Pronounceable Ingredients

I don't recall where I first heard about the idea of eating pronounceable ingredients but it's an idea that makes sense to me.  A number of colleagues around me in the office are experimenting with the Paleolithic Diet theory and while I don't agree with it as a complete diet, I very much agree with removing chemicals and maximizing micronutrients in the food I make and serve to my family.  I'm not saying that additives like Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Nitrate or Butylated Hydroxyanisole are health hazards; I'm not an expert.

However I do know that our bodies were able to grow and evolve for hundreds of thousands of years without needing those chemicals to do so.   The fact is that we did consume animal protein and fats, wild fruits and berries.  As a species we thrived just fine without monosodium glutamate.  If I can cook decent (and tasty) meals without these ingredients, then why not?  I understand their place in our diets and I appreciate the convenience they can provide us.  As a culture we have busy lifestyles and food stabilizers make grocery store shelves cost effective.  But at the same time, thanks to Nova Scotia Power, I have a freezer that is almost always on and I can take advantage of that infrastructure to prepare meals in advance.  Meals that are high in nutrients and hopefully low in chemicals I have to think about to pronounce.  Not every meal is completely organic and unprocessed, but as my skills increase I am trying to iterate closer and closer to that goal.

And besides, having a full freezer saves us money in power and on the grocery bills.  How cool is that?

!Foodie

Spicy Sloppy Joes

Sloppy Joes.   A loose meat sandwich that is a great freezable, hearty, budget friendly meal that we enjoy here on occasion.  The family grew up with Manwich based sloppy joes and I'll make that sometimes, but personally I prefer the more complex flavours of my version (which is a variation on how my mother made it for us growing up).  Yesterday I made a batch using 4lbs of ground beef, the following is how I made this weeks version.

I start by browning the beef in batches with a little Olive Oil and then sweat a finely chopped large onion (about 2 cups) and 3 minced Jalapeños in the same pan and add the browned beef back in.  I season to taste (hold back on the salt) and then add cans of Campbell's Chicken Gumbo soup (which adds some salt).  1 can per pound of ground beef.  Turn up the heat and start bringing this mix to a simmer.  From here you can add hot sauces (I added a table spoon of Sriracha sauce), a table spoon of mustard and a lot of ketchup.  Start with a cup of ketchup and add more until it tastes the way you want.  Simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Adjust the seasoning and serve on Kaiser rolls (or hamburger rolls, or just plain bread).

• 4 lbs ground beef
• large onion, finely chopped
• 3 Jalapeños, minced
• 4 cans Campbell's Chicken Gumbo soup
• 1 tbsp prepared yellow mustard
• 1 - 2 cups of ketchup

If my math is correct, all told this costs me around $30 for a batch this size.  For $30 I get two meals for the family and a couple of lunches out of it, so about $3.00 a serving.

Homemade Chicken Stock

The other night I came across a post from a local Foodie Blogger whom I've started reading.  She posted a video on making your own chicken stock (or broth) that was well made.  For the last year or so I too have been making my own chicken stock that I freeze and pull out for dishes like risotto, chicken noodle soup, etc.  I thought I would share my chicken stock process as I do things a little different than Suzie.

The biggest difference is that she used a whole chicken in her stock where my stock is waste protein only.  When I have lots of chicken stock on hand, I will collect all the bones, skin and cartilage of chicken I break down for use or roasts we make.  I toss them in a bag or wrap them in tinfoil and freeze them, I'm not worried about freezer-burn.  I also keep a couple pounds of cleaned chicken feet from Shani's Farm in the freezer that I use.  When I use onion, garlic or celery I scrub the skins before preparing and keep all the scraps and peelings in ice cream containers in the freezer as well.  Any other veg scraps may work too, I'm not sure.  The really important thing is to make sure it's clean, any grit brought in from the vegs may end up suspended in your stock.

When making stock, I try to start first thing in the morning.  I'll start by broiling all the loose bones, carcasses and chicken feet until very brown on baking sheets or in a shallow roasting pan.  Avoid burning but flavour seems to come from the roasting so I get them as dark as I can.   As the pans of bones brown I put them in a pot, including the fat and lightly scrape the crusty bits as well.  I usually have several "trays" of bones and carcass to roast before the stock making starts.  I don't worry about adding fat or whatever to the pot before hand as I'll strain and skim everything out at the end.

All the frozen produce scraps go in the pot.  Depending on how many onion skins and garlic scraps are available, I may add more (scrubbed) whole onions or garlic cloves.  I'll toss in some bay leaves (not just one, I use a large stock pot) and whole peppercorns.  That's about it.   Fill it with water to just cover everything and bring it up to a simmer.  Throughout the day I'll try to skim the "foam" off the top and give the whole mix a good stir.

