in the basket

[ljgeoff]

I went to the Salvation Army today and got a food basket. I thought it might be interesting to document what we got (this is for a family of five -- not that it's assumed we'll be able to live off of this for a week, it's supplemental):



2 loaves bread, store bakery, white
5 lb bag of shredded iceberg lettuce
four styrofoam soup cups of tater tots
1 19 oz ready-to-serve bag of soup - Bear Creek brand Italian Wedding
1 7.5 oz bag of cookies, Bud's Best brand, bite-sized pecan supremes
1 24 oz bottle of pancake syrup, Golden Griddle brand, original
2 snack ramen, Maruchan brand, chicken
1 bottle salad dressing, Kraft brand, Catalina
1 1-lb. box elbow macaroni, Creamette
1 8-oz box manicotti, Creamette
1 1-lb box spaghetti, Creamette
1 can plain Spaghetti-O's
3 cans soup, one cream of celery, one tomato, and one ready-to-serve beef broth
1 can of asparagus, Michigan Made brand
3 cans of corn, 2 whole kernel, one creamed
1 can sliced pears, Del Monte, "lite"
1 can sweet peas, Del Monte
1 can cut green beans, Green Giant
1 16 oz can of baked beans, Bush's Best, vegitarian
1 15-oz bottle chili, Bush's Best, original, no beans
1 1-lb bottle pasta sauce, Classico, four cheese
1 12-oz can tuna, StarKist, chunk light in water
1 2-lb bag rice, Riceland, enriched extra long grain
1 box Rice-A-roni, Chicken and Broccoli flavor
1 12 oz can evaporated milk, Gold Cross
1 MRE-like meal, "Heater Meal," distributed by Innotech, BBQ beef w/potatoes
1 box potatoes, Hungry Jack, Cheesy Scalloped potatoes
1 18-oz jar peanut butter, Algood, creamy
1 18-oz jar jam, Smucker's, Sweet Orange Marmalade
1 box b'fast cereal, IGA brand, sugar frosted flakes
1 8-oz bottle mustard, IGA brand
1 3-oz box instant tapioca, Jell-O, fat free
1 box cherry jello, IGA brand, sugar-free
nutmeg, .6 oz, Tone's
1 lb hamburger

Comments

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I guess, if there's stuff your kids will never eat, you can donate it back and someone else can have it. (Is there some stuff like that?)

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

well, Fred will eat almost anything.

[tiger-spot.livejournal.com]

It looks like mostly ready-to-eat non-recipe-requiring stuff. Is there something in particular that you don't like by itself that recipes would be helpful for? You could do a casserole with some of the canned veggies and cream of celery soup (and tuna or hamburger); toss some of the bread or rice in there for filler if you're feeding lots.

Nutmeg seems like an odd thing to find in a food basket, but I guess it goes in a lot of seasonal stuff this time of year.

[ailbhe]

I could... get us by, on that, but I'd probably end up gnawing holly leaves for vitamins. What is rice-a-roni?

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

It's a boxed carbohydrate dish, rice and little bits of vermicelli-noodles mixed together with some flavouring. You sauté the rice and noodles to brown them, and cook it in water with the flavouring powder.

[ailbhe]

Right. So the weakest single point in that list is protein. And not quite enough of any one thing to make a meal-for-five, so it'll be lots of three-will-have-this and two-will-have-that sort of thing.

Like dim sum, but, er, different. Hm. I'm assuming the bread, cereal, peanut butter, jam, one-person-meals etc will all go on something other than dinners.

1) The lettuce, sweetcorn kernels, and green beans could make a salad to go with pasta-and-pasta-sauce, with tapioca and sliced pears for dessert.

2) Beef broth and tomato soup might combine well so that everyone could be served the same thing. Then the tuna, celery soup, and potatoes (I am unclear as to whether those are real potatoes) or pasta baked together are quite good, especially if you have an onion.

3) The bottled chili and beans can go together with rice and more of the "salad", perhaps, if that's as much lettuce as I think it is. I'm not sure what's in the bottles. Jello for dessert. No food value, but it's a dessert.

4) Italian Wedding Soup. Fried mince, peas, and potatoes, unless you want to make it into a cottage pie, but that might depend on what the potatoes are like - cottage pie would need them to be sliceable or mashable.

I can't help thinking I'd be better at this if I knew what all the food was.

[ailbhe]

Could you make a heavy rice pudding using the can of milk, pancake syrup (I'm assuming something like golden syrup? flavourless maple syrup textured sweet stuff?) and the nutmeg.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It's a dry mix of rice, short rice-sized pieces of vermicelli, and seasonings, extra-heavy on the salt. It was a treat when I was little, but now I can't tolerate the chemical-y flavor.

