Creative Cooking–Use What You Have in Abundance

How adaptable and creative is your cooking?

…the wise farm housekeeper will seek to know ways of cooking beans, cabbage, turnips, asparagus, the precious Irish potato and other vegetables and the fruits that grow on the farm in abundance. -1905

Choosing to be a homemaker is often a choice to have less income, so strategy is essential when it comes to grocery shopping and cooking. Learn to cook with the simplest, most basic ingredients available to you. The bonus is that they are often the cheapest. These include staple ingredients, like potatoes, beans, and vegetables, as well as those foods that are the foundation of other meals, like breads and sauces.

If you have a garden, you should learn creative ways to cook with the abundance you grow. I grow several kinds of fruit on my property, like raspberries, grapes, apples, and peaches. As my fruit trees and bushes matured and started producing, we began eating more and more fruit. I eventually realized that I had to modify the way I cooked. A body needs only so much jam.

It didn’t make sense for me to make desserts that used store-bought ingredients like chocolate chips, cool whip, and instant pudding. I had fruit that needed to be used! Now I make primarily fruit-based desserts, like raspberry crisp, baked apples, and grape pie. (It’s such a sacrifice.) The fruit is basically free to me, so the dishes I make are fairly inexpensive, since fruit is the main ingredient. Of course, a dessert loaded with fruit is unquestionably a healthy one–just take away the butter and sugar and what do you have?  A fruit salad.

It’s also important to train yourself to take advantage of terrific sales and the unexpected ways you find yourself with extra food.  Maybe you’ve discovered some abandoned berry bushes in a vacant lot. Or perhaps someone offers you some meat after a hunting trip, or you score some unlabeled cans at the salvage grocery store for a song. Don’t be quick to pass it up because you’re not sure what to do with it.  Use a variety of cookbooks, find some good resources online, and seek the advice of more experienced home cooks.

An example of creative cooking

I recently bought a big box of dented cans for $3.95.  Included in the box was a large can of yams in syrup. This is not something I would ever, ever buy. I figured that one dud out of 30+ cans was still a bargain and I didn’t need to feel guilty for tossing it.  But, of course, I did feel a little guilty. I searched online and found a recipe for sweet potato bread. A little flour, sugar, and eggs turned my blech-y yams into two loaves of delicious quick bread. One I took to a brunch potluck, and the other we had for breakfast.

My next post will continue this thought, with an example of how I found a use for bargain peanuts.  I’m sure the suspense will be nearly intolerable.