A couple hours before the end of the day it's time to start wrapping it up.  I remove it from the heat and start pulling bones, soggy chicken and produce out of the pot and into my salad spinner ("waste not, want not").   A quick spin gets a little more liquid out of it and I discard the waste.  Some people may try to pull the edible chicken out here, I don't bother.  Because I only use carcass and feet, any edible chicken is almost shredded and I don't have the patience to separate it.

The liquid goes through a fine sieve to remove as much solid particles as I can and then into empty ice cream containers.  The liquid is usually steaming hot at this point so the containers get a lid and go outside on the deck to cool before being refrigerated overnight.   Do not freeze it as it is, there is a very important step left to do tomorrow.

First thing next morning we need to remove the fat.  As the liquid cooled overnight in the fridge, most of the fat in the containers floated to the top and you should see a white-ish greasy layer on top.  I skim this layer off as best I can down to the pure stock beneath.  You'll see the colour and texture change at the layer where the fat ends and the stock begins.  I discard the fat but I suppose that could be used for something too if you wanted.

From here I start dividing the stock into its permanent homes, container size depending on how much I want to freeze together.  You use anything from ice cream containers to ice cube trays.  I often have to reheat it a little at this point because the consistency can be like a thick Jello thanks to the chicken feet.

It's a big job, but that's how I make my stock.  Quality stock is expensive (not the boxed liquid, that's garbage), but mine uses literally the waste from other meals and from that I get about 6 litres of good stock.

!Foodie

Review: Mexico Lindo

Mexico Lindo serves home-style Mexican cuisine.  The first thing I always notice is the wonderful smell of spices permeating the air inside, a sign of the delicious Mexican meal to come.  A bowl of homemade salsa and corn tortilla chips are brought to our table shortly after we're seated.

The decor is humble, with local awards for food and business displayed proudly on the wall.  I can only describe the ambiance as honest; a small, local, successful business doing what they love in Fairview.  My wife and I both love this restaurant for what it is.  We're not experts in traditional Mexican food, we have not traveled around Mexico, we're not qualified to comment on what components of this dish or that are traditional or not.

With that being said, this is not Taco Bell or another Tex-Mex restaurant chain food.  Once seated our first question is, as always, if there is any Aqua Fresca made.  There is, today it is made with cantaloupe, our favorite.  We order a pitcher before they run out of it and proceed to review the menu.  My wife decides on the chicken chimichanga and I get the beef burrito meal.  We start in on the tortilla chips and salsa.  The chips themselves are nothing special, just round corn-based transportation for the salsa really.  There are usually 4 different salsas available if you ask about them, Mild, Medium, Hot and Extra Hot.  The hotter you can handle, the tastier it gets but because their target audience is Haligonians, I can't imagine they put out too much Hot and Extra Hot during the run of a service.

Chimichanga with Rice and Beans

Our meal comes out, the food hot to the touch.  The shell of the tortilla on the chimichanga is crispy, inside the shredded chicken, onions and green peppers are steaming.  The diced onions, tomato and sour cream on top are still cool but warming very quickly from the rising heat of the deep-fried chimichanga.  My wife comments the the green peppers seem fresh and flavourful and that the chicken is moist.  No complaints there.  I cut open my burrito.

Beef Burrito

One of the best things about Mexico Lindos is that they don't use ground hamburger.  All the beef versions of dishes I've tried so far use pulled beef and my burrito today is no exception.  The plate comes with Mexican rice and refried beans, the burrito is a large flour tortilla folded up and stuffed with seasoned beef and some more refried beans and topped with salsa and crisp iceberg lettuce.  Like the chimichanga, the burrito normally has a generous dollop of sour cream but I request it without.  I have to cut it open and let it sit for a moment, too hot to eat immediately.  I try the rice and beans while I wait.  The rice is moist but not mushy and the beans have the consistency of a nice oatmeal.  They work really well together on a fork.


All in all, another delicious meal from Ana in the kitchen for a reasonable price.  No surprise there as this is our favourite restaurant for a reason.  We will be back soon, hopefully for lunch to take advantage of their lunch specials.

Review: Fredies Fantastic Fishhouse

Fish and chips.  A maritime staple.  Fredies' Fantastic Fish House is a typical good hole-in-the-wall restaurant.  Located on Oland Crescent in Bayer's Lake Business Park, it can be a little hard to find.  If you don't know where Oland Crescent is, check out a map before you leave to avoid driving past the street.

I've eaten there for lunch a number of times and we've gone as a family as well.  The restaurant only seats a handful, but when the weather is nice there are several tables outside.  The fish has always been very fresh, portions are generous and all for a reasonable price.  The hand-cut fries are good and not greasy.  The seafood chowder is very good, my wife quite enjoyed it.  If you're in the Bayer's Lake Business Park and want fish and chips (or various other deep fried critters from the sea), Fredies is the best choice.  If possible, eat in.  As with anything deep fried, it tends to lose its crispness as part of a take out order.

