A New Family Favorite - Sabanekh

Photo from: http://theactorsdiet.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/ahhhh/

Our Sabanekh turns out just a bit more red/brown than this.

People have asked what we are eating on this here experiment of ours, wondering if rice and beans are our main staples, or maybe ramen noodles.  Well, actually, I have a recipe that incorporates some of those elements, but is far from the "poor people food" we're used to.  See what you think and I promise, next month, to give a better play-by-play of each meal.

Today KC and I made a big pot of Egyptian Spinach Sauce, a hearty, new family favorite. This is a recipe we learned from our favorite resident Egyptian, Heba.  She's living with us for the school year and teaches Arabic at our school.  I was introduced to this dish a few days after she moved in.  It was our first real culinary expedition together, and it ended so beautifully, my whole family frequently requests this awesome one dish wonder.

"Heba, do you know any recipes for spinach?" I asked as I peered in shame at the bunch of spinach in the fridge on the brink of going bad.  I felt ashamed because, since Heba moved in, I realize how much food we still waste, even though we try to be diligent and careful.  Egyptians waste nothing. 

"Yes.  I have one." She reported.  Then she got a gleam in her eye, "It is called Sabanekh and I think you will like it."  Just so you know, Sabanekh is easy for her to say, but not me.

I had made several of our favorites for Heba previous to this, and she had gotten to know the spices and variety we enjoy in our cooking, but this was her first time to show me something new and she was excited. 

"It's very quick and I think you have everything.  You have tomato paste?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You have vegetarian soup stuff, what is this called?  The water from the soup?" she mimes ladeling broth from a bowl of soup and bringing it to her lips.

"You mean broth?"

"Yes, broth."

"The only vegetarian soup stuff I have is some seasoning packets from ramen.  Will that work?"  Everything we make together starts out vegetarian because all of her meat has to be Halal, which is a Muslim form of Kosher.  Heba eats plenty of meat, but it has all been slaughtered in a specific way, prayed over and purchased in a Halal market.

"Yes, that will work." 

Heba smiled and went to work, so excited to bring us one of the great Egyptian comfort dishes.  It takes about an hour, tops, to prepare, and truly it is the soul food of Pharaohs.

Sabanekh – Egyptian Spinach and Rice

This recipe comes is borrowed from egyptianfoods.org, with some adaptations. 

Ingredients
1 bunch fresh spinach (cut into small strips)
3 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, chopped fine
2-3 bouillon cubes (or ramen packets)
3 tablespoon tomato paste
1 T coriander
1 T cumin
1/2 tsp. hot chili powder (cayenne is great)
3 cups water
salt
pepper

Directions

Wash spinach well and cut into small sized strips. I usually take a few leaves, and slice them together into strips, leave the stem, not problem. (This technique is called a chiffonade. It does not have to be perfect, you just want to get them into longer, smaller strips.) Set aside.

In a large pot or stirfry pan add chopped onion, garlic and butter and sauté until soft.

Add spinach, tomato paste, bouillon, spices, and stir around until well coated.  This is actually such a rich sauce that you can hide all kinds of pureed veggies in it, I espescially like carrots and zucchini.

Add 2-3 cups of broth. (You can add or decrease broth, depending on how thick you’d like it to be, check while cooking and add more or less broth. End result should be thick, but watery enough to be like a thick sauce — hope that makes sense.).

Bring to a boil, and simmer for 20- 30 minutes on low heat.

Serve next to (or on top of) rice or browned fideo noodles and with pita bread for scooping.

Treat Jar

It was the end of the afternoon on Wednesday, the kids and I shared a snack in the living room and talked about our current state of affairs.
“So, we used our last three dollars of the grocery money I set aside for the month. We spent it on our pop yesterday afternoon.”

“Well, thank goodness for the treat jar.” Brennan, the oldest, says. “We probably have at least twenty bucks in there.”

“And, with the new system of putting money in the jar when we don’t do what you asked us to do, when you asked us to do it, is going to add A LOT.” This comes from Caleb the ten year old.

“I hope not. You guys are never just disobedient by telling us ‘No, I won’t do that,’ but I hope you can get better at not blowing us off so much when we have to ask you multiple times to do something.”

“I had to put a quarter in yesterday,” says Hannah, the youngest. “I waited until the second time you asked me to come to the table and I had to pay.”

“The thing is, guys, we’re almost always willing to negotiate, ‘just another minute while I finish what I’m doing,’ but you all have gotten to where we don’t even have that conversation, you just wait until you are ready, rather than coming when I ask you.”

