Frugal Babe

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Creative Cooking – Use What You Have

July 11, 2008 By Frugal Babe

I love to cook.   Trying new recipes and putting together interesting and tasty meals is one of my favorite things.   But trying new recipes can get expensive, since it seems like there’s always at least one thing that I don’t have on hand.   So I’ve learned to improvise, and it usually works just fine.

Yesterday, I came across this recipe for raw strawberry cobbler at Kristen’s Raw – a blog that I’m loving.   Yum.   The picture alone was enough to make me want to try it.   I eat a lot of raw food, mostly in the form of veggies and fruits.   I’ve done some experimenting with making more complicated raw things, but I’ve found that the grocery bill that goes along with them can be painful.   Things like organic dates and cashews are not cheap – but they sure are tasty, so I buy them every once in a while as a treat.   Anyway, last night at 10pm I wanted to make this strawberry cobbler.   But I was missing about half the ingredients, didn’t want to make a trip to the store, and didn’t want to spend any money.   So I improvised.   For the cobbler part, I used about a cup of almonds, half a cup of oats, half a cup of raisins, and a tiny scoop of dark chocolate chips.   I put them in my food processor with a few teaspoons of water and processed them until I had a crumbly concoction.   I put that into bowls, and started on the strawberry part.   I had a pint of organic strawberries, and an orange.   I put them in the food processor with a teaspoon of honey, blended until it was smooth, and poured it over the cobbler.   Turned out fantastic.   Probably not quite as good as it would have been with coconut and currants in it, but it was a perfect summer treat anyway, and I was able to make it using just the stuff I had on hand.

I tend to be inspired by recipes.   It’s rare that I have all the ingredients, so I make substitutions and changes all the time.   I’ve rarely had anything turn out bad.   Some things – like baking powder or yeast – are vital to the outcome of a recipe.   But most of the time, you can improvise and it will be just fine.   So if you have a recipe and it’s going to take $40 to buy the ingredients, I challenge you to look around your fridge and pantry and see how you can alter the recipe to make it work with what you have.   And by the way, I’m the last person anybody would have thought would be doing creative cooking.   My mother is a great cook, but I was never all that interested in learning when I lived with my parents.   In college, some of my friends decided to have one night a week where we went to each others houses for a meal, and when it was my turn we always had sandwiches.   This is a relatively recent development – I only learned to cook about ten years ago (when I went to Africa with the Peace Corps and had to learn to feed myself without a microwave or starve), and started getting creative with it about five years ago.   So give it a try – I bet you can turn out some pretty tasty stuff with what you have in your cupboards right now.

Filed Under: health, the simple life, ways we save money 4 Comments

Comments

  1. Kelly says

    July 11, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    My mom is a fantastic cook and can make a gourmet meal out of what appears to be nothing. I am trying to be like that. My husband and I both like to cook. We used to eat out a lot, but with a new baby, it isn’t very feasible anymore (he tends to get home from work late and she tends to start getting fussy about that time) and it is definitely not in the budget. I substitute when I can, but am usually too chicken to make any major changes…and I am not creative enough to know what to substitute . But I will take you up on your challenge and see what I can come up with!

    Reply
  2. Kristen's Raw says

    July 11, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    I love what you did with the cobbler! That’s so creative and inspiring :) Sounds super delicious!!!

    Reply
  3. Mrs. Accountability says

    July 11, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    LOL, I’ve found that I have trouble sticking TO a recipe because I mess around with ingredients so much. The cobbler sounds delicious!

    Reply
  4. Stefanie says

    July 15, 2008 at 11:21 am

    I have to be honest… I am a horrible cook. Even when I follow a recipe, it usually comes out wrong. I have boiled water right out of a pot… twice! I won’t put you through horror stories of other cooking mistakes, lol. What you did with the cobbler sounds delicious!

    I came here to let you know that I posted about an award, and you are one of the people I chose to gave it to! See here: http://focusorganic.com/arte-pico-award/

    Reply

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