I'll be eating there again soon.

Quick Indian Butter Chicken

One of our favorite meals is butter chicken, we eat it fairly regularly.  I use the store-bought Asian Home Gourmet Indian Butter Chicken from Sobey's here and it works out well.  We've tried different sauces and pastes but we like this one the best.  I hope one day to make a better version from scratch but I'm not there yet.

I made a large batch last night.  A quadruple batch in fact.  A normal meal for us would normally be a double batch (2x packets and double the ingredients) with some naan bread but this summer I started making meals in advance and freezing them so the plan was to make 2 future Butter Chicken suppers.  The plan changed to 1 future meal and 1 meal right then but that's okay.

My large batch of Butter Chicken used the following:

• 4 packets of AHG Butter Chicken
• 4 lbs boneless skinless chicken thigh
• 1 28 oz can tomatoes, pureed
• 1 litre plain yogurt
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 1/4 cup butter
• No Water

My recipe is slightly different than the one listed on the packets; more chicken and no water added.

I heat the butter up in my large wok-like pan.   Saute the onions until very soft, about 5 minutes, add in the paste and bring to a strong simmer.  I like to really cook the paste, butter and onions for a good minute or two.  Then add the tomato puree and the yogurt.  Stir thoroughly and bring back to simmer.  Add your chicken which should be cut into bite-sized pieces.

Return to a simmer and cook uncovered until the chicken is cooked, about 20 minutes.  Continue cooking until it is to the consistency you prefer.  I do give it a good stir to keep it well mixed.

My choice of ingredients are part of what makes our meals what they are:

1.  I use local, free-run chicken.  This particular batch was made from chicken from a new butcher I finally found.  I am not sure what farm her chicken comes from, I need to ask.
2.  I prefer fresh, ripe tomatoes, ideally ones low in juice, like a beefsteak.  This batch used canned tomatoes as a test.  The canned (low salt) are better for budget, the fresh are better for taste and nutrients.
3. I use a Balkan-style plain yogurt, I need to try a Greek-style sometime to see if it makes for an even creamier finished product.
4. I try to dice my onions up fairly small so they're almost liquified by the time the cooking is finished.
5. I use real butter, we are phasing out margarine in an effort to reduce the unpronounceable chemicals in our diet.

The total ingredient cost for this batch was about $50 and it provides 12 healthy servings for the four of us (2 suppers and leftovers for work/school lunches the next day).  That's $4.25 per meal per person.  Not the cheapest meal I make for the family, but it is far cheaper than eating out.

!Foodie

The Math of Supporting Your Local Farmer

Most of the proteins I cook with come from the Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market, specifically three farms and a butcher:

• Windy View Farm
• Shani's Farm
• Sweet William's Country Sausage
• Roselane Farm (aka Bavarian Meat Shop)

Last week I discovered a real butcher in the city selling local, never-frozen, "organic" meat.  I'm still evaluating Highland Drive Storehouse but I purchased this weeks proteins from her instead of the market on Saturday and so far it's been fine.  Her prices are reasonable for what she is selling.  The problem, I suspect, with any local butcher is that the price per pound is high compared to the sale prices from the grocery store.  That sticker shock must drive away some customers, I've seen it happen at the market.

But what I've learned, and what I hope to explain here, is how to understand the real cost of the meat you are buying in order to understand why you want to pay what the farmers are asking.

Put aside the social and economic benefits of buying locally.  I'll leave that discussion to others, I'm not interested.  Strictly talking about value, the most important factor to consider is that the prices listed are uncooked price per pound.  What you really care about is the cooked price per pound.  We don't eat raw chicken, raw sausage, raw roasts and there-in lies the tricky advertising at the grocery store.  My local grocery store chain will sell boneless chicken thighs for $8/lb (not on sale) and my local farmer will sell me boneless chicken thighs for $9/lb.  On the surface, the Sobey's thighs are $1/lb less expensive but, my farmer's chicken has not been Plumped.  When cooked, injected water comes out diluting your sauces and reducing the cooked volume of the meal.  If we assume %15 of the grocery store chicken weight is water (or worse, salt water) and we adjust our costs, now Sobey's thighs are $9.20/lb.  Chicken from my farmer is free of growth hormones, unnecessary antibiotics and other additives.  What about the grocery store chicken?  Who can you even ask about that?  The meat packers in the store were in no way involved in the production of the chicken.  My conclusion is that the local, healthier, free-range and organic chicken is actually cheaper than the full retail price grocery store chicken.