“Yeah, I had to give $2 on Monday, $1.25 to the jar yesterday, and I haven't put any in today. I think Monday was an all time high.”

“Well, considering it’s costing you a quarter for each time you don’t respond when you’re asked to do something, it does seem pretty high, but you are getting better.”

“True, but that day you were standing over me, ‘KC, please do your chore. Oh, you didn’t get up, that’s 25 cents."

"Yeah and you just laid there on the couch."

" 'KC, you need to do your chore. Oh, you're still laying there. Okay, now it’s 50 cents.’ "

"And you were laughing like it was a funny joke, but you still didn't get up."

"You got all the way up to a dollar before I got to it.” She’s right, I stood there like a taxi ticker, hiking up the price every time I had to ask her. I don’t generally set my kids up to fail, but this has been an interesting new plan, and it has gotten quick results.

“Anyway, even today has been better than yesterday for all of you. Do you think it’s in keeping with the spirit of our experiment to use that money for whatever we need in order to get by until the end of the month? “ I ask.

Brennan gives an emphatic, “Yes! Don’t you always tell us about when you guys were broke and you’d go searching for change so you could buy a diet Coke?”

“True,” I said.

KC turns the conversation. “And, did you match what we gave, too?”

“No. But I think I might.”

“I think you should. It’s not a ton of money, but even ten or fifteen bucks will go a long way at this point, right. Especially if we mostly just need milk and stuff. Plus, did you take that food processor back?”

“Not yet, but what do you think?”

“What are you going to get for it?” Brennan asks.

“Something around fifty dollars.”

“Fifty dollars! Take it back. We’ll be fine. We can totally make it 10 days on fifty dollars.”

I love these kids. All the little gray areas I was grappling with separated quickly into black and white at their counsel. Good enough for me.

Cheating

So, I spent my last $3 cash after school yesterday. I bought a 32 oz. caffeine free Diet Coke for me and a 44 oz. Dr. Pepper for the kids to share. Those purchases weren't food, strictly speaking, but I used my grocery money anyway. I know it wasn't the best use of 3 bucks, but Monday's can be rough and we really needed the boost. 
I still have 2 weeks to go and there are a few factors I'm considering as I rifle through my wallet, all but empty except for a bunch of receipts showing me the paper trail of where I've been.  I think I may be breaching the integrity of my experiment, but I'd love to know what you think.

1. Maybe I should take the kids up on their offer and match to our grocery budget what they gave to charity this month.  That would give me another $15.
2. The jar of cash and change that gets collected from the laundry and other instances where kids owe me because they are late could support our soda habit for the duration.
3. A couple of weeks ago I bought a really nice food processor from Costco.  My old one, that I got 14 years ago died after a long useful life, an I figured the new purchase would help me a lot in my food prep.  However, I got it home, started this experiment and never took it out of the box.  Somewhere in the back of my mind I kept thinking I might need the 50 bucks.  It's a bute and I hate to take it back, but if I do and I get the $50 to use on groceries, is that cheating? 

 

Let me know what you think.  In the mean time, I'm grateful to report that I left $30 of grocery money in the bank so I could start the Bountiful Baskets program online, and I should get my first basket on Saturday.  I'm so excited. Also, I'm going to take inventory of what we have on hand and post it here.  Maybe that will help us all make a more informed decision on how to proceed, and whether we need  to "cheat", or not.

Birthday Traditions - An Epic Post

I survived feeding and entertaining 16 young party guests and a neighborhood of boys yesterday. One down, three to go. All of my kids have Holiday season birthdays. It’s fantastic! I only say that with slight sarcasm because, the truth is, when they were all born in November and December I was thrilled. Now that they all have so much going on, on top of the regular holiday stuff, this time of year leaves me overwhelmed and exhausted, a lot. In fact, as much as I love the Holiday’s, I tend to turn in to Ebenezer Scrooge when things get added to our calendar. I think that’s why every fourth quarter for the last few years finds me trying to simplify my life in a really complicated way. Like when I decided these things:

1. Seeing if we could go more than a month without entering a grocery store, thus having to make everything we eat from scratch.
2. Buying nothing new for a whole holiday season. We saved money and the gifts we gave were simpler, but it took lots of thrift store hunting and handcrafting to fit the bill for birthdays and Christmas that year.
3. Cutting our grocery budget in half, just to see what we can do with what we give away. I’m not sure that this actually simplifies anything, but it seemed like an interesting experiment to try.

