegetable Protein, also called TSP (textured soy protein). It's made from defatted soybeans, after the oil is extracted for making vegetable oil. The defatted soybeans are then processed into bits and chunks. If you've ever eaten a cheapo frozen burrito (hello, 7-11 from my college days), then you've probably had some TVP. It's that chewy bit mixed in with the other ingredients to fake a meat texture. Because it is made from beans (soybeans) so it has all of the protein associated with beans. Soybeans, in particular, contain all of the essential amino acids. And it can be really cheap, depending on where and how much you buy at any one time. The bits are often cheaper than the chunks; but the chunks are preferred for a more meaty approximation. Also, some TVP has wheat flour in it. There is also gluten-free TVP, which is oddly often less expensive than non gluten-free.

With so many US meat processing plants experiencing shutdowns due to COVID-19, it's my understanding that we could see some meat shortages in the next several months. Depending on how quickly the US can get the virus under control in the regions with these production facilities, these shutdowns could end in a couple of weeks, or go on for a couple of months. This situation is affecting the poultry, beef, and pork industry. And you know how it works with shortages, there may be some product, but what you find in the grocery store is more expensive than you're used to. So, with this in mind, I'm looking to other sources of high-quality protein to fulfill my family's nutrition needs. We've covered ourselves in the bean category, now on to TVP.

My experience  with TVP is with the bits, because, you know -- cheaper. So, here's what you need to know about TVP bits to see if they will work for you.

You can buy TVP prepackaged (Bob's Red Mill is one brand) in health food sections of the grocery store, in the bulk bins of some supermarkets, and online. It is very worth it to check prices at multiple places, as I found TVP for a reasonable price per pound as well as for pries that bordered on extortion levels. Years ago, we were able to buy TVP in bulk at a local upscale market for the lowest price per pound anywhere (99 cents/lb when other stores were charging $2.99/lb). Today, a great price per pound would be in the $3 to $4/lb range. As with many other food items, when you buy larger amounts at one time, you get a price break. I paid $3.19/lb this month, but bought 25 lbs to get that price. It is a lot of TVP. However, TVP lasts a couple of years in dry conditions ( it's shelf-stable).

You can buy plain TVP or flavored TVP. Flavored will cost you more. Plain TVP has little flavor of its own and takes on the flavors with which you cook it.

Plain TVP can be added to spaghetti sauce and taco/burrito filling, added to canned tuna to stretch a single can for more tuna sandwich servings, on top of rice and covered with gravy, in casseroles, soups and stews, made into patties or balls with the help of a binder, added to any hot cereal to boost the protein content, or even, as my husband likes, eaten just as it is, as a cold cereal with milk. But I think most folks use it in spaghetti sauce, casseroles, and soup.

TVP is a dry product. It rehydrates in hot water in about a 1:1 ratio, with maybe a bit less water than the dry TVP, and takes about 10 minutes for this step.

TVP keeps for a couple of years in my pantry. Official sites state that TVP needs to be kept in an airtight container in cool and dry conditions. The pantry is fine if you'll eat it within a year, but to extend it's shelf life, it can be stored in the fridge or freezer for 18 months.  In my personal experience, we've kept TVP for 2 to 3 years and had no issues with it, with no off-taste or odor.

1/4 cup of dry TVP contains 12 grams of protein, approximately the same amount of protein in 3 ounces of beef. When I serve beef to my family members, I serve about 3 ounces per person. There are 17 of these protein-based servings in 1 pound of dry TVP.  (I use grams of protein as my comparison data when looking at the cost per serving.) At the price I paid, $3.19/lb, each 12-gram protein serving cost about 19 cents. The current price for ground beef in my grocery stores is around $3/lb. So, a 3-ounce serving of beef would cost me about 56 cents. I admit, I did get a great price on TVP. But let's say I paid $4.99/lb for TVP (places to find it in that price range in a minute). At $4.99/lb, each serving would cost 29 cents. That's just under half the price of beef in my area. The price difference based on protein narrows until about $10/lb for TVP, compared to $3/lb for beef.

Our local Walmart sells Bob's Red Mill TVP for $3.28 for a 10-oz bag, that's $5.25/lb. You can find TVP online for less. I bought my 25-lb case at $3.19/lb from Nuts.com. They offer various levels of discount for buying in quantity. They carry this gluten-free TVP for $4.99/lb bought in 1-lb bags, $4.84 in 5-lb bags, $4.49 for 15 lbs, and down to $3.19 in the 25-lb case. A warning, 15 pounds is still a lot of TVP, yielding about 255 individual servings, while 25 pounds yields about 425 servings.

