We had $1.47 leftover from last week, so the Liz Lovely Cookie was an indulgence.  Combined with the $1 we spent last night on some bread and the $1.77 we spent on Monday night, our total this week is: $12.91.  We have $18.56 left.

Our receipt from Tuesday night’s shop needs to be put up on the site, but one of the items we got was a spaghetti squash.  This dish came together pretty quickly with some items we had in the fridge and the cupboard.  The protein powerhouse here was a pound of (dried) garbanzo beans that I made in the pressure cooker on Friday and stored in the fridge.

Spaghetti Squash: Seeds and All

Ingredients:

• 1 medium-sized spaghetti squash
• 1 cup cooked garbanzo beans
• 1 small red onion (diced)
• olive oil
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley
• crushed red pepper & garlic powder
• freshly ground black pepper and salt
• 1 cup of red wine

To Do:

1. Chop the top and very bottom of the squash off and split the squash in half.
2. Remove seeds and strands from squash.  Wash the seeds and place on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper and toast for 10 minutes in a 350F oven or until they are all brown and crispy
3. In the meantime, prick squash halves with a knife and fill a microwavable dish with a half-inch of water.  Place one half of the squash in it (if you can fit both halves, go for it) and microwave for about 7-8 minutes.  If you want to roast the squash, preheat the oven to 375 and place squash halves in a rimmed baking sheet with water on the bottom.  Roast for about an hour or until squash is tender.
4. Use a fork and comb out the squash halves – the strands should come out looking a bit like spaghetti.  Place in a bowl and cover to keep warm.
5. Heat up olive oil in a skillet and add the chopped onions.  Saute the onions for 5 minutes on medium heat and then add a 1/4 cup of wine.  Cover skillet and lower the heat to a simmer – cook for 5 minutes and add the parsley and garbanzo beans.
6. Add the rest of the wine, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste and cover.  Let this simmer for a little bit – it’ll be your sauce.
7. Heat up the spaghetti squash in the microwave for a minute or two.   Alternatively, add the squash to the garbanzo mixture and heat it all over the stove.
8. Top with the garbanzo mixture, Parmesan cheese and the toasted squash seeds.
9. Enjoy!

Our good friends, the sisters Rombola, came down from Boston last weekend (we’ve filed 30/w field reports with them before) and brought the fixins for this terrific dessert. Here’s how they did it:

[The pears] were peeled halved and cored, then thrown in a container with some farm-fresh apple cider, brown sugar and the scraped vanilla bean (scraped so the seeds are all freed from the pod, we threw the pod in too), lemon juice and lemon zest. They sat in that the whole ride down…I’m sure they didn’t have to stay in there so long.

I dotted it with butter before baking [ed. about a 1/4" cube on each pear.].

The pears were baked in a casserole dish at 350 for about…20 minutes? Just check on them periodically for texture. There was a lot of liquid left after cooking, which made them particularly good to serve over a piece of Gooey Butter Cake that had been made a couple of days prior and and was therefore a bit on the dry side (bonus points for successfully reinvigorating dessert leftovers). Also featured were one small scoop each of vanilla and dulce de leche ice cream.

Not expecting much, I made this the other night and it exceeded my expectations.  Really good as a dinner with a salad on the side or equally delicious for breakfast the next day.  It was hard to decide whether the leftovers should be breakfast or lunch.

I got the original recipe from the NY Times and tweaked it a bit (used goat cheese instead of Gruyere, 4 eggs instead of 3 and soymilk).  I also roasted the squash the day before since our oven was being used for something or other and baking it before hand really cut the prep time…a lot.  Enjoy!

Weekly spending: $1.77 (head of lettuce and daikon radish)

*As a commenter noted, this can be sweet (some squashes are sweet than others and butternut squash gets nice and sweet if you roast it), and I actually added a LOT of parsley and a bit of chopped spinach to the mixture as well.

Made this guy out of odds and ends the other night to serve alongside a pseudo-tagine of couscous, veggies, chickpeas, dates and nuts.

The salad is made from a couple of shredded carrots, a little diced red onion, a handful of raisins, and a handful of chopped parsley. The dressing is just olive oil, rice vinegar (I wanted a lighter flavor than cider vinegar), salt and pepper. I guess this sort of qualifies as another slaw.

