Valentine's Day: gifts for your sweetie when you are completely broke

PC hearts H

Photo credit: hard to tell. Found on http://www.laughingriveryoga.com

Did I mention that H and I are on a $10 a day food budget right now? Just the luck of the draw, really. While I'm in forced unemployment, the running of the household is highly dependent on H's ability to snag overtime hours at the office. Due to how his office bills clients, he has to work additional hours to be eligible for overtime pay if he takes a paid vacation day. The the poor guy has to work like a demon all the time while my income has been reduced to very little.

We are very broke. While I'm not one for Valentine's day romance (blech...I really dislike canned romance of heart shaped boxes, red roses and prix fixe), we do like to spend a little extra time with one another the day before (NYC is a hot mess on Feb 14th) and we did get married this year. I'm still filled with fond, goofy, post-wedding feelings for H and I would like to give him a little gift, despite our very limited means.

So, I've decided to take a note from Jenny Steffens Hobick's Everyday Occasions and make him a little bag of sugar cookies, with royal icing designs. I'm going to print her adorable and happily free "Be Mine" tags, and affix them to a little bag of personalized cookies. I think I will make my cookies a little bit more psychedelic and little less rosebud-oriented. Her site has lots of other really cute V-day ideas worth checking out, if you want to do something a little extra special for your sweetie.

PC hearts H and H hearts cookies

Photo credit: Jenny Steffens Hobick's Everyday Occasions

Just in case you are interested in doing the same, here is the recipe I use for iced sugar cookies below.

Sugar cookies (for shaped cookies)

2 cups sifted flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup of butter (1 stick), room temperature

1 cup of granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

Sift together flour, salt, baking powder. In a separate bowl cream sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add the the flour mixture to the creamed mixture. Stir until combined (do not over stir). Chill the dough until firm (about an hour). Roll, cut out shapes and rechill. Bake cold cookies at 325, for about 10 minutes or until the edges start to brown.

When the cookies have cooled completely, you can then ice them with royal icing. Royal icing will start to harden quickly, and should be completely hard in 20 to 30 minutes.

Royal icing

2 large egg whites (or 4 Tbsp of meringue powder and 3 Tbsp of water)

1 pound icing/confectioner's sugar

juice of 1/2 a lemon

food coloring.

Pretty straightforward - combine until smooth. I usually split it into a few batches to add coloring.

If you want the effect of a full, smooth coat of icing, like in the pictures above, outline the cookie in a slightly thicker icing using an icing bag or a little plastic bag with the tip cut off. Then take the same icing and thin it slightly with water - so that it is just a little, tiny bit runnier than the outline icing and gently pipe it into the space left by the outline. It should smooth itself out, and harden in 20 minutes. Before then, though, you can throw in thinned icing in other colours and make little designs.

I'm pi$$ poor. Let's crock pot

It has been a really long time since I've updated this blog. As my repertoire of graduate jobs has started to dwindle and I enter the cold and money-poor month of January, I have been forced to squish my New York City life into a shrinking budget.

Luckily for me, Christmas brought the gift of slow cooker. NYC kitchens are tiny. As a result, I'm a bit of a fascist when it comes to determining what appliances will and will not be in my kitchen. For years I lived with a kitchen-aid mixer and an electric nettle. I lived that way very happily. Since moving in with my bf, my kitchen has been hammered with appliance gifts. Everything from food processors to toasters. Someone has even given me a knife sharpener...presumably for my one and only knife.

This Christmas my grandmother gave me a crock pot. At first, I was horrified - where-the-hell-am-I-going-to -put-this horrified. I quickly warmed up to the gift as it would give me two greater presents a) cheap tasty food and b) boyfriend cooking time.

Despite having owned an antique Westinghouse meter tall slow cooker for years, I've never actually cooked anything in a slow cooker. I used the Westinghouse machine for storage until I had to store it in my grandmother's garage pre-NYC move. Turns out, it's like an idiot's kitchen. I can throw anything in there and it, more or less, comes out ok.

