How to Stretch Your Food Dollar

Well, they keep saying the economy is improving. I'm optimistic that we'll see a rebound here soon, but for most of us, things are still pretty darn tight, financially. Which begs the question, how can you stretch your food budget?

So here is another food stretching idea for you, and it should get you a couple of healthy meals. First, buy some chicken breast (you'll want a bit more than you think your family will eat, perhaps enough to have one breast left over). Of course, I recommend the chicken breast from the Market. It is nicely trimmed, and you can pound it out in the package. Preheat your oven to 350F.

I like the chicken for this to be about half an inch thick, so it doesn't take much pounding. Smear the chicken lightly all over with olive oil, and season it simply - maybe some tarragon, thyme, then salt and pepper to taste. place in a casserole with sides (you'll see why later) and bake until cooked through - 15-30 minutes, perhaps longer, depending on the size and thickness of the breast.

Here's another site for great tips on cooking chicken breast by various methods. I offer this because chicken is touchy to bake. For the meal I'm describing, I want a dry cooking method, but I don't want the meat to dry out. That is part of the reason that I recommend pounding out the chicken. It is important NOT TO OVER COOK the meat. Chicken needs to be cooked through (no pink in the center) but JUST cooked through. Over-cooking will dry out the meat.

When the chicken is done, it's ready to eat with whatever side dishes your family prefers. My family is a potato kind of family, but I like to throw in green veggies every once and awhile if only to hear the inevitable groans. Since you have the oven on for roasting the chicken, why not try roasting some veggies, like green beans. And rather than putting butter and salt on the green beans, try crumbling some feta cheese over them instead - yum! Leftover beans or other veggies are also great in the next dish!

Place the 'extra' chicken (and veggies, if you have them) in a container and refrigerate for the next day. Deglaze the pan that you cooked the chicken in using water, wine, or lemon juice. Lemon juice? Yes, lemon juice - it lends a wonderful lightness to the chicken soup we're going to make with the left overs. It's a traditional Greek addition to chicken soup. My friend, Marian, converted me when she made me try it. You can adjust the amount of lemon to your taste, but I've found that I like quite a bit. And you can also add the zest of the lemon to the resulting broth for some extra zing. Refrigerate the broth for use the next day.

I call this my left-over soup. I use this 'recipe' as an opportunity to use up all the odds and ends left from meals for the last few days. Have some left over fresh salsa - throw it in. Left over bulgur, couscous or pasta - great addition. Left over veggies - why not? Now there are a couple things you are going to want: an onion, diced; some red pepper diced (green pepper works, too, I just prefer red), a few stocks of celery chopped, and some carrots, chopped.

Place a stock pan over medium heat, and add a couple tablespoons of olive oil. sautee the onion, pepper, celery, and carrots until just softened. Add the broth you made the previous day, along with some additional chicken stock to make up the liquid to what you will need to feed your family (this is truly a 'stretchable' meal - need more soup, just add more stock). Again, I recommend the chicken base from the Market, which has no MSG and no added salt (unlike many of the cheap chicken bases you can find other places that are mostly salt).

Shred the chicken breast and add to the soup. Add any other left-overs you found in your fridge. Bring the mix to a simmer, and cook until all ingredients are heated through. If you didn't have left overs like the bulgur or couscous, you can add it, uncooked and cook it in the soup. Bulgur, or barley, or quinoa, or millet are GREAT and healthy whole grain additions to this soup.

Once everything is done, and the soup has had a chance to simmer all put together for awhile, taste it, and season as you like. This is the time when I might add some extra lemon zest or juice, maybe some fresh thyme or cilantro. It really depends on what you added and how it was originally seasoned, so you really do want to allow the soup some time to simmer, so all the existing flavors come together, then you can adjust appropriately. I would recommend leaving the salt and pepper to individual tastes.

There you go - a food dollar stretching exercise. But if you are feeling lazy, or just rushed, remember that we have home made soups at the Market, and we are starting to make MTO sandwiches. Stop by and let us know what you think!

Please, share what you do to stretch your food dollar!

THE Omelette

I'm not sure how many of you watch Russ on Conneaut AM Live with Pat Williams, but if you do, this week you saw the monster omelette he brought on to the show. I thought I would give you a glimpse of the kind of meal stretching that we do at our house.

