Economical Swedish Furniture Makes Me Ravenous

... so I was ready to eat when I got back from Ikea at CascadeStation (ha! A mall that thinks it's an insurance company, by the sound of its name) this afternoon. When I drive back from the airport on Sandy, I go past soooo many intriguing noodle places - Ohana, Got Pho?, Thai Lao Bistro, Pho Gia - and those are just the ones I can think of right now. There are literally at least five more, and those are just the signs in English. I really, reeeeally wanted noodles - but I really didn't want to stop or spend money. So, I dressed up some Top Ramen! I brought water to a boil with a few tablespoons of leftover chicken broth, part of the spice package, and half of a leftover carrot, quartered. Once it got to a boil, I added the noodles, a handful of frozen corn (whew! Finally used up the last of the bag), a clove, and some Five-Spice powder (cinnamon, anise, fennel, ginger, clove, and licorice root. Hey, wait... Sun Luck, are you sure you want to call it Five-Spice - yes? Well, okay...). I have no idea if four minutes of simmering was enough for the whole clove to make any contribution, but the five-spice powder certainly did its share!

Once the carrots were soft enough to stick a fork through, I put it all in a bowl, added a dash of rice vinegar, a dash of soy sauce, and a couple of drops of toasted sesame oil, and some sesame seeds on top just for sass. And it was great, and psychologically so much more filling than a regular bowl of ramen!

My cheap and oh-so-good noodle bowl got me thinking. A couple of years ago, I discovered the USDA's online recipe-finder tool (http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/). It features a sizeable database of easy, generally healthy, and very economical recipes. Each recipe has been analyzed for cost and nutritional content. Many of the recipes are submitted by nutritionists who are trying to get people to eat healthily while using food stamps. This makes it a great place to go to find basic, bare-bones recipes that cost between 30 and 90 cents a person (some more). Then, if you decide that you want to splurge on kale or use leftover green onions, you can do that - but in most cases, you don't have to go out and buy something crazy just because it holds the recipe together. And, the database is incredibly searchable, since it's partly intended for social workers to use to get their nutrition messages across.

Here are just a few of the many ways you can search:

-Nutrition Education Topic (Calcium-Rich Food; Whole Grains; Less Saturated Fat, Trans Fat and Cholestorol)

-Theme (Ready in 30 Minutes Or Less, Food Resource Management)

-Menu Items (self-explanatory)

-Ingredients

-Ratings

-Audience (Parents of young children, Middle Eastern, Southern, Vegetarian)

-Cooking Equipment (Microwave, Wok, No Cooking Required, Stovetop/Hot Plate)

-Aaand: recipe cost! Yes, you can actually specify that your search results cost less than a certain amount per serving and/or recipe.

There are even official-looking Nutrition Facts with each recipe, as well as a shopping list feature (you can browse through recipes, click "Add to shopping list" when one looks good, and then view your list to see what you'll need).

In honor of our crappy economy, I've decided to start using this website a lot more. It's such a great tool! In fact, I may try to cook things from it every day this week. I'll let you know how they turn out.
So, tonight we're having Spaghetti With Lentils, which is kind of cheating because it's the first recipe I ever used off of this site when I first discovered it.