Eating on a Budget: Making a meal for 5 with $15
Cooking a meal for five on a fifteen dollar budget was difficult. Finding a recipe that could be purchased for less than that was hard enough, let alone baked easily. We finally settled upon pizza- a basic, easy to make, and enjoyed by many, with different options available. This was a popular dish at the banquet, and proved simply to buy, cook, and bake. The recipe was found on “The Simple Dollar”, and could’ve been made for around six dollars, provided some of the needed ingredients were already sitting around the kitchen or hiding in the cupboards.
The first thing on the group’s agenda after settling on making a pizza was setting up a date to get together and purchase ingredients. After working out availability, we found that Reach and Julia were unavailable for most of the times Laura Beth, Gabriel, and I were. The three of us went on to purchase the ingredients, Gabriel and I riding with Laura Beth to Harris Teeter in her car. Looking around, we knew this was a more-expensive grocery store, but we were sure the ingredients we needed would be available here. On our list was flour, which was an easy find, water, easily available from the tap, olive oil, dry yeast, which was more expensive and harder to find than we had hoped, salt, tomato sauce, oregano, cheese, and pepperoni. We decided to circumvent buying spices and tomato sauce, and just bought pre-made pizza sauce. It was a tad less time and money consuming. The pepperoni was one of the most expensive ingredients, other than the yeast and olive oil. The total was around fourteen dollars, just under our price limit. If we didn’t buy things that weren’t laying around the house and didn’t use pepperoni, we would’ve managed to stay well under half the amount given, probably even manage to stay well under half of our limit.
After gathering the ingredients, the group met a week later at Laura Beth’s house, with the exception of Reach, who had a Chemistry exam. Cooking began with us mixing a cup of warm water with 3 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, a tablespoon of yeast, and a teaspoon of salt, with a mixing machine. Fortunately, we had electric mixers to aid us in the process of baking, I can only imagine the process being even more difficult without electric tools. We mixed until the dough formed a ball, and then checked to see how sticky it was. It was sticky enough to leave a residue on our hands, so we added more flour and water, which did the trick. We then kneaded the dough, and let it sit. Next, the dough was flattened out, and baked in the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit for six minutes. When it was finished, we popped the few bubbles that remained. We were able to skip making sauce and went straight into baking the pizza, layering our pizza. We spread sauce, added cheese, then layered more sauce and cheese on top of that, with the other side having layered pepperoni. When finished, we baked the pizza in the oven at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for sixteen minutes, and then checked to see if it was done. We ended up adding 4 minutes to the total, to make the crust a tad more crisp. After that, all that was left was slicing the pizza up and presenting it.
At the potluck, as soon as I got in line, I heard someone proclaim, “Holy shit, there’s pizza!”. That’s all I needed to hear to know our meal was a success. By the time I got to the pan, there were only three slices left. I took one for myself, and by the time I was done, the pan was empty. I took the pan back to my room, our meal was gone before some people had even arrived at the potluck. I cleaned it, and returned it to Laura Beth, which concluded our meal.
Looking back, there are many things that we could’ve changed in our recipe. We neglected to use Kosher salt, as it was more expensive than normal salt, and bypassed making our own sauce by buying premade sauce. This was less healthy, and we didn’t get the experience of making that ourselves, but proved effective in the long run. We also could’ve saved money by not buying toppings such as pepperoni.
It should be noted that this project cannot accurately portray how a family of 4-5 can survive on a budget as low as this. There are factors to consider, such as job stability, disasters, conflict, different recipes, utilities, and the like. If this project lasted longer, perhaps it could be more accurate in portraying the struggle, as well as if we hadn’t had transportation or the ability to use cookware to easily mix the dough and knead it.
When I began this class, I wasn’t a big fan of food, or knowing anything about it. I came into the class ignorant to anything in the realm of food, from farming to free trade, organics and processed foods, and the like. I felt like most of the class was biased and well informed on the topic, while I sat in the back ignorant to it all, feeling like my world was suddenly under attack. I was a picky eater, and still am, but as time went by, discussion and experience in this class allowed my eating habits to improve, and my horizons expand. Through service learning, I was able to plant food, watch it grow, and eventually eat and try it for myself, a huge milestone in my eating habits, as the vegetables I would eat are very limited in number. I’ve become more aware of what I buy at the grocery store in order to eat more healthy, while balancing my budget. I’m still not too keen on knowledge of organics, as it seems like another label for manufacturers to slap on products to gain consumers. Gardening is one way to insure you know where your food comes from, and allows you to sustain your own diet. As Erica Strauss says in Zombies vs. The Joy of Canning: Motivation in the Productive Home, “Be prepared for zombies! Grow a garden!” (Strauss 97).
To conclude, it’s reasonable to say that I no longer have a huge problem with food, as much as I am slowly beginning to learn to cope with food. I’ve learned to expand my horizons in the way of food, which has allowed me to gain a taste for new things and eat healthier. My views on food have changed, as Kingsolver says, “I find myself fundamentally allied with a vegetarian position in every way except one: however selectively, I eat meat.” (Kingsolver 187). I’ve found that I’d rather grow my own food or buy it local than eat from a chain restaurant (Except when I go through withdrawal from greasy food), despite not liking vegetables for many years. It’s been a great experience with service learning, that’s empowered me to be more proactive when it comes to food.I hope I can better expand my food horizons, so that one day I’ll be more open to food and eating choices.
Works Cited
Bauer, Holly, Barbara Kingsolver, and Erica Strauss. Food Matters: A Bedford Spotlight Reader. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
"A Guide to Making Inexpensive and Delicious Homemade Pizza - The Simple Dollar." The Simple Dollar A Guide to Making Inexpensive and Delicious Homemade Pizza Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Dec. 2014.
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