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Welcome to the jungle.  I will not promise fun or games.  I will promise recipes.

Midnight in Pasta

I think every post I’ve made has mentioned sardines. Their slight saltiness is a great addition to so many things, they are really good for you and are a pretty cheap ingredient to boot. When you buy them canned, you can get them packed in water, olive oil, mustard or tomato juice. Usually I get the ones packed in oil, and I’ll use a little bit of that oil in whatever I’m doing with them.

So how do you eat these guys? Well, one of my favorite ways to eat them is mashed up with goat cheese, a little avocado, salt, and pepper on toast. But some of us think that that isn’t enough for a meal because we are really judgmental or our mothers are in our heads about eating balanced meals and this isn’t balanced enough because there are no vegetables and I’m totally not talking about myself. So I also love this really simple pasta dish with arugula and Parmesan cheese. The best thing about this pasta deal is that it’s really flexible; you can sub out the arugula for your favorite leafy green (I really like spinach too) and the Parmesan for another hard cheese (or or or Goat Cheese if you’re feeling rich (that was not a pun on purpose (A parenthetical to a parenthetical? Really?)))

Basically, what’s going to go on here is we’re going to make a really basic sauce with some sauteed onions, mushrooms, and sardines, and toss spaghetti with the sauce, cheese, and arugula. The heat from the pasta and the sauce wilts the arugula just a bit, which is capital “g” great. Here’s the detail:

Sardine Pasta

5 oz Spaghetti (or Linguine or Fettuccine)

½ tin sardines in olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

¼ large onion, diced

3-4 crimini mushrooms, sliced

1 cup + 1 tbsp vegetable broth OR sweet vermouth OR bourbon

1 teaspoon flour

salt

pepper

dried basil

dried oregano

dried thyme

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp butter

½ cup Parmesan cheese

Cook the pasta according to the package directions, until al dente*.

In a pan, heat the olive oil and butter on medium heat. Add the onion, and a dash of salt and pepper, and cook until the onion is sort of translucent, about 5ish minutes. Add the garlic and mushrooms, and cook for another 3-5 minutes. You know that you’re ready to go when the mushrooms have gone from a sort of dry looking beige to a nice, damp looking bronze color. Taste this guy. Is it good yet? The answer is probably yes. If you like your food a little salty, hold off on adding more salt. How about spicy? Throw in some red pepper flakes.

Now, for a little bit of a difficult part. We’re going to make this into a sauce by reducing the broth/vermouth/bourbon in the pan. If you know how to do that, skip to the next graph. If that doesn’t make sense, keep reading and I’ll teach you how to do it. Take that broth or booze and add about 2 tablespoons of it to the pan. Turn the heat up to medium high, and let the mushrooms and onions absorb the liquid. What we’re trying to do is make sure that there’s always about 1 tablespoon of liquidy stuff in the pan. So as the liquid looks like its almost gone, add more. We’re going for a sauce with about the consistency of gravy. If you don’t use all of the stock/booze, that’s okay. And if you need a little more, that’s cool too. When you think you’ve got it to a good place, taste it again. Does it need more salt? Now you can add a little more. Still not spicy enough? You know what to do.

When you’re satisfied with your reduction, add one more tablespoon of the liquid, the sardines and a sprinkle of basil, oregano and thyme. Mash up the sardines while they are in the pan so that they sort of become one with our reduction, and let that simmer for about 2 more minutes. Finally, combine the pasta, the reduction, and the cheese. Mix it well, and then eat it with your face.

Also, thanks friends for your support.  I’m going to try to be more quality than this last week.

This is me acknowledging that I am a bad blogger

I recognize that I told you guys that I’d post about this salad like 6 months ago (in internet time), and I still haven’t.  I’m sorry. BUTBUTBUT I’m totally about to make up for that!  First, though, I want to address that salad.

