Dinner day 2

So, for breakfast this morning I had a biscuit and some eggs and for lunch I had the remainder of my roasted chicken. That is one of the great things about biscuits and roasted chicken; they are arguably better as left overs than when you first make them.  

For those of you that do not know me I am a “good ole boy” from Mississippi or in elitist liberal parlance “a redneck”, perhaps a bit of a renaissance redneck but a redneck just the same. This means that I was raised on certain foods that I still love to this day. One of those foods is fried chicken and nothing makes better fried chicken than legs and thighs. So tonight I made some fried chicken and buttermilk mashed potatoes or as we call them in the ‘sip “maish taters”.  I made extra so there will be plenty for tomorrow and the only thing better than fried chicken is cold fried chicken the next day.

It should be noted that the oil used to fry the chicken will be strained and reused and the flower used to dust the chicken will be sifted and also reused.

I would like to explain a few things about me and the way I look at problems. I am doing the snap challenge to show that living on a budget is really not that hard to do. It just takes some planning and a modicum of discipline. For the sake of the “challenge” I have been buying everything I eat at the grocery store with the $30 per week allowance. 

That being said, if I found myself in destitution you can rest assured that I would not be whining to some government bureaucrat that I need someone else’s money to feed myself. If I found myself in a situation like that I would grab my fishing pole and march down to the bayou and I would spend every extra second I had catching fish to feed myself. Or, I would put my shotgun over my shoulder and walk out into the field and try to get some doves or rabbits. I have friends to this day that that do not buy protein at the grocery because they hunt and fish for their protein. These people buy very little vegetables at the grocery because they have their own gardens. You see, to me, that is what it means to be American. Self-reliance is the essence of what it means to be an American. Our being able to take care of ourselves is what defines us as citizens and as human beings. Our grandparents and for most of us our parents did exactly that. If you were hungry then you went out and killed something and ate it whether that be figuratively or literally. Looking to the government was not even a consideration. 

I fear this is becoming an antiquated and mocked concept in today’s society and I think it is not good for us as a country that we are so far removed from what our grandparents went through. I find it sad that so many people’s first response to any sort of hardship is to turn to the government. The really sad thing about it is all of those people who immediately turn to government in any time of hardship are always very disappointed with the government’s response to their plight (see Katrina and Sandy). What does it say about us and where we have come?

Late lunch

Here is the chicken and taters I made. This is truly a great dish and I love cooking it.

So, I made a minor mistake. I bought those carrots and celery to use to make stock, however, I am not planning on making stock until next week. Because of this I will not have vegetables this week. What I should have done is bought more vegetables and held off on carrots and celery until next week. That's fine and I will make up for it next week. The first week in doing something like this is always the hardest. It gets perpetually easier as the weeks go buy and you tend to build up somewhat of a stockpile of food. Anyway, no vegetables for this week but I will certainly make up for it next week.

Lunch and dinner day 1 (maybe lunch for tomorrow too)

I am making a batch of roasted chicken from the chicken I butchered earlier and some roasted potatoes to go with it.

The chicken has a bit of oil, Salt and Pepper, a bit of Garlic and some fresh herbs.

I can hear all of you now "but you didn't buy garlic and Salt and Pepper you are cheating and you hate poor people". This is true. I am working on the assumption that people have basic condiments and seasoning in their cupboards.

Now I hear you again "what about fresh herbs??? Only rich people can afford fresh herbs!!! You are a capitalist pig!!!" This is simply not true. You can buy an oregano plant, a thyme plant, a sage plant or basically any other herb plant for about the same price as the same herb dried and jarred by McCormik, in most cases for substantially less. With a very minimum of care these herb plants will provide you with fresh herbs for years.

I am using Sage, Thyme and Oregano on my chicken

And here is the prepared chicken in the toaster oven ready for cooking. Those are yellow potatoes that will be roasting under the chicken.

So, this is a pretty cool thing here. The chicken roasts and then drips deliciousness onto the potatoes below. If you look at any of Paul Bocuse's (French Master Chef) cook books you will see something similar to this. It is roasted chicken with Lyonnaise Potatoes and it is considered a delicacy by many chefs including myself and certainly a dish worthy of mastery. How's that for eating on a budget?

Butchering chicken

When poultry producers butcher chickens into quarters they typically split the bird right down the middle of the back and the cut the breast/wing portion from the leg/thigh portion. This basically renders a significant portion of the leg/thigh quarter inedible. It is inedible, however, it is not unusable. So I will butcher these leg/thighs and show you what I mean.

Here is a whole leg and thigh. My thumb is in roughly the area where the thigh bone is attached to the back.

And here is the quarter broken down into leg, thigh, and the back pieces.

Here is the entire bag of chicken broken down. You will notice that the three piles are about the same size. The pile on the left is these back pieces that are basically inedible. If I had simply cooked these quarters without breaking them down then I would have wasted a third of this 10lb bag of chicken. Since I have removed the back pieces now I can use them for something else. These back pieces are still high in protein and still usable. So, I am going to bag and freeze these back pieces and next week I can make stock from them. The legs and thighs will be used this week for roasted, rotisserie, and fried chicken dishes.

