Closing Out Week One

The first week is drawing to a close and I am suffering no ill effects. In fact the Mysterious Chinese Woman says I am eating healthier now than I usually do. I know I certainly haven't been going hungry.

I decided I would make a variation of my spinach omelet today, a quick and dirty version.

Similar ingredients, but just one egg.

Breakfast Ingredients


Step one is just a little chop chop.

Preparation Is Everything


Then I simply saute the onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil. The trick is to keep the heat really low and just get them to turn translucent. You especially don't want to burn the garlic.

Just About Perfect


After I had the onions and garlic just the way I wanted them I threw in the cheese and spinach.

Just Tossed It In


After the cheese started to soften I cracked the egg on top.

Everything Is In The Pan


Then it was just a matter of scrambling everything up together.

Not Really An Omelet


And voila, a healthy and hearty breakfast.

A Great Way To Start The Day


I popped into Trader Joe's to pick up some more bananas. They still had them for 19 cents each, which is a pretty good deal. Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of Trader Joe's, and frankly do not understand why so many people are such fanatical supporters. I think their selection is limited and the prices, other than for the bananas, aren't that good either. I do like their peanut butter, though. But for most of my shopping I will stick with Key Food.

My Bananas


As you can probably surmise, I had my favorite banana and peanut butter sandwich for lunch with a carrot thrown in for good measure.

Meet Mister Sandwich


I figured on making a bean stew of some kind for dinner and had to figure out a way to do it with somewhat limited ingredients.

Not A Whole Lot To Work With


I trimmed off most of the meat from the pork shoulder and set that aside for later. Then I chopped up the carrot, onions and garlic.

Ready To Go


I just threw everything into a small pot of water along with some salt and pepper, brought it to a boil, and then let it simmer for about an hour.

Ready To Simmer Away


When I judged it to be done I strained the stock and tossed everything else. I suppose you could eat it, but it would be pretty flavorless. All the flavor goes into the stock.

The Leavings


And The Stock


You may recall that way back on day one I had rice and beans with chicken and broccoli. When I soaked the beans I had way more than I could use so I just put some of them in the refrigerator. I broke them out and threw them into the stock to cook.

Cooking The Beans


After cooking the beans for about half an hour I threw in the carrots. I wanted the carrots to be cooked, but not mushy.

Carrots Into The Mix


When the carrots and beans were done I added the pork that I had cut into fairly good sized chunks. I wanted this to be a hearty stew.

Hmm, Not Quite Right


I was looking for something thicker, more like a porridge. Luckily, I had watched Tony Bourdain last night. He was visiting Azores and they had an interesting custom. The community builds a house and then hold dinners for the poor people. Azores is doing fairly well these days so now the house is used more for just family or community gatherings.

Okay, to the point. The primary dish they made was kind of a stew where everyone brings something to throw in. Something a bit unique though is that they add bread as kind of a thickener. So there it was.

My Thickening Agent


Just Threw It In


Suprisingly, after letting it cook a bit the bread absorbed all of the excess liquid and then kind of browned up a bit.

Now This Is More Like It


It actually turned out much better than I had expected. The bread added a bit of sweetness, but it was a pungent sweetness because it had absorbed the flavorful stock. I had a big bowl of it and it was very satisfying. I will have to remember that bread trick.

Fit For A King


I was plenty full when I finished my bowl and still had plenty for another meal in a day or so.

Looking Forward To My Leftovers


I have a chicken leg and thigh thawing out in the refrigerator for tomorrow night so I will have to figure out what I am going to do with it. Probably nothing too fancy, though. You can get a lot more flavor than you might think out of just onions and garlic and just salt and pepper, but I am accustomed to a wider variety of spices. I will probably find out that I had enough money to buy more, but I don't want to come up short. Ginger is pretty cheap though, so maybe I will pick up some of that tomorrow.