[here’s where a picture of the salad would be; enjoy this gif of Psyduck instead]

So the salad was really… beige.  It was a bed of arugula topped with chopped up sardines (I swear that I’m legitimately obsessed with sardines) and an avocado relish.  Here’s what you do:

1. For the avocado relish: in a bowl, combine a chopped 1/2 onion, 1 chopped avocado, about 10 quartered grape tomatoes, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil.  Stir that shit until it’s mixed.
2. For the sardines: Put about a half tin of canned sardines in a bowl with a dash of salt, and enough red pepper flakes to make the mix a little spicy.  Mash the saltines until they aren’t whole.
3. For the salad: put some arugula in a bowl, then the avocado relish, then the sardines.  Put in face hole.

So with that out of the way, how am I making up for being a bad blogger?  Here’s a preview of two things that I’m going to write about in the next 24 hours (feel free to call me out on it too!):

This was a really tasty pasta dish with arugula, mushrooms, and sardines.  I’ll teach you about it first, because I made it first.

And this is what I ate for dinner tonight.  Notice how I got really excited and started eating it before I took a picture.  Also note how I’m not telling you what it is yet.  It’s sort of a surprise.  If you’re wondering if this is what you think it is, you are probably right.

sanctimonypony asked: No such thing as too many feels about canned peaches!

Look, I have a lot of feels about canned peaches.  They’re really good for desserts and making marinades for chicken.  But if you’ve found 9 pages worth of feels for them… you might want to redirect a few of those feels to something else.  Maybe canned mandarin oranges, or fresh peaches, or global warming.  Anything really.

I Went to the Store and All I Got Was These Groceries

Sorry that I’m not sorry about that title. What the title does do, is say that I bought food. I went during the middle of the day, which was pretty nice; the store wasn’t very crowded, so I was able to browse much more than I typically do. This is what I got:

• 1 can black beans @ $1.39
• 2 tins Sardines @ $2.89 each (seriously, sardines are a magical food. I’ll be talking a lot about them; they might be one of the cheapest forms of animal based protein on the market.)
• 4 avocados @ $.99 each
• 1/2 lb leeks @ $.98
• 2 1/3 lb potatoes @ $2.35
• 4 grapefruit @ $2.87
• 1 bunch of tomatoes @ $1.99
• 1 container (~1/5lb) arugula @ $2.42
• 4oz Cotswold Cheese @ 4.41 

With tax, the bill came out to $26.74. I personally try to budget $30 for groceries a week, and this should be enough to make about 14 meals (admission: I don’t usually eat breakfast because of reasons, which I know is not good for me). I think most of these items should be pretty familiar to you, except for the Cotswold, which is a really great cheese that’s a lot like sharp cheddar with scallions in it. So what am I going to make with this stuff?

• Sardine and Arugula salad with Avocado relish
• Potato tacos with red beans and rice
• Vegetable Barley Stew
• Grilled Cheese with Arugula and grapefruit salad

Also, note that I’m using a few things that I already had in the house. Check in tomorrow, and I should have instructions for this salad. Here’s a teaser: it’s a salad.

Cooking is easy. Making good food is easy. Good food doesn’t have to cost out the ass.

If you started laughing somewhere during those three sentences, I’ve only got one more thing to say to you: sit down and listen up, cuz you’re about to get schooled. For everybody else, thanks for taking those sentences seriously. Most of us in the fresh-out-of-college or still-in-college stage of life are, quite frankly, broke as shit but still want to put tasty things in and around our mouths. I want to show a way to do that.

To do that, I’ll be posting three different types of things that are sort of inter-related. Every week (I’m not going to promise what day because my life isn’t in a place where I can make those sorts of promises yet), I’ll post a grocery list. It’ll serve as a preview of what ingredients I’ll be using for the next week, as well as showing what sorts of things one can get on a budget. I’ll also use these posts to talk about how I think about the impact that my grocery shopping has on my wallet. Obviously, then, I’ll post instructions for making delicious eats, and also tell stories about the food. Oh, and there will be pictures. Finally, I’ll post some tips for other ways that certain ingredients can be used.

One more thing: this is tumblr, and as such should be an interactive experience. My ask will always be open for suggestions, questions, requests, harassment, and things of that nature. Or if you’ve got a 9 page treatise on the merits of canned peaches that I just NEED to see, you can email it to grubbist@gmail.com and I’ll maybe probably not read all 9 pages. Because that is too many feels about canned peaches.

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