One of the biggest culprits? The grocery store, farmer’s markets and my local LCBO. While I can’t do much about the LCBO bill (can’t be without my pinot) I can do something about the grocery bill. I’ve decided to channel my inner 50s housewife and become queen of the casseroles because….

1) it’s cheap

2) it’s easy

3) it means I don’t have to make dinner every night (more time for that pinot!)

I started last week with a Mexican potato lasagna (ok maybe that’s a made up name for throwing everything I had in the fridge into one dish) and it turned out great. Proof that you can’t really screw up a casserole and it doesn’t have to cost a lot.

This week I planned ahead a little bit more and made a broccoli chicken dish, it took 15 minutes to prep, an hour to cook and about $10 (for three meals). This is what I put in mine, but like I said, casseroles can be throw-all-your-leftovers into the oven at 350 kinda dishes. Easy, economical, enjoyable. Clever eh?

ps-my measurements are all ballpark (enough to feed me for three nights), but play around with it. You’ll never learn until you screw up try!

KB’s Broke Broccoli & Chicken Casserole

1 1/2 cups broccoli chopped

1 chicken breast chopped

1/2 cup onions chopped

1/2 cup mushrooms chopped

1/2 can cream of chicken soup

1/4 cup milk

1 cup vegetable thins crushed

1/2 cup cheese grated

Take all of your chicken and vegetables and place in casserole dish (if you want a bigger or smaller portion chop more or less-eyeball it)

Take soup (again, more or less depending on how much you’re making) and mix in milk in a bowl, then pour over chicken and vegetables. Toss and coat everything.

Sprinkle cheese then cracker crumbs on top.

Bake at 350 for 50 min to an hour.

bathing the bottles

It’s a work in progress. We’re bottling our first batch of wine before Christmas this year and we need a ‘winery’ name. When I say we, I mean myself, my brother and two of my good friends. Little brother came up with recession reds and welfare whites…I’m hoping for something a little classier. Small Town Big Grapes was tossed around too and I kinda like it. Anyone have any good ideas for a name? We’re making a batch of Gewurztraminer and a batch of Cab Merlot. If I like your name I might be willing to share…

I remember my young, naive excitement at seeing Mama B making a main course dish that involved brown sugar (pecans and mashed sweet potatoes) and taking my first bite. I was devastated at the taste. It wasn’t so sweet.

She used to shake her head and say she couldn’t wait for my palate to develop.

Jump to University– doing grocceries on a limited budget. Enter the dreaded orange vegetable. But it was so cheap!

Necessity made me give the sweet thang another try and I can happily say that we’ve made up.

My favourite way to cook ‘em? (and the easiest)

Cut up the sweet potato into cubes, toss in a bowl with olive oil and spices (paprika, salt, roasted garlic and peppers)

Spread on a baking sheet and cook for 35-40 min or until potatoes are cooked through

For more sweet sweet potato recipes click here

I would love to buy  wine from the vintages section in the LCBO, but I always worry if I can afford the cheese to go with it.

I would love to be able to call myself a true gourmet and a libations lover, but my lack of budget can be … restricting at times.

I’ve had to deal with this for the past four years as a student when I had to spend money on books and paper instead of bocconcini salads and prime rib. But I’ve learned to be a cheap connoisseur, a frugal foodie, a bargain bruncher-here’s how you can fake being a foodie too.

#1 Recipes are not written in stone

The recipes I pour over in Bon Appetit and Food & Drink have spices and ingredients that I can’t always find or afford, so I use sites like the The Cook’s Thesaurus  and The Culinary Sleuth to help me find substitutes.

#2 Homemade always tastes better…

But if you’re someone who loves eating out, there’s plenty of options from prix fixe menus to buck an ounce wine sampling that can help keep your pocketbook padded.

#3 Cheap wine is good wine

No one likes a wine snob. Sure it doesn’t hurt to be knowledgeable and informed, but there is nothing wrong with a $7.95 bottle of wine. Toronto Life lists their top ten wines under $10 here. The LCBO also has over 600 wines listed for under $10, try them all, maybe even the 7 11 $3.99 brand, if you’re feeling particularly cheap…or adventurous.

know my brand will continue to change and evolve.

This is where I’m at now. I’m trying to build an online presence, establish myself in my fields of interest and network ’til people are sick of me. I’m looking for a career, not a job and I hope my brand will help get me from point A to B.

Just watch me.

I’ve known about the KLB for a while now and I’m always tempted to buy a can of their raspberry wheat beer. But I always figured I wouldn’t like it. I don’t like my beers too….fruity?

My lovely wine-adoring mother was buying my wonderful beer-aficionado father a mixed six pack and picked up the KLB Raspberry Wheat. But dear old dad said he couldn’t drink it because it belonged to me. So she dropped it off for me. And I was sceptical, but after a week of mid-terms I decided it  was needed.