So, the birthday party. All of my youngest daughter's girl friends from her Sunday School class, two families of siblings, and two friends from school came to help celebrate her big day. Plus, we invited the whole neighborhood out for cupcakes. Not everyone came, but we did end up with about 10 little boys and their moms from various parts of our street. Some of the best parts of the party were:

• I released myself from the notion of having a themed party . We just had a treasure hunt, played a bunch of fun games like charades and balloon stomp, and experimented with dry-ice in bowls of hot soapy water (it’s fascinating, you should try it sometime .
• I didn’t buy any pricey party favors. The day after Halloween, Hannah and I went to the candy story and found lots of cute Halloween themed specialty candies seriously discounted. We bought what we needed and only spent $3 for all 16 of our party participants.

It was a great time, and I stayed in a very small budget. Between the balloons, the dry ice and the candy I only spent ten bucks. We ate snacks we already had (popcorn and fruit from Grandma and Grandpa’s trees) and cupcakes from food storage cake mixes. Good, cheap, fun.

So, what does this kind of craziness have to do with Live On What You Give? Well, beginning last year we started a tradition of birthday service. The idea is that our birthday is a pretty big thing to be grateful for, and maybe there are things that we can do to show our appreciation.

Past Birthday Service projects have typically been simple, take a meal to a family with a sick mom, donate blood, shovel a neighbor’s driveway, help clean our church. The key is that whatever we do, we serve together. Sharing a meal - some of us help with the cooking and some of us help with the delivery. Donating blood –one of us donates, some of us are support team and some of us stay behind with the younger kids, preparing dinner and making things nice for the donor’s return. You get the idea.

For yesterday’s service, we decided to invite all of the neighborhood children for birthday treats. So, early in the morning Hannah and I got up and made 4 dozen cupcakes in two flavors, devil’s food and vanilla (we turned those purple). The day was CRAZY, I had a presentation to prepare, a class to teach, a husband to pick up in Salt Lake, and carpool to run. There was no time for icing all of those cupcakes. But, inspiration comes often when you needed most, so here’s what we did...

“Okay, Hannah and I made these cupcakes to share with everyone.” I told them as I put all 48 of them in front of them on the table.

Wide eyes quickly counted how many cupcakes there could be.

“But, wait,” one little girl said. “How come there’s no icing on them?”

“Well, we thought we’d let you guys in on that fun.” I feel like Tom Sawyer tricking all of his friends into paying him for the chance to whitewash his fence.

“We each take 3 cupcakes. One is for you to eat and two are to give away. If there are enough left in the end, everyone can eat another cupcake.” I instructed.

“This is part of my birthday service. You guys get to help me ice all of these cupcakes.”

“Wait, we’re giving them away?” All the little girls shared looks of confusion.

Then, one girl asked, “So, we’re sharing these with neighbor kids? It’s like a service, right?”

Exactly. As all of the other girls began to understood they went to work . I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happy group of cupcake decorators.

When the neighbors didn’t seem to be coming on time, they all started to get anxious that the love and effort they had put into those cupcakes would have been in vain.

“No one’s coming. What should we do?” Hannah asked, concern in her voice.

“Take the trays of cupcakes and go outside. I promise you will find plenty of kids to give them to.”

“You mean we can just go and give them all away?” a little girl asked.

“Yep. And I know those kids are going to love all your hard work.” I said.

There was a collective cheer as they pulled trays of cupcakes off the table and headed for the door. When they got there, they found a bunch of kids and moms ready to be served. It was awesome. I think it is one of the best birthday parties we’ve ever thrown.

Where We Stand Today

The Live On What You Give Experiment is running from October 20 through January 20th.  I draw cash for groceries and other food purchases on the 20th of each month.  The amount of cash we allow ourselves is set and equal to the amount of cash we donate to help individuals and families in need right in our own area.  You can read more about where our cash contributions go, here and here.

For this particular experiment I did not stock up.  I did not inventory what I had and decide what I might need in order to make it to the end of the month.  I also didn't plan any contingencies for camping, Halloween, or birthday parties (we have one tomorrow). Those all had to fall into the budget.  So, here's where we stand.

We went camping with cousins and I scrounged up all the granola bars and snack items I could find in our food storage.  I also brought hot chocolate, cereal, paper cups, bowls and spoons, all from food storage.  We bought french bread and soda on sale and made other meal contributions from our garden.  It was amazing, because in the past I remember spending upwards of $50 for a simple over night camping trip.  This time we pretty much only brought what we had.

For Halloween, I bought the big bag-o-candy.  I considered taking it back since we were going to our friends' neighborhood, but we ended up with a few of our own trick-or-treaters before we left, so the candy stays.  I hope I can make it last through the holidays. 

