The Recession Diet – How to Cook a Week’s Worth of Food in 2 Hours 56 Minutes

Perhaps the best thing you can do to lose fat and eat better is learn how to cook. But who has the time?

You do.

In less than 3 1/2 hours per week, you can prepare more than 20,000 kcalories from scratch, enough for a week’s worth of food.

That’s an average of less than 30 minutes per day.

Take that, Rachel Ray!

Eating Well on a Budget

In my last post, I showed you how I bought enough food for a week (22,152 kcalories) with just $48.21.

But since I bought mostly raw, unprocessed foods, the pressure is upon me to get all that into edible form as quickly as I can.

Mission: Impossible?

As easy as it would be to make just one meal to live off for a week, I need to add in a little variety.

I’ve found that four different types of meals is enough to keep me from getting bored each week. Most people think this is restrictive, but the fact of the matter is that most people eat the same things over and over again anyway, and it’s simply a matter of settling into a new routine.

So here’s my goal of what to make:

• Roast chicken with roots and tubers
• Chicken stock
• Gravy
• Chicken soup
• Rice and lentils
• Scrambled eggs and bacon
• Chicken pâté (fancy French term for minced chicken liver)

Most of the time, I do all of this one day a week, often utilizing old leftovers. But since I’m sticking to all the stuff I bought in my last post, I’m spreading this out over two days, mainly to allow time to make stock.

I’m a Tortoise, Not a Hare

Right off the bat, I need to let you know that I am slow at most things, including cooking.

Although I have been preparing food from scratch from years, any recipe I try that says it needs only 30 minutes of prep will invariably take me 60 minutes to complete.

So when I tell you how much time it takes me to do these things, this means you can do it too!

Phase 1: Prepping the Roast Chicken and Vegetables

Roasting by itself can supply you with a week’s worth of meat and vegetables in a remarkably short amount of time.

For this first phase, I peeled and chopped the carrots and potatoes, stuffed the chickens with lemon and herbs, and seasoned everything before throwing in the oven.

Phase 1 Total Time: 29 minutes

Phase 2: Chopping Veggies and Soaking Rice and Lentils

As much as I love roast chicken, roots, and tubers, I wouldn’t want to survive on nothing but for a week. So I’m going to make some soup as well as rice and lentils.

For this prep, I needed to peel and chop the rest of the potatoes and carrots, as well as slice the celery, peel and mince the garlic and dice the onions. I also poured the rice and lentils into separate bowls, covered with water, and added a little bit of vinegar.

Now, I’m generally not a big fan of rice and beans, but for budget eating they can’t be beat.

Unfortunately, they tend to contain plenty of anti-nutrients that block the absorption of the vitamins and minerals found in them. (Whole grains are NOT the incredible health food we have been led to believe.)

Soaking overnight in an acidic medium is an excellent way to remove the majority of these anti-nutrients, and only takes a minute of work.

Phase 2 Total Time: 50 minutes

Phase 3: Chicken Destruction and Stock Prep

Once the chickens were done, it was time to carve them up.

I wanted to make chicken soup, so I also pulled one of them apart completely after cutting it up.

And remember all the waste I’ve been creating over this time?

• Potato, carrot, onion, and garlic peels.
• Chicken carcasses.
• Chicken giblets (except the livers).
• The extra parsley and thyme.

Well, I wanted to make the most of those things.

So I did what would certainly make your grandmother proud: I made a stock.

I know, it sounds like a pain in the ass, but it really isn’t. By taking all the stuff you were going to throw away anyway, tossing them in a pot, covering up with water, and simmering for a few hours, you get a tasty, nutrient-packed liquid that is perfect for soups, stews, and gravies.

Plus, admit it, granny knew how to stretch a dollar much better than you can.

Lastly, I poured the chicken juices left in the pan together and let sit overnight in the fridge. I’ll use this for gravy later.

Phase 3 Total Time: 34 minutes

Phase 4: Breakfast, Soup, Gravy, and Rice/Beans

This was the phase where the bulk of the food got prepped.

In short, I baked a tray of bacon in the oven while scrambling eggs in butter in a pot. (The infamous James Bond scrambled eggs.)

I then sautéed the remaining onion and garlic in butter until soft, splitting them into two separate pots.

One I filled with the pulled chicken and chopped vegetables from Phase 2, the other I filled with lentils and rice.

I added stock to both until covered, and simmered for an hour.

After this, I made gravy from the pan drippings I saved, adding stock, boiling down, and melting butter in it. Yum!

Phase 4 Total Time: 47 min

Phase 5: Offal!

Onwards to the final step: chicken liver pâté.

Here I simply fried the chicken livers in butter and garlic, mincing the whole mixture up afterwards.

Phase 5 Total Time: 16 min

Done!

With a grand total of 2 hours, 56 minutes of work. Great success!

Now the real challenge: can I make it a week surviving off of only this food? If so, it would be an extremely good investment of my time and money. In the next post, I’ll be wrapping this all up with some more insights on how to eat well on the cheap.