[Sca-cooks] $2 a day Food Challenge ----Part 2

[Sharon Gordon]

Dan, who runs the challenge, is working on a project in Africa this year. In
the meanwhile someone damaged the discussion boards and group boards on his
website. When he gets back to the UK, he will fix them.

In the meanwhile in emailing with him about the challenge, I learned that he
would like to have some more frugal recipes including a variety of ethnic
recipes to add to the cookbook for the next challenge.
Here are the Sample recipes he has so far.
http://www.2dollars.org/resources/NEW_cookbook.pdf

If you have some suggestions for frugal recipes would you post them to the
board? If you have specific cost info that would be great, but if you just
know they are frugal that is fine too.

On the website,
http://www.2dollars.org/
I would not download any files or open any files to your computer as it's
difficult to tell what might have viruses or spyware from the damage to his
website. But you can get a look at the various pages and pdf files that are
visible on the site and get an idea of the challenge.

Why to do the challenge:
http://2dollars.org/why.html

How to do the challenge.
http://2dollars.org/how.html
They also gave out some spices, herbs, and broth cubes to the participants
which didn't count against their
£9.10 / $14.

Recipe booklet for previous challenge
http://www.2dollars.org/resources/NEW_cookbook.pdf

What recipes would you add?
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UK frugal options
Canned beans 10p
Spaghetti 15 p for 500g
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I was looking at this and it looks like you'd have $14 for the whole week.
So it would be important to find friends to split bulk items with like a bag
of flour if you only wanted to use part of something during the week.

How would people allocate the money for each meal? Would you have 66-67
cents per meal or would you go 50/75/75 or 50/50/100?
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Garden plot rental 40 cents a day
Pintos 99 cents a pound or 69 cents a pound
Bulk carrots 2-3 dollars for 25 pound bag
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I don't know exactly when in 2007 that Dan is returning to the UK and would
be able to repair the website and run the challenge again.

We could run one ourselves, perhaps February 18-24, 2007. Anyone who wanted
to get a local group together could have a meeting on Thursday or Friday
evening (15th or 16th) for a kickoff meeting. The group can give out small
spice kits to participants like Dan's group does if you like (Dan sent me
some info about what they put in the spice kit, but local groups might want
to personalize it for the favorite styles of cooking in their area). And
people might want to prearrange to split some bulk purchases to reduce
costs. Then particpants would have Saturday to do some of their other
shopping and some precooking if they wanted to.

In the meanwhile we could try and figure out which foods are most likely to
be frugal then and share some recipes. Does anyone have some data from
February-March 2006 price books of what the loss leaders were? What's in
season would vary with late winter cold weather crops and stored root
vegetables in the northern hemisphere and probably tomatoes, peppers, and
squash in the southern hemisphere.

For people who would like to try this, would this timing and strategy work
for you? I picked the dates to be close to what Dan has used in the past, to
avoid the first week of the month when prices tend to be higher, and to miss
Valentine's Day and the likely alternate celebration weekend nights for the
countries which celebrate it, to miss Canada's Flag Day.
The week does include
4 days of lent
Chinese New Year
US-Washington's Birthday weekend

I don't think there are any special country holidays for Australia, Canada,
France, Germany, New Zealand, UK during that time. Not sure where else
people on the board are living, so please chime in if your area has an
important holiday then.

Since people who celebrate lent usually do special frugal things then, the
challenge would likely fit ok. Areas which celebrate Chinese New years might
want to shift the challenge backward or forward a week unless they want to
double their challenge by seeing what sort of Chinese New Year celebration
they can create on the challenge, but this would be sort of like trying to
do a US/Canadian Thanksgiving meal for US$1 a person or doing a Christmas
meal for that.
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Posted - Dec 17 2006 :  4:24:24 PM
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I think people on this forum are up to the challenge! People might have more
time to think about it in a week or two and to begin sharing recipe ideas.

Here's what Dan said about their spice kits. This is the one he did in the
UK. I think the one the year before was in the US and I don't know if they
did the same. I think people were assumed to have salt and pepper already.

Dan's group's spice kit:
> The herb packs countained about 5grammes of oregano, basil and sage,
> some stock powder for soup, 50ml cooking oil, cloves of garlic and a
> dried chilli, just as those things are really important flavourwise,
> but very expensive to buy individually. Buying in bulk and splitting
> them up allowed us to do the packs for about 20pence each.

How does that combo and salt and pepper sound to people? Personally, I'd
like MSG-free bullion/stock powder. The advantage of Dan's list is that it
can be locally grown most places. I also think cinnamon would be very
helpful and fresh rosemary and parsley would add a great deal nutritionally
as well.

