Hunger Challenge, Day 3

Breakfast, 3/23: Cereal/milk

Lunch, 3/23: Two of us had leftover stir-fried noodles and three of us had leftover lasagna.

Dinner, 3/23: Roasted chicken, potatoes and carrots, with sauteed zucchini and mushrooms. Cost of dinner, with plenty of leftover chicken to make soup tomorrow = $14. Total cost for the day: $18 ($8 under budget).

Hunger Action Week, Day 2

Today was a crazy day. My daughter had an early dental appointment and she wasn't supposed to eat anything. I ended up not eating anything, either. The rest of the family ate cereal or yogurt. After the appointment, she was restricted to plain foods. So I made her some plain boiled pasta, which her younger brother also gobbled up. My mom ended up having some of the pasta drizzled with soy sauce, sesame oil and chili paste. The cost of the pasta: $1.25. I ate a piece of the leftover lasagna, as did my husband. Because my mom and the kids didn't have lasagna for lunch, there are still three pieces left that will be lunch for tomorrow.

For dinner, I julienned assorted vegetables, which I stir-fried and mixed with Chinese noodles. The vegetables: Chinese cabbage, crimini mushrooms, carrots, zucchini and celery.

I stir-fried the vegetables in a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil and then added about a 1/4 cup of soy sauce. I then added the noodles, which I had just boiled. Total cost: $4.50. There was enough leftover to feed the kids tomorrow for lunch.

Day 2 tally of three meals plus grapes and oranges for snacks: $15 -- $11 under budget.

Hunger Action Week

It's Hunger Action Week and the United Way of King County has enlisted members of the community to take the Hunger Challenge. The basic premise is this: Try feeding yourself for $7 per day over five days. Because I have a family of five (husband, two kids, my mother and me), I get to work with $26 per day.

I shopped for the week based on a budget of $130. To be honest, when I saw that I had $26 per day, my first thought was that this wouldn't really be much of a challenge. Resourceful cooks can feed the proverbial army for that amount. I considered working in a reverse golf handicap, so to speak, to make it more of a challenge. Ultimately, I decided that I would use the cushion to purchase as many organic items as would fit within the budget. I also decided that I would stick to using only the most common kitchen tools and equipment to minimize any unfair advantages.

To be clear, if my family were in such dire straits that I had to choose between paying for food or rent, the last detail I'd be worried about is whether my canned tomatoes were organic.

The Week Begins

One way that I save money is by making enough dinner so that there are leftovers for lunch the next day. So instead of starting the Hunger Challenge with breakfast this morning, I started with Sunday dinner. We found flank steak on sale for about $6. I made a flank steak "satay" by slicing the meat thinly on the bias and then marinating the pieces in a mixture of soy sauce, green onions, garlic, ginger, sesame oil, brown sugar and the juice of half an orange. I normally would grill the meat, but decided to pan-sear the flank steak to adhere to my own rule of using basic equipment.

Dinner, 3/20: Flank steak satay with steamed rice and stir-fried baby bok choy

Breakfast, 3/21: Congee made from leftover rice paired with leftover stir-fried baby bok choy. Congee is a typical Chinese breakfast. I make a simple version with just water, instead of broth, and leftover cooked rice.

Lunch, 3/21: Flank steak satay lettuce wraps, with shaved carrots (drizzled with a squeeze of lemon juice), fresh cilantro and a schmear of chili bean paste on the beef. I packed this for my husband to take to the office.

Lunch, 3/21 for Meilee to take to preschool:

Dinner, 3/21: Lasagna, toasted baguette with garlic butter, chopped salad with honey-mustard vinaigrette. (While this blog normally focuses on Chinese cooking, I wanted my menu for the Hunger Challenge to represent a typical week for my family, which consists of cross-cultural foods.) I made my own bolognese sauce and bechamel. I made extra sauce and was able to save about two cups to use later in the week for an easy pasta lunch for the kids. We ate half the lasagna for dinner and will have the rest for lunch tomorrow. (**Addendum: I made both sauces and assembled the lasagna in 30 minutes.)

Total cost so far of the four meals we've eaten plus tomorrow's lunch made from tonight's leftovers = $31.39 or $6.27 per meal for five people. The total cost for today was about $17.50. I will round up to $20 - still $6 under budget - because my kids snacked on some apples, oranges and a yogurt.

Thanks, Cozi.com!

Yay! Cozi.com selected my blog as a Cozi Family Fave! If you don't know about Cozi.com, offers lots of great tools for families to keep track of schedules and grocery lists -- and there's even a journal function for you to record milestones big and small. Thank you, Cozi!

ONE DOUGH, THREE APPLICATIONS

Green Onion (or Scallion) Pancake

I like efficiency. My father was fond of saying: "If it takes you only two steps, why would you take three?" I think of that often, especially when I'm cooking. I appreciate recipes that are more than one-hit wonders. 

The dough from my potsticker recipe is just flour and warm water, but there are several ways you can use the dough. If you doubled the amount of dough, you could make potstickers, green onion pancakes and homestyle noodles in one session. You can freeze what you don't plan on eating right away for a snack or meal on another day. The photo below shows the finished products: From the left are the green onion pancakes, potstickers and hand-cut noodles.

To make the noodles: 

• Roll out the dough to desired thickness from 1/8" to 1/4".
• Fold dough in half and in half again.
• Cut strips to desired width.
• Unfurl the noodles and either cook right away or place on a baking sheet to freeze. Once frozen, store noodles in a plastic zipper bag. 

To make the green onion pancakes:

• Chopped green onions, about 1 tablespoon per pancake.
• Salt
• Vegetable oil
• Dough
• To cook: Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add about 1 teaspoon vegetable oil. Place a pancake in the pan. Cook until browned on one side, turn and cook the other side until browned. You may need to adjust the heat if the pancake is browning too quickly.

Green Onion Pancakes from Hsiao-Ching Chou on Vimeo.

To make make the potstickers: 

• Follow the recipe.
• Watch this video to see how to roll out the wrappers and then pleat to seal the edges.

Potsticker from Hsiao-Ching Chou on Vimeo.

Ready for the pan: After you place the dumplings in the pan, you add water, cover with a lid, and let cook for 7-9 minutes.