It surprised me.

KLB Raspberry Wheat isn’t too fruity, it’s light brown with a very thin head, and you can smell the raspberries more than you can taste them. But they’re still there, though it’s more of a tart raspberry taste with a light hoppy/wheat finish.

Bottom line: It’s light, refreshing and drinking more than one won’t give you a sugar headache. It probably won’t make its way into my fridge too often, but I’m ok with sharing my initials

So I’ve started making massive meals and freezing them. A couple weeks ago I made a pot of chili that could have fed all of my C1 class (For non-Humberites, that’s a lot of people!)

I’m still eating chili, but it makes my night knowing I don’t have to wait another hour after I get home to have a hot meal. AND kidney beans are so good for you! AND chili is ridiculously easy. I probably don’t even need to post the recipe, but I will, ’cause I’m nice like that.

Brown the ground beef. Chop the veggies, cook for 15 min with 1/2 the beer. Then throw everything into a LARGE pot and bring to a boil. Then let simmer for 1-2 hours or until it smells so good that you have to try it!

(adapted from http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Its-Chili-by-George/Detail.aspx)

Feeling adventurous?

You could enter the second annual Canadian chili cook-off, hosted by Anthoyn Sedlak!

Meeting Anthony Sedlak is enough of a reason for me!

 1)     It is possible to find good, cheap wine.

 James Chatto, a senior editor at Food & Drink magazine, says that it is possible for a novice wine drinker to pick out an enjoyable bottle of wine for under $10. Chatto recommends looking for countries or regions that are known for their inexpensive wines. He recommends Chile, South Africa, Italy, Portugal and eastern Europe, and advises looking toward whites if your budget is under $10. It’s harder to find good reds for that price because some are aged longer, often in oak barrels as opposed to steel tanks, which makes them more expensive.

 2)     The days of precisely pairing a wine to the meal are over.

 Kelsey Williams, a fourth-year fashion communications student at Ryerson University, has been hosting dinner parties since her first year of university. “I love entertaining my friends at my house and trying out new recipes on them,” Williams says. “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about matching wine to the food though, I pick what I like and it always seems to work out.”

Williams isn’t alone. Even wine critics are praising experimentation when it comes to mixing and matching flavours. Gord Stimmell, the Toronto Star’s wine critic, says, “That’s the vital part: keep experimenting. Have fun with making fusions of your own. Don’t listen to snobs¾let your own taste buds be the ultimate judge.”

3)     Look for conversation starters

It is not the end of the world if you pick a wine that doesn’t suit your taste. Chances are, someone else could love it. Wine is very subjective and it can make for interesting conversation if you begin to talk about why or why you don’t enjoy a certain bottle. This is also the only way to learn what you do or don’t like. So don’t be scared to pick up that 2007 bottle of cat’s pee on a gooseberry bush sauvignon blanc or a 2006 Fat Bastard shiraz, even if the name throws you off, it’s sure to generate conversation at the dinner table.

4)     Do at least a little research.

If you’re completely new to the sipping society, you may want to do a little research before you jump right in, not to mention impressing your friends with your wine wisdom. A few quick pointers:

• Wines are identified by variety (what kind of grapes were used, for example, a chardonnay) or appellation (the geographical location where the grapes were grown, for example, Burgundy).
• The two most basic categories are white and red. Reds tend to go best with red meat, while whites are usually lighter and go better with fish or poultry.

If you want to learn more about wine before you host your next dinner party, Chatto notes that attending a wine tasting is the way to go. There are plenty of wine tasting clubs in the city, and for the bargain hunters, there is iYellow, a free-membership social networking/wine education club. iYellow puts together monthly wine tasting and social networking events where young professionals can discuss wine. Each event has a different theme, such as Canadian or Chilean wines, and the only cost is the price of an appropriate bottle to share.

 
]]> http://kbudd.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/bringing-the-bottles-without-breaking-the-bank/feed/ 0 kbudd http://kbudd.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/kbudd-profile-pieces/ http://kbudd.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/kbudd-profile-pieces/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 04:02:35 +0000 kbudd http://kbudd.wordpress.com/?p=140 ]]> In my last year at Ryerson I was lucky enough to get to work on some multimedia docs to tell a story. As much as I love the written word, I think sound, images and colour add so much to these features.

The first one is a look at the fairly unknown sport, Women’s Roller Derby (produced before Whip It! premiered at Tiff this year)

http://www.networkedstreets.com/global360/dec_2008/features/kristy/feature_derby.html

The second one is a look at Toronto’s A La Cart program and two Thai women who struggled through red tape and debt just to participate in a city sponsored program.

http://www.ryersonline.ca/articles/3225/1/Toronto-A-La-Cart/Page1.html

update on Toronto A La Cart: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/08/27/to-street-food232.html