#six spoons

[gilgai]

Michael Riley, Wiradjuri/Kamilaroi peoples Australia 1960 – 2004, Untitled from the series Sacrifice [blurred six spoons], 1992, printed 1993 (NGA 93.1441.6)

[lowspoonsgourmet]

Trail Mix - 5-6 spoons

Good to make in big batches and then store for lower spoon days. You can substitute different ingredients and quantities to suit your taste

Ingredients

1 cup small shaped cereal e.g. cheerios, puffed rice

¾ cup mini pretzels or pretzel sticks

1 ½ Tbsp pumpkin seeds (pepitas)

1 ½ Tbsp slivered almonds

1 Tbsp peanut butter

2 Tbsp honey or mapel syrup

1 tsp butter or margarine

dash chilli pepper

¼ cup dried pineapple chunks 

Method

Preheat oven to 190°C / 375°F

line a large baking tray with baking paper

In a bowl, combine cereal, pretzels, pepitas and almonds

In a small saucepan, combine peanut butter, honey, butter and chilli powder on medium heat

Cook and stir until mixture in warmed through and butter is melted

Pour over cereal mixture and stir gently to coat

Spread mixture onto lined baking tray and put in the oven

Bake for 5-7 minutes until lightly toasted

Remove from the oven and sprinkle with pineapple, stir to combine

When cool, store in an airtight container or transfer to small resealable plastic bags

[lowspoonsgourmet]

Extra Veggies Pasta Sauce (5-6 spoons)

So this is a pretty basic/easy pasta sauce recipe I like because it’s tasty, quick, and most importantly CHEAP! The base recipe I use costs around $0.72 USD per serving and uses frozen spinach and frozen mixed veggies to add some quick/sneaky vitamins and minerals to a regular pasta dish. My version is a meat sauce (because of personal nutritional needs), but for the vegetarian/vegan/extra frugal user, you can nearly cut the cost in half by omitting it as an ingredient. 

Someone at some point sent the mods of this blog an ask about low-cost recipes, so I’m including prices in parentheses next to each ingredient. I live in the North Eastern US, if that helps give any perspective on the prices I have recorded. Prices are based on buying one whole unit of the item (ie: you only need ½ onion but i include the price of the whole thing) for the sake of clarity. A little tilde (~) before the price indicates an approximation, since prices of fresh produce/meat can be a little more variable week to week even within the same store.

Ingredients

1  29 oz can of tomato sauce ($0.79 Note: tomato sauce, not pasta sauce) 1  16 oz package of frozen spinach ($0.99) 1  16 oz package of frozen mived vegetables ($0.99) ½ sweet onion, diced (~$0.33/onion) 1-2 cloves of garlic, diced or crushed (~$0.80/whole bulb) 1 lb. ground turkey (~$4.49 Note: depending on fat content, ground beef can be cheaper) Water, in case the sauce is too thick for you with the current ingredients (Price negligible for myself. Note: this is going to depend on personal tastes, but ½ a cup to 1 cup should be plenty) Spices/seasonings to taste (should be less than $1.00 but I’m using that for my calculations because of wildly varying prices on different brands, and based on whether you use dried or fresh) Nonstick spray or 1 Tbsp. of oil (I forgot to check the price for this, sorry! But it is technically a staple so the price should be negligible (still super sorry))

Tools

Knife (for dicing onion/garlic) Cutting Board or large Plate (to dice on) Large Pot (it might look too large, but using a big one has saved me from obnoxious cleanup in the event I misjudge the volume of what I’m making) Spoon (large enough for stirring)

Directions

1. Start by peeling and dicing the onion on a cutting board/plate. It can be as rough or as fine as you like/are able to. You can also peel your garlic at this point too. 2. Put the pot on the stove and turn the heat to medium-low. Give it a quick spray with nonstick spray OR toss in your tablespoon of oil, followed by your onion. 3. If you haven’t peeled your garlic yet, do so, and dice it. Again, how finely it’s diced is up to your tastes/ability. After it’s diced, add the garlic to the pot with the onion. 4. Once the onion is mostly translucent/clear, and the onion and garlic start smelling strong, add the ground meat. I use turkey but you can use beef instead or even omit it to make the recipe vegan. If you are using meat, though, make sure that it cooks all the way through and there are no pink bits before adding any other ingredients.

