Pauper to King Eating

When I started writing this blog my intentions were to demonstrate how to eat like royalty on a pauper’s budget.  They still are.

One of the things I am going to talk about in this today is the cost of eating fantastic food. I will attempt to break it down to ‘costs per serving’ when using premium ingredients thought to be too expensive for most limited fixed income budgets.

Cheese is one that comes to mind first, especially Parmesan. When I was growing up, I thought the Kraft ‘grated cheese in a green can’ was real Parmesan cheese. Not to slight Kraft but it ain’t Parmesan cheese they are selling – it’s mostly cellulose. Yet it’s still popular because people think it’s relatively inexpensive.

But is it?

A good Parmesan Reggiano can cost at least $20.00 a pound. That is 16 ounces. That breaks down to $1.25 per ounce. A ¼ cup of cheese is two ounces. That is way more than is normally used in a dusting over your spaghetti. The imitation cheese that you get in the green canister is around half the price per ounce, but it has other ingredients in it for shelf stabilization and has practically no taste.

When buying meat products such as pork, I usually wait until it goes on sale which is often. Usually at least one day each month. I have not paid more than $1.50 per pound in I don’t know when. The last one I bought was .89 per pound. I buy them, bone in and cut them up at home. The bone only weighs a a mere .3 pounds, besides when I cut it up I usually leave a bit of meat around the bone to use it in a pulled pork recipe.

When cooked the meat falls away from the bone and the bone adds flavor. Along with the bone in I use pieces that I have trimmed from the rest of the hunk of meat. Pork when boiled the fat falls away from the meat and those very small pieces blend in with the rest. From a 4-pound butt I get fixin’ for at least five ample dinners for two people. That includes the pulled pork, BBQ style steaks, ground pork for sausage and char siu. That is less than a dollar for each serving. The spices and herbs used are very little cost.

Corn on the cob at usually .25 to .50 cents an ear husked. That same corn that has been husked and placed in a container is $6.00 for 4.

The more an item has been handled the more expensive it becomes. Case in point the bulk spices.

I noticed the other day that a spice that I purchase in bulk cost me .79. In the jar for just twice as much it was $5.79. Totally unreal how much we pay just for packaging that is thrown away. Buying bulk I believe we also get a fresher product.

I buy all my pepper as peppercorns and grind it myself. I buy what is called rainbow mix. I never would have thought I would like the smell of pepper. The ground pepper you buy in the store only makes me sneeze, the stuff I grind smells absolutely marvelous. Tastes great on the food, it is fresher so goes farther because it is more peppery.

Buy fresh vegetables rather than canned when you can. They don’t take any longer to cook and they don’t have the extra salt and sugar or other preservatives in them. They do taste different, the flavor of the food come out, you may be surprised to find out that a vegetable you disliked as a kid becomes your favorite.

Be open to trying new things. I am 75 years old I just recently I found out that most of the fresh vegetable leaves are edible. The most astounding to me was radish leaves. They make a good pesto and are good in salads. Who knew, I have been throwing them out for decades. A quick google search will open a whole new world of edibles.

A lady maybe in her fifties in the Sprouts store asked me if I knew how to cook collard greens. She had picked up a very large bag for .99 cents. She had never cooked them before. She had only eaten them once before, but the price encouraged her to try them. That is what I mean by being open to new things.

Cooking shows may not appeal to a lot of people, but the internet has opened up a whole new world of wonders in what is available in fine cuisine while saving a lot of cash on the mean time.