Author Archives: Meg
Food 101: Pantry Staples
I realized the other day that Erik and I throw around the term “pantry staples” a lot in our posts. However if you’re not one to cook all that much, or are just getting into cooking on your own, you might not be aware of what types of food we mean (and there’s nothing wrong with that!). So I’ve compiled a list of pantry staples to help give you an idea of what ingredients are good to have on hand all the time.
Getting the Most Out of Ingredients
When you don’t have handfuls of money to throw at things, it’s generally a good idea to use all of something that you’ve spent money buying. For some things this is easy to do. Any pantry staple you buy and then just keep in said pantry until it’s used up. For other ingredients though it isn’t so obvious, and a lot of times you end up throwing things out. I’m going to give you some hints on how to use up less obvious leftovers.
Cheese Review: Goat’s Milk Ricotta
Last week I told of our adventures in Limburger cheese – a cheese that we ordered special from the internet. This cheese was a much more spur of the moment purchase. A few weekends ago on our way to the Garlic Festival we visited a local dairy farm. I mostly just wanted to hang out with the goats, but we also wanted to buy some super fresh cheese.
The cheese is that way guys!
It was really nice there because they had a large selection of fresh cheeses made from cow, sheep, and goat milk. They also had fresh milk, butter, and eggs. We spent a really long time in front of the refrigerator case trying to decide which cheese to try. We probably would have bought more if we’d remembered to bring an insulated bag. But we didn’t want to risk buying a lot of cheese and having it all go bad sitting in the car all day. Anyway, after a lot of debate we finally decided to buy the goat’s milk ricotta.
Cheese Review: Limburger Cheese
I’ve been told that there are people who, when they come into some extra money actually save it. Most people I know use the money to buy something fun and frivolous they otherwise would not have. We meanwhile spent this money on… stinky cheese.
Besides just our love of cheese, the idea for buying this cheese came from a discussion about how in old shows and cartoons like Looney Tunes Limburger cheese was always used as the quintessential smelly thing.
It’s apparently aged using the same bacteria culture that’s found on human skin to make b.o. and smelly feet. It’s even included on the list of Top 10 Stinky Cheeses in the World. We wondered, what does limburger cheese really smell like? Could it really smell that bad? If it did, why would people even eat it? The curiosity was eating away at us. Since Limburger isn’t the kind of cheese easily found in grocery stores, and local cheese stores around here sell mostly local cheeses, we ordered it from the internet.
Hey iGourmet, we’re giving you some free advertising…how about some free cheese?
Making Your Own McMuffin
They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The problem of course is that it comes in the morning, and no one likes mornings. The fact that brunch and brinner (breakfast for dinner) are things is proof that people love breakfast foods, just not in the morning.
Generally in the mornings you tend to sleep as late as possible, then run out the door, neglecting breakfast and just grabbing something on the road on the way to your destination. Unfortunately, a lot of times “grabbing something on the road” means stopping at a place like McDonalds and getting something like an Egg McMuffin. Which is fine if you enjoy getting 87% of your daily cholesterol intake and 33% of your sodium intake down in your first meal of the day (you can see for yourself if you don’t believe me). Also, your eggs will look like a hockey puck.
I can practically feel the spongy texture of the eggs from here.
But what if I told you, you could make your own version of an Egg McMuffin (I call mine an Egg MegMuffin, but I realize that won’t work for people not named Meg) at home in under 10 minutes? Surely you have 10 minutes to spare right? It’ll be worth it, I promise.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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