About a hundred years ago, I started blogging about food prices, and how we can save our hard-earned cash without resorting to creating gourmet meals from Dollar Store ingredients. Let’s return to that theme, the one of eating on the cheap, shall we?
I recently toured my freezer and pantry and realized that I could, if I had to, serve at least a week of family dinners without plunking down a penny, and without even resorting to cereal. Perhaps some of you remember that I made my own pesto last summer? Still plenty of it left, in plastic bags. I’ve also got bags and bags of frozen fruit and vegetables. Plus a few cartons of silken tofu — the fruit + tofu made awesome smoothies. Frozen veggies are plenty healthful — sometimes even more so than the fresh stuff. I’ve got frozen chicken breasts, frozen cranberry-pear crumble, boxes of chicken broth, bags of rice. I’ve got potatoes growing eyes, cans of tomato paste, and plenty of dried fruit. I’ve got stale bread for breadcrumbs. I’ve got sauces. I’ve got oil.
So what am I saving this stuff for? Why don’t I just go ahead and eat it?
Not too long ago, Blair and I cleaned out the kitchen of his grandparents’ home. Among our many finds was a can of beans from the ’70s. Yes. From the ’70s. It was amusing, but since we weren’t willing to eat the contents, it was also a waste of money. All six and a half cents that beans probably cost back then.
What’s that you say? Beans were a whole eight cents in the ’70s? Well, they ain’t anymore. Nothing is. So let’s not allow that to happen to us. Can we make a pledge right now? That unless it is a Campbell’s soup can signed by Andy Warhol himself, our descendants will not find three-decades-old cans on our shelves. That we will work our kitchen pantry like J. Lo works her million-dollar tushie. We will use what we’ve got, just ’cause we’ve got it. We will rock those luscious curves practical boxes of foodstuffs sitting in our cabinets, oh yes we will.
Excellent. Let’s proceed.
One of the most-stockpiled things in my cabinet was canned wild Alaskan salmon. I had read that wild salmon is way, way better for you than most farmed stuff — more of the good fats, fewer of the bad fats, higher in nutritional content, and not filled with dyes. Since the wild stuff is seasonal, I’d stocked up on canned.
But…what to do with it?
Work-It Canned Salmon #1: In which I go for salmon burgers and end up with croquettes
This idea came from the Professional Critic (Hello, Mellie!), in what may be the blogosphere’s least appetizing title for a food related post (no offense intended, Mellie! I think you would agree!). The professional critic notes that her original salmon burger recipe is much like meatloaf, “open to interpretation and pretty forgiving.” I interpreted, but only a little:
1 can of salmon
1 egg
Half of a leftover onion
Big handful of homemade bread crumbs, about a quarter cup (made from stale bread - see how I’m workin’ it?)
These were fast, simple, and decent. I ate them, and so did the rest of my family. They are more of a greyish pink than the happy orange salmon burgers you might be accustomed to. And they’re not quite burgers. More like croquettes. But as croquettes go, they were okay. Would I serve them to the Queen of England? Nah. Would I serve them to my kids? Heck yeah. They were edible, filling, fast, and made from on-hand ingredients. For once, dinner — like J. Lo’s love — didn’t cost a thing.
Work-It Canned Salmon #2: In Which I Try to Make Something Fancy and Instead Just Make a Mistake.
My next attempt was a kind of creamy salmon pasta. It was lofty in its intentions — an attempt to create something gourmet from something humble. I made a white sauce made with butter and flour and bubbling milk and herbs. Something Bechemel-like. Nantua-like. I tossed in a touch of dijon. A sprinkling of dill. A splash of wine. Handfuls of broccoli. I mean, these are the makings of a great meal, right?
Like J. Lo and Ben, it was sort of pretty. Like J. Lo and Ben, it was ambitious. Like J. Lo and Ben, it it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Like J. Lo and Ben, it was a mistake.
It was just…wrong, somehow. Stinky, in the way that canned fish is stinky, but even more so. Merrie refused to eat it. Blair tried. Bless him, he tried. Then he shook his head and said, sadly, “I just can’t do it.” He ate cereal that night. I sighed, and ate mine, but mostly because I felt like I had to. For a brief, happy few minutes, Baby Charlotte slurped it up, calling it “fish sauce soup.” Mo’ fish sauce soup, Mommy. Mommy? Mo’ fish sauce soup. But then, suddenly, she got wise. Her “mo’ fish sauce soup” became a resounding “NO fish sauce soup”, lips pursed, head shaking in protest. She refused to go back.
The leftovers stayed in the fridge for days, and then I discarded them. Not unlike the million-dollar 6.5 carat Harry Winston pink diamond ring that Ben bought for J. Lo…and then returned. (well, okay, a little unlike the ring but disappointing nonetheless).
Work-It Canned Salmon #3: In which I go for the anti-gourmet and find a hit
After I tried — and failed — what I thought was an inspired canned salmon recipe, I decided to return to canned salmon’s humble roots: salmon melts. Think tuna melt, diner style, but with pink fish, and no mercury.
