Cheese!

Buttercup Brie & Brie Nangis

After discovering the Fair Food Farmstand @RdgTerminalMkt during the Greater Philadelphia Food Stamp Challenge I had to go back and start tasting some of the local cheeses on offer. Tonight I picked up a couple of rather wonderful products: Cherry Grove Farm's Buttercup Brie and Linden Dale Farm's Dalencay.

The Buttercup Brie is the perfect cheese to serve folks who claim they don't like "stinky cheese". It's soft and lactic and has only a hint of the classical "brie mushroom" flavor. Rather surprisingly, it stood up well against the Brie Nangis (from Downtown Cheese) with it's own sweet personality - a sort of charming cousin to it's more aggressive French relative.

Dalencay Goat Cheese

The Delancy ash rind goat cheese is another creature altogether. The slightly scary ash rind conceals an wonderfully melting core of mild goat cheese that overwhelms any bitterness from the ash - just dig in.

Both are available in limited quantities so swing by after work and grab some.

#foodstampchallenge Saturday Summary & Thoughts

Saturday started out great. We made a couple nice omelets with 4 eggs, some of the ham and a few sliced of sweet pepper and diced onion. Total cost about $1.25. Then we went crazy and drove out to Atlantic City. Not exactly a food stamp friendly move, eh? (I did hit my first ever royal flush on video poker at Revel so maybe it was meant to be.)

If we had stayed home, we would have eaten the last two servings of leftovers, the frittata and eggplant pasta, for lunch and a potato curry with rice for dinner. So now we'll have the last of the leftovers for Sunday "late lunch" and depending on how hungry we are the potato curry for a late supper. Because we skipped Saturday's food stamp lunch, we still have two apples one of which might turn into some sort of chutney for the curry.

This has been quite a process and we made quite a few mistakes. What I thought was good planning carried an unconscious assumption that I could run out and buy whatever I happened to need if I forgot something. Including a variety of foods, especially protein, was far more difficult than I imagined and although I though I'd done pretty well at that the leftovers did indeed prove boring.

Shopping at our two local supermarkets was a mixed blessing. I was able work the sale brochures pretty well but the lack of bulk options for things like legumes meant my main protein sources were repeated doses of chicken and eggs. In addition I should have exercised the Fair Food Farmstand double dollars deal for it's full value. They have, for example, a locally sourced beef bologna that, while relatively expensive, could have been "free" with their $10 in matching food. That would have provided a savory boost to weekday lunches that the relatively bland ham did not.

Interestingly, we have quite a bit of food left. There are a few mushrooms, some potatoes, 2 chicken leg quarters, a whole loaf of bread, a little ham, half a pound of rice, two apples, scallions, and most of a celery. That could probably stretch to two more dinners (for two) and a lunch.

#foodstampchallenge Sunday Brunch

After running off the rails on Saturday, it's time to finish up the challenge with a little style. So we slept in and made brunch with the rest of our eggs, potatoes, mushrooms, the last of the peppers and half an onion: Mushroom Omelet and Sauteed Vegetables.

Ingredients

2 medium potatoes, diced
1/2 large onion, diced
1/2 sweet red pepper, diced
1/2 sweet green pepper, diced
Handful mushrooms, sliced
3 eggs
Milk
Salt, pepper to taste

Method

Prepare the vegetables as shown

Heat oil in a large saute pan over high heat and add the potatoes. Redce the heat to medium and cook covered until the potatoes begin to brown. Turn the potatoes over and continue to cook covered until they are nicely browned and begin to soften.

Meanwhile, fry the mushroom slices in a little butter until they soften and give up their water.

Transfer the potatoes to a plate and dump all  the remaining vegetables into the pan. Add a little more oil if necessary. Saute the vegetables until the begin to soften and the onions start to color a little. Return the potatoes to the pan, mix well, cover and remove from heat.

Whisk the eggs with a couple tablespoons of milk. Heat a tablespoon of butter in a 9" non-stick pan until the foam subsides. Pour in the eggs and shake the pan in a circular motion, tipping from side to side until the omelet begins to form. When the eggs are almost done scatter the mushrooms ove the top third of the omelet and fold over. Flip the omelet over and allow to settle off heat for a few minutes.

Divide the vegetables and omelet and serve.

Cost:

Potatoes - $1.00
Onion - $0.80
Peppers $1.00
Mushrooms - $0.00
Eggs: $0.51
Total: $3.31/$1.66 per serving