This is the most taxing part of the recipe for me personally, but you do not have to necessarily hover over the stove while the meat browns. I usually take a seat close to the stove and get up to break up the meat every 3-4 minutes until it’s cooked through. It doesn’t typically take more than 7-10 minutes, and you can turn up the heat a little to make it go faster (remember the hotter it is, the more you have to watch it).

5. Once the meat is cooked through, or if you aren’t using any meat, add the entire can of tomato sauce. 6. Add both bags of frozen veggies, and stir them in. At this point, you can decide whether the sauce is thin enough for you (between the veggies and the meat it gets rather bulky rather fast). If it isn’t, add some water to the can the sauce came in and swirl it around before pouring into the pot. This just lets you use a little bit more of the sauce that might have stuck to the sides of the can. 7. Add any seasonings/herbs/spices you want to taste. 8. Cover the pot and let it simmer on low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally (tbh i don’t even remember to stir it half the time and the only thing it changes is sometimes stuff settled at the bottom sticks a little bit if I left the heat too high. It doesn’t really alter the taste at all though). 9. Serve or let cool and store in the fridge for quick reheat use on low-spoon days.

Makes around 13 (pretty darn big) servings Total cost for all ingredients is around $9.39 Cost per serving is around $0.72

This recipe freezes pretty well, and I tend to make it on medium-high spoon days and then refrigerate/freeze it in portions for low-spoon times. Along with a box or two of pasta, and maybe some bread or salad if I want it, this can definitely work as lunch or dinner for a little over a week (including the occasional seconds). I’m waffling between calling it 5 or 6 spoons if only because of how draining the meat browning step can be for me personally, but if that part doesn’t sound like an issue for you, I think it fits pretty well into the 5-spoon category.

Recipe Cheat Code: If you need the extra veggies, but don’t have the spoons for the full recipe, you can take a jar of regular pasta sauce and add a few handfuls of each type of frozen veggie to it as it heats up on the stove.

I hope this recipe looks good enough for some people to try, and sorry for prattling on like I probably did! :)

[lowspoonsgourmet]

Cheap + Easy Salmon Croquettes

Hi, lowspoonsgourmet! Sorry if this is very long, but I want to share a recipe that was one of the first ones my mom taught me when I was a kid, but it’s also one of my family’s go-to meals when short on time, energy, or ingredients. It is a fish dish that can be served with plain spaghetti, plain greens, or just eaten alone and it can be refrigerated + eaten cold on bread or toast safely for up to a week afterward. I also want to share a cool simple low-tech tool my family uses to mix + chop the ingredients that is great for people who have trouble fine chopping with conventional knives.

The prep for this dish takes a some spoons (I would rate around 5-6 spoons on your spoons scale) but it has some unique pros that are notable for a fish dish:

It’s made with canned salmon. This means that the protein can be bought for cheap months ahead of time, so if you have memory issues you don’t have to plan very much. It’s already cooked so there is no risk of undercooking it and getting food poisoning, or the ingredient “going bad” so long as you don’t open the can and store it in a cool, dry place.

It only requires one egg, and it makes enough salmon croquettes for multiple portions. Really useful if you’re trying to conserve eggs, which do go bad over time.

It’s padded with breadcrumbs so it includes starch, so it can be eaten as its own dish totally alone.

It’s pan-fried comfort food and you can omit fine chopping if you need to, or use pre-chopped alternatives with no impact.

You can keep it warm in an oven without risk of it overcooking or drying out, so you can cook as fast or as slow as you need.

It uses very basic tools and can be completed with high-tech or low-tech solutions with similar effort.

Here are the ingredients:

1 Can of the Cheapest Canned Salmon (it should be cooked, though it will still have bones.)

1 Small Onion (you may omit this)

Some Cloves of Garlic (you may omit this)

1 Egg

Breadcrumbs (Seasoned or unseasoned, it does not matter.)

