money matters

As anyone who has been paying attention knows, this month in my OCL (that's Operation Consumption Liberation, yo) is one of two months this year dedicated to curbing frivolous spending.  A quick review of my ATM-card purchases over the last year reveals that the highest percentage of those card transactions took place in restaurants and grocery stores.  In the month of October, for example, I made 48 card purchases. Eighteen of those purchases were made at the grocery store, in a restaurant, or a bar. Now, I'm not great at math, but I believe that's 37.5% of my monthly card purchases.  The category with more purchases during that month was "Miscellaneous," with 19 purchases for 39.5%.  (FYI, "Miscellaneous" purchases include iTunes, clothing, entertainment, haircuts, and non-med purchases at the drugstore--the things I'll be cutting from my spending during my second month of curbing frivolous spending, currently planned for May.)

Look, I finally got my cupcakes! Using my one No Eat-Out gimme: my soon-to-expire Groupon.

Watching my spending is pretty important to me at present.  Earlier this month, the department at Amazon that I've been writing for regularly since 2006 sent me a note saying that they would no longer be using freelance content for Home and Kitchen. Poof! There went a lot of income.  Suddenly, this whole No Eating Out thing feels kind of essential.  Reviewing my 2010 ATM purchases, I found that I spent approximately $130 a month eating out, and that's not including when I paid cash.  I don't know about you, but for me, $130 IS a substantial amount of money.  As long as I have so little income, I absolutely cannot spend that much money eating out.

Hard times requires frugal cooking: English muffin pizza

While I'm saving money from eating out, I'm curious to look at how much more money I've spent on groceries this month in comparison to a so-called regular month.  I like fancy food; I tend to gorge myself on Gorgonzola and Kalamata olives and pine nuts (Okay, not pine nuts.  Who can afford to snack on those?).  And meat.  When you host people for dinner all the time, you often want to give them meat. Where have all my vegetarian friends gone?  I'm getting a little off topic here, but I think I've made my point: my grocery bill could use a makeover too.  I'll keep you posted.

Chicken is expensive, but this chicken was AMAZING.

Anyway, I've been pretty lazy about taking pictures of the food I've made, or the food others have made for me (!!!).  I am also finding I am a lousy food photographer, though the fact that I'm using my phone camera may be half the battle.

No picture on Earth can capture how yummy that above garlic chicken was.  I made that for CI and ES a few weeks ago, and I can't wait to make it again.  Recipe here.  (Chef's note: I made this with skinless chicken breasts.  Also, if you love garlic like I love garlic, I'd use three heads of garlic instead of two.  We almost duked it out over the last few cloves, squeeze that roasted garlic directly out of the clove onto bread and smear it like butter.  True, the house will stink pleasantly of garlic, but the garlic wasn't overpowering at all to eat and I don't think we reeked of garlic for the next day.)

I have been enjoying lots of soup.  It is 30 degrees F in Seattle right now, so soup is good.  And a big batch lasts forever.  I think I still have some leftover pesto minestrone in the fridge from almost two weeks ago.  I made over three quarts of that stuff in the crock pot.  Pretty good, certainly fine for taking to the office for work.  Recipe here.  Also, my friend JM came over last week with all the ingredients for a warm and healthy miso soup, full of carrots, cabbage, turnips, onion, and ginger. I don't have the recipe, but it was good.

Pesto minestrone.

Miso Soup.

Chicken Enchiladas!

I've been treated to quite a few home-cooked meals at friends' this month, which is almost as lovely as cooking for them.  It isn't easy hosting: my friend MK invited me over for dinner last week and forgot to turn his crock pot on when he left for work, poor guy. SO he whipped up some Asian noodle dish for us instead, and then he dropped off a Tupperware container of the crock pot dish a couple days later--I'm lucky to have such good friends.  The other weekend, I got to enjoy TWO home-cooked Mexican meals: fantastic chili rellenos at CW's, courtesy of his friends I and Y on Saturday night, and then tasty chicken enchiladas at the house of SW and MH-squared on Sunday.

This week, I confess, I've been a little worn out on hosting and social activity, so I've only planned to host dinner one night.  It HAS been a fun month though!  I haven't missed eating out much.  There's only one night where I've really thought, "God, I wish I could just go out to eat" and that was last Friday when I had tickets to something on Capitol Hill that started at 7:30 and started cooking this on Queen Anne after 6. It is true, cooking at home can be time consuming.  But it doesn't need to be an all-day affair.

Oh, and remember my four-drink allowance for the month?  I haven't needed to use a single one.  Maybe I should let them roll over into next month, in which I will stop consuming alcohol....  Ack!  Stay tuned.

Adventures in Home Cooking

Perhaps this post should be entitled "Adventures in Home Eating" as moments after I typed the title, my elbow had a little mishap involving a fork and my lunch of chicken and rice, that resulted in sauce and rice in my lap and on my laptop.  Oops.

My fridge is never this full.

But given that my monthly challenge for February is consuming no restaurant meals and drinks, I have indeed been cooking at home a lot.  Also, with my parallel February goal to increase my social activity, I have indeed been hosting friends for dinner or drinks a lot.  Which, while a little exhausting with all the dishes and recipe research, has been a whole lot of fun so far.


