I made cheese blintzes. It was something of an adventure because I hadn’t made them before. And while Rita regularly had them at home while growing up, she wasn’t much help in guiding the way. And so it went with my participation in the Food Stamp Challenge. The blintzes were crucial to my effort.
The non-profit group Fighting Poverty With Faith issued the Food Stamp Challenge in a lobby effort to protect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from budget cuts. It requires participants to limit their food budget to $1.50 meal, the average per meal amount food stamp recipients receive. According to The Hill at least nine Democratic congressmen took up the challenge. (Full Text)
When Rita read about this in the newspaper she said I should take the challenge.
“Is there some sort of prize,” I asked.
“No,” she said, “but we don’t spend much more than that on groceries, as it is.”
I took the challenge. Here’s how it went:
Sunday – roast chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy, onions and carrots. I bought the largest roasting chicken I could find. It was about 4.5 lbs. and would be good for at least another six meals: two beautiful chicken sandwiches with lettuce and mayo and a pot of hearty chicken noodle soup to amply feed four. It cost $8.50.
Monday – beef roulade with potato dumpling, gravy and sugar snap peas. The roulade is a thinly sliced round steak, layered with two strips of bacon and then wrapped around a large carrot stick, a rib of celery and a dill pickle spear. Delicious – I make these regularly. The cost driver in this meal is the steak and bacon and is less than $1.10 a serving. The potato dumplings were made from the left over mashed potatoes, an egg and enough flour to stiffen the mix for rolling into balls. The yield on this was four servings. Rita snacked on the left overs for breakfast.
Tuesday – lamb ragout. This might have been a deal breaker, but it was oh so good. It was made from a 0.43 lb. lamb shoulder chop costing about $8 a pound. I cut this beauty into stew meat and brazed in a combination of equal parts of chicken stock, beef stock and red wine. The stew was finished with two peeled, seeded and diced fresh Roma tomatoes, an onion, ½ of a bell pepper and sliced green olives. It was thickened with tomato paste and simply seasoned with garlic, basil and oregano. Finally it was tossed with cooked rotini pasta. I think this dish might have cost $2.60 a plate.
Wednesday and Saturday -- chicken soup with buttered toast triangles for dunking.
Thursday – meatloaf from 1 lb. ground chuck, an egg, two table spoons of chili sauce, onion soup mix and a cup of bread crumbs. I had this with Betty Crocker scalloped potatoes and an iceberg lettuce salad. The leftover meatloaf was good for another three sandwiches.
And now we come to the adventure. Friday – cheese blintzes. A blintz is simply a thin pancake. In France they are called crêpes and in Italy, crespelle. In Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine they are called blintzes.
Like hearty soup with bread, they are part of peasant cuisine. I knew that if I were to meet the Food Stamp Challenge I would need to cook like a peasant. After all, Rita had them regularly while growing up and both of her parents were honest to god German-Ukrainian peasants. So I placed the here-to-for unknown to me, cheese blintz on my menu.
While blintzes can be filled with any number things, Rita’s mom made cheese blintzes filled with either cottage or farmer’s cheese and topped with cherry pie filling. Rita did not want that. She rejected the cottage cheese, and suggested Ricotta instead. Nor would she have anything to do with cherry pie filling. Beyond that advice I was on my own. The result was magnificent and a recipe will follow.
Now I don’t really know if $1.50 per meal is miserly or overly generous food assistance for the poor. But I do know that the SNAP program is supposedly a supplemental program and for $2 a plate one can eat very well indeed, provided there is a little peasantry in one’s food culture. And to a significant degree, that’s what the best cookbooks are all about. Think of the Joy of Cooking, Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking or Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.
I normally spend between $70 and $85 a week on groceries. Rita packs a lunch every day. I normally pack a lunch two or three days a week. On the days when I buy a lunch the cost is normally under $5.
My local newspaper columnist James E. Causey also accepted to food stamp challenge. His account of his experience presents joyless and unhappy week of eating, anchored by skinless, boneless chicken breasts, turkey burgers, canned soup and peanut butter sandwiches. (Full Text) And after enduring this purgatory like menu he oddly concludes:
“The experiment reinforced my belief that there should be restrictions on what can be purchased with food stamps. Food stamps are meant to be a supplement, and with the nation facing an obesity epidemic, restrictions should be placed on sugary snacks, chips and sodas, cookies and cakes.
These restrictions actually would help those who use food stamps to make healthier food choices by eliminating the least healthy options. It would curb impulse buys, such as candy bars or bags of chips while waiting in line.
When I was at Aldi, a family ahead of me at the checkout was overdrawn on their food stamps and had to put back some food. What they put back were several Arizona Ice Teas, Popsicles, ice cream and bags of chips.
In that family of five, four of the people were overweight. With more than 40 million people currently using food stamps, don't we want to make sure people are making the healthiest food choices?“
But enough of that, it speaks for itself. Instead let me offer you a recipe for delicious cheese blintzes.
Cheese Blintzes with Caramelized Apple Slices
For the Blintz (makes six):
½ cup of half and half
1/3 cup of flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 egg
Slowly wisk the flour into the half and half making sure to beat out all the lumps. Wisk in the egg and salt to complete the batter.
Fry these in a lightly buttered 10” sauté pan on medium heat. About three tablespoons of batter will do for each blintz. The batter swirled to coat the bottom of the pan to make a very thin 8” pancake.
For the cheese filling:
6 oz. Ricotta Cheese
2 oz. Cream Cheese softened at room temperature
2 heaping tablespoon crumbled blue chees
For the sauce
1 Apple pealed cored and thinly sliced
2 oz. Apple cider
2 oz. Maple Syrup
1/8 teaspoon ea. Allspice, ground cloves, ground cinimon.
Saute the apple slice in butter until browned and limp. Add cider to cover then add the spices and maple syrup. Bring mix to a slow boil then simmer to keep it warm.
To assemble
Fill the blintzes by centering an oblong mound cheese filling on each pancake, fold the sides over the filling then roll the blintz up to fully enclose the filling. Place the filled blintzes seam side down on a non-stick sheet pan and bake at 3500 for 15 minutes. Then serve topped the caramelized apple sauce.
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