Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Recipes, anyone? Ideas, even?

So. Here I am with a nice list of foods I can use in the Pennywise Eat Local Challenge this week.

In addition to the foods I bought, I have:

• various and sundry jams
• raspberry honey 'creme'
• asparagus galore
• eggs
• mustard greens
• onions (am running out though. eek!)
• dried cherries*
• apple butter (LARGE quantity thereof)
• oregano
• sage
• parsley
• rosemary
• hot peppers
• thyme
• garlic chives

Here's where you come in! I'd appreciate any and all suggestions for meals made just from what I have, especially some kind of cake or sweet that will last a few days.

Remember that oil and spices** are free. (Sugar too, cause come on, I'm not a pioneer)

Thanks. My brain needs input from you, because I'm thinking very 'inside the box' with the ingredients I have.

THANK YOU!!!

*Mom brought them for me from Michigan, where they are local; i'm including 'local' to mean if it was purchased close to the source, as long as nobody made a special trip just to get them. Since I brought the cherries back from an already-planned-trip to visit my family, these are fair game.

**Be liberal with your definition here, so then I can make decisions based on my conscience. I don't want to limit your ideas too much!

EDITED to add: I always forget that this is a "Pennywise" challenge. Let me add the cost of the other ingredients I have.

Jams $5 per jar. If I end up eating more than one jar in a week, I'll count more.
Raspberry Honey Creme: Um, this was a gift, so I'll exempt it.
Asparagus:I probably have about $5 worth of it.
Eggs: I have remaining 1.5 dozen, which, at $3 a dozen is $4.50 (if I use the turkey or duck eggs Jamie brought me, I'll add those in separately.
Mustard greens: $2, I think Jamie said.
Dried cherries: also a gift. In real life I didn't pay for these, so I won't count them as costing anything
Apple butter: same. Thanks Phil!

So....add $16.50 to my total of $36 and get: $52.50. Add $9.34 to that (yesterday's meal cost) and we're up to $61.84.

If I don't stray from my already-purchased foods, I'll have $6.16 to spend on other stuff. If I find myself running over the $68 limit, I'll probably start subtracting out proportionally the food I don't actually eat (i.e. will i REALLY eat 5 pounds of potatoes this week? um. Probably not. So if I eat half of them, I'll subtract 1/2 of what they cost ($4.19/2= ~$2.10) from my running tally, which currently includes the cost of the whole, enormous bag.