Potatoes

Last night I grilled a porterhouse steak on the grill and and served it with the customary green salad and baked potatoes, so I thought this would be a good time to rhapsodize about the potato while it is still fresh in my mind and stomach.

When I first started keeping my own kitchen, I made one of the cardinal errors of potato storage and put them into the refrigerator. They quickly turrned sweet (starch turning to sugar?) and I learned my lesson. Since then, I have been storing them in a cool dry place, and I keep an eye out for potato eyes and rot which can smell pretty bad.

If I peel or cut potatoes that I won't be using for a few minutes, I keep them submerged in water to prevent them from turning brown. When I'm ready to use them, I pour off the water.

I prepare potatoes only a few ways: boiled, mashed, scalloped, and baked. Except for mashed potatoes, I usually leave the skin on the potato (after a thorough scrubbing) which makes perfect sense -- less work and more fiber.

For my baked potato, I love a crunchy skin. After washing, I put the foil-less russet potato in my 400 degree toaster oven for about an hour and serve it with sliced onions and mushrooms sauteed in a little butter, cheese, and sour cream. Yes, it is a little decadent, but everything in moderation.

I peel and cut the potatoes into small pieces when I am boiling them to mash to reduce the time required to cook them. I drop the potato pieces into salted boiling water. When the potatoes are tender, I remove the pot from the heat and whip the potatoes in the pot with a hand mixer with a little milk. I draw the line at adding butter. You've got to know when to say when.

Another potato dish that I make is scolloped potatoes. I have lately been keeping the skin on before I slice the potatoes into coins. I also chop up some onion (put it in raw -- no need to saute -- I don't like the onions to disappear during baking) and sometimes add some meat like browned beef or pieces of Polish sausage to turn it into a main dish. I make a white sauce from a roux of 2T flour, 2T butter and a dash of salt, stirred over a medium heat. Let it bubble and then add a cup of milk. Stir constantly until it will thicken. I assemble the dish in layers with ground black pepper and then pour the sauce over the assembly. Bake for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees, stirring halfway through.

Your Thrifty Cook 

Tomatoes

I have a love-hate relationship with tomatoes. I don't like many raw vegetables, including tomatoes, although I will eat them on sandwiches which are doused with enough spices or condiments to mask the taste. However, the taste of a tomato is less and less a concern, as the food industry is more concerned with the tomato's look and robust portability. And don't tell me I just haven't tasted a freshly picked home-grown tomato -- my father picked bushels of them from his garden when I was a child.

However, through the chemistry of cooking, the disagreeable taste and texture of the raw tomato changes to something that I love. But I don't buy raw tomatoes and cook them. Canned tomatoes are the only canned vegetables that are acceptable to eat, in my opinion. My only concern is the extra sugar and salt that might be added. I check the label and avoid the ones with added sugar. I haven't been checking the sodium content but will start doing that.

One of my shortcuts for quick meals is prepared spaghetti sauce, the bachelor's friend. I purchase the meatless sauce with extra vegetables (garden style), which I assume is a healthy choice, knowing that it has added sugar and salt. I will be checking labels more carefully.  Would homemade sauce be cheaper and healthier? That will have to be investigated.

One of my favorite meals using tomatoes is a simple "gumbo." I dice onions and green pepper (if I have it) in a pan and saute it adding peeled shrimp and garlic. Then I add canned diced tomatoes, black pepper, no salt (plenty in the tomatoes), a dash of hot sauce, and thicken it with spaghetti sauce since I never have tomato paste. Let it simmer a few minutes and serve over a bed of rice.

Your Thrifty Cook 

An Introduction from your Thrifty Cook

Every time I hold forth on cooking as I am wont to do, my mother always says, "You should write a book!" Well, I don't have the talent or patience to write a book, but why not a blog?

I am single, so I cook for my own pleasure. I eat three meals a day with a few snacks in between. (My mama taught me right way to eat.) I rarely go to restaurants or eat fast food, and when I do, I order those things that I do not or cannot make myself. And when the check comes, I blanch.

Let me start with my cooking philosophy:

1. I buy everything I can on sale. To do this, you have to give up your privacy and join the supermarkets' frequent shopper programs. I scour the weekly advertising flyers and visit a couple of different supermarkets once a week. I never buy meat that's not on sale. I buy in larger quantities, put it in smaller packages, and freeze it for later.
2. I don't use coupons unless they fall into my lap. Most of the coupons are for processed foods or products I don't use, and it takes too much time to manage them. As a frugal cook, I admit that admire a shopper that can get a cart full of groceries for free, but I wouldn't dare eat what's inside.
3. I am becoming more and more wary of processed food and believe in eating them in moderation, and less. Processed, or prepared, food can be used for cooking shortcuts, but the more I know about them, the more guilty I feel about using them.
4. I use frozen vegetables, but never canned (except tomatoes). They can be almost as good as fresh, and I can use small quantities at a time.
5. I almost never throw away food. If cooking is my religion, wasting food is a cardinal sin. Extra food is often an inspiration for a dish, and I love having leftovers in my refrigerator.
6. I don't measure too accurately, unless the chemistry is important. And I substitute or leave out ingredients if they are not readily available or  too expensive.

Your Thrifty Cook

 P.S. They can say it better than I ever could...