I've always enjoyed the idea of hosting dinner parties.  For many years, I wanted to host them with a specific someone in my life.  He wasn't against the idea really, but it wasn't exactly his idea of a riotous good time either.  Especially because, back in those days, I was a bit of a control freak in the kitchen, as well as an overachiever.  Oh, and I'm not always the best with time management.  I never allowed enough time for whatever fancy-pants recipe I picked out, I hated compromising on perfectly diced tomatoes for efficiency, and I didn't like delegating cooking tasks to my partner because I didn't trust him to "do it right." Thus, we did not host very many dinner parties over the years.

NOW, that was a long time ago. That individual and I have been cooking apart for over two years now, and I've hashed out my perfectionist and time management issues with my therapist more than a few times.  I'm still not great with time, but boy, have I embraced half-ass dicing and quick 'n easy recipes!  And should you come into my kitchen, I will happy thrust a cutting board and onion at you and tell you to get a-slicing.

Besides learning to go with the flow in cooking, I had one other obstacle to my ability to host dinners: I live in a cute, but small mother-in-law apartment with a very small living room.  There's not exactly room for a permanent dinner table, not if I want to do yoga in my living room, which, as many of you know, I do a lot.  But with a little creative rearranging, I brought home on Tuesday an excellent drop-leaf table that tucks away easy as pie and extends to seat four comfortably, and six cozily.  Hooray!

And that's only half size!  Oh my!

So I thought I'd share some pictures, stories, and recipes from my first week of No Eating and Drinking Out month.

Tuesday: I am nuts about my new-to-me crock pot, and I have tried about five recipes discovered on Stephanie O'Dea's blog "A Year of Slow Cooking"--including this recipe for Sweet Potato Chili.  I made this for lunches and nights eating at home alone.  It turned out alright; certainly edible.  But for my crock pot and my sea level location, I definitely recommend cooking on low for closer to 6 hours than 8 hours.  Or perhaps the baby-food mushy sweet potato results have more to do with my "2-inch chunks of sweet potato" which were more like 1-inch chunks. Live and learn!

Can you see the marshmallow consistency of that there sweet potato?

Wednesday:  I got some pretty undesirable news around 6 PM (which I'm sure I'll elaborate on in another post soon) and almost called my friend MK to tell him dinner was off.  But sometimes, when things are going down the crapper in one department of life, it is nice to have a big distraction like throwing together dinner real quick for a guest to keep you from crying on the floor all night.  I put together this Curried Dal and Basmati-Rice Pilaf from Cooking Light's October 2008 issue, and sauteed some garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, and kale in peanut oil for some vegetable love. I've made this dish before and I always forget how fast and easy it is to make.  Also, eating it feels downright nurturing in the dark night of winter--it is warm, flavorful, and it's reasonably healthy too.  MK agreed.

Do not fear the lentil.  Do not fear the kale.

Thursday: I had my friend GM over for gin and tonics.  Memo to self: I may need to invest in a jigger and a cocktail shaker.  For dinner, I had left-overs from the dinner I cooked for CW on Monday night, Moroccan Chicken, brown Basmati rice, and a side salad.  This is one of my favorite recipes to prepare for guests, because it is damn good.  I adapted Cooking Light's recipe to my crock pot this time, and it was perhaps even better than ever.

Look at that chicken glisten!  This is by far the best food picture my Droid camera will ever take.

Friday: I had a G&T hangover and leftovers.

Saturday: My dinner party hosting, put to the test!  I invited my friends MO, QH, and CW over for pizza.  CW came an hour early, as I was just beginning to make the crust.  Delegation example #1: I promptly assigned CW with the task of carmelizing an onion, something I've never even done.  The instructions I'd pulled up on the web obviously weren't written with my hot-trending stove top in mind, and perhaps cast iron isn't the way to go, but CW, the epitome of a good sport, did a great job at blackening onions--they actually tasted great (Letting go of perfectionist standards example #1).  When M and Q showed up, I'd hoped that all the toppings would be ready to go, but they weren't (ah, time, you continue to taunt me!).  So I put M and Q to work grating cheese and chopping peppers. (More delegation!  More going with the flow! My therapist would be thrilled.)

So many options for pizza goodness!

Anyway, we rolled out the dough and cooked the pictured four little pizzas, which we cut into four pieces so we all try each of them.  They were FANTASTIC.  And it was so much more fun than just meeting up at a restaurant--we worked hard together to create those little pies, and then we got to sit and feast and shoot the breeze for as long as we wanted without worrying about whether someone else was waiting for our table or needing to settle the bill.  This is what hosting a dinner party for good friends ought to be like.  M, Q, and CW, you all have my permission to put me to work at your next dinner party.


Sunday: I'd planned to throw something random together alone at home, but my friend CI called.  She's in town with her 10-month-old daughter S house hunting, and is staying at our friend ES's house.  E was out for the night watching the Super Bowl, but C and I decided to put her kitchen to good use and make dinner there.

