Frugal when cooking

Long ago I read something about cooking meals that struck me it could have been describing my Grandma Mama. She let nothing go to waste. I never forgot about it although I had to look up the exact wording for the quote.

“The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she fed the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.” Calvin Trillin; New York Times Writer

I do love that quote and I imagine Grandma Mama and Calvin’s mother would have been great friends. I believe it was a common cooking strategy in their day for women to use every scrap as often as possible. From what I remember, some of what was cooked on Sunday would be used as the start of another meal on Monday. Monday’s meal became the start of Tuesday’s meal which became the start of Wednesday’s meal and so forth.

Grandma Mama was an expert at creating meals seemingly from almost nothing. She would do things like save bits of left over meat and dried out cheeses which were ground into tiny bits to be included in soups or stews. If it ever seemed like there wasn’t enough meat to feed everyone she would say it hadn’t been ground small enough. All types of bones, even fish bones, became the start of stock making. Papa hunted and fished. Grandma Mama made everything he brought home into something delicious. They were subsistence farmers and foragers. These days it’s called sustainable living.

I’ve got a long way to go before I’m half as frugal as my grandparents were although I do my best. Have you heard about or read about people saving meat “drippings” during WW1 & 2? I picked up the habit from Grandma Mama. Can you see the fat floating on top of the water in the pan? I save drippings like this in a container in the freezer. I just keep adding a bit at a time until the container is full or when I need to make space in the freezer. When the container is full I clean the drippings to be used as lard for cooking. Grandma Mama called it washing the drippings. I just started a new container. The old one gave me a little less than one cup of lard after washing it.

You might say ‘that’s a lot of work for such a tiny bit but it doesn’t take long for all those bits to fill a container. I don’t let the water go to waste either. There’s a lot of flavor in that water. I freeze it and use it because it’s a simple form of stock. Hmm, I just realized I had two different dates. I was confused.

I used the water as the starter for boiled cabbage. I put in a couple pieces of leftover sausage too so nothing was wasted. Sometimes when I’m sick I drink cabbage water instead of chicken broth.

Most of my meals come from either the USDA senior food box, foodbank truck, or the discount bins at the grocery. I realize not everyone has a foodbank truck giving produce away in their area so I’ll show you some of what I get and explain how I use it. Please don’t be upset by the way the food looks. The purpose of the foodbank truck is to let people have the food before it’s sent to a landfill or plowed under. In the Bible it’s called “gleaning the fields” and there are several references to it as required charitable giving by the wealthy.

In October I got deer carrots. Deer carrots are over sized, broken, and ugly carrots most often used as deer bait by hunters.

I don’t care how ugly the carrots are. I’ll be a deer and eat them too. I canned those for stews and soups this winter. Hmm, maybe I’ll have carrot pie for Thanksgiving.

Potatoes that aren’t suitable to sell in grocery stores are bagged for distribution to foodbank truck recipients. Again they are the oversized, misshaped, broken, and ugly potatoes. That doesn’t matter to me. These yellow potatoes are great for canning. They hold their shape and don’t get cloudy after canning. I hope we get more of this kind of potatoes in the November foodbank truck foods.

Despite being ugly they taste just as good as the pretty potatoes in stores and I’ve saved twenty pounds from ending up in a landfill. I canned those in both chunks and as French fries. When opening and cooking canned potatoes I like coating them in oil and baking until browned. The potatoes also make a chunky kind of potato soup. In summer the canned potatoes make a quick potato salad.

Not long ago I found two bags of pomegranates in the discount bin bags five for a dollar. If you don’t know it, these normally sell for $5 each. Fifty dollars worth of pomegranates for $2. As far as I’m concerned that was a golden find. I quickly seeded them and froze the arils for eating a little at a time. I’m hoping to find more while they are in season. I’m also hoping to find dragon fruit in the discount bin but I doubt it will ever happen.

Last month the foodbank truck had breads. We don’t get bread as often as we used to get it. I was given a couple of baguettes with a sell by date of that same day. I quickly made crackers with them. There are lots of ways to use bread crackers.

I used some of the vegetables given that day to make a bread salad. Sometimes I make a cheese spread using the senior box cheese to eat on the bread crackers. Sometimes I just eat them with peanut butter.

So you see I do my best to use the food we are given. I believe the next time I get potatoes I’ll try canning potato soup with carrots, onions, and celery. All I would have to do is open, add milk and butter, then heat to serve. Even though it would technically be potato soup I could use it as the starter for pot pie or vegetable soup.

As you can tell by the long post about food; living on chicken broth and cabbage broth for nearly a week due to my illness left me feeling very hungry. I’m feeling much better. Thank you for all the get well wishes. I’m going to make phone calls today to see if I can speed up the installation of my furnace before the weather turns cold again.

Hugs from KY,

Anita