Not A Warm And Fuzzy Feeling

I once had a Quick & Reilly account that somehow managed to morph into Banc of America Investment Services, Inc (BAI). One of those mysteries of life, I guess. Anyway, this month, along with my statement, I received an insert titled Important Information about Revenue Sharing Arrangements. Now this is the type of thing that probably 90% of the people receiving it throw away. For some reason I decided to look through it.

Basically, the whole insert describes conflicts of interest "Because BAI receives revenue sharing payments based on the amount of sales of, and assets invested in, annuities of Branch Access Annuity Companies and mutual funds of Branch Access Fund Families, BAI has a financial incentive to promote sales of those annuities and mutual funds, in particular annuities of Branch Access Fund Families that pay the highest revenue sharing rates to BAI."

And here I thought my friendly BAI broker had my best interests at heart. How naive an investor can be.

A Leftover Monday

The day wasn't entirely leftovers. For breakfast I had a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and dried bananas and a grapefruit.

A Healthy And Hearty Breakfast


Leftovers did play a predominate roll in my lunch, however. I pulled out the good old pork shoulder and sliced off enough meat for a decent sandwich.

My Sandwich Makings


I heated up the pork in the microwave and toasted the bread. Then I simply put the pork on the toast and slathered it with mustard.

You Gots To Like Mustard


Then I put it all together and sliced it on the diagonal. Plopped it on a plate with a raw carrot and, voila, my lunch.

My Manwich


Dinner was almost all leftovers. I had the leftover pasta with some cheese on top and the other half of the acorn squash with some broccoli. Stuck the stuff in the microwave and ding, ding, my dinner.

Pre-Microwave


Post-Microwave


Tomorrow I am going to try to concoct some kind of a thick bean soup or stew or something with the remainder of the pork shoulder. I will also have to go get some more bananas. I miss my peanut butter and banana sandwiches for lunch.

A Null Day

My sister-in-law who lives near me in Park Slope stopped by to pick me up this morning. We, along with her two young daughters, went to visit my Mysterious Sister-In-Law who lives in New Jersey. Another sister-in-law with her young daughter, the birthday girl, were coming over too for a birthday party as did my brother-in-law Jim.

The Mysterious Chinese Woman and my Mysterious Mother-In-Law went out yesterday so it was kind of like a reunion. You know, running towards each other through a field of flowers with our arms stretched out, music playing in the background. That would be me and the Mysterious Chinese Woman. The Mysterious Mother-In-Law is not the running through the flowers with arms outstretched kind of woman. She is more the chop-the-chicken-with-a-cleaver type.

The birthday girl wanted pizza for her party so we ordered a bunch of pies from Pizza Hut. Man, have they ever gone down hill. The pizzas were terrible. The crusts were undercooked to the point where they were almost raw in the middle. And the toppings were laughable. The pizza with pepperoni had at least two slices with no pepperoni at all and another two slices shared one piece of pepperoni between the two of them. And we are talking about slices of pepperoni so thin you could see through them. The mushroom pizza was about the same and with what looked like shriveled up and overcooked mushroom parts. Don't even get me started on the meatball pizza, hamburger was more like it. If I had to describe the pizzas in one word it would be a hard choice between "disgusting," "horrible," or "laughable." Oh, and "terrible." Let me simply say that I will never again get a pizza from Pizza Hut.

At any rate, I skipped breakfast this morning, relying on black coffee to hold me over until lunch. But, in keeping with the spirit of living on my food-stamp budget for a full month, I will extend my experiment through Friday, May 1st to make up for today. I am nothing if not scrupulous. Or obsessive/compulsive, take your pick.

A Satisfying Saturday

Okay, enough with the eggs for breakfast every morning. Today I headed to Key Foods and picked up some oatmeal and raisins. Then I popped in to the fruit and vegetable store next door and picked up about half a pound of dried bananas. The oatmeal was $1.29 for one pound two ounces, the raisins were $1.69 for 15 ounces and the dried bananas were $.74 for about half a pound.

Breakfast Stuff


I measured out a cup of the oatmeal (I have the feeling I bought a month's worth) and an appropriate amount of the raisins and dried bananas.

