eBooks & More by Ria Stone

Saturday, August 4, 2018

Matchstick Zucchini and Almonds

Matchstick Zucchini and Almonds
(Adapted from: https://smittenkitchen.com/2007/08/quick-zucchini-saute/)

After bringing home a few vegetables from a local market, I needed to find ways to prepare them.


(1 dragonfruit, 1 chayote, 2 patty pan squash, 1 zucchini, 1 camote, and 1 beet)

Found an interesting zucchini recipe, Quick Zucchini Sauté, on SmittenKitchen which I adapted to my circumstances.

Ingredients:

1 Zucchini
olive oil for skillet
a handful of almond slivers
Parmesan cheese

Process:

After cutting off the tip and end of the Zucchini, I cut it in half, then into quarters. But cutting the zucchini into matchsticks was a challenge; dicing and julienne are not skills I possess.

But, I finally got a batch of thin zucchini strips

After putting oil in the skillet, set on medium, and adding a handful of almond slivers, I had to be careful not to burn the almond slivers before adding the zucchini strips. As the recipe suggests, you are trying to toast the almonds not burn them.

Sorry for the really lousy picture. After stirring and mixing the zucchini strips with the almonds and oil, I removed the skillet from the burner.

After putting the mixture on a plate, I sprinkled it with a bit of Parmesan cheese.

But, I did not use the whole zucchini, so now I have to find more ways to use zucchini.

My First Beet

I thank two authors, Amy Dacyczyn (The Tightwad Gazette) and Jack Monroe (Cooking on a Bootstrap) for inspiring me to continue to learn how to cook on a fixed income with limited skills.

While Amy's book is not a cookbook, it contains several recipes where she illustrates how to reduce your food budget and still make nutritious meals. With Amy, I did not always have to have PB&J and potato chips for dinner or McD's sausage burrito for breakfast and lunch. Some of my favorite Tightwad Gazette recipes are "The Universal Casserole", "Apple Crisp" and "Cuban Bread."

Jack inspires me to try new recipes. While I don't always succeed, today, I cooked my first beet. Beets fascinate me. The only beets I have ever had are pickled beets in a jar. A real beet looks odd to me, while it has a beautiful shape, it is the color of dirt and it's hard for me to imagine how to cook it so someday it could become a pickled beet.

(1 dragonfruit, 1 chayote, 2 patty pan squash, 1 zucchini, 1 camote, and 1 beet)

The beet is at the bottom of the picture. I went to a local market and picked up a few vegetables and a dragonfruit. I continue to try and increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables I eat, so I have to learn to prepare them.

I used Jack's recipe "Jacket Beetato" (https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/02/13/jacket-beetroot-recipe/) as inspiration to try and cook a beet. In essence, I cooked the beet like a potato.

Cooked Beet

I just washed the beet bulb and pierced it with a fork in a few places. Put it on a plate and microwaved it on high for 5 minutes.

I cut and quartered the cooked beet and peeled off the skin. I ate a few bites plain. It was good with that beet sweetness.

While the beet was cooked, not sure it is totally mashable. Do not know if I microwaved for 1-2 minutes more it would have been easily mashable.

I saved the remaining beet chunks. I do not know what I will do with them later. At the moment, I don't have much to top cooked beet with that seems suitable but I will bet cold beet chunks will taste good, too.

Monday, July 9, 2018

El Apapacho Cafe

El Apapacho Cafe

Calle 62 x 41 y 43
Centro, Merida, Mexico

Open: Lunes, Miercoles - Viernes noon to 10pm, Sabado y Domingo open at 9am, closed Martes.

El Apapacho Cafe is a spunky place. Wait staff are friendly and attentive, they greet guests and serve them with fresh cool water along with the veggie-friendly menus.

Menu

Large selection of hot and cold teas, cafe, fruita de Agua.

Sample menu items:

Sopas, huevos de patio al gusto
Chilaquiles
Con huevo o Pollo
Tecola o tecolotes
Enfrijoladas
Enchiladas
Tacos, mezcla de hongos
Bistek a la Mexicana
Filete de pescadoo filete de soya

From 30 - 150$

My favorites are: molletes, pan con frijol y queso con de salsa Pico de Gallo, y quesadillas con queso or queso con lechuga, crema.

(molletes, pan con frijol y queso con de salsa Pico de Gallo, y sandia de agua)

There's indoor and outdoor patio seating at tables for 2-6 or more.

Original artwork decorate the walls. There are bookshelves with used and new books in a wide range of topics, including books for children, and an emphasis on women's issues.

There are games to play, and crafts, like jewelry, for sale, and a gallery space upstairs.

El Apapapacho Cafe also holds various music or art events.

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Jack Monroe, Cooking on a Bootstrap, Introduction

Early in my search for easy, frugal recipes, I found Jack Monroe, author of A Girl Called Jack, a cookbook of 100 recipes for people on a tight budget.

Jack Monroe, Cooking on a Bootstrap, Introduction

Jack has a witty, intelligent, creative way of explaining how to make her budget recipes. Because of her style and creativity, she has become a media darling.

She has been invited onto a variety of talk shows. She has written for several publications including a cooking column for The Guardian. For example: Tips for Students How to Eat Well for £3.50 a day (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/sep/20/how-to-eat-well-for-350-a-day-by-the-scrimping-experts )

Jack has published several more cookbooks and continues to create budget recipes on her website, Cooking on a Bootstrap.

On her website, she also highlights her experiences as a single mother living in poverty. She shows people the harsh difficulties of being poor.

