Food for thought: Recipes for budget-minded bon vivants

Cheap comfort foods

A lot of my favorite cheap comfort foods hail from Africa. If you think about it, what better source for making something good and plenty when families are often huge and wallets are often thin?

Binch akara-amazing fried black-eyed pea fritters
You can also save lots of time by not removing the "eyes" or only waiting 10 minutes before frying the akara like this. But don't tell my mom that I said that...
Binch akara taste so much better with onion gravy (a fried onion and pepper sauce) included in the second recipe. Don't skip it!


Tiakry/dege
I love this rice-pudding style dessert served cold, with orange blossom water and shredded coconut mixed in.

Black-eyed peas with palm oil sauce--I could eat my weight in this. I occasionally add dried fish instead of bouillon or salt, never take off the skins and make the sauce as soon as the beans start cooking to save time. Also, try adding a chopped bell pepper with the sauce. Oh, and I use 1/3 cup palm oil and 1/2 to 2/3 cup canola oil instead of 1 cup palm oil.

Cheeseburgers
OK, so these aren't always cheap in total cost by the time you add all the fixings, yet a good quality burger at home is cheaper than a good-quality burger at a restaurant when you count all the servings left over. I figured out a way to make hamburgers using stew beef that came out tender, cheaper, and of better quality meat than the ground variety. Plus, there's only a fraction of the fat of a regular hamburger in this version. As good or better than many restaurants, too. You will need a food processor for this. It will be hard for me to go back to using regular ground beef now!

1.5 lbs. lean stew beef, cubed (the smaller the pieces, the better)
4 slices turkey bacon
1 slice bread
1/3 cup milk
1/3 medium or large onion
Salt and pepper to taste

Set oven to broil or 500 degrees. Mash bread & milk together in a small bowl. Set aside. Pulse stew meat in food processor with onion. Tear turkey bacon into chunks. Add to processor when stew meat is almost free of chunks. Add in bread paste. Add pepper to taste. Pulse until just about uniform (maybe 5 more times.)

Make large patties (4 or 5) and put on a greased oven-safe pan. Shake a little salt on top, if desired. I also sliced the remaining onion and put in the pan. Spray meat and onions with nonstick spray, if desired. Broil for 3 minutes. Turn heat down to 350 and cook 10 minutes longer, until juices run clear for a well-done burger. The great thing is that you grind the meat at home and use right away, so there are a lot fewer bacteria on freshly-ground beef than the ground beef from the store. So, the hamburgers don't have to be well done at 160 degrees to be safe. Melt your favorite cheese, fix it the way you like and enjoy!

A plug for food processors: a budget-friendly friend for those with expensive tastes
A lot of my friends and acquaintances who want to cook more don't have food processors. I cannot stress enough that a food processor cuts time and saves money int the kitchen. You can make all kinds of quick things that have five ingredients or less like sorbet, Dijon vinaigrette, dough, tapenade, nut butters, hummus and pesto. If you eat pasta and spaghetti sauce from a bottle or can every night for dinner, you probably are not a candidate for a food processor. For me, it improves my creativity by allowing me to mix all kinds of stuff, especially some foods that are on the pricey side in stores. Unlike a blender, the mixture doesn't have to be too wet. Not to mention the money saved chopping, slicing and shredding compared to prepared produce or cheese at the supermarket or the time saved instead of cutting with a knife or grater. Some people prefer cutting up veggies and herbs themselves. I do that sometimes, but a food processor has helped me shave a lot of time off of food prep. And if you're buying pre-cut stuff at the market and think a food processor is expensive, think again. For the extra dollars per pound you pay for pre-cut produce, a food processor could pay for itself in a couple of months. I use just a basic Cuisinart that cost $90 on sale at the department store. I got it 7 years ago, and it's still going strong. It's not amazing in terms of what it can do, but it functions well and dependably. That's all I ask.

Goddess sundae
This is my sundae of milk & honey plus fruit. It is one of my main dessert cravings besides Nutella!
1 cup frozen fruit (usually use wild blueberries or mango chunks)
1/4 cup half & half (or coconut milk, soy creamer or evaporated milk)
1 Tbsp. honey

Arrange frozen fruit in bowl or cup. Pour half and half over fruit. Then drizzle honey over. If the fruit is really sweet, use 1 tsp. honey. Mix around a little to cover all of the fruit. This will make a nice slushy cream. Enjoy and wonder why you haven't been eating this your whole life!

Hopefully we'll all be inspired to cook things other than lentils, gruel and watery soups when times get a little rough. Food can be a real comfort when other sacrifices have to be made. It starts with not feeling sorry for one's self and making lemon granita when life hands out lemons.