Edible San Diego Issue 45 January/February 2018

Dinner was a very simple pasta. I crumbled
half the pound of sausage into a sauté
pan, then added blanched, chopped kale
and maybe half a cup of chicken broth to
simmer while I cooked the pasta. I added
the drained pasta to the simmering sauce
for a minute before serving. This was a
really easy, tasty dish, but the real stunner
was the cake. Clearly, the Spring Hill
butter is excellent for baking.
The following day we made do with what
we had: a mandarin orange, raw almonds
and a slice of wheat toast for breakfast;
lunch was a quick soup made with spring
onions, carrots, finely chopped almonds
and chicken broth, plus melted mozzarella
cheese on lightly toasted ciabatta. The
homemade crackers topped with a bit of
butter and thinly sliced radishes made
a great afternoon snack. For dinner, I
stretched out leftover sausage and kale pasta
by grating mozzarella cheese over it and
baking it for 20 minutes, then served it with
another salad of lettuce, carrot and radishes.
Wednesday morning before heading to the
market with my remaining $27, I took an
inventory of what I had left. Laying it all
out was reassuring. I still had half a pound
of sausage, as well as half the bread I had
bought. In fact I seemed to have half of,
or almost half of, everything I’d initially
bought, except eggs and apples.
At the market I was happy to see
mushrooms, knowing I could do a hearty
dinner with those. Suzie’s Farms had blackeyed
peas so I got some of those as well,
along with cabbage, kale, eggs, avocados,
spring onions and broccoli rabe. I wanted to
make another apple cake, but unfortunately
apples were nowhere to be found, so I
bought mandarin oranges instead. I wanted
to buy some kind of meat or chicken but
didn’t have enough money. I’d have to make
do with the remaining sausage I had.
Once home, I was pretty inspired by my
haul. I made a simple lunch of scrambled
eggs, avocado and mozzarella cheese, then
spent some time in the kitchen. I broke
into the pantry for rice and more chicken
stock, and started a Hoppin’ John soup
using the black-eyed peas, some spring
onions, kale and rice. This would be lunch
for the next couple of days.
I wanted to cook the sausage to assure it did
not go bad, so I sautéed it and stuck it in
the refrigerator for later. I then chopped the
mushrooms fine and sautéed them with some
spring onions in the same pan, to get a bit
of the sausage flavor mixed in. I added some
cooked brown rice, the juice of one Meyer
lemon and chopped parsley, then stuffed
blanched cabbage leaves with the mixture
and topped them with a can of tomato
sauce I’d heated up with the juice of another
lemon. To accompany the cabbage rolls,
I made a salad of grated carrots, chopped
spring onions and sliced radishes tossed with
orange avocado oil and plum wine vinegar
from my pantry. We ate the cabbage rolls for
two nights straight, along with more toasted
and buttered ciabatta bread.
The Hoppin’ John soup made a great
lunch. Normally a New Year’s Day
tradition, it’s a soup that would be great
anytime you can get fresh black-eyed peas.
I served it with more of the homemade
crackers smeared with a little butter
and topped with a sliced radish. I also
made another cake—this time using the
mandarin oranges and olive oil, since my
butter supply was getting too low.
Over the last two days of the project, the
food was definitely holding out: buttered
toast and oranges for breakfasts, the rest
of the Hoppin’ John soup for one lunch,
mushroom and mozzarella omelets for the
next, guacamole and homemade crackers
in the afternoon. The final two dinners
were similar to the one I made earlier in the
week—sausage with broccoli rabe instead
of kale, topped with mozzarella cheese and
baked. I also made a bowl of coleslaw with
the rest of the cabbage and carrots. We
managed to take those four ciabatta rolls
through an entire week.
I even had some food left at the end of the
week: a couple of avocados, some oranges,
carrots. And I proved, at least to myself, that
you can feed two people for a week—with
some backup pantry items—on $100 worth
of food from the San Diego Public Market.
There was definitely some repetition, but if
I were to do this for a month, I would have
had a lot more variety to work with. The
thing I enjoyed most was getting creative
with all the food I bought, staying on my
budget. Next time, though, I’ll make sure I
have garlic in the pantry! D
Shannon Essa is a California native currently residing
in San Diego. She is the author of the restaurant
guidebook Chow Venice! and splits her time between
San Diego, Santa Barbara and Europe, writing and
leading wine-, beer- and food-based tours in Croatia,
Spain and Italy for Grapehops Tours.
Illustration: Bambi Edlund
January-February 2018 edible San Diego 19