I forgot to ask him if the oregano, basil, and sage were dry. If they are
dry, that would be about
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
2.33 Tablespoons ground sage
1+ Tablespoon ground basil
or 2 Tablespoons fresh basil leaves

And I agree about doing it in as healthy a way as possible.

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Check prices in bulk food sections.  You can get more different things.
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Laura, I was wishing I could remember where you live to try to give specific
suggestions, but in the meanwhile here are some generic suggestions:

1) Ask the various farmers at the farmer's market if they will sell a bag or
two of mixed misshapen vegetables in the last half hour of the market for a
$1 or $2. Some farmers will do that to get rid of the odd items at the end.

2) Ask around about ethnic markets in your area. Often they will have some
things cheaper.

3) Check the Aldis in your area and check more than one if available as
sometimes one manager will value produce in good shape more than others.
http://www.aldifoods.com
for frugal fresh fruits and vegetables. Also look at their canned items for
fruits canned in juice. Most of their vegetables seem to be canned in salt,
but you can rinse them and let the bit of salt that remains in the vegetable
be all the salt in a soup for instance.

4) And I second the bulk bin suggestion. However do compare as sometimes
it's more expensive than store brand or generic brand of beans or grains.
And there can be a pretty wide range of prices among stores in an area on
the same bean or grain. Getting a price book going will help a lot. Usually
there are 10 1/4 cup (dry) servings of beans or grains to a pound, so if you
can get a pound for 50 UScents (or less), your bean or grain serving is 5
cents (or less). Also check which beans are frugal and which are exotic in
your area. Ours range from .50 to 2.00+ a pound and sometimes less on sale.
If you can get lentils for .50 a pound they are often the best bet as they
are high in nutrition and cook quickly and without soaking.

5) See if you have a bulk bin with mung beans. Those can be sprouted for
fresh vegetables. A tablespoon of beans sprouts into a huge amount of fresh
vegetables.

6) Also check Big Lots and Sav-A-Lot stores and compare prices.

7) Keep watch for canned tomatoes of various sorts in the 28-29 size for 50
cents. That's 7 servings of an orange vegetable.

8) In many areas of the US, Canada, and Europe during the time we are
planning the challenge, cabbage and potatoes go on sale to celebrate St.
Patrick's day. And corned beef does too, though that is likely to still be
too high for the challenge.

9) If you get a sourdough starter going, you can avoid buying yeast which is
a big savings. People wanting to do this challenge in a local group, may
want to have a gathering 1-3 weeks ahead to get starter going for everyone
who would like to do so.

What else do people usually find good sales on during the last two weeks of
February or Chinese New Year? This year's timing of Chinese New Year might
add some extra items.

Laura, recipes in advance would be good, especially ones that use items that
are nearly always frugal in your area or most areas. Another help is
flexible recipes which can make use of that week's loss leaders though the
specific nutrition would need to be checked at that time. For example, you
might have a soup recipe that's something like this per person:
1/4 cup dry beans, cooked
1/4 cup dry grains or 1/2 cup potatoes
1/4 pound onions
1/2 cup red/orange/yellow vegetable
1/2 cup green vegetable
homemade stock, herbs/spices

With this recipe, you could have a french style lentil and carrot soup, an
italian white bean, tomato, and green pepper soup or a hispanic themed chili
over rice or many other themes and combinations. With all items bought
frugally, the soup could be around 30-40 UScents a serving.

Another way people deal with challenges like this is to get as many healthy
things as possible and to substitute some semi-healthy things. So they might
have applesauce instead of fresh apples for example.

You can also split larger quantities of foods with other family members or
friends participating in the challege. This way you can have more diversity
which is generally good from a nutrition standpoint.

Are there any recipes that people would like frugal versions of, or frugal
strategies for that would be good candidates for that week?

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Earlyretiree,

Those are great suggestions to:
1) Prep several meals at once so you can use the peels for stock.
2) Use just one kind of beans or grains if bulk bins are not available. What
do you think would be the most flexible beans or grains to get if you could
just have one of each?

It might be that you can get a local group to participate with you in the
challenge with several people shopping together to get the advantage of
larger containers and more diversity. Then you could split the packages and
costs. Another strategy is for a group to walk to a far away grocery store
and then all pay to send one person home in a taxi with all the groceries
with everyone else walking back. Though even an hour walk is not too bad if
you have a good fitting pack or one of the upright city shopping carts and
good friends to talk with along the way. It does however make a person
inclined to have rice or barley rather than potatoes as their starch.

Fresh parsley, dill, and garlic sound like flavorful additions to the meals
(along with salt and pepper). I can see where you'd miss the bay leaves
though. What ways are you thinking of using your three fresh herbs? One
thing I like doing is adding some of the dill or parsley to a fresh green
salad or a potato salad.

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Sharon
gordonse at one.net