My Favorite Cheap Eats Story

Every once in a while, the stars align and I can feed fiancé and I for pennies. Last month was one of those times. I stopped by Winn Dixie to buy eggs but decided to check out the rest of the store for deals. I walked by the whole chicken section and saw that there were a couple marked down for quick sale. The best by date was still a few days out so I decided to get one. A six pound chicken cost me 3 dollars. That's 50 cents a pound!

Now cooking whole poultry is not my favorite because it's kind of a pain getting the bird prepared and then you have to deal with carving it. However, it is delicious so sometimes it is worth it. I threw it in my largest cast iron skillet with a cut up onion inside the cavity and some butter and garlic under the skin. I baked it for an hour and served it with mashed potatoes and gravy ( made in the skillet with the chicken drippings.) Pretty easy meal right?

[Sorry for the terrible pictures and my messy kitchen. I took these pictures to text to my sister and didn't plan on blogging about it! Forgive me please.]

Then as I carved the chicken, I threw the icky parts, the cooked onion and the carcess straight into my crockpot and made stock. I had never made chicken broth before but it was embarrassingly easy. Throw bones into a crockpot set on low, fill with water and add spices and a bay leaf. Then you leave it for 12 to 24 hours. When you come back, you fish out the bones and bits with a slotted spoon and throw it away. The broth was so much better than the store bought crap I usually get that when I got my Instant Pot, the first thing I made was broth for my freezer. It was that good. My crockpot ended up making about ten cups of broth And it was made with ingredients that I would have thrown away!

However, I planned for this batch to be made into homemade chicken noodle soup. After I scooped out the bones and other solids, I added some frozen carrots, celery, and pearl onions and threw in a couple cups of the leftover chicken.  Then I let that cook on low for awhile and then added a package of uncooked egg noodles and some kale I had in the fridge. Once those were done and I added salt and pepper, I filled up ten pint freezer containers with the soup and put them in my freezer for later.

[No, I don't know why this was the only picture I took of my awesome soup. This was like my third bowl and half eaten at that. Dishonor on me, dishonor on my cow.]

At this point, I STILL had lots of chicken left over so I made a chicken pot pie in my cast iron skillet with a pre-made piecrust, leftover chicken, kale and a frozen mix of carrots and peas and pearl onions. Made a white sauce and baked. Fiancé ate almost the entire thing!!! And he has been begging me to make it again! It was delicious.

Then, if you can even believe it, we still had a cup or so of leftover chicken so Fiancé brought it with him for lunch on the fourth day.

To recap -  I paid:

$3.00 for the chicken
$1.50 for the ready to microwave, mashed potatoes
$3.00 (approximately) for the carrots, celery, bag of peas and carrots and pearl onions
$2.49 for the pie crust
$1.29 for the egg noodles
$1.79 for the kale
and a small amount for flour, spices, and milk.

For under 14 dollars, we had a roast chicken meal with mashed potatoes and gravy, a chicken pot pie and ten servings of chicken noodle soup. Oh and some leftover chicken. Obviously this wouldn't stretch quite as well for a larger family but it works pretty well for two!

I know I write a lot about food and saving money on this blog that is supposed to be about law school but I swear it is connected. Right now, I am trying to save for the Bar exam next summer. Not only do I have to commit to not working or only working minimal hours during the bar study course, the course itself costs $3,000. Taking the bar exam itself costs about $700. Oh, but don't forget you need to pay your state to even apply to take the bar and to convert your student application to a full application. Plus, the school advises to have 5-6 months of expenses saved up because it takes months for the results to come out and who knows how long it will take to find a job after that. The more I can prepare now, the less horrible next year will be. 

First Attempt with the Instant Pot

Well, I bit the bullet and used my new Instant Pot today. I made chicken broth because I had all the ingredients on hand and I wanted to compare it to my crockpot recipe.

The Instant Pot wasn't nearly as complicated as I thought it would be. When I first read the instructions, I felt seriously overwhelmed but once I started actually doing it, it was pretty self explanatory. Just go step by step and it works.

Step One - Put all the ingredients and the liquid in the pot.

