[...] Eat good food. Since the first of the year, when I was stressed about being overweight (wonder whose fault?), [...]

You need:
1 cup white rice
1 can tuna
1 can cream of mushroom soup

Cook the rice as usual. Warm up the soup, but don’t add any milk, then crumble the tuna into the soup. Stir and be sure it doesn’t stick to the bottom.

When rice is done, simply mix the two together and serve.

Buttered toast on the side adds a textured counterpart.

[...] Minimalist Meals:  Fantastic Food in Ten Minutes or Less as reviewed by J.D. I’m gearing up for a busy week at work and I’ve bookmarked this one for some quick dinner ideas.  I’m wondering if “hot dogs on buns” or “Southeast Asia Steak Salad” would go over better with the kids.  Maybe I’ll have to cook two meals that night! [...]

[...] a perspective on a topic close to my heart: food, particularly frugality through minimalist food. (Read it at Get Rich [...]

[...] Rich Slowly writes about Minimalist Meals that you can make in less than 10 minutes. There are a few good ideas in here for recipes that [...]

It’s like having a giant free cookbook at ones fingertips all the time.

What do I mean? Well…take for example soup. It’s not hard. Just throw some broth (or a couple of bullion cubes) into a pot. Add a can of diced tomatoes if you (like me) are a tomato freak. Add some chopped onion and any assortment of veggies (fresh or frozen) that you like. You can also add any meat that you like, raw or saute it a little first. You can add some canned beans if you like. Season with salt, pepper and any other spices you might like. Then add about 1/2 cup rice, barley or pasta and let the thing simmer for an hour.

You don’t need a soup recipe to do that. Just be creative with what you have on hand.

P.S. — I am a bit spoiled in that my mom DID teach me how to cook. So I may underestimate the learning curve for some.

P.P.S. — The public library is a great resource for cookbooks if you want to check them out for ideas.

Pineapple juice
Grated ginger
Dash soy sauce

Marinate.
Cook fish.
Reduce sauce/add corn starch.

Oh so yummy…

Saute until heated through, toss with sauce of choice and serve along side cooked rice. I buy those large bags of frozen chicken breasts and cook up the whole bag at the beginning of each week, makes good for dinners and snacks the whole week through.

Cheapest, lowest-calorie and healthiest meal (protein included) meal I’ve come across.

2. canned blackeyed peas, frying pan with the juice, reduce, durkee “red hot” hot sauce, dollop of butter. tastes like hot wings. serve with canned seasoned collard greens and corn bread

3. pasta with tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and capers. boil pasta and drain, set aside. get some canned tomatoes in a saucepan, reduce with some capers, marinated artichoke hearts, and anything “thrown in” of your choice.

Seriously, i’ve never seen any of her recipes list more than 10 ingredients. And her ‘instant chef’ cookbook is my first and favourite.

Also, its is based on a less-meat philosophy so its great for vegetarians, as 90% of the recipes are meatless or have meat as a side ingredient that can be omitted without replacement.

I think that menu planning can go a long way to solving one of the problems you mention. Use that extra swiss cheese for sandwiches the next day, an omelet on Sunday, and so on. And many “unusual” ingredients are pantry ingredients; buy them once, then use them over many months or a year. You can also modify a bit and save $; instead of buying a jar of anchovies for caesar salad dressing (use one anchovy, the jar then goes bad in a week or two), I bought anchovy paste at my local (inexpensive!) italian grocery. It will last for years since I only need a dab when I make dressing. I keep a bottle of Minute Maid fresh lemon juice in my fridge and use that in all kinds of recipes; no more buying lemons when I only need 1 teaspoon of lemon juice. (By the way, the MM lemon juice is found in the frozen food section and it is 100% lemon juice!).

By far, my biggest savings comes from buying fruit and vegetables at a local produce store. It’s sort of a glorified produce stand, owned by the same family since the 60s or 70s. I drove by it for years before I finally stopped, and it has cut my grocery bill by 50%! Some of the produce is not as pretty as grocery produce, but tastes just as good and it’s half the price (or less). This encourages me to eat more fruits and vegetables, too, since they are no longer the most expensive items in my shopping cart.

