This week I've made a concerted effort to plan meals around the veggies I got at the farmers' market on Saturday. On Monday, I made a heaping bowl of coleslaw using only half of the purple cabbage and half a red onion. Red cabbage, which I tend to overlook, is a cruciferous vegetable that's rich in Vitamin A and Vitamin C. It also contains two powerful antioxidants—lycopene and anthocyanins—that are known to help prevent heart disease and prostate cancer. Nice.
Coleslaw (the rest is already in the fridge)
The recipe, which couldn't be any easier, yielded enough coleslaw for lunch all week.
1/2 cabbage [$2]
1/2 a red onion [75¢]
olive oil [about 50¢]
red wine vinegar [about 25¢ worth]
Total: $3.50
Tear off and discard the tough outer layers of 1 small cabbage. (Or 1/2 a huge cabbage.) Cut into quarters and remove the core. Turn cut side down and slice crosswise into thin shreds. Mix together in a large bowl with:
1/2 small red onion, sliced as thin as possible
salt
Prepare a vinaigrette by mixing together 1 tablespoon cider or wine vinegar, salt, and black pepper.
Stir to dissolve the salt and then whisk in: 4 tablespoons olive oil
Taste for acid and salt and adjust as desired. Pour the dressing over the cabbage and onions and mix well. Taste again. Eat right away or let it sit for a while to let the flavors permeate and the cabbage soften.
[From Alice Waters' Art of Simple Food, which—despite what you may hear about Alice Waters—is full of affordable, easy recipes.]
Tuesday night I made a tasty one-pot supper of whole wheat rotini with broccoli, grated parmesan, and olive oil. Following Tamar Adler's sensible advice in An Everlasting Meal, I used the same pot of salted water to cook the broccoli and the pasta.
Safeway's "Organics" Pasta + Purple Broccoli
Here's my recipe, which yielded two heaping bowls plus leftovers for Wednesday's lunch:
2 cups raw broccoli florets [$1.75 worth of organic broccoli]
1/2 pound whole wheat rotini (or other short pasta) [80¢]
1/2 cup grated Parmesan [about $1 worth of Parmesan]
a little of the salty water
generous splashes of olive oil [50¢?]
Total Cost: $4.05 for 4 servings
Boil the broccoli for about 5 min., tasting to see if it's done. "Vegetables are done when a sharp knife easily pierces a piece of one," writes Ms. Adler. Remove with a slotted spoon directly to a big bowl and drizzle with olive oil. Then, bring water back to a boil and adjust seasoning. (If it's too salty, add more water.) Add the pasta. While the pasta is cooking, smash the broccoli a little with a wooden spoon and grate the Parmesan directly into the bowl. When the pasta is done, save a glass of the salty water. Drain pasta, add to bowl w/ vegetable and cheese along with a little of the pasta water and mix. I added more olive oil and sprinkled with salt.
Finally, last night, we didn't have time to make a leek tart from scratch (that's a weekend project) so Don whipped up some vegetarian burritos. (Notice a theme? We each have our fall-back meals. Mine tends to be pasta-based, Don's tend to be Mexican.) Not wanting to miss a chance to eat our farmers' market bounty, I cut up some of the kale, blanched it, and then sauteed it in olive oil, tucking some leaves into my burritos. (Don prefers his kale on the side.) The burritos were filled with black beans, corn, sauteed onion and green pepper, and some chipotle salsa. I topped mine with avocado.
A note about sources for organic food. We received the New Seasons Market flyer in our Oregonian newspaper yesterday and I was struck once again by how fortunate we are to live within biking distance of this reasonably-priced chain, which prioritizes organic food. The deals are remarkable. For example, the specials this week are:
organic fuji apples: $1.49 a pound
organic broccoli (yes, we need more): $1.49 a pound
organic large Hass avocadoes 2 for $3
organic whole wheat sandwich bread (freshly baked) 2 for $5
organic bulk coffee, $9.99 a pound
Cascadian Farm organic frozen vegetables, 2 for $4
I'm well aware that not every city has such deals on organic food. New Seasons is one of the reasons this organic food stamp challenge hasn't felt like all that much of a challenge yet. Today is the last day of the month and we have $56 left of our pro-rated food stamp amount in our grocery account. I'm amazed that we still have any money left (especially considering we bought local Dungeness crab last week to make crab cakes for my mom and her husband) but I think that's because we haven't had to buy staples like organic flour, organic almond butter, or organic cheese yet. We re-up our account tomorrow with $526 for the whole of March.
Now that we're only buying organic ingredients, though, we're starting to frequent Trader Joe's and Safeway a lot more, too. Organic condiments (more so than produce, I find) tend to cost a lot more than conventional condiments, but TJ's has excellent prices on both organic maple syrup ($8 for 12 oz.) and organic olive oil ($6 for 16.9 oz.). (I know olive oil isn't a condiment, but it's also usually way more expensive than its conventional counterpart.) Safeway has an affordably-priced "Organics" brand; I like their whole wheat pasta, for example, which was on sale the other day for $1.59 (for a 1 lb box). But Don, an apple juice connoisseur, was aggrieved when I returned home with the Organics apple-juice, which he says is sub-par because it's made from concentrate and too heavily filtered. (Not to mention it's in plastic, not glass.)
Stay tuned for my next post, in which I'll show how the Oregon Food Bank is teaching low-income folks how to shop for and cook healthy meals.
Soooo how's it going? What have you been surprised by so far?
Posted by: Jocelyn McAuley | 04 March 2013 at 04:51 PM
Hi Hannah,
I work for the Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides, www.pesticide.org and would love to talk with you about a possible event we are hosting in Portland. We would love to have you come and discuss your recent adventure in eating organic on food stamps. Can you contact me at [email protected]. Thanks so much! Sorry I couldn't find another way to contact you besides a comment on your blog, which I love! Talk to you soon, Shelly Connor
Posted by: Shelly Connor | 02 May 2013 at 11:12 AM