This Looks About Right


And for those of you who might think that Bar Man can't cook, just look at this. And I did it without any help from the Mysterious Chinese Woman.

Look Everyone, I Boiled Water


The oatmeal is the instant kind and cooks in just over a minute once you throw it into the water THAT I BOILED ALL BY MYSELF!!! I also threw in the raisins and dried bananas.

Looks Yummy


When it was finished I had a big, and filling, bowl of, well, oatmeal, raisins, and bananas, no longer so dried.

A Healthy And Hearty Breakfast


It was very satisfying and, the Mysterious Chinese Woman will love to hear this, I may start having oatmeal for breakfast more often. Not that thin, prison gruel stuff that she seems to favor, but a manly thick and chewy concoction like I made.

For lunch I had, drum roll please, a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

The Obligatory Picture


I figured I would take a break from my rice and beans for dinner so I decided to make myself some pasta. I also figured it was about time for me to do something with my acorn squash before it just sat around and became inedible.

Dinner Fixings


I always like to prepare my misa-mess or whatever you call it. You know, getting everything ready before you start to cook. This involved chopping the garlic and onion and cubing a decent amount of the pork shoulder.

My Misa-Mess


The first step was to separate out the little chunks of just the pork fat and then crisp that up with about a teaspoon of olive oil.

Crisping The Fat


After the fat was all crisped up, and a bit of the fat was rendered out adding to the olive oil, I threw in the onions and garlic with some salt and pepper.

Everything All Thrown In


Now, while the onions and garlic were slowing turning translucent, I prepared the squash. First, I simply cut it in half and scooped out all of the seeds and stuff.

Easy Enough


Then I just placed them face down on in a baking pan with about a quarter of an inch of water in the bottom. Well, where else would the water be? Floating on top, somehow?

Oven Ready


Then I just popped them into the oven at 350 F where they would spend the next 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, I was stirring the onion, garlic, pork fat mixture until everything looked right. The onion and garlic translucent and soft and the pork fat already nicely crisped up.

Ready For The Next Step


The next step was to simply throw the pork on top and turn the heat down very low. The pork was already cooked so I just wanted to heat it up a bit.

Like A Politician, No Cutting Out The Pork


Now, and here was the tricky part, I had to open up the can of tomatoes and measure out one cup.

My Final Ingredient


Again, I saved the remaining tomato sauce for future use.

Enough For Something Else


Meanwhile, the spaghetti sauce was coming along nicely.

Just About Ready


Having mastered the art of boiling water I advanced my skills by adding a pinch of salt and a bit of olive oil and boiling a larger quantity. I am getting really good at this. Once the water hit a rolling, or is that roiling, boil I put in about a third of a box of the pasta.

Pasta In A Pot


While the pasta was cooking, about 7 minutes, I took the squash out of the oven and flipped them over to check them out.

My Flipped Over Squash


It looked like it was done so I scooped out one half.

My Scooped Out Squash


When the pasta was done I strained it, put it into a bowl, and then poured the sauce (gravy for all you Italians) over it.

The Finished Product


And, the final plating with the squash, restaurant worthy.

Looks Good Enough To Eat


As usual, I made more than I could eat, so I saved about a third of the pasta and sauce and will probably have that for either lunch or dinner on Monday. I also had half of an acorn squash left over so I stuck that in the refrigerator too.

Tomorrow I am heading to my sister-in-law's for my niece's eighth birthday party. This means I will only have breakfast at home and, for reasons beyond my control, take a half day hiatus from my experiment. I promise, though, I won't just load up on calories. I think you can see that I haven't actually been starving myself so far.

Monday I will have to use some more of the pork and then, depending upon how much is left, either freeze the rest or make a stock out it. I will make stock though, you can't just waste that bone. I probably should have saved the bones from the two chicken legs and thighs that I ate but I kind of forgot. I won't make that mistake with the five I have left though. I will save them and freeze them and then, when I have all the bones, make some chicken stock.