Have you entered the Jamie Oliver giveaway yet?
It’s the Sunday after the First Tuesday following the First Monday but before the First Full Moon of August, so that must mean it’s time for August 2009’s Hobo Tuesday Roundup.
Let the rounding begin: May the tightest ass win!
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Dark Side of the Fridge returns to attempt reclaiming the Tight Ass Tiara with their pork, chard, cheese and BACON FAT filled “You Are What You Eat Breakfast Sandwiches.”
This is a food-related event, not a creative naming event, y’all know that. Not that I want to stifle you or your unique and beautiful personalities. You go on ahead and throw on as many pieces of flair as you want.
The cost: $2.54 for 4 servings – dinner plus lunch: $.56 per person. I think they are wizards. Or food ninjas of some kind. Still, let’s see if anyone can knock them down a peg…
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Emily over at the eponymous Hey Emily threw the gauntlet down with her challengingly named “Kick-Your-Tight-Ass Eggplant Red Curry.” Thus, I suggest that you all watch your backs. Unfortunately, her entry is pr0n-less, giving you all the more reason to go read about it.
Her total cost for 3 people: “I claim $3.89 but general public would eat $4.64 (not to get technical or difficult, hah, but I didn’t eat any sides (aka rice) with it, but I know the general recipe is better/more filling for two people with rice.)” I concur that the rice is a critical component, but will extend a lenient arm and base her entry on the sans-rice cost: $1.29 per person.
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Channeling Granny weighs in with some straightforwardly named vegetarian chili and cornbread; thank you for you candor. Also, thank you for bringing some of this over for dinner, if you wouldn’t be too inconvenienced
You know, I just read her “About” page for the first time and noticed that we have a shared love of vegetables cooked with with bacon and the Golden Girls (Bea Arthur was my favorite, obviously). So if you brought this over, we could eat while watching a Golden Girls marathon with maybe some Designing Women for variety. Just a suggestion.
Total cost to serve 4, $3.55: $0.89 per person. A worthy effort!
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Jesse from I tell you what… makes a triumphant return to the competition with a two course meal of black bean and corn salad and cherry clafoutis.
I was slightly confused when I got the entry, since the photo is of the clafoutis; the theme this month is “spicy,” and while I don’t eat clafoutis often because it’s almost always cherry and cooked cherries make me want to hork, I was prepared for spicy clafoutis.
I would still be interested in seeing a spicy clafoutis, but was also somewhat relieved that the bean and corn salad was the spicy part.
She got three for a total of $5.12: $1.70 per person.
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A Form of Function takes the dish-naming candor one step further, freely admitting that she has no idea what this actually is: “ummm…?? Spicy Shredded Chicken? Spicy Simmered Chicken? feel free to make a suggestion.” So check it out, and feel free to make a suggestion as requested.
This meal includes crispy chicken skins as a legitimate side dish. It is, therefore, one of the best dishes EVER. If there was some way to get chicken skin in quantity without actually buying the chicken, that would be on the side of every meal I’ll eat over the next 6 months before the cholesterol gets me. Total cost for for 5 servings was $7.85: $1.57 per person.
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Fig and Cherry deigns to join us this month with Harissa baked eggplant. She ticks off some of the meal’s perks in her post; I add a few more:
– Harissa
– Served in a hollowed-out eggplant hull, which is (1) fancy and (2) makes it look like the eggplant is heading for Valhalla in a Viking longboat
– Harissa
Her total cost for the dish was 2.87 euros, or $4.07 US Worthless Pieces of Paper Dollars: $2.03 per person. Ouch! I hope it’s not too painful as Dark Side of the Fridge eats you for breakfast and shits you out.
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Closing us out is Robbing Peter, who returns to the name game with these Huevos conFusion. They also tread on thin ice by suggesting that I am not good-natured. I HAVE A STELLAR FUCKING NATURE. Seriously, between this and having been called a heifer I wonder why I put up with this shit.
They are redeemed because they eventually recognized the tweeness of the dish’s name and decided to go literal with “Huevos Rancheros en cocotte from my own demented little mind.”
Let there be no mistake about it: this sounds incredibly, wonderfully excellent. Like I think I might make it for dinner, say, tonight. Total cost for 2 people, $2.00: $1.00 per person.
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And I, of course, made these Fiction of My Imagination Quesadillas. Total cost for 2 people: 17 pachinkos. That’s the currency used in my imagination.
