I saw an excellent peasant bread recipe a while back and got all excited to try it, and then I saw this one somewhere too, and I left it open in a tab on my phone for literally months, and then I closed it. But I remembered the name of it because I saw it every time I opened a new Chrome tab on my phone. If you’re the person who posted a link to it, thank you! But I don’t remember why I had it open in a tab.
Anyway, I tried this recipe finally. Here’s the thing: I hate kneading bread. I mean, I like it, but i hate getting stuff on my hands, I had eczema between my fingers for like, a formative decade, so I just don’t get my hands wet much if I can help it, and, anyway. The point of this recipe, and what made it work for me, is that you literally never touch the dough with your hands. Not even to shape the loaves; they bake in bowls.
The version of this recipe on my phone was one of those ones with a blog entry beforehand where she waxes rhapsodic about vintage Pyrex, and goes on and on about which size bowl you gotta use.
I don’t have vintage Pyrex. I have two 1.5-quart Pyrex-ish casserole dishes.
I made this in those. It worked fine.
And here, the true acid test: I left the recipe scribbled on a piece of paper (I never can cook straight off the phone or computer, I always hand-write recipes) and said offhand to Dude that we could have more of that great bread, and he successfully made this recipe from my abbreviated-to-fuck recipe with no notes. It was a little underdone but that’s not his fault. (Except that he didn’t realize it would take two hours, which ok my handwriting’s bad but if he read the whole recipe or paid attention the whole time I was making it while he was in the room, he’d know that. So he started at like, 6pm. Don’t do that.)
So anyway. Here’s my rec. Casserole dishes work fine if they’re smallish.
I bet… *whispers* I bet you could do this in a loaf pan. Is that blasphemy? I bet you could. I have loaf pans, I might use them next time.
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I have $24 to last me til Friday, what should I buy with it?
a pallet of ramen noodles
I hate ramen noodles tho
hmmmmm
bees?
Are you suggesting that I eat bees for a week
This is roughly what I make sure I have in my kitchen all the time along with rough estimates of local prices (MN). I buy a lot of things when they’re on sale and stockpile them.
instant oatmeal packets with fruit in them – $3 probably and this can be breakfast all week and maybe even a lunch or dinner too since you usually get 10 packets
bag of rice – $2-3 depending on size. 1 cup dry rice makes enough for about two meals depending on what you add in. if you get cheap rice, rinse it before cooking
canned beans – usually under $1 per can – mix the can with your rice and you have a meal. chili-spiced beans will make bean tacos. Rinse non-spiced beans before adding to anything.
Tortilla – usually around $3 but you get like 8-10 of them. Tacos, wraps, and quesadillas are all fair game here
lettuce – $2 max around here, either a head of something or bagged precut depending on preference, use as a salad or on tacos
protein other than beans of some sort – probably $5-7 for meat, $2-3 for eggs. sometimes I can get bags of frozen chicken breasts in this price range and each is usually 2 meals if I add in a bunch of veggies. fry/scramble eggs and add to any of the options.
your favorite stir fry sauce – $3ish
vegetables – $5ish. literally anything that you can 1. fry in a pan and 2. you’ll eat. fresh carrots are usually pretty cheap. get frozen if it’s cheaper and you’re strapped for cash/prep time on this part.
alternative to stir fry: pasta (~$2), fresh tomatoes (~$2), cheese (~$3).
cheese and fruit if you have extra – look if your store has loyalty cards for free that you can load coupons on for cheese there’s always one it seems like.
ahh thank you!!!
Reblogging because there’s never knowing who’ll need it.
Adding also: the single most nutritious food on earth is potatoes in their peel. Potatoes + some milk and butter = everything you need. They don’t last all that long, but they’re fairly cheap and the quickest cheat to “How do I not fuck my body up.”
(Cooked potatoes’ll last a while in the fridge. Potatoes nearing the end of their useful lives? Cook them to half-done first, figure out what to do with them later.)
