Katherine Sharpe | a pilgrim’s blogress

Cheap Food Links: Eating in a Recession

Lately I’ve been thinking about the recession w/r/t eating. Suddenly, my attempts to save money on food via homemade Cute Dinners are positively de rigeur. I have been wondering who’s blogging about consumption habits in the new economy, especially of food. The Times ran a piece a few days ago about The Recessionista blog, but it’s about clothes, not eating, and anyway, I’m envisioning something that feels a little more fingerless-gloves, a little more Dorothea Lange, a little more like eating leftover bean soup, as I’m doing for dinner tonight (thank you, Bob’s Red Mill 13-Bean Mix). I looked around a bit today, and I haven’t discovered the ultimate hard-times cooking blog yet, but Slashfood provided a couple of useful cheap-food resources:

+ The Culinary Review. Bargain-basement interface BUT a serious, serious database of food prices and calorie counts that magically comes up with per-serving costs for about a thousand recipes.

+ Cheap Eats. Since I am a sucker for price-per-serving calculations, I especially like this food blog’s “3 Dollars or Less” recipe category.

And of course, I am tempted to remember the recipe I discovered at the Brooklyn Free Store years ago, when I was new in NY and living on Anna’s feta/bread/tomatoes mixture, leftover sandwiches from my place of work, Grolsch flip-tops, Stonewall’s Jerquee, and the occasional Chinatown bakery egg custard. It’s Anarchist Oatmeal Cookies (“anarchist ’cause they’re free”).

Maybe I’ll blog some of my own favorite cheap recipes if I can get around to it. I am making my maiden voyage in a Zipcar on Monday, to the Red Hook Ikea, and then I’m going to stop by the Fairway, to stock up on heavy goods/things that are cheaper there, like my favorite kind of snack bar (Odwalla’s ‘Sweet ‘n’ Salty Peanut’) and my favorite kind of tinned sardine (don’t laugh, I have a favorite kind of tinned sardine). Ah, spaving.

If I can figure out a bunch of cheap, leftover-friendly recipes to get me through the winter months, I stand to spave a LOT. Updates TK.

(Image source — apologies to New York magazine.)

I think that the majority of my purchases are spavings, come to think of it. I’m a member of a food club, so I purchase directly from a health food/farm distributor with a group of acquaintances. Gallon of olive oil. 25 lbs. of spelt flour. Sometimes the savings are not immediate, but will hopefully have a long-term beneficial effect, like membership in a co-op: the discount at the register is only like, 2%, but hopefully if enough people are purchasing co-op memberships then the co-op will be able to keep food prices down for everyone. CSA membership in the spring costs $215 but then we get produce all summer and fall and only have to pay for produce at the market in the winter. At the moment, we have an 11-gallon bucket of olives in the fridge ($24) that will last probably 4 or 5 months. Luckily we have a huge kitchen. Spaving is harder when space is an issue. Or if you get tired of eating the same thing. In other news, and speaking of Bob’s Red Mill, they are sponsoring the Community Cycling Center in an awesome way this fall: http://www.communitycyclingcenter.org/index.php/mud-sweat-and-cheers-holiday-bike-drive-at-the-cross-crusade/. So buy up, buttercup!

You have space for 11 gallons of olives? Damn.

We have a pretty great kitchen for New York, big and new, but the landlord decided to go with a fun-sized fridge/freezer, even though there’s plenty of space for a regular one. It’s all right, it just makes food hoarding that much more of a challenge.

I’m glad to know that Bob puts his money where his crunchy-granola packaging would imply he does. Yay!

Hey Katherine, Thanks for reading the Times piece & talking about Recession Dining. I have actually done a couple blogs on that. I’m a big fan of early bird specials & I’ve talked about several great restaurant cheap eats.
You might check:The Cheesecake Factory Bar is now serving small appetizers from 4-6 pm at lower prices.

Favorite Recessionista Dining in Los Angeles.

I have 2 new fabulous discoveries:

The Marmelade Cafe El, Segundo California Early Bird Dinner. I so love this! Its $14.95 for a 3 course dinner from 4 pm to 6 pm, Monday thru Friday. And, they have now allowed dinners to choose a glass of house wine OR a desert for course numero 3. This is recession dining at its finest, dinner + glass of vino for under $15.00. And the food is good, good, good. Thank you Marmelade for getting into the spirit of the recession!

Grand Lux Cafe, Beverly Center offers lunch until 5:00 pm. This is the place to go for recession dinning in Beverly Hills after you are exhausted from shopping for bargains over at H &M. :) Check out the menu and prices, plenty of food for less.

Hi, Mary. I blush! Nice to see you here too.

I guess I will be coming to you for advice if I find myself in Los Angeles anytime soon. Here’s hoping New York steps up the way your city has.