Proud, frugal shabbos menu
I wanted something nice this week for shabbos.
Only I didn't want to spend lots of money.
I wanted healthy as well.
What to do, what to do...
Lately I've fallen in love with lachuch (teimani flat bread) but the guy who sells them sells them 4 for 10 shekel, and thats a bit steep, seeing as we finish 2 in a meal. I love to eat that lachuch with different dips, and my favorite one is this gross looking, snot textured dip made out of fenugreek, called chilbeh. Chilbeh is sold at 6 shekel a container, and the container gets polished off really quickly at my house. Chilbeh is insanely nutritious. In 100 grams of chilbeh, there is 22 mg of iron, in comparison to chickens 9 mg per same 100 grams. In 100 grams, there are 6.5 grams of protein, about the same amount as 100 grams of lima beans. In 100 grams, there are 170 mg of calcium as opposed to 119 mg of calcium in 100 grams of milk. Basically, an all around good food. Its an acquired taste though, I'll admit.
But it was bugging me to be spending 16 shekel on lachuch and chilbeh each week (we only did this 2 weeks in a row, but to keep it up would end up getting expensive), so I wondered if I could make my own.
And I did.
Lachuch looks like this, only mine is less oily looking.
The way I made my lachuch was like this:
Take 1 kilo of flour (2.89 shekel), 1.5 liters lukewarm water, 1 tbsp yeast (negligible- I have a gigantic package that has been lasting me for over a year that I must have gotten for 15 shekel or less), 1 tbsp salt, and 2 tbsp sugar.
Mix together in a bowl. It'll be the texture of a very thick pancake batter. Let rise one hour.
Take a non stick frying pan. Grease it lightly. Ladel a ladel or two of batter into the frying pan. Spread it around with a spoon so it is all uniform thickness (or approximately). Put on a high flame.
Within a couple of minutes, you should see bubbles forming holes in the batter, and it should become cooked pretty quickly. When its almost all the way cooked but with a few raw patches, flip it over with a spatula for 10-20 seconds and then flip it on to a plate.
Cool down the frying pan by dipping the outside into a bowl (or sink) full of cool water.
Repeat.
With this recipe, I got 15-16 lachuchs for approximately 3 shekel. That is about 10 times cheaper than buying them 4 for 10 shekel.
And its delicious.
As for the chilbeh, I went to the health food/grain store where you buy grains and spices by weight. I bought 100 grams of coarsely ground fenugreek for 11 shekel, approximately.
To make chilbeh, you do the following:
Take 2 tbsp ground fenugreek. Put in a container and cover three to four times its height with water. Let sit overnight, or at least 6 hours.
Pour off the water. The fenugreek should have absorbed a lot of the water and taken on a gel like consistancy.
Put gel in the food processor with one clove of garlic, some lemon juice to taste, a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, corriander/cuzbara, and if you'd like, a tomato. Blend up until smooth and not chunky any more.
Serve as a dip to eat with challah, or with lachuch. Apparently teimanim like putting it in soup, but I'm not THAT adventerous.
That chilbeh probably ended up costing me 2-3 shekel to make. In 100 grams of fenugreek, there is enough to probably make this recipe 7 or 8 times. Corriander I get three for 10 shekel, and just use a drop, so maybe maybe 20 agurot worth of that. The tomato, which is optional, i can usually get for 89 agurot a kilo, so approximately 5-10 agurot for a tomato. And garlic- I get 4 heads for 7 shekel, so one clove is really negligible.
So alltogether, instead of spending 16 shekel on x amount of lachuch and chilbeh, I spent approximately 3 shekel or less for that same x amount.
Additionally this shabbos we are having mock chopped liver. I made this mock chopped liver out of eggplant and onions, sauted together and then blended. Its that simple. With some salt. I bought the eggplant and onion when they were on sale for 89 agurot a kilo. I used less than a kilo total combined eggplant and onion, but i'll round up and say it was a kilo. Thats 89 agurot. And i divided up the dip into 4 because it was so much, and we're using a fourth this week. So 20 agurot for our mock chopped liver.
I made homemade tehina sauce out of whole grain techina paste, bought at 500 grams for 9 shekel. I probably use 25-50 grams of tehina paste, so thats about 25 agurot for the tehina paste. I thin it out with water, lemon juice, salt and garlic powder, all of whose costs are neglibile. So 25 agurot for this techina. Very nutritious as well. In the non thinned out whole grain tehina paste, in 100 grams of paste, there are 975 mg of calcium, 7 times the amount of calcium found in the same amount of milk. Protein is 17 grams per 100 grams, a drop more than white meat chicken. 14.6 mg of iron, whereas chicken liver only has 9 mg in the same 100 grams. Wholesome, healthy, nutritious, and cheap.
