Crockpots, or slow cookers, as they are also known have always been a ying-yang kind of affair with me. They cook some recipes well, while destroying others. Over the years I’ve learned that other forms of cooking all have their purposes for being. Whether it’s a hot oven, indirect heat or searing flame; each works to best effect and is dependent on the nature of the food you are preparing. Experience counts!

As far as the slow cooker goes, one recipe that does work well is a combo of hamburger, potatoes, carrots, onions and zucchini. The picture above is the end result of just such a meal that was cooked for six hours on high in a crockpot that is at least as old as I am. What makes this fun, for me, is that very little preparation has to be done. Just peel the carrots and the potato, cut everything else up into chunks and toss in a hamburger patty. Pretty simple actually!

After you get back from work or a day of shopping or whatever, this meal is ready to be served when you are ready to eat. I like that! Another advantage is the amount of power consumed is rather lean also. I hooked up a Kill-A-Watt meter when I made this and it informed me that the pot had used about .41 Kwh (kilowatt hours) of electricity to cook everything over 3.5 hours of time. That’s about $.04 in money spent. Not bad. Here are some more figures for a meal that serves two:

   $1.53                  Total for food

             $0.04                  Total for electricit

$1.57                  Grand total

As you might have guessed, the more veggies you grow yourself, the cheaper this meal becomes. It also gets cheaper if you make up a larger batch. Since I’m currently on my own, I made up just enough this time for two separate meals.  The actual calories, sodium and cholesterol per serving were:

Food               Wt(g)        Calories          Na                Ch

————————————————————————————————–

Hamburger         112               280                 80               101

Onion                   23                 11                   0                0

Carrots                 24                   9                 14                0

Cabbage               35                   8                   3                0

Potatoes             112                 96                   6                0

Zucchini               30                   5                 72                0

————————————————————————————————–

Totals                  336               409               175            101

So, for a meal that is modest in size and full of flavor; four hundred calories is not a bad trade. If you can do without the meat altogether (not me) it’s positively nutritious!

Disclaimer: All quantities and power readings were collected on the best basis available. This blog is meant to be informative and not taken as absolutely accurate. Also, sorry about the terrible formatting. Not me…them. Last note: The meal was fabulous!

I will admit that I am a salad junkie! Have been for as long as I can remember and it’s not unusual for me to have a salad with most every meal. But, since economic times have gone down hill and what with the job market all but non-existent, I’ve really had to watch my spending patterns. Trying to save is most felt when I shop for food these days. Not so long ago, a can of corn was under fifty cents. Now you can spend over a dollar. Vegetables were downright cheap and I can remember friends asking me why I even bothered to garden. I would always come back with the fact that my produce was at least pesticide free. Now, in 2010, I don’t have to use that excuse any longer.

So, how do I save money? If you look closely at the picture for this blog you will see that I have a pretty happy salad going here. There’s lettuce, romaine, parsley, celery, radishes, green onion and even a little bit of ham mixed with leftover peas going on in this dish. Because about half the ingredients came from my garden, the cost of this great diet meal is under a quarter! (At my last visit to a restaurant a small dinner salad was $2.50). Also, by creatively using leftovers from other meals, I am making use of ever bit of purchased food while enjoying the benefits of fresh produce from the garden. Now that’s a great way to save. You can see more on gardening in my blog ‘DanO’s Garden‘.

Some days you just want to make soup, but depressingly you are missing some of the key ingredients. That’s where you can do what I do! Scrounge around and make the damn thing on the fly! On this occasion, I had some old frozen beef stew meat, a can each of diced tomatoes, corn and green beans. Green onions from the garden filled in for the real thing and then there were carrots I discovered in the bottom of the ‘crisper’. (They were not crisp but still good to go). Lastly, I had an old russet potato that had seen better days along with a few stalks of fresh celery. This cobbled collection was minced, diced and otherwise adulterated, then thrown with no ceremony into a pot containing one quart of beefed up water. I then turned my heat to simmer and covered the whole deal with a lid.

One hour later, I had managed to produce some pretty tasty vegetable beef soup. (This only goes to show that cooking is mostly an art with some luck thrown in). Preparation took about ten minutes and like most soups it should taste even better after a night in the fridge.