Day 1 breakfast

Full disclosure: I am a classically trained chef. I don't cook anymore professionally but I do have the knowledge. That being said, nothing that I will do is overly complex or not readily available on the internet or your public library. All it takes is a little bit of work.

Now, let's make some BISCUITS!!!

So, here we have a bowl, a 2 lb bag of self-rising flour, 1 qrt of buttermilk, and two sticks of butter. I use only butter. Butter is more expensive than alternatives, however, the point of this is to get the most high quality calories you can for your buck. Since margarine and shortening basically have no redeeming nutritional value we must use butter.

I used about three quarters of this bag of flour and a little over half of the buttermilk. First you meld the butter into the flour and then add buttermilk until you get a dough.

You should kneed the dough as little as possible so as to not make your biscuits tough. Then cut and place your biscuits on a sheet pan. This yielded 11 biscuits and a bit of extra dough.

I am going to bake 9 of the biscuits and freeze the remaining two along with the extra dough. The extra dough has many different uses. I can make more biscuits or I can use the dough for chicken and dumplings or chicken pie. When you are eating on a budget you have to save everything. You have to choose foods that you can get 100% utilization.

Now we place the biscuits in the toaster oven and bake them until they are golden brown. I typically cook in a toaster oven because turning on the full size oven for small cooking like this just needlessly wastes power. I highly recommend getting a high quality toaster oven.

Yummy. So, here are the biscuits. I will have 1 biscuit along with a two egg omellette for breakfast. The remaining biscuits will be bagged and kept in the refrigerator to be eaten for breakfast for the rest of the week and into next week. This is the point of eating on a budget. I am already preparing food for next week with the groceries I bought for this week.

So, here is the first week of shopping. I wasn't able to get everything I wanted but such is the life of the "poooor". I would have liked to have gotten some cheese and maybe some more fresh vegetable but that will just have to wait until next week.

I am eating steak tonight and will begin the challenge tomorrow. I did buy my orange juice and I make no apologies for it.

There are certain things you should recognize about what I bought. Eggs. Eggs are an integral part of eating on a budget. They are a tasty and inexpensive source for high quality protein. Also, notice the chicken. This is a ten pound bag of leg and thigh quarters that Walmart sells for $7.80. This is one of the keys to eating on a budget. The chicken will be used in several different ways so stay tuned for that. Also, fresh vegetables. Fresh vegetables are inexpensive and good. They are not quite as nutritious as frozen but that's ok.

Notice there is no convenience packaging and no junk food. Fresh fruit and vegetables and fresh poultry is the only way to go when eating on a budget.

So, tomorrow I start cooking and living the SNAP challenge.

begin the snap challenge

I have read with great amusement about the "snap challenge" lately. My friends have posted about it on my Facebook. I have read numerous articles about politicians taking the snap challenge and having to suffer through on peanut butter sandwiches. I have read about CEO's taking the snap challenge and getting constipated because they ate too much pasta.

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/09/26/panera-food-stamps

I am sure that all of this is supposed to make me feel bad about being successful and make me want to pay even higher taxes to help the "po' folks". Well, I am sorry, it does not and I will tell you why: there have been times in my life when I had to live on less than $4.50 per day (the snap challenge daily food budget) and I never took a nickel from my fellow citizens and I was happy and thankful that I was able to provide for myself. It actually makes me laugh and disgusts me a bit to see these politicians and CEO's in their mock sacrifice to show the plight of the "pooooor" in our country. I have lived it so I can see right through the bullshit.

All of this being said, I have decided to take the snap challenge to show that it really isn't that difficult to feed yourself on $4.50 per day and have satisfying and nutritious food. Granted, I will not be eating steak every day. It is my opinion that if you like steak then you should make the life choices that will lead to you eating steak and not being on SNAP.

A few stipulations about this before we get going. There are two things that I will not be giving up and that will not be included in the snap challenge that I am going to do. I will not be giving up my expensive coffee or my expensive orange juice. Other than these two things everything I consume over the next several weeks will be on the snap challenge.

I feel it is necessary to go longer than one week. The reason is that some food items that I buy can carry over to the next week. This allows you to have some variety in what you eat. It also makes the week to week expenses not as bad as the politicians would have you believe.

It is the point of eating on a budget to get the maximum amount of high quality, nutritious calories that you can get for your dollar or in the case of SNAP recipients, the maximum amount for the dollar that someone else earned, the government took from them and then gave to the SNAP recipient. For this reason there will be some stipulations:

1) no vegetarianism, fruititarianism, veganism, or wtfianism. If you want to make social or political statements with the food you eat then get a job.

2) all shopping will be done at Walmart. Walmart has by far the lowest prices of any grocery store. When you are living on the tax payers money then you should forfeit your "right" to shop at Whole Foods.

3) No junk food or soda of any kind. Again, these are low quality calories and therefore a luxury. If you want to eat that crap then, again, get a job. Also there will be no desserts.

So, here we go.