Say cheese!

Lent, to me, means 40 days of eating no meat. Poultry and fish are allowed. So are eggs and cheese. The problem for me is that at least the latter is very calorie-dense, which might make indulging too much a recipe for failing my present goal of having two more pounds gone till the middle of March. But, for the most time, I´m not that deeply into eating fish. Nor is DH who might just go on strike at repeat sightings of pollock or mackerel in my kitchen. My daily allotment of eggs is eaten at breakfast, and I must also- as last weekend´s gain painfully brought home- avoid those meatless but carbohydrate-rich fillers like pasta and potatoes. Which makes this whole lent thing a bit of a meal-planning balancing act for us two carnivores.
One thing I discovered at the grocery store may help there. It´s a package of dollar-sized (the coin kind you get at Las Vegas to operate the slot machines) breaded goat cheese pieces that you can bake in the oven. I had four of these little cheeses yesterday, putting them on an ovenproof platter along with an arrangement of broccoli and bell peppers, which I had doused with a bit of olive oil. The veggies were roasted nicely by the time the cheese was ready, and the whole arrangement on the platter looked definitely restaurant-worthy. As it was, DH and me were speculating about how much such a platter would cost if served at a restaurant. Four times the price of the ingredients for two home-made servings seemed to be a good guess, meaning the two of us would have spent eight times as much to eat the same thing in a restaurant.
I can, actually, get quite angry at people who claim that it´s impossible to eat cheaply. Yes, things have gotten more expensive overall, but the last time I looked, fresh or frozen produce still came a lot cheaper than those microwaveable meals, or fast food.
Of course, feeding one´s family on produce instead of fast-food burgers means you have to get off your bum and cook. People who never learned how to cook are at a decided disadvantage there. And the number of those is rising, even among the better educated.
In my eyes, it´s a crime for parents to have their children leaving home unable to prepare their own food. Apart from putting them at the mercy of Big Food for what they ingest, it also prevents them from realizing that it is possible to eat like a gourmet on a shoestring budget, if you know how to prepare those delicious things you get in a restaurant for yourself at home.
The ever rising number of people who don´t know how to cook coincides with a rise in the number of cooking shows on TV. I don´t think these are a good thing, because they are, well, shows which means that the cooks featured there will make everything appear like, well, a show. Someone who doesn´t know how to cook will look at displays of excellent knife skills chopping up onions, or at pancakes being turned over by flipping them in the air, and say, "I could never do that". The threshold to cross before starting to learn how to cook is thereby getting higher.
Guess what, cucumber salad made by slicing a cucumber slowly one slice at a time tastes just the same as if said cucumber had been cut up by a chef´s knife working like some fast-motion guillotine, cutting so fast it looks like that cucumber came apart all by itself. And for a novice cook, going slowly may prevent you from serving up an unplanned side dish of fingertips...
Yes, you may take a lot longer than they make it look on TV. They have pre-prepared ingredients backstage, did you know? And yes, you may end up burning instead of roasting your meat at the first try. But with time, you´ll learn. Just don´t say you can´t so you won´t. Try it. It is not rocket science. Generations of women in the Dark Ages when there were no restaurants around the corner have done it, with far more impractical appliances than what we have today. You can do it, too. And while you are at it, try to learn something aout your ingredients. Reading about kids who believe that milk is an artificially created product, or who aren´t able to identify even the most ordinary veggies, is just scary. Knowing which ingredients mix well and what seasonings to use with them is something that will enable you to make something out of any pantry.
There was actually one cooking show I liked, where they bought some especially ill-assorted ingredients, and the challenge for the cooks was to turn these into a proper meal within a time limit.
I thought that was the most realistic show they ever had, because it showed that with some creativity, you can turn even the last resort remnants of your pantry into a proper meal. And that´s what learning how to cook is about, too, because that way you will be able to feed your family tasty food even when grocery money is tight.
It is, after all, not what you spend on the ingredients that makes a good meal. It´s how you prepare them. A cheaper cut of meat done right will be better than the most expensive filet not properly prepared.

So dare to cook- it´s fun and frugal!


Julia