The Secret Weapon: Tabbouleh

So I’ve introduced some new dishes into my life now that I’m actually keeping myself on a strict budget of $40 a week for food.   The secret weapon to fighting hunger on a budget?  Just look to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, India or Turkey.  It’s called tabbouleh and it’s freaking brilliant.  (I’m not sure whether tabouli or tabbouleh is the preferred spelling . . . ) The back bone of tabbouleh is bulgur. Bulgur is a parboiled cracked wheat usually made from durum wheat.  It’s sold dried and can be bought whole or de-branned (it has a fairly high fiber content either way).  Every 100 g of bulgur has 12.5 g of protein and 8 g of fiber and it cost $1.75 a pound at the Park Slope Food Coop.

I love cold grain salads but I never made them because it involves cooking the grains first and then chilling them, which is a bit beyond my interest level.  But then I read about how the best wives of Turkey don’t use water to prepare their bulgur  . . . nay! in the summer they use tomato , onion or lemon juice to soak bulgur with out cooking.  You can find that tabouli recipe on Epicurious dot com.

Imaginary scenario:  It’s monday morning and there’s 15 minutes before I need to leave for work. I was gone all weekend so there’s no prepared food in the fridge, not even a slice of bread for a  peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I’m going to have to buy a sandwich from the lunch truck for $8 and risk indigestion.  But wait, what’s that bag of  unassuming uncooked grains doing in the cabinet! It’s bulgar, the unbeatable cracked wheat of the lord.

diretions for last minute tabbouleh lunch:

Fill a peanut butter size jar 1/4 to 1/3 full with dry uncooked bulgar.

Add tomatoe juice or diced tomatoes with juice from a can until the jar is about 3/4 full. (If you have time squeeze some lemon juice in there too).  The bulgar will absorb all the liquid.

Add salt, pepper, 1 tbsp olive oil,  1 tsp cinnamon.

Grab a handful of parsley, mint, scallions, peppers, cucumbers and what ever vegetables you have on hand and put them in plastic bag to take with you to work.  Rinse and dice the veggies when you get to work,  no point bringing lunch if you get fired for tardiness.  I like to have a ratio of 40% vegetables, 40% bulgur and 20% fatty protein rich ingredients, but the decide for yourself.

Fill another container with at least a half cup of fatty protein rich delcious tidbits from your fridge.  Feta, olives, capers, and nuts give the tabbouleh enough umph to keep me going.

Put the jar of bulgar in your bag and don’t forget the veggies, and the olives and nuts.

What about cooking the bulgar?  Because the bulgar is parboiled it doesn’t actually need cooking if it’s soaked in acidic juices.  In about 1 or 2 hours the bulgar will absorb the liquid and be fluffy and delicious. It’ll fluff up whether or not it’s refridgerated. Mix all the ingredients together and enjoy the flavors.  Convince your co-workers to give you parts of their lunches in exchange for spoonfuls of tabbouleh.

Bulgar salads have become such a great side dish or main dish in my hear that I now make a huge batch every week ( using about 2 lbs of dry bulgar a week).

Simple Tabbouleh: I like to make a simple batch with just bulgar, red onions, scallions, mint, parsley, cukes and peppers to keep in the fridge all week.  Through out the week I add different ingredients with to this to keep it fresh and exciting.

Bulgar Prep:

Rinse the bulgar first and pat dry (if you have time). I use about 2 cups of tomatoe and lemon juice for every 1 cup of bulgar.  Add olive oil, cinnaomon salt and pepper.  Instead of tomatoe juice I often buy a can of diced tomatoes in juice and add the whole can to the bulgar.

Mango Fennel Bulgar salad:

Use the Simple Tabbouleh recipe described above and add:

diced mango, fennel, walnuts, currants, goat cheese and a little bit of honey.

Delicous Tabbouleh:

Use the Simple Tabbouleh recipe described above and add:

crumbled feta, olives, red peppers, capers, spinach, cherry tomatoes and serve with roasted egg plant on the side.

BUDGETING because i love food not shopping

Hello, friends. As you probably know, Mat and I are saving up money to go traveling again. As part of our savings plan we have decided to spend $40 per person per week on groceries.  This includes alcohol and cheap toiletry products (dental floss, tooth brushes, toilet paper, etc).

I designed this grid/worksheet to fill out before I go to the grocery store to help me buy enough food for the week, enough variety of food and stick to my budget.  I’ve been using the grid for 4 weeks now. I’ve made some major improvements and now it’s finally ready for open review and feedback.

