Beef...its whats for dinner cheap!

Fifteen years ago, I was fortunate to be in the National Beef Cookoff for my recipe Beef Sirloin Salad with Dried Cherries.   Sadly, I didn't win the national contest, but I won for the state of Michigan and got an all expenses paid trip to the National Beef Cookoff which was in Little Rock, Arkansas that year.   I was pregnant with my eldest then, and in my days before kids, I was really into "contesting" as it is called among the cooking contest community.   This contest was my last major effort: then I got too busy with kids and work and never seem to find the time to do it.  Every year at this time I think I am going to get back into contesting heavily, but then life manages to get in the way.   Back in the day, if you were heavy into contesting, you subscribed to the Cooking Contest Chronicle newsletter to know about the upcoming contests.   But with the advent of the internets, much of the info can be found online.   However, actually getting something in the snail mail might be more inspiring if you are so inclined.  I am not even sure if Karen Martis still publishes it anymore.

Everyone remembers the "Beef: Its Whats for Dinner" ad campaign - I still love Aaron Copland's Rodeo Suite 3: Hoedown.   While the Cattlemans Association is responsible indirectly for bringing Dr. Phil into our collective conciousness (he was hired by Oprah Winfrey during her infamous beef trial as a jury consutltant), I have nothing but fondness for America's beef farmers.  They have some terrific recipes on their website...including this one, Stir Fry Beef with Spinach which is something a busy parent can whip together after a long day at work with ingredients she probably already has in her pantry.   Even if you forget to take the round steak out of the freezer in the morning, it still works because beef is easier to cut when it's semi frozen.   Just nuke it for a few minutes on defrost so you can get your knife into it.  Also, fresh spinach is spendy this time of year, so it's okay to use frozen for this recipe if you are on a budget and fresh spinach is hard to come by on a budget.   Just nuke it to defrost and squeeze it out.  Use dried hot red peppers if that's all you have in your pantry, too.  It works!

The recipe calls for beef round tip steaks, but any inexpensive cut of round can be used.  Whether you use grocery store beef, or buy grass fed organic beef raised by a farmer you know personally, round steak is always a good value.  When round steak goes on sale, or ends up marked way down because it's near it's expiration date, I buy it in bulk and freeze it.  Nobody knows how to cook round steak, so it ends up on sale often.  Round steak can be used for a multitude of purposes - it can be used for stir fries or beef stew or salisbury steak, or beef stroganoff, etc.   The key to making any beef recipe for less than $2 per serving is to keep an eye out for beef when it is less than $5 per lb.  For this recipe, look for round steak at a price of $3/lb or less, because some of the ingredients like hoisin sauce can be a little pricy.   I haven't tried it this way, but I bet this recipe would even taste good with ground beef in it.  Just skip the marinating part.  I have to remember this for days when I don't feel like making the usual suspects out of ground beef - i.e. spaghetti, tacos, hamburgers, etc.  So, the bottom line is that I can make this recipe for $1.89 per serving.  Take that, Wal Mart!  And, no matter how you feel about Dr. Phil,  if you are in the mood to try your hand in contesting, the next beef cookoff is in 2011.

Pasty making 2009

Alison and I made a total of 79 pasties today for the freezer.  Pasties are labor intensive, but worth it for those days where you have no idea what to make for dinner.   This year, we used lard instead of shortening - 1 lb container of lard is equal to 3 cups shortening in this recipe.   The crust was definitely flakier, and lard is much cheaper than shortening.  I am a lard convert! We made 3 batches of filling, and since we made smaller pasties this year, we actually used 6 batches of crust.  This is an extremely thrifty recipe - only 67 cents per pasty!  Serve that pasty with some ketchup. like they do in the U.P.  at  10 cents per ounce or some store bought gravy like the "trolls" do  (people who live south of the Mackinaw - under the bridge, get it?) at 35 cents per serving, and you still have enough grocery budget to add a tossed salad with home made Italian dressing at 52 cents a serving and a magic brownie like they make at Zingermans (only for a smaller portion) for only 44 cents.  The meal is only $1.98!  Take that, Walmart! 

Less than $2 per serving...take that, Walmart!

My blogging friend Noelle has started something wonderful - the Anti Walmart Challenge.  Not that I'm against Wal Mart...I haven't ever really shopped at one since they have been drummed out of Ann Arbor every time they propose to build one around here, but I really take issue with their commercials.  If you watch any TV at all, you’ve probably seen one of Wal Mart’s recent ads that feature a mom bragging about how she can feed her family on food from Wal Mart on less than $2 a serving. One of the ads is at breakfast time, and the products featured are a sugary yogurt targeted at kids, toaster pastry, and some soy milk.  Why soy milk when she's feeding them the neon colored yogurt?  The other ad takes place at dinnertime and the meal consists of frozen garlic bread, bagged salad, bottled Wal Mart brand salad dressing and spaghetti.   What Noelle has proposed is for food bloggers to post about how cooking from scratch can save money.   I really like this idea....plus she is going to donate $2 for every post she gets to Gleaners Food Bank, which helps feed the hungry in the Detroit area.  Detroiters really need the help right now...many people out of work, many families are struggling to put food on the table.

I decided to go right for the Walmart jugular and start with spaghetti.  Yes, it might take a little less forethought to just use a jar of Walmart sauce and a bag of salad and a bottle of Walmart salad dressing and some frozen garlic bread.  With a little forethought, this meal can be made by a working person after a long work day.   First, in the morning, get a head start by making my crockpot spaghetti sauce with 4 lbs of ground beef and an additional can of tomato puree.    The good news here is that it makes enough for 4 meals, so the rest can be frozen for another 3 days worth of meals.  This results in homemade spaghetti that actually has meat in it for $1.17 per serving.  Note that I didn't sale shop for these prices - this is just what happened to turn up at Busch's this week.  $1.99 per pound isn't a great price for ground beef....you can sometimes get it for $.99 cents/lb in a 5 lb tube which would even make this price even better.   I am sure Walmart sells it that way...check it out.   Then, serve the spaghetti with home made garlic bread made from a grocery store baguette for $.21 per serving.  This price could even be reduced more by baking a frozen bread dough loaf instead of using a baguette from the bakery.    Lastly, a salad made from half head of iceberg lettuce, a quarter head of red cabbage and 2 grated carrots, and my son's salad dressing for $.52 per serving.

Without even trying hard, my meal is $1.90 per serving.   The hardest part about this venture was tallying up the costs - it certainly wasn't cooking it!