If you have leftover mashed potatoes, you can make cheap and easy shepherd’s pie. Brown a pound of ground beef with some chopped onions, and drain. Mix with a bag of thawed mixed vegetables and a can of cream of celery soup (cream of mushroom would also work). Spread in a greased pie pan, then top with leftover mashed potatoes. Sprinkle grated cheese on the top; cheddar works well. Bake at 350 until the cheese is melted and the sauce bubbles around the potato topping.

Answer:
Capers are the berries from a mediterranean bush that are pickled and brined. They figure prominently in Greek and Italian regional cooking, but are also used in French and Spanish regional cooking.

Or, if you want to really learn cooking and food, get a copy of the Professional Chef. It teaches all the cooking techniques and teaches about determining food quality and cost considerations.

Store-bought Hummus? What is he, some kind of millionaire? All hummus is is blended up chickpeas, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and tahini! It costs a couple bucks to make a whole blender full.

One of my staples is pasta and there are a dozen sauces you can make while the noodles cook.

1. quickfry some bacon – soft cooked not crisp- add some garlic and cayenne pepper and whichever herb you like…basil,rosemary parsely…optional but changes up flavor and pour over pasta…Serve with or without salad.
These days I pour off the bacon fat and add a bit of olive oil.

2. Same as above but throw in some yoghurt and sour cream to make it a cream sauce. Or use cottage cheese, it cookd down creamy.

3. For summer, chop some tomatoes and garlic olive oil parsely and mix with hot pasta. Any fresh vegetable can be thrown in… the heat of the pasta stems the veggies…the Italians call the pasta primavera.

The only downside is that most of his recipes aren’t particularly fast. They’re simple, but there tends to be quite a bit of chopping and mincing involved. However, his instructions are clear and his advice is always spot on.

The book is definitely worth it though; it makes a great gift for kids headed off to college or moving in to their first apartment.

It does take a while as people no longer learn how to cook by watching parents.
Try Monday to Friday cookbooks (M Urvater)– sections on cooking from pantry (and what to put into the paantry)

Also P Anderson: How to Cook Without a Book (to me, her palate is not as good as Urvater’s, but the concept is good).

Be frugal–take these out of the library OR get them on paperbackswap.com (what I did) or used on Amazon or half.com!

Needed:
1 or 2 Heirloom tomatoes
1 or 2 Medium size balls of Boccacini
1 bunch of fresh Basil
salt and pepper to taste
a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar

Prep:
cut up the tomatoes, pull the basil leaves off the stems, cut up the boccacini. In a circle on a plate overlap tomato, basil, boccacini and continue in a circle around the entire plate. Drizzle some olive oil and balsamic vinegar over top, sprinkle with salt and fresh cracked pepper and dig in.

Super simple ingredients, flavors and prep and its is so tasty.

Bittman truly keeps it simple. In fact, I have never made a meal I didn’t like out of his book, but I cannot say the same for fancy Martha.

That’s what my BF calls it anyways. We’ve made a habit out of going to the local farmers market and pick up all the fresh veggies we need for the week. I then make a big pot of soup that we pack for lunches for the rest of the week. It varies from week to week depending on what we end up getting. This week, I made a hybrid chili/vegetable soup with ham. It saves a lot of money because buying individual cans of soup is actually pretty expensive. You can also control the sodium and other bad stuff if you make it yourself.

To address Tana’s issues. I used to feel the need to follow recipes to the letter, but if you don’t have the two kind of cheese – use the one type you have. I’ve just outright ommitted things that I didn’t have or have no intention of buying. Fresh cilanto is a good example. It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just a pain to chop and the rest goes bad quickly. At some point, I might grow an herb garden, but for now, I’ll either go wth the dried stuff or just skip it all together. The more you experient with things, the better you get at it.

Oh – and capers are baby olives. Odd because I hate olives, but love capers. Go figure.

Cheers!
Brigid