I guess they make these boxes up from individual donations to food drives? What strikes me the most is how haphazard it is, and almost nothing in a quantity that would actually feed your whole family. Meal planning with this would be quite tricky. Tuna noodle casserole, I guess, and mixing the baked beans and the chili and maybe the tomato soup to make a hearty soup, and I guess I'd stretch the hamburger with breadcrumbs and make meatballs and serve it with the pasta sauce over the spaghetti... but still, the spaghetti meal is the only one where you really have the right quantities for five.

(Why do people donate things like sugar-free Jell-O? I mean, no food value whatsoever, even empty-but-filling calories?)

[ailbhe]

There's nothing to season or bind the meatballs, either.

Sugar-free food is morally superior.

(What's a tater tot?)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Sugar-free food is morally superior.

...And poor people are too fat anyway. *sound of teeth grinding*

(What's a tater tot?)

You're certainly getting a lovely tour of American processed food, aren't you?

It's minced or grated potato formed into a little cylinder, with something to bind it, I suppose. They come frozen, in bags. When you bake them, the outside gets crispy and the inside is light and soft, but not creamy like mashed potatoes. They look like this, and I confess that I rather like them.

[ailbhe]

Oh, we could get something like that. It's sort of like chips/fries but really not.

I'm stuck with tater tots, a can of asparagus, manicotti, and creamed corn.

Though I've just remembered that what I *used* to do was to eat really well at the beginning of the week and worse and worse as the week went on, then really well at the beginning of next week, so perhaps I'm taking the wrong approach.

[ailbhe]

I think they might be called something like potato croquettes. I think. Certainly something that sounds a lot more like food than they are.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Sugar-free food is morally superior.

*grin* I was thinking the exact thing that rivka said; poor people are fat, lazy and stupid. It's really their fault that they're poor. If they got off their fat, lazy asses, and got a job, they wouldn't be poor. And if they stopped eating junk-food, and got off the couch, they wouldn't be so fat. Maybe if they didn't dress so scrubby and took better care of themselves, they'd get a better job.....

[ailbhe]

I've been disciplined at work for not having sufficiently professional clothing. They didn't seem to understand that not all women in low-paid work lived with a properly-paid man who could buy their wardrobe.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

The shredded lettuce is datemarked for yesterday and is going a bit yucky. It's in a vacumed-bag, so it probably won't last long once I open it. The thing is, nobody at the house really likes iceberg lettuce. It's probably gonna get tossed.

I loved the baked beans/chili sauce idea. I could buy some tortillas and cheese, and make a kind of taco. I've got more beans, too. And maybe use some of the lettuce before it goes bad.

I'm also thinking tuna-noodle cassarole, and spaghetti (with the hamburger). I was thinking I could use the Itallian Wedding soup for some kind of rice cassarole, too. I've got lots of rice.

A can of pumpkin is cheap, and I can make a pie (with the evaporated milk, and I've got eggs)

I can make ramen noodles with mixed veggies. Maybe with toasted cheese sandwiches or something.

Last night was movie night. We watched Ladyhawk and ate hotdogs, and I made homemade "pizza bread" (strips of plain pizza crust, brushed with butter and sprinkled with parmasean), and a kind of apple crisp. It was a little odd, but I fed nine people on about $10 of food.

Hrm. We really are ok. I've been in much worse straights. I have an interview on Wednesday, and it looks good. Mike reminds me that if I wasn't trying to feed the starving masses, we wouldn't have a problem, and he's right, so a lot of what's going on right now might just be poor choices that I'm making.

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking there should be an Iron Chef: foodbank edition, where the cook gets to spend just a little bit sprucing up a food bank haul, and try to use the ingredients counterintuitively.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

My friend Geriann and I used to share "cooking from the basket" recipes. The counterintuitive stuff is what those iron chef shows are good for! There's a show on BBC where some celebrity brings in $10-$20 of food, and there's a cook-off.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well... I've heard it said that "Lettuce is good for you. However, in order for this to be true, you must not regard iceberg as 'lettuce'." And, the article went on to say that there's nothing *wrong* with iceberg; there's just not enough *right* with it. So, I wouldn't panic if that ends up going away.

[ailbhe]

Mm, I personally loathe iceberg lettuce, and it looked like a lot. There *are* lettuce soup recipes out there but I think they had other lettuces in mind.

[julia-reynolds.livejournal.com]

You could make a buncha french toast, also.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Yep! Luke's favorite.

[ailbhe]

So how did it go?