Cooking in batches

Posted by FrugalPinoy on Mar 10, 2008 in Food | 2 comments

In a previous post, Goal for the month: No Fast Food, I wrote about the benefits of cooking your own meals vs. dining or eating out. Frugal Pinoy reader Jinoe sent the following comment:

I would love to do this also for similar reasons (esp #4). But lately Im in a rush. Cooking my own food takes more than an hour plus cleaning up. So fastfood was an option.

If you still want to cook for yourself, but don’t have the time or energy to do so every day, you can cook in batches.  On weekends, days off, or whenever you have a lot of free time, cook one big batch of food that you will heat up for the rest of the week.   (An exception to this might be the rice, which you can cook once daily with no hassle using a rice cooker.) Here are some pointers:

• It requires a bit of planning.  Since you’re cooking food in big batches, you need to plan ahead.  This includes ingredients, what meals you’ll be having, and the quantity of food.
• Use your freezer.  Most of the food you’ve cooked should be stored in your freezer to prevent spoilage.  Just pop them up int he microwave or heat them up in your stove when you’re ready to eat.  It’ll take roughly 5 minutes to do this per meal for one or two people.

Click here for a very informative article on batch cooking.  It includes notes about shelf life of certain foods, a list of foods that don’t freeze well, recipes, and more tips.  It’s like Batch Cooking 101.

Recipe: Chive Butter Toast

Posted by FrugalPinoy on Feb 24, 2008 in Food | 0 comments

These slices of Chive Butter Toast accompanied my Valentine’s day dinner with Scout.  It was yummy.  Here’s the recipe (again, not exact measurements).

Ingredients:

• 3 slices of bread, cut in half
• 3 onion leaves (chives), cut into 1/2 centimeter pieces
• 1 small clove of garlic, minced
• 1/4 of a block of butter

Directions:

1. Slightly melt butter (in a microwave, saucepan, whatever) but take it out of the heat while it’s still a bit lumpy.
2. Add the chives and garlic in the partially melted butter.  Mix well.
3. Spread butter mixture onto bread slices.
4. Toast bread slices until light brown.

This is great when eaten with soup or pasta, or used as croûtons in salad.

Pasta with Tomato, Basil, and Mushroom Sauce – a valentine treat

Posted by FrugalPinoy on Feb 24, 2008 in Food | 1 comment

For Valentine’s Day, Scout and I had pasta in tomato, basil, and mushroom sauce accompanied by chive butter toast. It was obviously delicious, as there was none left over. Here’s the recipe along with the approximate price of each ingredient.
(Note: Since some ingredients were “cut” from a bulkier amount, I’ve reduced some of those prices according to the portions we took. Halimbawa, kung kalahati lang nung pack yung ginamit namin, kalahati rin lang yung presyo.)

Ingredients:

• 1 pack tomato sauce (P 14.00)
• 1/2 can of mushrooms (P 19.00)
• roughly 90-100 grams of cut macaroni (P 14.00)
• a handful of crushed fresh basil (P7.00, would’ve probably cost less if I had my own plant)
• some butter
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• salt, dried oregano, pepper (preferably the course type – yung di masyado durog)
• cheese

To be honest, these measurements aren’t precise – I’m not that kind of cook. I just go with my tastebuds and come up with the measurements on the spot. I don’t follow exact recipes, and I encourage you to add/subtract the measurements of the ingredients as you please.

Also, you may omit the mushrooms for a minimalist sauce.

Directions:

1. In a pot of water, boil pasta with a tablespoon of oil and some salt.
2. In a saucepan, saute the garlic in butter until light brown.
3. Stir in the mushrooms and fry them until they’re a little crisp on the edges. Add some salt and pepper in desired measurements. I add some of the oregano in this stage, too.
4. When the mushroom, butter, and garlic mixture is hot enough, slowly add the tomato sauce. I said “slowly” because it’ll be harder to mix it with the butter if you dump the tomato sauce all at once.
5. Wait until it boils then let it simmer for 5-8 minutes.
6. Stir in the basil.
7. Taste the sauce. If it’s too sour, then add some butter until it suits your taste. See, the sourness comes from the tomato, and the butter counteracts that. If it’s too bland, add some oregano and basil. If it lacks “oomph”, add pepper.
8. When the pasta is done, take it out of the pot, drain it, and mix it with the sauce.
9. Serve on a plate and sprinkle with cheese, according to your preference. For this particular meal, we used grated parmesan (the affordable but ok kind, not parmigiano reggiano from Italy).

Total cost of dish: Main ingredients cost P54.00 You can add an additional 10-20 pesos for miscellaneous side expenses such as the salt, pepper, garlic, butter, water, oregano, cheese, and the gas that was used. So the total cost is roughly P64.00 – P74.00

Not bad, especially since it got to feed 3 people with really generous servings.

If you notice the toast next to the pasta, it’s chive butter toast, but it merits its own blog entry. Click here for the recipe of the chive butter toast.

Did you have a special meal with a significant other (or by yourself) this Valentine’s Day? If so, what did you have and how much did it cost? Share it with us in the comments.

Goal for the month: absolutely no fast food

Posted by FrugalPinoy on Feb 23, 2008 in Food, Saving | 2 comments

I hate to admit it, but I fall into the fast food trap every so often. Especially when fast foods come out with their coupons. (Hello McMoney!) The temptation is always there – they have 24 hour delivery services, my school is next to a mall, my friends always entice me with the phrase “Kain tayo!“ And I just really, really love to eat.

I have to stop eating at fast foods. Mc Donald’s, Jollibee, Pao Tsin, Chowking, etc. Anything. If I’m to eat anything while I’m at school, it has to be something I brought with me.

Why am I doing this?

It’s healthier. Oftentimes, fast food has extenders, preservatives, and probably a lot of stuff you don’t want to know about. Have you seen Supersize Me? Plus, the food I make at home is often just veggies and fish, and I’m sure it’s freshly made.

It’s cleaner. I try my best to be a clean cook. See, I had amoebiasis last year, and it was the worst experience ever. It’s much easier for me to get a relapse, so I try to avoid questionable foods. (I miss isaw!)

It’s cheaper. A cheeseburger roughly costs P35.00. If I make the same thing myself, I assume it’d cost roughly P20.00. Plus, it’s customizable! I can put whatever I want on it. Someday I’ll make my own cheeseburger at home, do the math, and show you folks the difference.

My cooking tastes better. At least I think so. I have to be honest that the taste of fast food has its own charms, but most of the time I prefer my own cooking. Especially when it comes to spaghetti.

This is the 3rd time I’ve tried this goal. I hope I’m more successful with this attempt. I’s probably save at least P800.00/month (based on previous months) if I stay away from fast food. Deadline: March 30, 2008. I’ll let you know my progress.

It’s going to be much harder – fast food has such a big hold on me. When I was a kid, my parents always took me to Jollibee or Tropical Hut. When I was in high school, my friends and I often had fast food delivered to the dorms. I have such a big history with it that it’s hard to let go.

Do you eat fast food? If so, do you think you can give it up?