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So once again, Dark Side of the Fridge whips us all soundly – enjoy your continued smugness.
What’ll it be for September, Dark Side?
Some Administrative Matters:
- I call it “Hobo Tuesday” because I know lots of you have G-rated blogs; the normal feature is called Tight Ass Tuesday, and most people end up calling this Tight Ass Tuesday anyway. Who objects to dropping the Hobo? Not literally, obviously. It just seems needlessly confusing.
- I don’t actually give a shit whether you cook on Tuesday or not as long as it happens sometime in the week and the post is in by Saturday.
- I’m instituting a new rule wherein once you’ve won the Smugness Prize three times you have to wait 3 months before you can win it again, or else this will just turn into Dark Side of the Fridge’s event.
- 150px by 150px, kids. I know you can crop.
Dark Side, leave our next theme in the comments, and I’ll update the guidelines page accordingly!
[tags]food, cooking, inexpensive, economical, spicy, hot[/tags]
Thursday Night Smackdown 
Lurve the huevos confusion – delish!
Great entries again this month – how can you people go so cheap!? I’m inspired.
Damn, it seems like a garden and home baking is the definite way to hobo eats. Congrats on kicking our tight asses, Dark Side. 🙂
Wow, again? Thanks.
Do I try too hard, or what? We’ve got a theme idea, but first, a couple of thoughts:
1- Is dropping hobos anything like tossing dwarves? If so, count us in!
2- We actually had the same thoughts about our winning streak – the last thing I want to do is spoil anyone else’s fun. We’re more than happy to play along next month but will remove ourselves from the competition.
3- How’s this for a theme: September’s hobo meal needs to have FRUIT as an integral part of the main dish – no sticking a lemon wedge on the plate and calling it done.
As for tomatoes – it’s up to you whether you want to fall on the side of the nerdy botanists or THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nix_v._Hedden
Not that I could ever approach Dark Sides’ Tight-Ass mastery, but I didn’t see them list the eggs when they toted up their per person costs – I didn’t see the bread, but they explained that was a free find. Were the eggs a free find too?
I can’t believe I missed the EGGS! (They were in my initial handwritten, albeit mostly illegible, calculations, if that helps.) I’m so embarrassed. . .
Thank you, Jenertia, for your catch – it’s been corrected – the breakdown is now 63 cents per serving.
Good God amighty damn! I am purely outclassed in the cheap category. Not to mention overwhelmingly impressed by homemade sausage. (I did do pretty doggoned good cheap chicken tonight; Kroger had breast filets on sale and I fed four of us on a pound of ’em, stirfried, for $1.77; plus trimmings.)
ok, i had to add that i also realize that cooking in NYC versus elsewhere totally screws up the budget. because i see dark side pays $0.89 for a dozen eggs, and around here it’s usually $2+ (or am i crazy?).
fruit sounds yummy… i’m excited for september to roll around!
Hey Emily – I’ve paid up to 3 or 4 dollars for a dozen (NOT ORGANIC) eggs. NYC prices are crazyness
@Michelle re chicken skins: If your butcher is anything like mine – and many are not; it specializes in organic, free-range meats, and costs accordingly – you can get the backs & bones for next to nothing for making stock. Mine usually throws in some of the skins as well (since the breasts had to have skin attached once upon a time, so the skins have to go somewhere). So just separate and clean the skins prior to making your stock, and get a-crispin’.
christie, i don’t know how they do it either, i never get that cheap. like i said, ninjas.
jenertia, good eyes.
toylady, we’ll go with the fruit for september, but you’re out of the running.
em and deb and others, the egg thing is such a toss-up; it’s crazy-making. i can go to three different stories within a half-mile of each other and get three radically different prices.
cayenne, i need your butcher.
lol, our eggs, beef and pork, and occasionally lamb cost next to nothing, we raise our own. gotta love country life. right now, veggies, herbs and our orchard are all in or getting in full swing, so we are literally spending spending maybe $20 a week on groceries, for a family of 4. (that is, it’s super cheap if you don’t count how much is spent on grain and feed, threshing the pasture for hay, or the simple manhours involved.) I don’t know exactly how to factor these things, but i really feel it would be unfair if I popped with something like grilled chicken, corn, potatoes and pear tart and it cost me, like, 4 cents a person.