Cold Brew and Iced Coffee $ Money Hacks by Ruth Paget

Cold Brew and Iced Coffee $ Hack by Ruth Paget 

Both iced coffee and cold brew are mega money savers, if you make them at home. I let a lot of coffee go cold in Detroit (Michigan) as I watched the news in French that was broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Channel (CBC) in Windsor (Canada) just across the Detroit River when I was in high school. (Free French oral comprehension lessons to go with high school French classes.) 

I was teaching myself to like bitter coffee, so I could pass as French in Canada. I thought coffee was bilge, though, compared to tea, especially cold. 

However, I did not want to waste money and throw out the coffee in the pre-microwave era I lived in. (All this money management economics destined my college to be the Austrian School of Economics at the University of Chicago I sometimes think.) 

I knew the Greeks made iced coffee, so I poured the cold coffee over ice and added milk and sugar. That was good and refreshing. I made it summer and winter and still do despite loving Starbucks. 

So, that is how to make inexpensive iced coffee. Cold brew is even simpler. 

I have learned to love coffee now that I am middle-aged. Coffee is even supposed to be good for you now due to its antioxidants. 

Cold brew coffee is now the rage and so easy to make at home. Place 1 or 2 tablespoons of ground coffee in the bottom of a French Press Coffee Pot. Pour in water and let the water stand on the coffee grounds for twelve hours. 

Press down on the grounds with the French Press lid and serve the cold brew over ice. 

I use a Starbucks insulated 3-cup container for this. These recipes are easy and can fit all budgets depending on the coffee you use. Amazon sells Starbucks, Lavazza, and Dallmayr coffee, if you cannot find these items in your area. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Costco Rotisserie Chicken $ Food Hack by Ruth Paget

Costco Rotisserie Chicken $ Food Hack by Ruth Paget 

One of my favorite Saturday lunch meals that I have eaten for decades is a Costco organic Rotisserie Chicken priced at $4.99 for a whole chicken. 

I cut the chicken into 4 portions, which cost approximately $1.25 each. I like to eat this with Korean 90-second microwave rice and baby greens salad – all from Costco. 

This meal is simple, so I jazz it up with a habanero margarita from Total Wine. The money I save on this meal goes towards a baked pasta or a baked enchilada dish for Sunday. 

I drink a red Malbec wine with the pasta or a beer with the enchilada dish. I roughly plan out my weekday breakfasts, lunches, and dinners to stay with three meals and little or no snacking. 

That little $4.99 rotisserie chicken has helped me manage household finances and tastes good. I even cut up the leftover meat and mix it with Caesar Salad (a no-food waste meal). 

(Note: Caesar Salads are also a Costco deli item and have dressing with anchovies in it, which are antioxidants.) 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Costco Pizza $ Food Hack by Ruth Paget

Costco Pizza $ Food Hack by Ruth Paget 

Friday night pizza is very affordable with a pizza from Costco’s food court. 

An 18-inch pizza costs $9.95 for 12 slices. Each slice is 9 inches long and costs .83 cents each. 

Two kinds of pizza are available: a combo with pepperoni, sausage, and vegetables and one with just vegetables, tomato sauce, and cheese. You can request packets of Parmesan cheese and hot pepper flakes to go with the pizza. 

Parmesan has calcium for bones and hot peppers have Vitamin C to strengthen the immune system. 

Currently, the Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes are free, but a small charge for these could be added to a fund for employee raises, for example. These pizzas are especially great for sports teams and sports nights at home. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Costco Turkey-Swiss Sandwich $ Hack by Ruth Paget

Costco Deli Sandwich $ Food Hack by Ruth Paget 

I think the turkey-Swiss sandwich on a butter croissant with a Caesar salad combo box at Costco is a great deal at $10.28, because I can make two lunches out of it. 

The two meals cost $5.14 each. 

Caesar salad dressing uses anchovies, which are antioxidants and have iron. Lemon juice from freshly squeezed lemons has Vitamin C for the immune system. 

Turkey has protein and Vitamin B-6, which helps keep the nervous system and immune system healthy according to the Mayo Clinic. Swiss cheese has calcium in it, which is good for your bones. 

The butter croissant used for bread fills you up, so you can stick to three meals a day to stay trim and maintain weight. 

All those health benefits for $5.14 make the turkey-Swiss sandwich a good deal for me at Costco. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Costco Baked Salmon $ Food Hack by Ruth Paget

Costco Baked Salmon $ Food Hack by Ruth Paget 

I think Costco’s ready-to-bake salmon that comes with three scoops of butter and dill in its deli section is a great deal at $28 for the following reasons: 

I add 2 cans of drained green beans to the salmon to bake for an hour. The cans of green beans are about $1 each. When the salmon is ready to serve, I microwave Korean sticky rice, which costs around $1 a dish, too. All total that is $31 for the 5 servings that I get out of this dish for $6.20 for each serving. 