Whatever seasoning you desire (you may omit this)

Vegetable oil

Here are the tools you need/can choose to use:

Small bowls or whatever is convenient to hold breadcrumbs.

Fork, small grabbers, whatever you use to move things in and out of a frying pan

possibly ordinary table knives

Can opener

Stovetop

Frying pan

plate with paper towel or baking sheet with rack

Mixing bowl (I prefer wooden because I use an ulu knife described below, but any medium-size mixing bowl will do)

Cutting Board + Chef’s Knife OR a Cuisinart/your automatic chopping solution

TOOL FEATURE: ULU KNIFE (sometimes also found under “chopper,” “chopping knife” or “mincing knife." Might not be as available in Canada because of the perpendicular grip and blade laws.)

Combine this with a wooden bowl to have a steady chopping solution that doesn’t require electricity, lots of muscle power, or precision knife skills. It removes a lot of risk of cutting your own fingers if you have low energy or poor muscle coordination. My mom and I love this thing and it can be used to make finely chopped materials or to mix + chop at the same time with low effort. It also makes the best salsa and chunky dips without use of electricity or having to clean a Cuisinart! You can often find it cheap at yard sales because many people do not know what it is or how to use it, but new store-bought works just as well. It will probably never break, you don’t have to sharpen it unless you want to, and it will last for decades.

OK, so this is how you do it. Prep + cook time is around half an hour to 45 minutes and includes can opening, chopping/cuisinarting, mixing, touching food with hands, and frying on the stove. But no heavy lifting or kneading.

Roughly chop the onions and garlic. You can do this with a cutting board and knife, or in your Cuisinart or however you like. If you are not using an ulu knife or returning things to your Cuisinart later, you might want to do a finer chop but rough is still fine. Put all of this in your bowl. OR, if you are omitting onions and garlic, skip this step.

Open the can of salmon. Pour the entire contents, juice and all into your bowl. It should be a whole core of fish, already cooked! Using a fork, separate the chunks and extract the hard round bones of the spine. The other small hair-like bones and the fatty silvery "skin” (there are no scales) are fine and will dissolve once you mix it all up. I have never noticed them, nor has my family that has texture issues, but if you do you can always pick out some of the fine bones too.

Once the hard circular bones are gone, you have a few options. You can add all of this to your Cuisinart and blend until lightly mixed and mostly even. You can take your fork + knives and mash all of this together into a paste. Or, my personal favorite, you can take your ulu knife and effortlessly chop + fold it all together until it’s even and slightly soupy. It’s all up to you!

Crack and add 1 egg. Mix it in however you want like before until it’s even and sticky/gooey.

Add breadcrumbs a little at a time, mixing as you go. Do this until the consistency of the paste is like hamburger. You should be able to hold + shape it with your hands. The crumbs should absorb the excess liquid from the canned salmon. If you add too much crumbs and it won’t hold together, add some water or another egg if you need to.

Heat up about a 1/8th of an inch of oil in the pan, or however you prefer to pan-fry things. Don’t burn the oil!

Use clean hands to shape the fish mix into any shapes you desire– I find sausage shapes work the best, but some like to make small patties. Roll the shapes in some breadcrumbs and place them in the hot pan a few at a time. The oil should not spit angrily if it’s at the right temperature but gently bubble or make nice frying sounds.

Cook them until all the sides are golden-brown or crispy, then remove and place on your plate or rack as they come out. Replace them in the pan with new ones until all your fish goo is cooked. If you take a long time to cook things, use a rack and heat the oven to a low temperature. Place your croquettes on the rack and keep warm in the oven. The only thing that needs cooking is the egg (and the onion/garlic if you used it) so you cannot really overcook or undercook this dish so long as you heat it through and crisp the outside evenly.

You should come up with 6-12 croquettes depending on how large you make them.

Enjoy! Fish can be difficult to eat with low spoons because of the threat of spoilage and the planning involved in cooking it. But my family always keeps a can of salmon in reserve in case we need an emergency dinner option that can feed several people in a pinch with low chance of “failure.” It’s also “fancy” enough to serve to unexpected company and feel like effort despite just being mostly canned salmon.