"There’s nothing fun and exciting about missing days of meals, with the heating off all winter, the light bulbs unscrewed, selling your sons shoes and drinking his formula milk that the food bank gave you. Try it for a month at least, if you really want to get an idea. Two months. Two years. Unscrew your light bulbs, turn off your fridge, sell anything you can see lying around that you might get more than a quid for.

Stop going out. Walk everywhere, in the pouring rain, in your only pair of shoes, with a soaking wet and sobbing three year old trailing behind you. Drag that three year old into every pub and shop in unreasonable walking distance and ask if they have any job vacancies. Get home, soaking, still unemployed, to ‘dry out’ in a freezing cold flat. Put two jumpers on and worry about how you’ll wash them, take them off, and put a tshirt underneath. You can wear the jumpers all week, and change the tshirt twice.

Drag yourself to the cooker to pour some pasta into a pan, pour some chopped tomatoes on top, and try not to hurl it across the room when your son tells you he doesn’t like it – because there is nothing else. Nothing else at all.

I was cold, exhausted, only forcing myself out of the depths of choking depression to smile at the children’s centre workers because I was scared they can see how numb and dead I felt, how I went to bed at night tormented by thoughts of suicide. The endless self-chatter: ‘Your son would have a better life without you. You’re a drain on society, the state, your family and friends.’ I slit my wrists in the bath and horrified, came to, wailing and sobbing on the floor because I knew I’d hit the fucking bottom. Again.

You’re grateful for the tea and sympathy but you just want everyone to leave you alone and to stop asking if you’re okay. Because you’re not. You’re full of rain and heartache and anger and despair and it’s starting to seep through the cracks in the kept up appearances, seeping through the tshirt sleeve and you need to get out of there.

The rain isn’t miraculously any less wet when you don’t have a coat with a hood, or an umbrella, or three quid for the bus. That rain still soaks you to the skin, and your three year old, too." (Source: https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/06/27/the-difference-between-poverty-and-poorface/)

She also criticizes how media make a game of trying to live on £1 a day.

"Poverty is not a 24 hour challenge. It is a world of endless nothing. It is depression, despair, darkness. It is having no light at the end of the tunnel, like being stuck down a well, waiting to die.There is no planning for the future because you don’t believe you really have one. There are no savings accounts, no rainy day funds, no contents insurance, no health insurance, no investment in your own self, your own health, because to invest financially, nutritionally, or emotionally is to look forward. Poverty only looks at its own feet, in too-tight shoes that let in the rain, it drags you downwards, and inwards, and I speak from bitter, horrible experience..."

I particularly like Jack's approach to creating recipes for those in poverty. She recognizes that not everyone has the same level of cooking skills or have access to various cooking equipment.

"In other circumstances, people may lack cooking facilities, in houses of multiple occupancy, student halls, domestic abuse and homelessness shelters. They may have shoddy landlords renting them inappropriate and ill-equipped homes, or their cooker may have broken and they simply don’t have the ready money available to fix it. I have readers who are literally cooking in a bedsitter, or on a camping stove. Some people have no saucepans or cooking equipment. Some people lack the confidence to try new recipes and ingredients; if you have no money or a bare storecupboard, trying new ideas is a risk – if it goes wrong, you end up with no dinner at all. (Source: https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/06/27/top-5-tips-for-eating-healthily-on-a-budget-and-the-limitations/)

She also recognizes that many people are on restricted diets and/or do not live near grocery stores or farmers markets.

Initially, being a "Best Selling" cookbook author did not made life easier for Jack. At this point in time, she has not received any royalties from the sales of her cookbook. In addition, she has to fight off aggressive abusers on social media and elsewhere.

Yet, Jack fearlessly addresses how politics and government policies directly affect the poor. She continues to write articles, serve on panels, and support various charities. She calls out "Conservatives" who try and use her as an example to others living in poverty.

"...And finally – I took exception to the Conservatives holding me up as some kind of role model because, it was their policies that left me hungry, cold, almost homeless, moving house seventeen times with a child under my arm. I ended up severely mentally ill, referred to psychiatrists, and still recovering several years later. I tried to kill myself four times that I remember under austerity policies, being continuously maliciously investigated for my benefits (curiously always coinciding with me writing something negative about the local Council on my well-read political blog I wrote from the gallery of the local public meetings), having housing benefit withdrawn over a dozen times, leading to my eviction from my home, and in such horrific debt it took two books to finally emerge from the other side of it. Not credit cards or frivolity; but water bills, bounced gas and electric, rent arrears, and bank charges. I still can’t even open my own front door, scarred as I am by penny pinching pissy policies devised over £39 breakfasts by those who think nothing of spending £6,000 of taxpayers money on a dining table for their second home while loftily declaring that the poor can live on 1% of that figure for an entire week. To be used as their ‘poster girl’ for frugality by such obscene hypocrites offends me to my burned and shattered core." (Source: https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2018/02/17/my-ready-meal-is-none-of-your-business/)

A simple web search for Jack Monroe will illustrate many of their interests and activities.

Most people are disconnected in many ways from the food they buy. Food is political.

Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Monroe

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/series/jack-monroe-low-cost-recipes

https://cookingonabootstrap.com/

BoomerRadio Ceased Broadcasting June 30, 2018

On June 30 2018, Boomer Radio went off the air.

(http://www.boomerradio.com/)

For several years, I enjoyed listening to Boomer Radio. Boomer Radio had several collections of songs from the 1950s to today.

Thank you, Boomer Radio, I spent many hours listening to Classic Mix, Soft Oldies, Acoustic Cafe and many of the other music collections. They even had a collection of Christmas music.