Earlier in the day Don had a party at work.  Food storage and garden items came in handy for the seven+ layer dip he brought.  We had beans, el pato hot sauce, and olives from the pantry.  Our garden was prolific with onions, peppers and tomatoes this year.  Only three items came recently from the store: cheese, sour cream and cilantro.

Before trick-or-treating, we had a big chili party with our friends.  There were three families and three pots of chili.  I found a white chili recipe on allrecipes and made it my own, using canned turkey instead of chicken breasts and only 2 cans of beans instead of 5 (who uses that many beans?).  I also added one cup of cream.  The cream and the cheese were the only items that did not come from food storage.  It was delicious and we ate most of it.

So, I have made a handful of trips to the store in the last 10 days and am left with less than $100 to get us through to November 20, when I can draw cash again. It may not sound that hard, but we are foodies, and there are six of us. I have to say, that in order to make it, I think I'm going to have to implement "No More Grocery Shopping" again and stay out of the store.  Costco is like a death trap in this experiment. 

I'll update again soon to give details on where we are.

Live On What You Give

I'm back for a little visit to my favorite personal blog.  Let me catch you up a bit to where we've been, where we are now, and where I hope we're headed.

1. In October of 2008 we began a month-long experiment to stay out of the grocery store.  With some preparation, lots of trial and error, a little innovation and much inspiration we made it a whole month and the experiment was a success.
2. In August of 2009 my husband lost his job and we were free-falling for almost a year.  Self employment has its perks, but financial security is not one of them.  We lived on severance pay, savings, tax-returns, unemployment benefits and food storage.  After nearly 12 months of that we depleted most of our stores.  We came through it alive, with our marriage stronger and our family closer, so I'd say that was a success.
3. In October 2009 we decided to have a Nothing New holiday season.  Some of that is chronicled here.  It was also a success, though I can't remember how much fidelity we devoted to that particular experiment.
4. In August of 2010, my husband began working for a new company for half the salary he'd made at his previous job.  Still, it was better than unemployment or the poor house, so we made it work.  The trick with that company was that they rarely paid on time.  In fact, we spent the entire holiday season from November-December of 2010 without being paid.  That was tough.  I will admit that our overdraft line of credit was what kept us going through that period.  We spent a year planing that game.
5. In August of 2011 we got a new job.  It is going well.  They pay on time and are good to work with. He is happy and in his element there.  I am adjusting to the time it takes him to commute.
6. We once had an emergency fund that covered several months of expenses, no car payment and no credit card debt.  Now we have $1000 in our emergency fund, a car payment and a little bit of debt from our year of robbing Peter to pay Paul after we got the job that rarely paid.  We are still working towards and waiting for the restoration of all things.

In keeping with fourth quarter money saving traditions of the past, I'm back with another super personal family experiment.  This one goes hand in hand with No More Grocery Shopping and is called our "Live On What You Give" experiment.  Here's how it works.
Each month we donate a certain amount of money to charity.  This is beyond tithe that is one of the tenets of our faith. I've been thinking a lot lately about the level of our giving and if it accurately reflects our ability to give.  I've also thought about just how far those funds are able to go and that's where I came to the inspiration for this experiment.  What if I had to live on what I give? What if I can't spend at the grocery store any more than I have given to meet the needs of others around me?  What if we could only provide for our children what others were willing to donate? What if my family had to live on the donations of another family, would it be enough?  How would I make up the difference if it wasn't?  These are just a few of the questions I have.

So, this time of year, as we make room for more, we give away toys, clothing, canned goods and participate in fund raisers for local food pantries and shelters.  What if this season we can only spend to the level that we give.   For instance, if I donate $X to charity, I can only spend $X on groceries.  When I buy gifts for my kids' birthdays (they are all during the holidays), that gift can only be to the level that I am also able to donate for a child in need.  If we have a holiday meal, I can only make and use items that I will also donate to a family in need.

Mostly, I want to test two quotes from wise men of my faith. 
The first is this:

“You cannot give yourself poor in this work.”

Marion G. Romney

And , the second:

“A person cannot give a crust to the Lord without receiving a loaf in return.”

Melvin J. Ballard

The Promise of Beans

So, I promised I'd post a recipe for beans. My good friend, Lindsey, posted this on her Facebook page and I tried them. Delicious. Simple. Straight forward. The only thing I did differently was add extra salt and spices. I'm a girl who likes a lot of spice.

We ate the beans and rice covered in a savory chicken broth with cheese, avocados, and home made picante. It was a perfect mix of fresh and food storage. So delicious and nutritious. And, the whole meal was gluten-free, which is one of my new pursuits.