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

I've finally launched my new cooking multiblog, Curry Elvis Cooks, which is a combination of my 4 older cooking blogs, as well as several new food, drink, and gardening categories. The homepage is not up yet, and the new blog's template will be changing slowly. I hope you'll bear with me.

By the way, I will be maintaining my 4 older cooking blogs for archive purposes only: Curry Elvis Cooks, Cooking For One Or Two, Chili Monster/Hot Head, Vegetarian Fusion.

cheers,

curry elvis

Okay, you don't have time to make your own soup right now, and you're tired of canned soup. But you've got a stock-pile of cans that you bought on sale. What do you do? Easy. Add a bit of pizzaz to your soup. I regularly add salt, black pepper, crushed red chile pepper flake, sesame oil, and Italian seasoning (any combination of dried parsley, basil, sage, rosemary, thyme). If you like mushrooms and have canned ones on hand, add a few slices. If you have some leftover boiled potatoes, make a small dice of one small potato and add that before heating. After you've heated your soup - either on the stove or in the microwave, for an incredible texture contrast, toss in some Middle-Eastern Salad. When your soup is ready, add a few tablespoons of this salad to your soup.

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

Technorati : budget meals, cheap recipes, cooking for one, cooking for two, food budget, soup

This isn't exactly a salad, it's more of a salsa/relish - but is sometimes referred to as Middle Eastern or East Indian salad. It's very easy to make, refreshing, and it works great as a garnish for curries, soups, and stews. The salt and parsley/cilantro enhances the flavour of tomatoes and onion.

Ingredients

• 1 small, finely diced tomato
• 1 small, finely diced onion
• 1 tbsp finely chopped parsley/cilantro
• 2 tbsp finely minced cucumber, skin on for color (unless you're using waxed cucumbers) [optional]
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Crushed red chili flake or ground red pepper or paprika [optional]

Preparation

• Mix all of the ingredients in a bowl and let sit for a few minutes. The salt and pepper will bring out the flavour essence of the tomato and create an addictive sauce. Let the salsa sit for a few minutes, chilled, before serving.
• As a variation, I sometimes liked to add a 1/2 tsp (or less) of finely ground cumin.

Presentation
Use as a garnish in curries, soups, and stews, or add chunks of avocado and slivers of red onion and serve with nachos or "scoops" corn chips.

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

Technorati : cheap recipes, cooking for one, cooking for two, food budget, relish, salad, salsa