Easiest baked potatoes: slice thinly but not paper-like, spread like cards, brush with oil (a silicone baking brush is totes worth the little it costs), spread salt and pepper (a little less than you think you’d like), cover with foil, stick in oven or toaster-oven at 150C for 40min. (If you have the patience, at that point click up to 180C, remove the cover and add 10-20min.) Reheats well, lasts in the fridge longer than it’ll take you to nom.
Dead-Animal-Free Whole Protein: some legumes + some grain. AKA rice and lentils, or rice and beans. (Maybe some fried onion for flavor; onion’s cheap and stays good a descent while. Fried onion makes everything taste better and keeps forever in the freezer, so frying up a bunch and keeping portions is not a half-bad idea.) (If going for the beans option – lentils are cheaper around here but fuck if I know what it’s like in your area – dump some tomato sauce and oil in; canola or soy are best health-wise, and far cheaper than olive; avoid corn.) Oh, what does instant couscous go for in your area? It keeps for fucking ever, it’s usually cheap, and it takes well to any and all added taste.
If you get to choose, black lentils taste the best and need the least soak-time (0-20min), green lentils are best for cooked stuff and red lentils are best in soups. (Red lentils + potatoes + root vegetables of choice + spices; cut into small pieces, cook, run through the blender if you wanna [stick blender’s awesome], freeze in portions.)
When possible, get instant soup mix. Get the good instant soup mix. (The kind that’s not made primarily of sugar, yeast or both. The rest is optional.) Dump 1/2tsp (or more, but start on the low end) into couscous, or chicken, or sprinkle over potatoes being stuck in the oven. Whatever. It’ll make most cooked-food-type things taste better. And again, lasts forever on the shelf.
If you can have eggs (goodness knows they’re sometimes expensive), dump some tomato sauce in a pan (tomato sauce lasts forever on the shelf), add some oil, onion/beans to cook in it, hot peppers if you wanna, then when it’s nearly ready crack an egg or two in. Hard-boiled eggs last a remarkably while in the fridge, so when eggs reach near the end of their usable lives, just hard-boil and stick in the fridge.
(Have eggs as often as you can, particularly as you have brain-shit going on. You need all the eggs, salt, and 60%-or-more chocolate you can get. Brains are made of cholesterol and salt, so folks with neuro or other brain shit need more of both. Potassium is also aces. You know what has the most potassium? Tomato paste.)
Grated cheese keeps in the freezer for ever. Grated cheese will make a lot of things taste nicer. Preserved lemon juice keeps forever in the fridge. Grated cheese + oil + lemon = instant and awesome pasta sauce that’ll liven up the weeks-old dry pasta in the fridge.
Slices bread also keeps well in the freezer. Try to have half a loaf or a loaf. Dry bread gets cut in cubes, mixed with oil and the aforementioned instant soup, stuck in oven at lowest until properly dry, then kept in an airtight jar to add to soups.
(Over-ripe tomatoes come cheaper. They get turned into soup or sauce, then frozen in portions.)
this is a very good post but why are we glossing over the fact that the alternative to ramen is bees
i have it on pretty good authority that bees are not an affordable eating alternative to ramen.
Seriously, bees are expensive
Trufax.
And speaking as someone who is also living off oatmeal, beans, and brown rice, if you need recipes, I have them!
Today I made 16 bean soup with chicken sausage and it was crazy good and I got 8 servings out of the one batch (froze half). I usually get the cheapest beans I can find, and GOYA bags of beans are usually $1-2. I soaked them overnight,rinsed them, and threw them in a gallon lidded saucepan with 2 boxes of chicken stock (also on sale for $2), two bay leaves, sauteed green pepper, onion, and celery, some garlic from a jar, about two tablespoons of dried herbs de provence,and the “fancy” bit was adding $6 bourbon and apple chicken sausages. You can actually sub veg stock for chicken and skip the sausage and make it vegan and it would still taste great.
