Frozen Bread And Salty Yolks - The Cheapskates Guide To Groceries

Like most people, I go food shopping once a week.  That's when the big list gets made and when I know it's time to get more self-raising flour, eggs, bread or tomatoes.  Sometimes though, stuff just dies mid-week.  Got a bunch of spring onions?  Most of 'em floppy by Wednesday.  Ate half a baguette?  The other half goes stale, languishing in the bread bin.  NOOOooooo!

It took most of my adult life, but I finally became a Grocery Scrooge.  No more shall my onions wilt!  Yes, I shall freeze my perishable seafood!  Yeah, I'm making it sound like a bigger deal than it really is, but the truth is I hate wasting food because it's money down the drain... or in the bin.
Money that could be spent on shoes, illicit street drugs nail polish, or a can of Ortiz anchovies.

So here's what I do to get more food in my mouth, while saving some sweet sweet dirty cash.

1. Italian Week = YES.  Italo-Mexi-Thai-Grecian-Chinese Week = Aww hell NO.
   I get that in the 21st century we home cooks are supposed to be as schmancy and cosmopolitan as James Bond's flight itinerary.  We've Got Skills and can wield both a wok and paella pan with equal dexterity.  Damn, has Marvel made a comicbook about us yet, because they should.  The ability to cook food stemming from different cultures and regions is a fabulous undertaking.
   However, I assure you there is no pressure to cook food from wildly different etymologies every night of the week.
   

Beyond Existentialism, Now At Your Grocery Store

Two Chicken Soups

The weather here in Melbourne has turned properly autumnal. Summer is a memory, and the with the turning of the seasons come the usual rituals - woolly jumpers resurrected from the back of the wardrobe, sales of hot water bottles and electric blankets start to rise as the temperature drops and alas, the inevitable cold besmirches your body.  Or it's the 'flu.  Or some random virus that's going around.

So here are suggestions for two types of chicken soup, both pretty low-effort.  Because no-one feels like cooking when they're sick (or at least, I don't) they're 'cheat' soups - so make sure you've got some powdered chicken stock or bouillon cubes in your pantry.
I was pretty ill last week and trust me, you don't feel like doing much other than wrapping yourself in blankets and groaning a lot.  Making soup from scratch is for healthy people.

Animated GIF from Nerdy World

Science! The Little Cup That Could

In this special volume-centric post of 'Science!' we take a look at a small wonder - the Little Plastic Cup that comes with your rice cooker.

(L) Egg cup for comparison (R) The Little Plastic Rice Cup

Some of you have kept it - wise move.  Many folks toss it out along with the packaging, assuming it's a nondescript item which serves no purpose.  You know how much rice you want, right?
Plus, you've other measuring cups and can't possibly cram more stuff in the drawer of assorted gadgets, whotsits and geegaws that every kitchen has.

Yeah, sure thing buddy.

An Offall-y Big Adventure Part 1 - Kidneys

{This adventure is in two parts, documenting my experiences with types of offal I'd never cooked before.  We start with kidneys, then move onto brains.  Let's go!}

The blonde behind the counter is grumpy.  Kidneys were clearly an 'out-the-back' item, not in easy reach within the gleaming display cases of steaks, fillets and other more familiar, muscle-centric parts.
"How many do you want?" she asks curtly.
"Umm... 250 grams?" I reply.
"How many would that be?"
"I'm not sure... um... how big are they? They're lambs' kidneys, right?"
She nods, making a vague motion with her hands indicating they're sized anywhere between a 20-cent coin and a char siu bao*.
"I'll just, umm... just a good handful, thanks".

She yells something to a chap out the back, he yells something back.  I stand quietly, waiting for the kidneys, trying not to die of awkwardness.  Eventually, a large brown parcel is proffered to me, feeling a lot more like 500 grams than the asked-for 250 grams.  The price is $2.40.  I hand over the money and skulk away, feeling confused and a little foolish.

Watch Out, We Got A Badass Over Here

Sure, I might look like some small-time city gal, but ya know what?  Life's for livin' dangerously, and I know what it's like to live on the edge.

Why, just tonight The Boyfriend went out with his pals and I went crazeee, baby.
Got myself not one, but TWO lots of deep fried deliciousness - some veggie balls and a serve of confit duck spring rolls.  Got 'em from Ebi Fine Food down there on Essex Street.  Sure, they got the healthy stuff too, soba noodle salad, some real fresh fish, but tonight... I'm dangerous.
I even got the "strange but good jap icy pole" which I ain't seen before.  In this cold weather!
No clue about the contents - could be green tea and grape Jell-o for all I know.

Now, here's the kicker; I sat down in front of the teevee, then ate it all with my bare hands.  Like a savage.

Image from Sentient Machinery

That ain't the only thing I done.  The list of crimes is long and deep.  The kitchen police are gonna bust down my oven door and burn me in the crusts.

There's a place for me in Hell's Kitchen somewhere...

Greed, Inadequacy... And A Recipe For One Mad, Bad Chocolate Pavlova

A lone blueberry flops to the left of the pavlova, a criminal fleeing the scene.  The raspberries are studded unevenly across the surface.  Some are huddled together like hostages, while others lie solitary and stranded, lost and away from the herd. The strawberries are leaking their dark balsamic syrup, sullying the white skirts of cream with rusty drips.

As I poke another errant blueberry into the Sorry Heap it dawns on me that I possess the plating skills of a toddler drunk on laudanum.

Plating is like sex.  If you think about it too hard, too much, or generally obsess about it, it's probably going to be awful.  Or perhaps I've just conjured up this platitude to comfort myself;  the correct placement of fruit eludes me so thoroughly and I am very, very bad at it.  Either way the facts are unassailable - I cannot make food look pretty.