Food experiment

Just a quick update on our "not buy food for a month" experiment.

We did not go into this with fanatical devotion.

We are still buying bananas and fluid milk. I bought a cinnamon roll.

What worked:

The sourdough rolls: They are 50% whole wheat and 50% unbleached "white" bread flour. The basic recipe is starter, 3 cups of water, 3 cups of WW flour. Let "batter" do its thing over-night. Add 3 cups bread flour and knead. Let rise two hours and bake.

Soup: We have been making two quarts of some variant of gazpacho and storing in the fridge. When it is eaten, we make another batch. The "recipe" is based on what is available. So far, a quart of home-canned tomatoes, a pint of home-frozen sweet corn, pinto and garbanzo beans and a dash of lemon juice (or vinegar) and two dashes of olive oil.

Oatmeal: It is a staple.

Didn't work

One batch of soup was too spicy. Lesson learned.

Future

Kubota is mourning the loss of sweet breakfast cereal.

We are giving rice pudding a shot as a substitute.

One cup dried rice cooked in 1-1/2 cups of water until water is fully absorbed.

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup dried milk

2 cups water

More vanilla and nutmeg than you think you need

Dried fruit (I used raisins) to suit.

Put cooked rice in bottom of 9"-by-13" glass baking pan

Pour sugar/"milk"/egg/raisin mixture over top.

Poke it around a little bit to mix raisins in with rice.

Toss in 350F oven for about 30 minutes.

There is nothing radical or cutting-edge about this recipe. It is a comfort food, not a political or culinary statement.