Day 10: Enjoying Mom's Cooking

I conducted my daily kid-survey to see how hungry they were - a determining factor in the amount of effort I put into making dinner - and it turns out both had snacked and neither were hungry. My plans to make (and blog) about gyro sandwiches will have to wait until tomorrow. When I only have to feed myself, I usually eat from the abundance of Korean food in the bahn chahn and kim chee fridges thanks to my parents. The kids like Korean food but only periodically so when the three of us eat together, it is usually other things.

When my mother cooks, it is no small affair. Korean food, due to its high salt content, will keep for several days so when you cook, you cook A LOT and it is a major production that lasts most of the day. When my parents make their bi-weekly trek to Koreatown (about 30 minutes away), they come home with dozens of bags full of napa cabbage and Korean radishes, giant tins of soy sauce and sesame oil, plastic bins full of chili paste and soybean paste. On kim chee days, my mom makes enough kim chee to stock a small grocery store. Kim chee ji gae (soup made from kim chee) is made by the vat-ful. And dough for bahng rises in giant plastic bowls.

Speaking of bahng... Today my mother taught a friend how to make these Korean steamed rolls that are similar to Chinese dim sum. She, herself, learned how to make these rolls a couple of years ago from a friend and has since become famous (in Korean circles) for them. As I mentioned, when she makes bahng, it is in huge quantities and it takes all day; the house is filled with the tantalizing smell of yeasty, freshly steamed bread for hours. My mom makes so many of these rolls for special occasions that last year she bought a freezer chest to store them, what we now refer to as "the bahng freezer." Lucky for me, today was a bahng day.

Dinner also came from the bahn chahn fridge. Several days ago Mom made bahn chahn to take to an elderly couple (long time family friends who made it possible for our family to emigrate to the United States in 1970) and subsequently stocked our fridge with a dozen or so plastic containers of Korean stir-fried vegetables. These vegetables - usually carrots, zucchini, bean sprouts, spinach, fiddlehead fern, and cucumbers - are specifically meant to be eaten all mixed together with Korean chili paste and a fried egg, a dish called bibim bop (loosely translated means bibim = mixed and bop = rice).

This is one of my all-time favorite dishes. During my high school years I attended a boarding school that was a four hour drive from where we lived and therefore made it home usually only one weekend a month. Whenever I got home, no matter how late it was, there would be bibim bop and homemade kim chee waiting. The ultimate comfort food for a Korean child going to school far away in rural northern Michigan.

Sorry, no recipes today. You can find lots of recipes for bibim bop on the web but personally, I find it to be very labor-intensive and time-consuming and never tastes as good as when a Korean Mom makes it. However, Korean restaurants typically do a very good job, usually for under $10. BTW, if you're vegetarian, be sure to order it without the beef.

My Shopping List

Nothing - I made do with what I had on hand.

The Tally

• The day's tally: $0
• Total this week so far: $143

Day 9: Smokin' Hot Salmon

I don't go out to eat very often, mainly for budgetary reasons since feeding two teenagers and myself at a restaurant adds up very quickly. When I do go out, my one criteria for choosing a restaurant is that they have to serve something I can't make at home, which usually means we are eating at an Asian hole-in-the-wall or having In-n-Out burgers.

I haven't been out to eat since this experiment started and so I was ecstatic when The Geek offered to take me out for a sushi lunch today (and I only had to drop one hint!). We both love sushi and so it is no small affair when we go to our favorite All-You-Can-Eat sushi bar. That, combined with a late lunch hour, meant neither of us were very hungry at dinner time.

Here's where having a well-stocked pantry and a hot smokin' BFF comes in handy. The Geek hot-smokes salmon. (The smoked salmon that is typically available commercially - the thin fillets that are slimy - is made by a process known as cold smoking.) Hot-smoked salmon has the texture of cooked fish and fantastic smoky flavor. The Geek just happened to have a smoked fillet in his refrigerator along with some cream cheese and Triscuits. Voila! One of our favorite snacks!

I dug around in my freezer and found a wedge of brie and a wedge of Stilton (a mild blue cheese). I spooned some of AB's cranberry sauce (leftover from Thanksgiving) over the brie and microwaved it until just heated. The tangy cranberries and sweet honey  complemented the mild French cheese perfectly. Fuji apple slices rounded out the meal.

Busy Mom Modifications and Tips

• I frequently make a "meal" like this on nights when we're short on time or I am not in the mood to cook. I buy a loaf of crusty Italian bread, warm up some cheese (usually brie plus another, more pungent cheese such as chevré or blue cheese), add some fruit, and a protein such as summer sausage or smoked salmon. My daughter refers to this as our "European Peasant" dinner.
• TGI Friday's, the chain restaurant, used to serve a brie appetizer that I still like to make at home. Put a generous chunk of butter on top of the brie, sprinkle with slivered almonds, and bake in a 350F oven until the butter has melted and the cheese is soft. The melted butter is perfect for dipping fresh bread.
• Other fruit that goes well with this meal include firm pear slices, grapes, and cantaloupe.

My Shopping List

Nothing - we made do with what was on hand.

The Tally

• The day's tally: $0
• Total this month so far: $143 (Thanksgiving was an expensive meal!)

Day 1: Chicken Wings from Alton Brown

I love chicken wings and I love Alton Brown. So when I saw the episode of Good Eats, "The Wing and I," a few weeks ago, and then found frozen chicken wings at Costco, I knew I would be making them soon.

I decided that this would be a good dish for my first day of pantry shopping. In looking at the recipes for Buffalo wings and Orange Glazed Wings, I saw that I had just about everything I needed. I bought a can of frozen orange juice concentrate, of which I used half. I'm allowed to buy fresh fruits and vegetables as needed in this experiment and celery seemed like a good accompaniment. Of course this meant I had to buy blue cheese dressing. Since salad dressing is a "staple," it is an allowable purchase. A loaf of La Brea Bakery French bread rounded out the meal.

Chicken wings are usually deep fried which really adds to their already high fat content. I like AB's recipes because the wings are steamed (which allows much of the fat to drip off) and then roasted in a 425F oven so that the skin gets crispy. But the caveat is that these recipes, while easy to make, require two hours to prepare if you follow the recipes as written.

Busy Mom Modifications

• I forgot to take the wings out of the freezer to thaw (as frequently happens!) and so I steamed the wings for 20 minutes instead of the 10 minutes in the recipe.
• I didn't refrigerate after steaming because I didn't have time. Refrigeration dries out the skin so that it will crisp up more readily in the oven. I dried the wings thoroughly with paper towels before sticking them in and they turned out just fine.

The Results
Both kids devoured the wings. My son, who has very low tolerance for spicy foods, pointed out that the buffalo wings were not spicy at all. The buffalo glaze was quite thin and just ran off the wings. We found that if you let them sit, the butter would thicken a bit as it cooled and that helped it stick. But maximum flavor was achieved by rolling the wing around in the buffalo sauce just before eating.

Ratings

• FKP*: Delicious!
• Easy to make
• Time to prepare: 70 min., if you do not refrigerate the wings after steaming
• Prognosis: This one's a keeper!

My Shopping List

• Orange juice concentrate: $2.29
• Celery $0.99
• Bleu Cheese Dressing $2.50
• La Brea Bakery French bread $1.99

The Tally

The day's tally: $7.77
Total this week so far: $7.77

*FKP: Finicky Kid Pronouncement, which would be utterances from my teenage son.