Beggar's Banquet

ha HA! i deleted what matt wrote! my admin privs might have to be revoked! sorry this picture is small, it is too blurry to look decent full size.

so this week's theme, "beggar's banquet", had some severe monetary constraints. we were only allowed to spend five dollars on supplies for our dishes, which had to serve the whole crew. aside from that, pretty much anything goes if we already had it in the kitchen or were able to beg borrow or steal it. i chose to steal giant bags of precooked rotini from a certain establishment in which i work and use it to create pasta salad. (i also stole ham, black olives and pepperoni along with good olive oil from my roommate's side of the cabinet in my kitchen.)

sarah was quite fond of this easy to use precooked pasta.


there was also cole slaw, vegetable korma, lima beans with tomato sauce, cracker style whitebread, green beans and cottage ham with cornbread, broccoli casserole and butterscotch pudding.

i was told the broccoli casserole had funions crumbled on top. it was amazing.



Butterscotch Pudding

I seldom think of puddings when it comes time to make dessert. I blame Jello for putting pudding in the same category as Lunchables (oh how I despize thee!), but that's a tangent for another day. Come to think of it, I guess I should blame Kraft, since they are both Kraft products, and if that's the case maybe I should blame our economic structure which fuels the proliferation of mega-corporations...never mind. I decided to make this for a few reasons: 1. I LOVE pudding; 2. I love David Lebovitz; 3. I had everything I needed at home, thus making it ideal for our beggar's banquet. Since I had to double the recipe I did have to invest in some more milk (half gallon and whole to be precise) and I did buy dark brown sugar instead of settling for the light brown that was already in my cupboard. The total investment, including tax had me well under our $5 limit, and it made a ton of pudding. This dessert was not only cheap but, when presented in individual serving dishes with a dollop of barely sweetened whipped cream, is pretty classy as well. I did not take any pictures this time, but I found the recipe on David Lebovitz's blog, so you check it out there!

Scavenged Pasta Salad (a.k.a. F-You Pizza Hut Pasta Salad)

1 giant bag of stolen pre-cooked rotini
1 C shredded stolen ham
1 C chopped stolen olives
1 C purchased chopped spinach
1/2 C leftover homemade pesto
1/2 C stolen olive oil
2 cloves garlic
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 t salt
Leftover pine nuts and parmesan cheese for garnish

Toss the first 4 ingredients in a big, preferably pink bowl. Grind the garlic and salt together with a mortar & pestle until it becomes a paste. Combine the salt/garlic mixture, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and pesto in a small bowl and pour over the pasta. Toss! Sprinkle pine nuts and cheese on top if you so desire. Eat and gloat of your triumph over Yum, Inc.

COLESLAW!!

I don't know much that I can say about the making of the coleslaw. I really never liked it growing up, but have developed a taste for the non-creamy sort in my adulthood. I was worried that there was going to be a lack of fresh and crispy items, so I settled on this. Plus cabbage is tres cheap. I ended up spending $4.70 and had more than we could all eat in a week. I pretty much did this to taste and without a recipe.

1 head of green cabbage (shredded)
1/2 head of red cabbage (shredded)
9 tablespoons of cider vinegar
2 green peppers (diced)
4 medium carrots (shredded)
5 green onions (sliced thin)
4? Tbs sour cream (mayo grosses me out sometimes and I felt like the flavor needed to be bulked up a bit)
1 tsp-ish of celery salt (I thought I had celery seed at the house, but was out)
salt and pepper to taste.

Turned out....like coleslaw and I suppose that was the goal!