Ingredients:

½ lb beef stew meat cut in to bite sized pieces

1 can of corn, drained and rinsed

1 can of green beans, drained and rinsed

1 can diced tomatoes

2 carrots, sliced

2 stalks of celery, sliced up

1 medium Russet potato, cut into chunks

2 green onions, chopped

2 teaspoons beef powder

In addition to the above, I added a tablespoon of dried basil along with a splash of hot sauce and some pepper. Note: I never add salt during the preparation or cooking phase, rather I will add ‘fake salt’ when the soup is served. Anyone wanting to use real salt, go for it!

This thing about making soup with me anyways, is to never try to exactly repeat a recipe. Using different ingredients (especially leftovers) is part of the economy and fun of making this dish. So, get out there and experiment!

I though it might be interesting to take a look at the actual cost of certain vegetables I pay for at the grocery store. I was amazed to find that no one seems to be tracking this sort of stuff. At least I couldn’t find very much on the internet.

So, I’ve elected to try and track what I’m paying at a local chain store for select items. The list will include the following; Broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, onions, peppers, green beans and Bell peppers. I think this list is representative of some of the stuff I like to grow in the garden each year.

My purpose in doing this is to provide a record of produce costs and to see where I want to concentrate my growing efforts. I’d like to grow veggies that cost a lot and perhaps save a few bucks in the process. I’ll try and append monthly updates to this blog over the course of a few months to get a feel for the average cost of each item in the list.

All costs will be expressed both in the unit in which they were purchased (a bag of potatoes) and in a cost per pound. So, a head of lettuce that might go for $1.39 per head will be also expressed in its true weight. This will allow an ‘Apples to Apples’ comparison as it were. Finally, wherever possible, I plan to buy the produce that is packaged in the cheapest manner. This means buying a 5 pound bag of potatoes rather than each one individually. The only cravat is that I will keep the proportions consistent with what an average family would purchase. In other words, I’ll confine myself to buying a head of lettuce as opposed to a crate of lettuce just to try and save some money. (Anyways that much lettuce would just rot away before I could eat it all).

So, for the beginning of the month of March, 2010, this is what I paid for vegetables at a chain store in southwest Missouri. If, anyone in another part of the country wants to post their costs in the comment section please feel free.

I will followup with another report this coming fall to compare prices.

Here is a followup done on May 11th.

Another update:

Here is an update taken on October the 4th 2010.

I posted another update, of sorts, comparing prices between Aug 2010 and 2011 here! A whopping 21% increase!

One of the quick dishes made fairly often in my household is chicken breasts with steamed mushrooms. The leftovers go into the fridge and are usually forgotten. One morning, however, I thought I might combine them with some chicken broth, spaghetti and vegetables to make a simple chicken noodle soup. I’m very glad I did!

Ingredients:

2 15 cans chicken broth

2 carrots, chopped

¼ white onion, chopped

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 cup chicken breasts, chopped*

¼ cup mushrooms, sliced*

1 dash Thyme

1 dash Sage

1 dash Pepper

¼ tsp garlic in oil

Spaghetti, broken into small pieces

Directions:

Add the chicken broth into a medium pot. Set heat to medium low. Peel carrots, chop and microwave for 30 seconds on high. Add to pot. Do the same for the onion and celery. Add the herbs. Cook, covered on low for about forty minutes. Check it from time to time to make sure it just simmers.

About ten minutes before the dish is done, nuke the chicken and mushrooms (if your using leftovers) for about 30 seconds to warm them up and then add them along with the spaghetti to the pot. I like to break the pasta into smaller lengths as I add them. Cover set heat up a little and cook until the noodles are just al dente. Very yummy!

Notes:

* Leftovers from a meal the day before.

That changed this year when I happened across the Short and Sweet seed packet at a local store. The information panel informed me that these carrots were ‘bred especially for heavy or poor soil.’ I thought, ‘why not’ and bought the packet. That was this spring and I also broke with tradition by planting the seeds willy nilly in a broadcast fashion into a heavy clay soil. The result is all in the picture. I was amazed that such a tasty and good sized carrot could come from soil that is so rock hard you have to wet it down before digging the carrots up. This season, I have had a great harvest even though some of the plants were pretty close together.