So easy, this one. So fast. Mix salmon with mayo. Plop on bread. Unpeel a slice of bright orange processed-to-hell-and-wrapped-in-plastic American cheese (I went for the organic version, at double the cost of the Kraft stuff — real milk instead of MPC, and annato instead of “artificial color” — but yes, I do know how un-cheese like this stuff is). Stick in oven until cheese is melted.
The result? A hit. This recipe, if you can call it a recipe, was the best of the bunch, and the one I’m most likely to make with my last remaining can. We all ate it. We all liked it — some of us in spite of ourselves.
The lesson: Save money by workin’ your cabinets. But don’t try gettin’ too fancy with some of those ingredients. Sometimes, you work it best by staying humble. You know, kind of like Jenny From the Block.
What’s in your cabinet that you haven’t been cooking? What do you have that you could be working, kind of like this:
(yep, that’s your pantry there. And the arm wrapped ’round it? Whatever or whomever you want it to be).
Salmon patties are a favorite easy dinner in our house. My son loves them, with a bit of my weekly homemade mayo dressed up with a bit of mustard and chopped capers. I use a recipe based on one of Dana Carpender’s Low Carb cookbooks, the 500 recipes one, I think. It calls for oat bran instead of breadcrumbs, but I think I’ve used quinoa flakes and almond meal on occasion, too.
I cook the patties in a butter/lard combo (the lard keeps the butter from burning or turning too brown), with a well-preheated pan, but then lower the heat a bit (medium-low). It is important to let them sit and cook long enough to form a crust before turning or else they can break apart too easily (if that happens, and the patties can’t be saved, they can be broken up and cooked like browned ground meat).
I choose cans of salmon *with* the bones and skin. It isn’t very appetizing straight from the can, but when mashed and mixed up, no one sees the skin. Finding the little circular bones while eating is a game in our family and confers “luck” on those who have the most bones in their patty. Those soft cooked bones are full of minerals and should be eaten.
I buy canned salmon at the 99 cent store for my donations to the local food pantry. It’s a good source of easily protein and meets their requirement of non-perishability and non-glass packaging, plus protein is lacking in the majority of the donations they receive. I like to mix it up with small single serving cans and larger cans, depending on what’s available.
Honey. That creamy salmon pasta thing looks like it was bounced right out of James Lileks’ Gallery of Regrettable Food. I applaud your effort though!
I have a bunch of frozen wild-caught fish (I think it’s mahi mahi) in my freezer that I am going to try to make fish tacos with this weekend. We’ll see how that goes over.
The J-Lo bits made me laugh out loud.
And the salmon melt is likely the only one of the three my gang would actually eat. I’m going to attempt the croquettes, though. We’ll see. Maybe with a mushroom gravy?
I couldn’t agree more about needing to use the food on-hand. I work at rotating the foods through my pantry/freezer, but it’s a continual effort.
Salmon croquettes with cheese sauce is a regular meal at my house. My kids love it, so I cook it even though it is kind of unappetizing to me.
The one thing that I always have in my pantry and can’t seem to bring myself to fix regularly is dried beans. I like them okay, and I have grown them in the garden a couple of times, but my husband and kids would sooner die than let a single bean pass their lips. Not even bbq beans and weinies. (Which i’ve always thought of as a kids food.)
I’ve used canned salmon with some dill and mashed potatoes in a pie crust for a sort of salmon ‘meat pie’ and it’s good!
I’m trying to eat through my pantry as well—-I get so disgusted with myself when I go food shopping and can barely fit one more thing into my food closet.
I love canned salmon but I have to admit I prefer the more-expensive sockeye salmon because it is so much prettier than “pink” salmon. If you’d have had sockeye, you’d have had your orange croquettes. Two favorite canned salmon dishes: salmon florentine (in individual casserole dishes: steamed spinach, big chunk of salmon, generous dose of cheddary Mornay sauce, baked till bubbly) and salmon fromage, salmon and (yes) cottage cheese sauce (think chipped salmon) over hot biscuits and made pretty with a sliver of pimiento and parsley, both from the NYT Cookbook by Claiborn and both dee-lish.
Thanks for the salmon tips, all. And, yes, Jenn. Regrettable. Regrettable is the word.
What an honor! I agree that the color of the salmon burgers is less than appetizing, though adding a drop of food coloring runs counter to the point of these endeavors, no? I’ll try to find the sockeye as Janet suggests and definitely the salmon melts. I also have a tin of trout fillets that want to join the party, too–any ideas??
Salmon patties (like your croquettes but with a few more spices) were always a favorite when I was a kid and I continue to cook them in my home. In fact, I’m planning to cook them tonight.
Oh yeah, salmon croquettes… bread crumbs, an egg, a dollop of mayo, finely chopped onion, celery, red bell pepper, even carrots, fresh parsley - whatever’s in the crisper. Saute in olive oil or butter. Make a quick sauce with mayo & lemon juice, kinda like fake Hollandaise.
I pride myself on being an expert in “what can I make for dinner with just what’s in my pantry right now”, but the flip side to that is, I have this mental list of ingredients that I will always buy in quantity when they’re on sale, and thus my pantry ends up bursting with this stuff. Happens in the freezer too. But I promise, no beans from the 1970s.