Before implementing this grid I was going to the grocery store about 2 to 3 times a week and spending about $120- 130 a week.  I hate running to the store multiple times  a week because it eats up my free time and it increases the chance that I just “pick up a treat” while I’m there which wrecks my budget.  Since Mathew’s right arm has “tramatic tendinitis” I’m doing all the grocery shopping right now until it heals.  Since I can’t rely on Mathew to “pick up a few items” if I forget them I decided I needed to go pro.

How it Works:
1. Time Available for Preparation
For Mathew and I the struggle to fight hunger in our own lives is a serious issue.  When we’re hungry we quickly regress to something between cranky babies and predatory dinosaurs: helpless, confusable and aggresive.  It’s important for us to have food on hand that can be quickly put into our mouths. If we get too hungry we will buy food out to avoid the misery of trying to cook when we’re too hungry to think. Just one cheese and cracker can give us the strength to throw a quieche and salad together.

2. Food Type
Like many Americans, Mat and I have pitiful health care coverage. Given that, it’d be expensive for us to rely on pills and antibiotics to help us out in a pickle. I really believe that a healthy diet and exercise can prevent and possibly cure most health problems I face living here in Brooklyn.  I decided to make a meal grid that would guide me into buying a healthy amount of the things I need like fruits, vegetables, dairy, protein and grains.  There’s a lot of debate about what food groups we should be consuming and at what ratios. I used these 5 categories as my general guide and tracked how much of each I bought by weight over the past 4 weeks.  I loosely follow the Weston A Price Foundations guidelines for good nutrition.

The numbers in this grid are based on the quantities we actually prepared over the past month. In each section write down a dish that uses mostly vegetables or is vegetables based (same for the other sections). After the grid is complete I list all the ingredients of each dish on my grocery list .

Vegetables:
I start my chart with veggies and then fruits since they have the most seasonal variability and thus dictate the ingredients available for the rest of the menu.

Vegetables < 5 minutes: I like to have cucumbers around so I can have cucumbers and goat cheese on WASA crackers when I come home hungry.  Other good veggies to snack on raw: peppers

Vegetables < 5 minutes of prep:  This category is soo important to people who aren’t always in the mood to cook or need for RIGHT NOW. If I can’t put the thing in my mouth with in five minutes from the time I looked at it, then it doesn’t qualify for this prestigious title.  About half the food I buy (by pound) is intended to be eaten with less than five minutes of prep. In the summer I usually eat about 50-75% uncooked food (if I include fermented veggies like sauerkraut and kimchi).

vegetables <30 minutes of prep: This category is reserved for salads and quick soups that require are contain mostly vegetables.  For example: pear, walnut, goat cheese and currants on salad greens.  Miso soup with seaweed, scallions and shiitakes.

vegetables 1 hour or more of prep:  My co-worker told me about how her mom always had 3 or 4 different cold salads on hand at any given time and would serve them as side dishes (baba ghannoush, tabouli, etc) at meals and it freaking blew my mind.  There are so many dishes that taste great and even better after several days of mingling together a few days: mayonnaise free cole slaw, tabouli, black bean and citrus salad with cilantro, cucumber salad, etc. Most of my favorite dishes to keep on hand through out the week are Middle Eastern or Swedish.  Every culture has dishes they’ve developed because they keep well.  These are the dishes that require an hour of prep, but can make 8 or 10 servings that last as side dishes and main dishes for a whole week.

Fruits:
fruits <5 minutes: Right now it’s mango and papaya season in Mexico so we’ve been eating about 5 lbs of papaya and 3 mangoes.  By the time I’m sick of mangoes strawberries should be at the farmer’s market.

fruits <30 minutes prep:  this category is to remind me to buy fruits that accent main dishes like limes and lemons.  I usually do 3-4 lemons per week and 3 limes. Mat like to make juice out of cheap seasonal fruits sometimes.

fruits 1 hour or more:  I usually go over my budget because I love pastries, chocolate and delicious treats.  In order to avoid blowing all my money on pastries marked up at fancy cafes I try to make delicious things that I can bring with me when I’m out and about.  A thermos of hot coffee and a bag of homemade zucchini bread makes me feel like a queen when I’m running errands on a rainy day in the city. The price of a pastry and coffee at a coffee shop costs the same as making a whole loaf of zucchini bread and a bag of fresh ground coffee at Gorilla, one of my favorite coffee joints.