Oh and I’ve been doing steel-cut oats. I don’t buy the name brand ones, I just pick whatever store brand/generic I can get for less than $4. They take about ½ an hour to make, but they’re super tasty and I make 2 cups
of dried oats at a time
with dried cranberries and that’s breakfast for 4 days at least.
I’ve also been making black bean soup, red beans and rice, and curried potatoes and chick peas. I got 100 quart and pint take-away containers from Amazon for $20 and they all stack neatly and are perf for one serving of whatever.
Additionally, depending on where you live, whole rotisserie chickens are something like $4-$7 and are easily 4 – 6 servings of protein and on TOP of that, if you stick the carcass in a ziplock bag and then the freezer you have excellent soup makings. Using bones in soup literally squeezes all viable vitamins and minerals out of the suckers. Soup made from lots of bones is great to keep around if you get sick, it’ll feed and sooth you relatively easily and as you get better you can add noodles. ON TOP OF THAT, a quarter to a half cup of soup broth added to a lot of dishes also adds those nutrients PLUS flavor.
Why do my interests in canning, couponing, and homesteading overlap so often with blogs with titles like ‘The Obedient Housewife’?
Like, I’m like, “I want to learn to make soap and farm,” and suddenly I see 500 “traditional family” motherfuckers like no you are mistaken. I am just a simple lesbian anticapitalist looking to limit my consumerism as much as possible.
‘these fun crafts will keep your kids occupied until your husband gets home!’ no i want a clothespin crown for me
As a nerd who homesteads, let me share the data I have gathered!
First is my megalist of homesteading-related links I’ve gathered over the years. I’m a mod over at r/homesteading and this is where I’ve put a lot of good sources (not all, admittedly some are still sitting in my bookmark folder waiting to be added). The search function at reddit is wretched, but there’s also been lots of good things I’ve shared there too. Please note that many of these sources are not actual webpages, but PDFs. That’s not an accident, PDFs are where you find the really good in-depth stuff.
Many of my sources are from the Extension Service. They won’t try to relate to you based on your lifestyle or sexual identity or religion or whatever, but due to that, they also won’t be alienating you either.
The Cooperative Extension Service (US only) exists in all 50 states and in most counties. It is taxpayer funded. The Extension Service exists to help people become more self sufficient, for farmers to be more successful, for people to be healthier, for kids to be well adjusted, to figure out how to grow the best plants in your area, etc. Some county offices even offer cheap classes in things like gardening, canning, soap making, and they’re taught by people with training in these areas (I once heard a great talk on composting from a soil scientist that way). Do you want to know what type of plant something is? Do you need help figuring out a plant disease or pest issue? You can now contact them online and get great info.
I HIGHLY recommend checking out your state’s extension service website, because they do offer different types of information, depending on what is grown/raised where you are (and how well funded they are). My county extension puts out a monthly gardening newsletter, which includes a helpful ‘this is the time of the year to do —-’ part.
Here’s an example from New York – they have a calendar at the bottom, showing how they have things like hydroponic and urban agriculture workshops coming up.
Interested in raising animals? Penn State Extension is really really good. They have tons of free materials and courses available online, some I pulled for my megalist at the top of this.
National Center for Home Food Preservation – they cover the important aspects of food safety, and also have some recipes. Many state Extension Service websites will have lots more recipes.
If you have kids, check out4-H programs for them. It’s part of the local public school system here. If you’re homeschooling, you can also purchase their science-filled educational and self sufficiency materials (materials are divided by age ranges – Cloverbud Member: ages 5-8, Junior Member: ages 9-13, Senior Member: ages 14-19). One of my coworkers is in 4-H, she’s still in high school, and last year she raised an award-winning heifer.
Congress grants the money for funding these programs, and they’re connected with various universities. There’s a level of cutting edge scientific knowledge and academic rigor you don’t find in blogs or even most books. There’s LOTS of homesteading books filled with outdated information like ‘till the earth every year’ hell I still have older coworkers who do it and I’m trying to figure out how to gently tell them that they’re destroying their soil that way, and that there’s better methods now, methods grounded in science.
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