I think I've looked at every single recipe in my cookbooks. And still I sit here, frustrated as all get-out.Here's the thing:
- Meat's expensive.
- Cheese is even more expensive.
Fortunately, David's not picky. He's really sweet when it comes to my cooking, actually, and that's been a true blessing. But I'm picky! There simply has to be a more interesting way to eat cheaply than beans and rice! I'm sending out an SOS! Help!
We eat beans and rice two or three times a week because my husband is Mexican. We cook the beans with 1 jalapeno pepper/or serrano pepper, 1 clove of garlic, and we do not add salt until nearly done. My mother-in-law said that if you salt it too early the beans do not open correctly. We make flour tortillas to use to eat the food. If you can add onions to the rice and 1 can of tomato sauce. It will be like Spanish rice.(add your fav.veggies salt and pepper) Also a bay leaf in the Spanish rice really adds delightful flavor! You can also make burritos, enchiladas, with little or nothing. We combined 2 culturally different backgrounds and 4 kids and have truly learned to live without a lot of meat. Sometimes the kids will say it looks like the chicken ran through the dish and didn't stay!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that the reason your husband likes the food is because everything his new bride does is awesome, and probably minds way less than you think. enjoy!
Hey sis! Sorry you're so frustrated! The first two things that came to mind were 1) talk to Grandpa -- he's great with recipes, especially lowfat ones, and 2) a friend just told me about a website called allrecipes.com that allows people to post recipes as well as commenting on and rating others' recipes they've tried. I haven't visited it yet, but you may be able to specify what ingredients you're looking to use and get some help. Jennifer's suggestions sound good, too -- maybe she'd give you recipes. And a final website that I love is Layne's letters, which not only has recipes but has good mini-essays about parenting, marriage, Christian living, spiritual growth, housecleaning, etc. I love you!!
ReplyDeletehi sara, a lot of times i actually cook a recipe that calls for meat just using chicken/beef maggi and not using meat. In college I made a lot of tacos with refried beans and no ground beef. You can probably make a pretty good groundnut stew without the meat. Try frying up onions and garlic in a pot, adding curry and some ginger (and pepper) after a few minutes (fresh ginger root is great, but you can also just use powder). Then add four to six tomatoes. Add water and (chicken) maggi to taste, then several chopped up sweet potatoes. When the sweet potatoes look soft, then mix in some peanut butter (can you still get groundnuts ground into peanut butter near ECWA pharmacy?)and let it simmer for a few more minutes. Serve with rice. (And if you can get cilantro for a garnish--that's really good. I think you can get it at the market--although i'm not sure if they call it cilantro--maybe coriander.) I actually usually make this with chicken, but I think as long as you have the chicken flavour it would taste good and still have lots of protein because of the groundnuts.
ReplyDeleteI think you can also add okra or eggplant to this, and some groundnut stew recipes call for tomato paste (but I don't like tomato paste.) Ask my mom if she could get you a copy of the From the Crocodiles Recipe book; it's pretty fantastic and has a good veggie section