Tonight I decided to work the crock pot to save cash on something on which I typically spend lots of cash - eating in Indian restuarants. NYC has a slew of great Indian restaurants. It is really easy to blow my weekly budget on one night of chicken makhani and a couple of Taj mahals......so I busted out the crock pot and it was cheap and amazing. Here is how I did it.

Most of these ingredients I had at home already - starting from scratch would be a bit of an investment.

Chicken Makhani a la Crock Pot

1/4 Ghee or oil (I'm really lazy about this. I usually throw in 2 Tbs of butter and 3 Tbs of olive oil)
2 lbs of chicken thighs, bones in, skin on (skin and rinse the thighs before cooking)
1/2 cup of onion minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp of ground cayenne
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 inch of fresh ginger, minced
2 tsp of curry powder (You can also buy this - old stuff will taste bad. I make my own by roasting until fragrant but not burnt 1/4 cup of coriander seeds, 2 Tbs of cumin seeds, 1 Tbs of black peppercorns, 2 tsp fenugreek, 2 cinnamon sticks, 1 Tbs of ground tumeric, 2 tsp of ground green cardamon or crushed pods, 1 tsp of whole cloves, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 dried red chili pepper with stem or a 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper. Fenugreek is really important to this recipe as it gives most Indian food found in U.S. Indian restuarants its characteristic flavour. Check your health food store or an indian food store for it. It is pretty cheap. Grind witha mortar and pestle or a coffee grinder).
2 Tbs Greek yogurt
1 cup of canned tomatos (diced. I used cherry tomatoes, but plum or beef are fine)
2 Tbs of butter (I almost always use salted, but you can sub unsalted)
1/4 cup of water
1 tsp garam masala (you can buy this but I have the stuff to make my own - toast until fragrant 3 Tbs of cumin seeds, 1 Tbs coriander seeds, 1 stick of cinnamon, 1 tsp of green cardamon powder - or 5 crushed cardamon pods, 5 cloves, 1 tsp of ground nutmeg, 1/4 tsp of allspice, 1 tsp of black peppercorns, half a star anise, 2 bay leaves. Grind with a mortar and pestle or with a coffee grinder.)
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp hot paprika
1 cup heavy whipping cream

Heat oil in a large frying pan. Skin and rinse chicken thighs before placing in pan. Fry the chicken on both sides until cooked and light brown on outside (about 15 minutes). Remove the thighs and place them in the bottom of the crock pot, leaving the oil in the frying pan. Add minced onions, salt and cayenne pepper to the pan and saute until onions brown slightly. Add garlic and ginger and saute until fragant, or about 2 minutes. Add curry powder and saute for 30 seconds. Add greek yogurt and saute until it is well asborbed into mixture (there should not be excess liquid). Add tomatoes and butter and saute until bubbling. Remove from heat. Add garam masala, paprika, and bay leave. Pour onto chicken in crock pot. Pour water into the frying pan to rinse the remaining mixture off of the pan and then pour into crock pot. Add 1 cup of heavy cream to crock pot and mix gently. Cook at high heat (setting 2) for 4 hours.
Serves 6 people.

I served this on whole grain basmati rice and it was soooooo good. We have tonnes for lunch tomorrow.

I had the spices before I made the dish so the total cost was a little lower than it might be for someone else.

2 lbs of chicken thighs - $5.50
1 cup of heavy cream - $1.50
2 Tbs of yogurt - $0.50 (2 cup tub of greek yogurt was $2.49)
ginger - $0.50
1/2 cup of onion - $0.40 (whole onion $0.80)
Butter - $1.00 -(two sticks $3.00)
Diced tomatoes - $1.00 (2 cup can ~$3.00)
2 cup of dry Basmati rice - $2.00 (2 lb bag $5.00)

Total cost - $12.40 for 6 people...not bad. Salt, bay leaves and premixed spices would cost another $10 in total. The amount used in this recipe is about $1's worth.

Most importantly, a Taj Mahal will run about $4. A double Taj Mahal beer will cost about $7 in a grocery store.