Next thing on the menu is orange blended soup. This is a soup from my freezer, one that I will say costs nothing. I made chicken soup during the nine days with carrots, sweet potato, and pumpkin to give it flavor. I don't enjoy eating these vegetables with the soup- i prefer a clearer broth. I generally nosh on the "orange"s on friday, because i dont really eat lunch friday. Couldn't do that during the nine days, and knew it would get thrown out because it would spoil by the time I could eat it. I took the vegetables from the soup, blended it up in the food processor and made orange soup out of what otherwise would have gone to waste. So I'll say free. But if I had to guess the actual cost, the carrots were bought at 89 agurot a kilo, the pumpkin at 4 shekel a kilo and the sweet potato at 8 a kilo. This soup probably would have cost me somewhere around 6 shekel to make if I had made it from scratch instead of from leftovers.
We are also having grilled corn on the cob, free. My husband works as a security guard in a supermarket. An arab found a bought package of corn on the cob in his shopping cart that was outside the store, had no need for it, and told my husband to hold on to it in case anyone came to claim it. No one did. So free corn on the cob.
We're also having grilled chicken breast and chicken legs. I bought a whole chicken for 9.90 a kilo, and cut it up myself, and the total amount of chicken is probably at most half a kilo, so thats 5 shekel for chicken.
Last thing on the meal menu is barley and carrots. Cooked together in a pressure cooker. Probably cost me about 1 shekel total.
For desert, I am making mango sorbet, I bought mangos for 6 shekel a kilo, probably am using a kilo and a half worth of mango, and half a kilo of sugar, and the juice of half a lemon. Total cost 10 shekel for a lot, as opposed to the 25 shekel i could expect to get if I bought it in the store.
So in short, for shabbos:
Lachuch- 3 shekel
Chilbeh- 2 shekel
Mock chopped liver- .2 shekel
Tehina- .25 shekel
Orange soup- free
Corn on the cob- free
Grilled chicken- 5 shekel
Barley and carrots- 1 shekel
Mango sorbet- 10 shekel
Total cost for shabbos: 21.5 shekel. Score! (This doesn't count the bought bottle of grape juice for 11 shekel, of which we use 8 shekels worth for shabbos.)
:-D
You're all invited to my house for the meal!
Only I didn't want to spend lots of money.
I wanted healthy as well.
What to do, what to do...
Lately I've fallen in love with lachuch (teimani flat bread) but the guy who sells them sells them 4 for 10 shekel, and thats a bit steep, seeing as we finish 2 in a meal. I love to eat that lachuch with different dips, and my favorite one is this gross looking, snot textured dip made out of fenugreek, called chilbeh. Chilbeh is sold at 6 shekel a container, and the container gets polished off really quickly at my house. Chilbeh is insanely nutritious. In 100 grams of chilbeh, there is 22 mg of iron, in comparison to chickens 9 mg per same 100 grams. In 100 grams, there are 6.5 grams of protein, about the same amount as 100 grams of lima beans. In 100 grams, there are 170 mg of calcium as opposed to 119 mg of calcium in 100 grams of milk. Basically, an all around good food. Its an acquired taste though, I'll admit.
But it was bugging me to be spending 16 shekel on lachuch and chilbeh each week (we only did this 2 weeks in a row, but to keep it up would end up getting expensive), so I wondered if I could make my own.
And I did.
Lachuch looks like this, only mine is less oily looking.
The way I made my lachuch was like this:
Take 1 kilo of flour (2.89 shekel), 1.5 liters lukewarm water, 1 tbsp yeast (negligible- I have a gigantic package that has been lasting me for over a year that I must have gotten for 15 shekel or less), 1 tbsp salt, and 2 tbsp sugar.
Mix together in a bowl. It'll be the texture of a very thick pancake batter. Let rise one hour.
Take a non stick frying pan. Grease it lightly. Ladel a ladel or two of batter into the frying pan. Spread it around with a spoon so it is all uniform thickness (or approximately). Put on a high flame.
Within a couple of minutes, you should see bubbles forming holes in the batter, and it should become cooked pretty quickly. When its almost all the way cooked but with a few raw patches, flip it over with a spatula for 10-20 seconds and then flip it on to a plate.
Cool down the frying pan by dipping the outside into a bowl (or sink) full of cool water.
Repeat.
With this recipe, I got 15-16 lachuchs for approximately 3 shekel. That is about 10 times cheaper than buying them 4 for 10 shekel.
And its delicious.