My suggestion for someone who has never tried TVP: buy a single bag (such as Bob's Red Mill 10-ounce bags from your local grocery store) to see if you like it. If you determine that it would work for your family, then search out larger quantities, such as what I found online. Nuts.com has a minimum order for free shipping -- $59. Otherwise the shipping to order just one 1-lb bag would make the TVP a bad value compared to current beef prices. (Per their website, shipping is $6.99 on orders under $59.) They do, however, carry a wide selection of pantry-stable foods, including dry yeast, which I know many folks have had a hard time finding locally.

Another option -- Swansonvitamins.com. Here's Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free TVP for $2.56/12-oz bag, or $3.41/lb. Shipping is $4.99 or free for orders over $50 (possible limited-time free shipping at $25 spend going on right now). 

One more place -- iherb.com carries Bob's Red Mill 10-oz bags for $3.70, which works out to $5.92/lb. The other day, retailmenot.com had iherb.com coupon codes for 5% off your total order, bringing the cost per pound down to $5.63/lb (working out to 33 cents per 12-gram protein serving). Iherb.com offers free shipping at $20 minimum purchase. (I used iherb just the other day for something else, powdered soy milk.) So far, I've been impressed with their site. They include specific expiration information on the page for the items -- something that you often don't know until you receive your order and look at the package for yourself. Depending on what else you might need that they carry, it may be easy to reach a $20 minimum purchase to get that free shipping.

Remember, when you make your price comparison between TVP and something like ground beef, TVP is a dehydrated product, while fresh meat is not. That is why I suggest comparing protein-comparable cost per serving, using a 3-ounce serving of ground beef (containing 12 grams of protein) compared to the cost for 12 grams of protein in TVP (which weighs about .9 of an ounce). 

Just a note--all of the above online sources had stock as of Saturday evening, but may be out of stock, presently.

If you made it this far, bravo! I wanted to share as much as I could so you would have something to base a choice on, should you also be looking for meat alternatives. I understand that TVP is not everyone's "thing." Some folks have digestive issues or allergies with soy. But for my family, it is working out well. 



And just so you know -- I have no connections to any of the above companies, except that I have ordered from each of them at one time or another.

Rhubarb Season is Here! Using the Pinch of Baking Soda Trick to Reduce Sugar When Cooking With Tart Fruit

Several years ago, I posted (here) about using baking soda to neutralize acids in fruit when making fruit pies or sauces. Doing so means that I can use less sugar in these fruity dishes and desserts. 

It's now rhubarb season in my area. This week, I made 2 batches of rhubarb sauce and 1 rhubarb pie. All 3 times, I used a bit of rhubarb (about 1/4 teaspoon soda for a quart of rhubarb), then reduced the sugar in those recipes by about 1/3 cup.

1/4 teaspoon baking soda per 1 quart of tart fruit to reduce sugar by 1/3 cup

If you're trying to conserve on sugar in homemade fruity recipes, such as pies, crisps, cobblers, sauces, and syrups, tiny amount of baking soda will spare quite a lot of sugar over the course of a season. 

In addition to using baking soda with rhubarb, I also use it in desserts, sauces, and syrups made with berries, tart apples, and sour cherries.

A Canning Jar Question for You

I had a busy morning the other day. I was organizing my canning supplies for this summer. I have such a range of sizes of jars, from 8-oz to 64-oz. Some of the small jars are very pretty and good for gifting. The largest jars are more utilitarian. As I was looking over each size, I wondered how best to use each size. I typically make salsa, pickles, relish, jams/jellies, and fruit in syrup. I stick to high-acid foods.

Here's my question: what size jars do you like to use for which preserved food and why? For example, do you go through a lot of salsa, so you like large jars of it, while you only use a little jam, so you prefer putting up jam in the smallest jars? Tell me, how do you like to use your canning jars? What has made the most sense for what you can and how much your family uses? Also, which foods do you prefer to freeze, because of texture or safety concerns?