Cooking dinner at friends' houses is definitely an adventure because you don't know where to find tools, if they have desired spices, and because you don't want to trash someone else's kitchen and stuff.  But it is also a great thing to do, especially with friends who have little ones.  S crawled around in the dining area while C and I started prepping for our vegetable saute pasta dish.  When S got hungry, C could go sit on the couch and breastfeed, while I kept prepping.  Likewise, when C put S to bed, I started cooking everything.  She returned just as things were starting to finish cooking and she whipped up a salad dressing and set the table while I drained the asparagus and mixed the veggies into the pasta.  And it was really good. We had everything cleaned up and put away except for the wine when E came home.  Relaxed, yummy, and fun.  I'm going back tomorrow to make this.

"These noodles are so good I want to take a bath with them." -CI.  Oh really??

Lots of thanks to my dining, cooking, and drinking companions this week!  You too can enjoy a dinner chez Jess. I'm taking reservations through the end of the month. Comment below or send me a note and we'll get cooking.  Next time, I want to look at my restaurant and bar spending habits in more depth, by the numbers.

Until then, Bon Appetit!

Curb Frivolous Spending, Part 1: the Eating and Drinking Out Edition

As a single woman who lives alone, I go out to eat a lot.  In fact, off the top of my head, I can think of TEN meals eaten out during January alone.  That's during my month of no sugar, mind you. Also, I can think of at least two coffee dates and two drinks dates (there must be more of those!). Looking at my debit card record online, I charged $147.41 on meals in restaurant. Now I know I paid cash at least twice, so let's add $40 to that total ($187.00). Divide 187 by 10, and we're averaging $18.70 per meal out.

 Drinking wine, in a restaurant, as usual.

Now, this is highly unscientific. But think about what one can do with $18 dollars. That's my monthly gym membership, with extra to spare!  That's almost two months of Netflix. That's half a tank of gas, well, maybe.  Until my rates went up this month, that amount covered my copay at the doctor's office. Think of the possibilities!

The W & the C's yummy oysters...

There is nothing inherently wrong with eating out or drinking out--in moderation. (Ha!  I think I said the exact same thing about sugar last month!)  That meal Dad and I ate on Thursday at The Walrus and The Carpenter--amazing.  It is an easy way to socialize with friends: it doesn't take a lot of creativity, and we've all got to eat sometime.  And it is convenient as hell for a single gal like me.  If I cook a big dish, roast a chicken or something, I better have someone coming over for dinner.  I made a huge pot of lentil soup earlier this month, and I can't tell you how sick I got of eating lentils for lunch.  It's all me or nothing.

But eating out is a LUXURY.  I may be making enough to cover my bills at present, but we're still living in a recession.  I'm not even going to start on how there are people starving in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chad, Bangladesh, or Haiti.  There are.  Perhaps I'll go into this later.

So I'm going to cease my eating and drinking out for the month of February.  At the end of the month, I'm going to do my best to calculate how much money I saved from eating in, and donate half of that amount to a world hunger relief organization TBA (nominees, anyone?). What constitutes eating out and drinking out?  How gung ho am I going to go?  Here's my rules:

1.  No meals in restaurants.

2.  No take-out meals, including the deli at Whole Foods, etc.  That includes hot prepared soups and prepared sandwiches. However, I will allow myself to eat soup from a can and frozen food entrees, though I don't generally eat much of either.  Also, if friends invite me over to watch the Super Bowl, or Oscars, or whatever, and they're serving Pizza Hut or something from the deli section, I'll eat it--they're the hosts.

Whole Foods Deli: friend to the hungry and in a hurry, foe to the paycheck. Credit: Whole Foods Market

3.  No popcorn or snacks bought at the movies (seriously, $6 for that crap??). However, if I want to buy a bag of that white cheddar popcorn at the store, I will.  I probably won't.

4.  I will only allow myself to purchase four beverages for the entire month of February.  That's one drink out a week, so I better use it wisely.  I'm bending here as a concession to my friends, and so I don't spend the entire month crying about how I suddenly have no social life.

5.  If it suits me, I can go and use my Groupon to Cupcake Royale, because it is going to expire in March and I haven't eaten any of my one dozen cupcakes.  Oops.

Finally you will be mine. Photo by Rachel from Cupcakes take the Cake.

6.  If I decide to go out of town, I have the right to put a hold on my month of not eating out for the duration of my trip rather than subjecting my hosts to my rules. If this happens, my month of not eating out will continue into March for the length of the trip and overlap with my month of not--gulp--drinking alcohol.

7.  "Eating out" does not include picnics or going over to friends' houses for dinner.  Duh.

To balance out my removal of eating/drinking out from my life, I need to add something pleasurable. For January, that thing was sleep.  For February, I want to increase my social activity!  The easiest way to do this, clearly, is to have people over for dinner more.  Thus, I'd like to invite you all over for homemade pizza. Or soup.  I'm going to make one or the other each weekend this month, calendar to be announced.  Let me know if you want an invite!  OR if you'd rather I come to your house to cook with you, I can run with that too. 

Maybe I'll make you one of these pretty drinks!