As for the chilbeh, I went to the health food/grain store where you buy grains and spices by weight. I bought 100 grams of coarsely ground fenugreek for 11 shekel, approximately.
To make chilbeh, you do the following:
Take 2 tbsp ground fenugreek. Put in a container and cover three to four times its height with water. Let sit overnight, or at least 6 hours.
Pour off the water. The fenugreek should have absorbed a lot of the water and taken on a gel like consistancy.
Put gel in the food processor with one clove of garlic, some lemon juice to taste, a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar, corriander/cuzbara, and if you'd like, a tomato. Blend up until smooth and not chunky any more.
Serve as a dip to eat with challah, or with lachuch. Apparently teimanim like putting it in soup, but I'm not THAT adventerous.
That chilbeh probably ended up costing me 2-3 shekel to make. In 100 grams of fenugreek, there is enough to probably make this recipe 7 or 8 times. Corriander I get three for 10 shekel, and just use a drop, so maybe maybe 20 agurot worth of that. The tomato, which is optional, i can usually get for 89 agurot a kilo, so approximately 5-10 agurot for a tomato. And garlic- I get 4 heads for 7 shekel, so one clove is really negligible.
So alltogether, instead of spending 16 shekel on x amount of lachuch and chilbeh, I spent approximately 3 shekel or less for that same x amount.
Additionally this shabbos we are having mock chopped liver. I made this mock chopped liver out of eggplant and onions, sauted together and then blended. Its that simple. With some salt. I bought the eggplant and onion when they were on sale for 89 agurot a kilo. I used less than a kilo total combined eggplant and onion, but i'll round up and say it was a kilo. Thats 89 agurot. And i divided up the dip into 4 because it was so much, and we're using a fourth this week. So 20 agurot for our mock chopped liver.
I made homemade tehina sauce out of whole grain techina paste, bought at 500 grams for 9 shekel. I probably use 25-50 grams of tehina paste, so thats about 25 agurot for the tehina paste. I thin it out with water, lemon juice, salt and garlic powder, all of whose costs are neglibile. So 25 agurot for this techina. Very nutritious as well. In the non thinned out whole grain tehina paste, in 100 grams of paste, there are 975 mg of calcium, 7 times the amount of calcium found in the same amount of milk. Protein is 17 grams per 100 grams, a drop more than white meat chicken. 14.6 mg of iron, whereas chicken liver only has 9 mg in the same 100 grams. Wholesome, healthy, nutritious, and cheap.
Next thing on the menu is orange blended soup. This is a soup from my freezer, one that I will say costs nothing. I made chicken soup during the nine days with carrots, sweet potato, and pumpkin to give it flavor. I don't enjoy eating these vegetables with the soup- i prefer a clearer broth. I generally nosh on the "orange"s on friday, because i dont really eat lunch friday. Couldn't do that during the nine days, and knew it would get thrown out because it would spoil by the time I could eat it. I took the vegetables from the soup, blended it up in the food processor and made orange soup out of what otherwise would have gone to waste. So I'll say free. But if I had to guess the actual cost, the carrots were bought at 89 agurot a kilo, the pumpkin at 4 shekel a kilo and the sweet potato at 8 a kilo. This soup probably would have cost me somewhere around 6 shekel to make if I had made it from scratch instead of from leftovers.
We are also having grilled corn on the cob, free. My husband works as a security guard in a supermarket. An arab found a bought package of corn on the cob in his shopping cart that was outside the store, had no need for it, and told my husband to hold on to it in case anyone came to claim it. No one did. So free corn on the cob.
We're also having grilled chicken breast and chicken legs. I bought a whole chicken for 9.90 a kilo, and cut it up myself, and the total amount of chicken is probably at most half a kilo, so thats 5 shekel for chicken.
Last thing on the meal menu is barley and carrots. Cooked together in a pressure cooker. Probably cost me about 1 shekel total.
For desert, I am making mango sorbet, I bought mangos for 6 shekel a kilo, probably am using a kilo and a half worth of mango, and half a kilo of sugar, and the juice of half a lemon. Total cost 10 shekel for a lot, as opposed to the 25 shekel i could expect to get if I bought it in the store.
So in short, for shabbos:
Lachuch- 3 shekel
Chilbeh- 2 shekel
Mock chopped liver- .2 shekel
Tehina- .25 shekel
Orange soup- free
Corn on the cob- free
Grilled chicken- 5 shekel
Barley and carrots- 1 shekel
Mango sorbet- 10 shekel
Total cost for shabbos: 21.5 shekel. Score! (This doesn't count the bought bottle of grape juice for 11 shekel, of which we use 8 shekels worth for shabbos.)
:-D
You're all invited to my house for the meal!