I Keep Trying to Use Less and Less of Some Things -- This Time Coffee Filters

I was running low on my usual instant decaf coffee and since I had some rewards points to use at Walgreens (plus they were offering free shipping on any amount spent at that time), I decided to order my decaf from them. They were sold out online of instant decaf, so I ordered ground decaf coffee. No problem -- we have our old drip coffee maker I could use. I didn't even think about filters.

After a few days of brewing my decaf, I noticed the stack of coffee filters in the cabinet looked really scrawny. I'm used to buying store brand coffee filters at Walmart or Fred Meyer, or even from Dollar Tree. There have been no store brand coffee filters available for online shopping at any of these stores. And I wasn't about to spend double or triple what I'm used to for coffee filters, at least not yet.

So, I was wondering to myself just how many times you can reuse a coffee filter. I've scooped out used grounds and refilled a couple of times in the past, so this isn't completely new territory for me. My biggest concern is mold growth from reusing a coffee filter over multiple days. To counter that, this is what I've been doing. After I brew my coffee, I scoop/dump out the grounds, give the filter a quick rinse with water, then allow to dry until the next morning. Seems to be working.

one thing that surprised me -- coffee filter paper is relatively durable, much more so than the common college student coffee filter substitute -- paper towels. Paper towels do work in a pinch, though.

I was a bit hesitant to mention my coffee filter reuse here, as this may be a little too extreme for some folks' tastes. Then I found this article that completely backs me up. The article says that coffee filters can be reused at least 4 or 5 times. With that usage, I can make my dwindling supply last a couple of months.

This Was an Exciting Experiment: Making Sourdough Starter Using Only Flour and Water

You all know that I love a good kitchen experiment. In my quest to use less and less yeast in my home-baked bread, I thought of baking sourdough bread again. I've made sourdoughs before, using flour, water, and a bit of yeast. But you know, the old-time way to make a sourdough starter uses only water and flour. I was really curious just how difficult it is to get a starter going the old-fashioned way. And with the current situation of limited yeast availability, it seemed like a good time to try this out.

I didn't want to waste a lot of flour, so I began with a very small amount of good, unbleached flour (I used King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour). Filtered water would have been preferable, as chlorine might inhibit some fermentation activity. However, using what I had at home suited the nature of this experiment. So, tap water it was.

In a small glass bowl, I stirred about 1/4 cup of flour into lukewarm water, enough to make a thick pancake batter consistency. Then I placed the bowl in the oven with the door closed and the light on. I left it like this for 24 hours, without removing it from the oven or turning off the light. The electric light in the oven keeps it quite warm, without being too hot for the fermentation.

By the following morning, the top of the batter looked crusted over. I removed the bowl from the oven and could see through cracks in the dried top layer that there were bubbles underneath. 

The batter also smelled sour! I lifted the crusted surface and could see lots of bubbly activity going on below! How exciting -- a real sourdough starter without relying on commercial yeast to get it going.

I warmed a bit more water (about 1/4 cup) to just slightly warmer than room temperature and stirred this into my baby starter along with more flour (another 1/4 cup) and placed the bowl back in the oven with its light on. I checked on it about 10 hours later. It looked flat with layer of liquid on top. I stirred it up and could see bubbles forming right away. I fed it a little more flour and water and placed it back in the oven. Within an hour, it was bubbly. I suspect that I'll need to feed my starter twice per day for about 6 to 8 more days before it will be ready for a batch of bread. When the starter has grown sufficiently and is very active (sometime next week), I'll be baking a batch of San Francisco sourdough bread, using the recipe in this post. 


No need to buy that overpriced yeast on ebay or Amazon. I can bake bread without any commercial yeast at all.

Using Old Vegetable Seeds

This is just what frugal gardeners do, right? We try to use up all of the seeds in a packet, even if that packet is 3, 4, or 5 years old. It just feels wrong to us to throw them away without at least giving them a shot.

Like all gardeners, I have several of those old packets of seeds. I have 4 options with those seeds. 1) I could just toss them and start fresh with new seeds. 2) I could gamble on them sprouting in my garden and plant those seeds directly into the garden soil. 3) I could trial some of the seeds in a damp paper towel inside of a ziploc bag and placed in a warm spot in the kitchen, to see what percentage will sprout. Or 4) I could plant the seeds indoors in small-celled flats, keep warm and under lights, then transplant any tiny seedlings from the batch out into the garden once their big enough to move.

We already established that I'm not about to throw away seeds that could still have life in them.

