Money saving tips ?

My personal favorite way to eat cornbread is crumbled on a plate with a big helping of juicy pinto beans ladeled over. Bliss, Southern style.

With a plate of New Orleans style red beans and rice, a side of mustard greens in ham hock gravy!!!

Happiness is...scoring free ham bones from the local deli ! Last night I made a huge (really huge) pot of thick soup. Threw in the ham bones (which had lots of meat left on them), 300g dried green lentils, celery, carrot, tomatoes, onion, zucchini, snake beans, chermoula seasoning, frozen peas, frozen chick peas (garbanzo), let it boil for three hours, and then added half a packet of small pasta. It fed the four of us, two adult neighbours, plus I portioned out two 1L containers worth (before adding the pasta) and stashed them in the freezer. Lentils are an amazing food, they just extended the soup on and on. Total cost $5 (honestly!). Though I did need the $300 Le Creuset pot to cook it in. But hey, that's a sunk cost..

We all ate until we were stuffed. I LOVE food like this, ribsticking, slow cooked and thick. It's a shame so many contemporary cookbooks seem to focus on elegantly presented, minimally cooked foods. They seem to have forgotten that stews and soups were the survival cuisine of many cultures.

Jo Ann, thanks, I'll let you know how I go ! Btw, I can only get polenta here, so that's what I've been using.

Cheers, Celia

Jo Ann, thanks, I'll let you know how I go ! Btw, I can only get polenta here, so that's what I've been using.

Cheers, Celia

Wow, that's some expensive cornbread -- unless polenta costs a lot less where you live. I can get cornmeal her for about $1/lb. But, polenta sales for 3 times that amount. What does it cost where you live?

Um...maybe $3/kilo, so about $1.30/lb (close enough to US $1). Having said that, the packet is marked "Polenta (cornmeal)". So who knows what it really is..

Will post some pics soon - just made a cornbread topped slow cooked ragu.

Celia

...- we use a lot of tinned beans and legumes, so today I bought large packets of dried beans, which I plan to cook up en masse, and freeze - can't tell you how happy I was the day I discovered that beans freeze magnificently...

Celia, You may want to consider a pressure cooker, if you don't have one. The cooking times for dried beans using a pressure cooker are much shorter, as are most things cooked in it. The shorter cooking times will also save energy (money) used in cooking. Here are links to great pressure cooking website, one for overall use, the other for beans:
http://missvickie.com/index.html
http://missvickie.com/howto/beans/howtobeantypes.html

Howie, thank you for the links. I had a bad incident years ago with a pressure cooker and chick peas (garbanzo) - when the beans started to cook, all the skins came off and clogged the release valve and the cooker nearly blew up - scared me silly. So whilst I have a lovely pressure cooker, I've never again put legumes in it, but maybe it's time to revisit that. Will see what Miss Vickie has to say..

I mainly use the pressure cooker for making stock, although you're right, it does need to be dusted off and used more frequently. I use to make a lot of curries in them..hmm..maybe that can be today's project !

Edit : Howie - that's a GREAT link for identifying beans as well, thank you !

Edit : Howie - that's a GREAT link for identifying beans as well, thank you !

Someone else posted this link a few years ago (Bob Ross?) and I have it bookmarked. At the top of the link to beans, Miss Vickie says not to fill the pressure cooker more than 1/2 full when doing beans, so that may have been your problem with the garbonzos.

Howie, we've just finished pressure cooker day, with interesting results.

The chana dal worked very well - the beans went mushy, but that was fine, as the plan was to stash 1 cup quantities in the freezer for turning into dahl. Cooked some up tonight, and was surprised how simple it was to tip the cooked chana dal into a pan of curry powder, salt, coconut milk (I know that's not authentic) and a bit of water and cook for 5 minutes. Perfect.

The cannellini beans turned to mush, which wasn't what I'd hoped for. Followed the Ms Vickie instructions, but I think letting the beans cool in the pan with the heat off is way too long for them. Might stick to making these in a regular pot where I can watch them more closely. Having said that, they're perfect for nachos topping or burrito filling (we'll just cook the soft beans in tomato puree or passata), so into the freezer they went as well.

Finally we made beef stock from some fantastic looking veal and beef bones I found at the supermarket. It was superb, and only took an hour or so to make.

Thanks for the suggestion !