Dairy:  I never ate much dairy until I started getting raw milk last fall.  It’s like everything I ever dreamed milk could be: creamy, milk, sweet and totally satisfying.  I also think it’s the best placebo for all my ailments.

dairy <5 minutes: cheese & crackers, yoghurt with honey and nuts, bread and butter. Dairy is delicious and keeps me from getting hungry. thank you goats. thank you cows.

dairy < 30 minutes: smoothies? omelet? Totally cheap way to feed the hungry kid who just woke up on your couch, fast.

dairy 1 hour or more:  Mat makes a quiche every week.  I never see it coming and I never get sick of it and I always make out with him while it’s cooking.

Protein:  I like protein.  Our cells are built from protein.  That seems like an important thing to include. I don’t eat that much meat in the spring in summer, but I use left over bones for flavoring most slow cook dishes.

protein <5 minutes:  Nuts, cured meats, and nut butters they’re not just for hikers, they’re for hungry people.

protein <30 minutes: I skipped having meat around last week and we totally got by with out this category, but it sure is great to have a few pounds of meat on hand for quick dinners like grilled chicken and vegetables.

protein 1 hour or more of prep:  Bean dishes are forever.  We make a huge bean dish once a week and it serves as a back up meal whenever we need it. Having well seasoned, tender lentils in the fridge is such a money saver.  Often if I’m taking the subway somewhere around meal time I just bring a jar of lentils with a scoop of yoghurt and some crackers to eat on the run.

Grains:  grains are great.

IMPLEMENTATION:
1. Check your current inventory and list it in the side bar.
2. Fill out the grid based on what you like to eat and what you have in your inventory.
The cool thing about the grid is that it imposes fairly healthy proportions of different food groups.
I filled out the meal plan grid on loose leaf of paper this week and promptly lost it. I have no idea why I bought zucchini or what I was going to do with them.  From now on I will fill out the grid on my computer so I don’t lose it.

3.  Right down everything you need to make everything in your week’s menu. I do this on a separate piece of paper that I take with me shopping.
4. Estimate how much the protein and grain categories cost and make necessary changes to stay in budget. I only check these categories because they’re usually the most costly.
5. Bring the menu planning grid and your shopping list with you when you go shopping.  It’s important to bring the grid with you in case substitutions need to me made to stay in budget.
6.  If I’m under budget I spend rest of the budgeted money on beer or ice cream. For me, immediate rewards are way more satisfying than murky long term rewards like “saving money” and “fiscal responsibility”.  Buying goodies every time I stay in the budget gives me a direct and immediate reward for staying in budget.
7. If over budget REMOVE items until within the budget.  I’ve tried telling myself that I’ll make up for blowing my budget this week by spending less next week, but I never do.
8. Cooking during the week: More on this later.

Here’s

with poundage and the # of dishes to make per catergory for feeding 2 people.

A Portrait from Yesteryear

I drew this portrait of Harry Gassel back in 2007 during my last spring in Oberlin, Ohio.  Not shown here is his left hand browsing the internet.

Charcoal and ink on paper, 35 by 45 inches.

Every One Loves Morphing

Tonight is the official end of the “holiday season” for me.  What better way to celebrate than drawing a portrait of what the holidays have done to my boyfriend?  He was actually laying down for the portrait, but it works either way.

Drawing of Dave Singer

This is my favorite portrait of Dave to date.  He’s neither able to sit or leave the chair.   It’s as though he’s in some sort of chair purgatory.

Aura Portrait #3

This summer I started drawings people’s aura while they lounged on the porch. The porch was at my friend Samantha’s summer house up in the Berkshires.  In this particular portrait my calligraphy pen burped ink and I just decided to go with it.  It’s a terrible portrait, but a pretty good illustration of the mind of the sitter.

IceStone Holiday Party: Glitter in the Factory

Brightblack Morning Light Show at South Paw

So Mathew and I painted our faces to protect our cheeks from cold winds and to pay homage to Brightblack Morning Light. I even got to paint the faces of Brightblack Morning Light’s band. Of course, I was too shy to document their glittering faces on stage, but it was beautiful to be able to add to the magic of the evening.

Portrait of Carlos

Carlos is IceStone’s employee of the month for June.

acrylic and mixed oxide pigments on canvas, 26″ by 36″.