Day 13 - Value Eating on 02/03/2010

As I said, my kitchen has arrived. I am behaving like a little Duracell rabbit, zooming around the kitchen and wanting to cook, bake, braise, fry… as if I had been deprived of my favorite toys and now wanted to make up time using all of them at once.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel that this is exactly the case. Plus, a fully furnished kitchen with an inviting space to sit and eat does bring back an appetite!

So today I had:

Breakfast: no surprises: 1 cup organic yoghurt, ½ organic apple and 1 organic orange: 1.99$

Lunch: are you Italian? If the answer is “yes”, ignore this paragraph and continue reading starting with “snack”. Cause Italians are religious to their traditional recipes and even more traditional when it comes to pasta and I do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I did attack my tastebuds. I really like Yams, their sweet taste and their consistency when they are sautéed… so as I was getting (maybe overly) creative in the kitchen, I thought: why not use Yams in a pasta dish inspired by carbonara? Substitute the (sweet & salty tasting) bacon cubes with sautéed yams. And that is what I did. Three slices of yams were sautéed in olive oil, Carlo’s Durum Wheat Pasta from The Scrumptious Pantry was boiled, two happy eggs were beaten together in a bowl, the sautéed yams were mixed unter the eggs, the pasta was added, as were salt and pepper and that was it (classic carbonara recipe would read: sautee bacon cubes, boil pasta, beat two eggs, slide drained and warm pasta into egg mix, add bacon cubes and equal parts of grated Parmeggiano-Reggiano and aged Pecorino cheese). Mix well, add salt & pepper and enjoy). I did not add cheese, cause I was not sure about the pungent taste of aged cheeses with the yams. I liked the idea of the sweet tasting yam cubes as a substitute for the bacon, though. This is by no means a ready recipe, but I will not shelf it immediately, it might have potential… Costwise we were at pasta (1$), 2 eggs (82c), ¼ organic yam from grocery coop (15c), 29c for olive oil, salt & pepper = 2.26$

Afternoon snack: one cup of organic green tea (6c) and two of Niccolina’s Brutti ma Buoni Hazelnut Cookies from The Scrumptious Pantry (1.70$) = 1.76$

Dinner: I grated a beet (78c) and ½ apple (25c, all organic) to go with two slices of artisan bread (60c) and farmstead blue cheese (32c)= 1.95$

Total Food Cost for today: 7.96$