A second example: breakfast sausages.  I brought some breakfast sausages from the Bavarian Meat Shop over to my parent's house for Pancake Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday) this year.  We planned to cook them on a George Foreman grill.  My mother was used to cooking Larsons breakfast sausage; when cooking this sausage one would have to drain the drip tray from the grill to keep it from over flowing while cooking.  The sausages I brought from the market barely dripped any fat at all into the tray.  So when you lose 25% of your pre-cooked weight to fat and water, you tend to buy more up front because you know "how much feeds your family".   I can feed my family with less weight of uncooked proteins because the cooked weight works out to be about the same after you drain away the excess water and fat that is added to the sausage to "boost" the weight and profits.

I have more examples from personal experience, like ground meats, but in the price per pound department, the farmers locally are competitive with the retail grocery stores when you look at it in a corrected context.  Value is more than just the price per weight though, value to me is also derived from the quality of the product being purchased.  When I decided to move our family over to local, organic meats, the first thing I considered was the quality of the product.  My goal in feeding my son is not how much chicken I can stuff inside him, it is the nutrients that are contained in that chicken that his body requires.  My personal feeling is that the quality of the local, unprocessed meats I get from the market are healthier than the frozen and shipped products in the grocery store freezers.  I would be interested in reading any published and peer-reviewed studies on the matter.

We know that processed meats lose some of their nutritional value so in theory, I can use a little less unprocessed and fresh meat to provide the same nutritional value as something frozen.  Again, in theory this increases the relative value of the local product to me.

The third component of my value equation is taste.  I enjoy eating.  A lot.  Too much in fact.  So if the taste was not as good or better than the grocery stores, I would be less supportive.  Honestly, I don't really notice much of a difference in the chicken, but the pork and the beef are different to me.  Steaks taste different between farms too, find the farm you like and support it by eating their product.  Regardless, many people swear by the taste of fresh, organic, grass-fed beef.  Factor that into your personal value equation.  For us the taste is a factor but all of these factors are not as important as our forth and final one, chemicals.

Antibiotics, growth hormones, preservatives, dyes (maybe) all are common add-ons you get in factory-farmed meats.  This forth factor, additives, are used because they increase profits for the manufacturer, not because they're good for the consumer.  My wife has a sensitive digestion system, we've observed that eating higher additive meats are a trigger for her.  By switching to organic meats, she's been healthier and in far less pain.

All these factors combined make the organic proteins the right choice for my family.  They are the best bang for the buck when compared with full price grocery store proteins.  Sale prices are harder to justify from a budget perspective.  There can be some good sales on proteins, and I know from experience that you can save a lot by buying in bulk during a sale and freezing it.  We choose to support the farmers and buy quality meats every week instead of just when they're not on sale at the grocery store but that's a choice we budget for.  We believe saying "pay the farmer now or the doctor later" to be true.

I happen to know that some of the farms I support also use sustainable farming practices which I hear is good for the environment.  If that is important to you then value it accordingly.

!Foodie

An Opening Post...

I am the procurer and preparer of foods for our family of 4.   I have a wife with a sensitive digestive system, a step-daughter just out of her teens who has never eaten properly and a son entering his teens and growing like a weed.  We have extended family whom we share meals with at times with their own dietary requirements and restrictions (e.g. strictly gluten free).

Our budget is not large; as small as I can make it in fact.   For the past year I've been working hard to make the most of our budget and deliver the best food for our buck to my family.  We've been able to transition from eating out a lot to very rarely and (I think) enjoying our food a lot more.  I've learned a lot about cooking, the local sources for food, making the most of what I have on hand and more.  It might be fun to share some of that experience and my take on some local foods and restaurants.

I'm not a professional, I have absolutely zero formal training in the culinary world, I will never claim to be a authority on anything.  Our kitchen is old and tiny, my tools are limited, my knowledge is hit or miss.  All I can do is share what works for me and my family here.  Maybe it will work for you too, future but likely non-existent readers.

My journey really began in earnest about a year ago when I started moving from grocery store "on-sale" only proteins to the Halifax Farmers' Market for our meats.  It was intimidating at first and the budget expanded a little but the results are more than worth it.  The budget comparison is an interesting discussion in itself, something I'm passionate about as my family well knows.  I still get lots of supplies from the Sobeys and Superstore chains, but I'm more educated now about what I am purchasing, and perhaps more importantly, who I am purchasing from.

In a few short hours from now, I'll get up again to head down to the market (before the tourists show up) to refill our freezer and prepare for the week's meals.  This weekend is supposed to be rainy (naturally, it is Nova Scotia after all) so I'm hoping to be able to get some cooking done to replenish our stock of ready-made meals and maybe get ahead a little more.

!Foodie