My garden space is limited, so I don't want to just seed my garden with questionable seeds. If I were to devote a 4-foot square block to beet seeds and only a quarter of the seeds sprouted, I would have wasted all of the little pockets of bare soil in between the tiny seedlings from seeds that did sprout.

While option number 3 is very scientific (telling me exactly what proportion of seeds would sprout, if directly seeded in the garden, and then adjusting the quantity of seeds per planting hole accordingly), it sounds like a lot of extra work, when my aim is just to get some veggies to grow for our table.

Option number 4 is what I went for. I started seeds, old and new, in small-celled containers indoors.

I discovered that some seeds just don't last that long. For example, my yellow crookneck squash did not sprout at all. I planted 8 seeds in 4 cells and zero sprouted. These seeds were 6 years old. I still had about 6 seeds leftover in the packet, so I went ahead and plugged those seeds into the soil that didn't produce any sprouts. If they sprout, then good, I'll have some crookneck squash. But if they don't, I'm not out anything extra at this point. I did have success with my zucchini seeds, which is another type of summer squash, so we'll be fine in that department, at least.

I also discovered that 5 year old beet seeds do have quit a bit of viability. I started the beet seeds about 8 days ago and I have sprouts in a little over half of the cells, starting 1 to 2 seeds per cell (I aimed for 1 seed per cell but sometimes an extra would fall from my fingers). I'll wait another week and then carefully transplant all of the sprouted beet seeds/tiny seedlings to the garden. (You usually don't start root vegetables in containers, as these plants need lots of root space and soil nutrients to grow the vegetable. For that reason, I'll plant these out much sooner than I would plants like tomato or zucchini when started in a flat indoors.)

In all honesty, I think that option 3 is really the "smart" option, starting 10 seeds in a damp paper towel. The humidity is more controlled in a ziploc bag than in an open flat. If zero seeds sprouted, I could conclude that 6-year old seeds of a particular type are likely worth planting in the garden. But, hey, I don't always do the smartest thing. 


I read something interesting in the news the other day. In addition to everything else that screams self-sufficiency, garden centers and seed catalogs are rapidly selling out of seeds far earlier this year compared to other years. It seems that not only are we all baking bread and coloring our hair at home (yes, Walmart suggested that hair color is on the panic-buy list, too), but we are also all growing our own produce this summer. 

Of all of the hoarding or buying certain items when you've never done so before, I think starting a vegetable garden is one of the most helpful for all of us, as home gardens can help take the pressure off of tight food supply situations by creating more supply, even if that supply is private. This means that people who don't have the option to have a garden will have more to choose from in the stores and hopefully won't have to pay crazy high prices for a head of lettuce or fresh tomatoes this summer.

In my opinion, the home garden is so satisfying. Not only does it provide lots of fresh and delicious food for my family, but watching it all grow is exciting, too. Doing this frugally, by trying to use all of the viability in my aging vegetable seeds, was extremely satisfying for this tightwad gardener.

Even with a pandemic all around us, life still goes on . . .

. . . and people still have special occasions in their lives.

Tomorrow is a big day for me. It's one of those milestone birthdays (rhymes with "mixty"). 

Celebrating a birthday during a pandemic poses several challenges, obviously. There's no eating out, no travel, no special delivery from a florist, not even a gathering that would include all of my children. I don't expect any boughten gifts, as no one in my household has been able to go anywhere to shop. That's all really okay. 

So, I'm giving myself a gift. I'm giving myself a couple of days off from work -- from blogging, from earning money online (answering surveys and performing tasks), from cooking (unless cooking would please me), from stress. Today, Thursday, and Friday are just days for me to enjoy life, to cut some tulips from my yard, to eat chocolate, to have brunch and dinner at home with my two daughters and husband, to read a novel, to browse through the pile of magazines that I checked out from the library before they closed, and maybe to watch a movie at home (also checked out from the library back in February). I might have tea on the deck in the afternoon. And I might stay in my cozy pjs for half the day. It is enough to simply celebrate that I am still here and that I am blessed beyond measure in this world. 

When the virus has been suppressed to a level that it is safe again to go out and I can share a celebration with my son and daughter-in-law as well as my daughters and husband, then we'll do something to mark my special occasion as well as my daughters' birthday, Easter, and my husband's soon-to-be birthday. This could turn into a one celebration covers all spring events outing.

So, I'll be gone from my blog for the rest of this week and be back on Monday. I hope you all have a good rest of your week.