Step Two - Twist the lid until it latches and you can't lift it up anymore.

Step Three -  Make sure the Steam Valve is set to Sealing.

Step Four - Push the button you need to use and then press Adjust and then the + or - sign to change the timer. Since I was making broth, I pressed Soup and then adjusted the time to two hours.

Step Five - Wait a minute and it'll beep and start all on it's own.

I swear, if the manual was formatted like this, I wouldn't have stressed out about it nearly as much. It's pretty much as easy as a crockpot with just a few extra steps.

Then, when the food was done, the Instant Pot beeps again and the timer switches over to let you know how long to leave it for a Natural Release. The Natural Release basically means you leave it alone for 10 to 15 minutes and the pressure releases (mostly) on it's own. You still flip the valve over to Venting right before you open the lid to prevent suction but that's it.

If you need to open the Instant Pot right away, you use the Quick Release method instead. For that, all you do is flip the valve over to Venting right after the Instant Pot beeps to alert you that it is done cooking. Steam comes shooting out (Be careful) and when enough pressure is released, the valve drops and you can open the lid.

It's not nearly as complicated as the manual makes it seem and that makes it much more likely that I will use this new contraption often. Yay for sisters who buy you cool presents like an Instant Pot.

Also, the broth was just as good as my crockpot version. It was rich and flavorful and all around better than store bought. And made in 22 hours less time. WOW.

Cooking

This is a very non law school post about ... food and cooking.

I HATE COOKING. I find it stressful and annoying and it takes much too much of my precious time. Unfortunately, I happen to be pretty good at it. And my fiance is very, very, very bad at it. Try running out of milk so substituting tequila BAD. ( Yes, he was drunk when he made this decision but there have been many times when he has proven over and over again that he should never be allowed to create subsistence for himself or others.) He is an awful, can not make tuna helper without help cook.

This creates a problem because I like to eat. I really like to eat. And I seriously dislike eating boring cold foods such as sandwiches or cereal or really, anything that is convenient. I crave some sort of meat, potato, veggie and bread for every meal. Now this obviously creates a problem when you can't afford to eat out every meal and you also hate to cook. Not to mention not wanting to weight five hundred pounds.

My solution? Batch/Freezer cooking! I have two plans of attack for this. I either set aside an entire weekend and make three months of food to hide in the freezer or I make a huge amount of one meal and stick the rest in the freezer. (Both meant I had to buy a chest freezer but trust me, it more than made up for it's cost in only a few months. I love my chest freezer and even named him Nelson. I have problems but that is neither here nor now.)

While I was still in college, I would do the three month plan. I would get my financial aid check and spend about three or four hundred at the local Walmart, three or so days cooking six or seven hours a day and BAM, we had food through finals. It was awesome!! All I would have to do is come home from class, grab something, throw it in the oven and an hour later we would be eating. No prep, no standing over the stove and no mess.  Genius!!!!!! I will say it again, GENIUS!!

This method started to fail me once I entered the real world of full time, Monday through Friday employment. And then I added a second job. Once I began working 6am to 8pm Monday through Friday, the absolute LAST thing I wanted to do was spend my entire weekend cooking! (Remember, I completely hate the process of cooking!) So what happened? My second job ended up paying for us to eat out everyday. My entire paycheck was spent on restaurants and fast food. So NOT why I got a second job in the first place.

This was not going to work long term.

So I started my second batch cooking method. Each weekend, my goal was to make one meal that I could triple and put in the freezer. For example, I would prepare one dish on Sunday, put two quarters of it in the freezer, in two separate containers. We would eat it Sunday and probably Monday evening as we both love leftovers. But then a month later, I could throw another container of it in the oven and we would have a ready made meal. Then a month later, I could do it again.

The next week, I would make a different meal and rinse and repeat.

Even somebody who hates to cook can fulfill a goal of cooking only once a week!

It is not as convenient as the three month plan because it takes a while to stock up on enough meals to not be bored with the food choices. It also is a little more expensive as you can not buy in bulk quite as well nor get all the chopping of say ten onions done all at once. But it is indefinitely better than cooking a new meal each night.


This week, I am making spaghetti.