That price is much less expensive than a restaurant meal, but the real clincher for this Costco dish is that I can have a Habanero Margarita at home that is less expensive than a cantina. 

Salmon has many health benefits besides the good taste. It contains vitamins A, B, and D and the minerals magnesium, potassium, phosphorous, zinc, and selenium. 

In particular, selenium is an antioxidant that removes free radicals that cause cancer from the body. Vitamin A helps with vision, the immune system, and the development of babies in the womb according to www.healthline.com . 

Costco’s salmon is a great deal for Sunday lunch and health benefits. You cannot beat that! 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Donaueschingen, Germany Trip by Ruth Paget

Donaueschingen, Germany Trip by Ruth Paget 

I first read about the German Black Forest town of Donaueschingen, the source of the Danube River, in Marina Polvay’s cookbook All Along the Danube: Recipes from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria (Hippocrene Press – 357 pages). 

When I moved to Stuttgart, Germany with my husband Laurent for five years, we lived close to the Black Forest and made Donaueschingen one of our first trips. We drove through the Black Forest with its gingerbread architecture towns and shops selling cuckoo clocks and beer steins and ended up with those items before returning to the United States. 

On our walk to the source of the Danube River once in Donaueschingen, we passed churches and apartment buildings painted in pastel colors like Venice that would shine in the snowy winters here and constantly remind inhabitants of their connection to water. 

The two streams that come together as the source of the Danube River are the Brege and Brigach. They are encircled in a fountain with an Art Nouveau metal railing. People toss Euro coins in the fountain. I wondered if they ended up downriver in Budapest, Hungary or it the German civic authorities gathered them up for fountain maintenance. 

There are many pack terrace cafés in town that no doubt serve dishes made with mushrooms from the Black Forest like trout in mushroom-butter sauce. 

I treated our time in Germany as one long cooking course, so we returned home where I had a salad waiting that I made from Marina Polvay’s All Along the Danube. The rough outline for the salad I made follows. (I noted the page with the exact recipe.) 

Mushroom-Potato Salad (p.16) 

-slice mushrooms and marinate in vinegar and oil dressing 

-toss mushrooms with slices of boiled potatoes 

-garnish with slices of green pepper and capers 

This salad served at room temperature is especially good with a chilled Pilsner beer on a cool Fall day. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Suburban Detroit French Terrine $ Hack by Ruth Paget

Suburban Detroit French Terrine $ Hack by Ruth Paget 

My Polish babysitter epitomized the Detroit credo of “If I can make a car, I can cook.” 

I learned about Polish admiration for French food from my Polish babysitter in Troy, Michigan as a child. She made homemade French pork and liver terrines and duck terrines and had me eat them with her for lunches and dinners. 

The French eat terrine slices with either bakery-baked, long baguette bread or round, crusty loaves of country bread they make at home. The Polish babysitter, who knew how to bake, mostly made country bread. 

She also made her own sweet gherkin pickles to go with the terrine, which the French always eat with terrine. 

Finally, she filled half the plate with torn and chilled Boston bibb lettuce and homemade blue cheese dressing made with Maytag blue cheese from Iowa, which is the equivalent of the great blue cheeses of Europe: 

-Roquefort (France) 

-Cabrales (Spain) 

-Gorgonzola (Italy) 

(I think we need tasting competitions to decide who has the best blue cheese.) 

The French consider terrine a waste-not dish, because it is made from the odds and ends of butchering meat. A 1.5-quart terrine mold yields 15 slices or 2 slices for 2 people over 7 days with 1 slice leftover to share. My Polish babysitter viewed terrine as delicious, nutritious, and economical and so did I. 

My babysitter drank a sweet white wine with the pork and liver terrine from Michigan’s Warner Winery. She made sure to tell me that the great Hungarian sweet white wine Tokaj was the best match with terrine, but Warner worked for everyday, because Tokaj was expensive. 

The Polish babysitter gave me apple cider to go with my terrine lunch. (Apples grow in abundance in Michigan. Johnny Appleseed is a children’s book everyone in the state reads.) 

I thought of these lovely childhood lunches when I purchased Pâté, Confit, Rillette: Recipes from the Craft of Charcuterie by Brian Polcyn and Michael Ruhlman. This 250-page recipe book has recipes that cover meat, poultry, fish, and vegetables. 

I prefer terrines to confit and rillettes, because it is easier to measure slices for portion control. However, spreadable rillettes are easier to make. You can measure out preserved pieces of delicious duck confit, but pieces tend to be irregular, which makes it hard to count calories. 

Several dishes I thought would be make use of rural resources include: 

-chicken and wild mushroom terrine 

-cauliflower, pea, and red pepper mousse en terrine 

-portobello and red pepper terrine 

-two-potato terrine 

-cauliflower mousse 

-onion confit 

-fennel confit 

-chanterelle and garlic confit rillettes 

These terrines might sell well at a place like Costco, if they are not too expensive as they can be made into a week’s worth of food. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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