The basis of that omelette started the night before with dinner. We wanted to have tacos, but due to a lack of hamburger or buffalo burger in the house opted for chicken tacos (don't know why we don't do this more often, I like them better then hamburger tacos anyway;).

The chicken taco 'recipe' is really easy. Here's what I do:

1. Pound the chicken breast out until they are ~1/3-1/2 inch thick all over (this helps them to cook more quickly and evenly, without drying out).

2. Sprinkle your favorite taco seasonings on the breasts (a mix of chili pepper, cilantro, salt, pepper, red pepper flake if you like it hot, is a simple combo that works great, or you can use one of those pre-fab packets).

3. Toss the seasoned chicken into a pre-heated, non-stick pan (add a little olive oil to get a nice sear) over medium-high heat and cook on each side until cooked through (about 3-5 minutes per side, depending on how thawed they are). Note that in the winter when I'm making this dish, I would heat the over to 375F and roast the prepared chicken breasts - but that's just to get some extra heat into our chilly house ;).

4. Allow the chicken to rest for a few minutes, then take a couple forks and shred it into bite size pieces.

5. Return the chicken to the pan it was cooked in, add some additional taco seasoning, a couple tablespoons of corn meal (or more to taste) and enough water to make some sauce (for 4 breats, I probably added about a cup of water). Bring the mixture to a boil and allow it to cook until the cornmeal is cooked and the sauce is thickened.

6. While the chicken filling is cooking, we lay out and prep all the other fixings - I usually get the kids to help with this. For our tacos, we like shredded cheese (your choice, I'm partial to the Buffalo Pepper Jack for tacos, but it is kind of warm), diced tomatoes, candy onions (sometimes I sautee them - yum), fresh salsa (I'll show you another trick when you have leftovers of this tasty stuff from the Market), black olives, shredded lettuce, jalepenos, taco sauce . . . in short, whatever you like on your tacos.

Now for my brood of seven it takes 4 chicken breast halves - two whole chicken breasts - in order to even hope to have any leftovers; and if you want the omelette in the morning, you'll need leftovers!

In the morning, pull out your favorite taco fixings left over from the night before. For the omelette Russ took on AM Live yesterday we heated up some leftover chicken filling and onions, but I've added a couple spoonfuls of salsa before, and that's a nice addition. All you have to do is heat the ingredients up, which won't take long.

Heat your non-stick skillet over medium to medium-high heat. Add a little butter (I can't help it, I like the little shot of richness the butter adds to the eggs). Crack and scramble 4-6 eggs, adding salt, pepper and cilantro to taste). Once the skillet is heated, pour in the eggs, sprinkle a tablespoon of water around the edges of the pan, and cover the skillet. Let this cook until the egg is just about set on top (it will still be a little runny).

Once the egg is almost done, sprinkle shredded cheese over the egg, then spread the heated taco fixings over than, and cover the skillet. Allow this to cook until the egg is done and the cheese is melted, probably another few minutes is all it takes.

Serve with sour cream and salsa, with a little fresh cilantro as a garnish - yum!!

And as a bonus, for lunch that day, there was just enough chicken and cheese left over to make some chicken quesadillas! Triple yum out of four little chicken breasts. Now that's what I call stretching your food!

Oh, and I promised another tip with the fresh Market salsa - tired of cooking spaghettios for the kids as a snack? Try this healthy and easy alternative:

1. Cook some pasta (spaghetti, linguine, whatever you like) according to package directions, cooking only until al dante (still a little bite to the pasta). Strain the pasta.

2. In the pan you cooked the pasta in, dump some salsa (how much depends on how much pasta you made and how sausy you like it - I'm a dump kind of cook, so I'm not always real good about amounts, sorry;).

3. Add some parmesean cheese to the salsa and heat it over medium heat. Once it's heated through, add the drained pasta and toss to coat. Add salt/pepper to taste.

4. Serve with extra parmesean.

Simple, fresh, and better for you then that sodium-laden, mushy, over-cooked canned stuff.

Yep, it's all about stretching the food in our house. With seven mouths to feed, it's important. But equally important is teaching the kids that it doesn't have to come out of a can to be easy and good!

How do you stretch your food and/or food dollar? Please, share!!