Cooking For One or Two - A Guide to Budget Meals and Stretching Your Money

If you're into food and cooking shows, chances are probably good that you've either heard of or seen the original Iron Chef TV series. It's the one where a guest chef battles it out in a high-end cook-off against a Japanese "Iron Chef". Each chef takes their own food background and infuses it into the secret ingredient, which is revealed by the flamboyant host, Chairman Kaga. (The show's huge popularity has spawned a successor, Iron Chef America. While interesting, it's now where nearly as addictive as the somewhat campy original.)

The show's general concept is actually something that goes on in cooking schools across the world. At the end of a course, students have to prepare what is sometimes called a "black box" meal. Each student is given a station to work at, along with a black box of several secret ingredients including meat, vegetables, starches, spices and condiments. Every student in a class is given a random combination of items. Their goal: produce a creative meal within the given time limit.

I used to tell friends, before I ever saw my first Iron Chef episode, that if you gave me a main ingredient (meaning meat, though), I could come up with pretty much any meal. I used to sometimes pick a cuisine at random, as well. It's a lot of fun, as well as a way to keep your meals varied. I've never made exactly the same meal twice. You can do something similar, whether it's for a vegetarian or non-vegetarian meal. Many large groceries package up vegetables and fruits that are nearing their prime and list them at a discount price. Meats are sometimes on sale as well. Grab a few sale items at random and see if you can't come up with something. When in doubt, a stir-fry or curry almost always works.

My mother has been doing this for a while now. Being a strict vegetarian, she's already saving on the cost of meat. She saves even further by buying sale-priced fruits and veggies. You can buy in small quantities and eat the items quickly and still enjoy their flavour. I haven't added up her food bill, but it's probably under $100/m.

(c) Copyright 2005-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://cookingforone-or-two.blogspot.com

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