I haven’t made pita bread in years, but with friends coming over for dinner, I thought it would be a warm (cheap) treat.  Pita bread is extremely easy – if you wanted to get into yeast breads, but didn’t want to make a whole loaf yet, this is a recipe to try.

It’s from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and it couldn’t be simpler:

Pita Bread

Ingredients:

• 3 cups AP flour (or a mix of AP and whole wheat), plus more as needed
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 teaspoons instant yeast
• 2 teaspoons coarse kosher or sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar

To Do:

1. Combine the flour, olive oil, yeast, salt and sugar in a food processor.  Turn it on and add 1 cup of warm water through the feeding tube.
2. Process for 30 seconds or so.  The mixture should form a sticky ball.  If you need more water to make the dough come together, add it gradually, one tablespoon at a time.  Let the dough form a smooth round ball in the food processor or take it out and knead it (get your aggressions out!).
3. Transfer dough to an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap and a towel.  Place in a warm, draft free place for 1-2 hours, until dough doubles.  Bittman says you can cut the rising time short if you’re in a hurry or let it rise in the fridge slowly for 6-8 hours.
4. When it is ready, divide it into 6 or more pieces (depends on how big you want your pita).  Roll each piece into a round ball (make sure other pieces are covered) and place on a lightly floured surface.  Sprinkle dough balls with a little more flour and cover with plastic wrap or a towel. Let rest until they puff slightly, 20 minutes or so.
5. Roll out each ball into less than 1/4 inch thickness on a floured surface.  Spread discs out on a floured surface and keep them covered.
6. Preheat oven to 350F (if you have a pizza stone or a cast iron skillet, now is the time to use it, pop it in the oven) while the discs rest for 20 minutes.
7. Slide the discs onto the stone or skillet (as many as can fit) or you can bake them on a cookie sheet, although they puff up better on the stone.  You can also bake them in a heavy skillet on the stove top.  Whatever you decide to do, bake them until lightly browned on one side, flip an repeat.  This should take about 2-3 minutes on each side.
8. As the breads finish baking, place them in a dishtowel-lined basket to save or brush them with butter and serve immediately.  You can also cool them and store in wax paper or a baggie.

Bought a bunch of onions from Pioneer ($1.03) and some bread, cranberries and pasta from Jack’s ($3), plus some things from the Coop.

• carrots: .51
• squash: 1.49
• red peppers: 1.77
• garlic: .60
• almonds: .51
• dates: 1.49
• raisins: .76
• couscous: 1.02
• eggs: 2.43

TOTAL: $10.58

Grand total: $28.53

We had some leftover green cabbage that was not long for this world, and since we have so much soup sitting around already, I decided to make some slaw. Of course, we’ve also eaten a fair amount of slaw recently, so I thought I’d try to shake things (i.e., cabbage) up a bit and do a spicy Japanese-style slaw. I don’t know that there is any slaw in Japanese cuisine, per se. This slaw involves shredded green cabbage seasoned with rice vinegar, Japanese mayo, a little soy sauce, black sesame seeds, and some Sriracha for kick. If we had sesame oil, I probably would have used a little of that to supplement the mayo. Anyway, it turned out pretty tasty, but not as distinctive as I had hoped.

Anybody else have any unusual slaw recipes? Not that we’re really a peak slaw season here.

Voila!

I also bought bread and cheese at Jack’s for $2.29 bringing this week’s total to: $14.92.  We have $15.08 to spend (preferably on veggies).  I bought the yogurt (have to start making my own again) to go with the granola we made – perfect combo.

Last night Phil made an awesome soup – hopefully he’ll share the recipe later today.

We had a bunch of oats languishing in the cabinet – somehow it’s been too warm for oatmeal, so I made some granola last night since the oven was warm from the brussels sprouts.

I usually follow Bittman’s recipe, but just winged it.  A bunch of oats, slivered almonds, olive oil, salt, honey and dried cranberries that I somehow stuck in the fridge (?!) from who knows when.  There was also some toasted coconut from Phil’s birthday cake (more on that later).

Does anyone else find they stick random things in the fridge?  I think I once discovered a pair of salad tongs in there and definitely a dish towel once or twice.

Anyways, we had the granola for breakfast this morning.  It was just right for a Tuesday.