Poor Girl Gourmetby Amy McCoy
Price: $16.99
ISBN-13: 978-0-7407-8990-8
ISBN-10: 0-7407-8990-2
Format: Paperback
Size: 7 1/2 x 9 in.
Page Count: 240 pages
“In the current economy, many of us are cutting food budgets and getting back to the affordable option of cooking at home. Published in 2010, Poor Girl Gourmet: Eat in Style on a Bare-Bones Budget provides sophisticated recipes and up-to-date tips for these hard times. ” ––Tastebud Magazine http://bit.ly/bhDgUt
“It’s gourmet without the guilt. “Poor Girl Gourmet: Eat in Style on a Bare-Bones Budget” by Amy McCoy is just the ticket for cash-strapped food lovers pining for their fancy cheeses and expensive cuts of meat.” ––The Portland Press Herald http://www.pressherald.com/life/cookbook-corner_2010-08-25.html
“Loss of paid work put an end to what Amy McCoy calls her willy-nilly food spending and led to her blogging about making the most of her food dollars at poorgirlgourmet.blogspot.com. This grew into a book, “Poor Girl Gourmet: Eat in Style on a Bare-Bones Budget.” Her goal for these recipes is to feed four people well for $15 or less. To help accomplish this, McCoy lists her favorite ways to save money: not wasting food (which includes being careful about what you buy and planning for leftovers); buying in bulk and locally in season; buying whole foods (this means meat on the bone and entire vegetables, not the pre-cut kind); and buying items on sale.” ––Register Guard http://www.registerguard.com/csp/cms/sites/web/news/sevendays/25170489-35/couscous-mccoy-juice-almonds-bowl.csp
September 1, 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Dedham Farmers Market
in conjunction with The Blue Bunny Books & Toys
Dedham Square Circle
Dedham, MA
http://www.dedhamsquarecircle.org/
http://www.bluebunnybooks.com/
September 20, 6:00 p.m.
Whole Foods Market Swampscott
331 Paradise Road
Swampscott, MA 01907
http://wholefoodsmarket.com/storesbeta/swampscott/
Love eating well, but hate paying a lot? Amy McCoy’s cookbook, Poor Girl Gourmet: Eat in Style on a Bare-Bones Budget, features decadent and delectable recipes for foodies with limited budgets, but sophisticated tastes.
With the economic downturn Amy transformed from willy-nilly food spender to parsimonious gal. This resulted in a popular blog and a delicious cookbook of the same name that offers engaging stories, friendly advice, and savory recipes. In Poor Girl Gourmet, Amy offers pointers for saving a penny to help those of us who want to spend as little as possible without sacrificing good food.
Poor Girl Gourmet also presents basic techniques for cooking and mouth-watering menu suggestions that break down the cost for each meal. Each recipe serves at least four people, so it’s perfect for families on a budget—because eating well while saving money is something that appeals to all of us. Amy also includes a chapter on wine, reviewing 25 kinds and offering pairing suggestions to elegantly top off the perfect meal. And because once-in-a-while splurges make meals more special and life much sweeter, Amy also includes a chapter for
entrees serving four for $15 to $30. per person.
Recipes include Roasted Butternut Squash Soup, Honey-Balsamic Chicken Thighs, Roasted Beets with Caramelized Beet Greens and Orange-Walnut Pesto, and Sweet Corn and Basil Ice Cream. With full-color photography and heartwarming prose peppered throughout, Poor Girl Gourmet is a divine cookbook that’s sweet on the wallet and tempting to the taste buds.
From Poor Girl Gourmet: Eat in Style on a Bare Bones Budget
Serves 6 to 8, $5.00 or less
Estimated cost for four: $1.57. Ding-ding-ding—this is the least expensive stand-alone recipe in the entire book (roasted garlic isn’t exactly a snack—at least not for most people I know). And, the lowest cost way to make this is, of course, to use leftover coffee or espresso, but if you were to estimate the cost based on brewing four 6-ounce cups for this specific purpose, and using Fair Trade coffee that costs $12.99 for approximately forty 6-ounce servings, that would be $1.30. The water is free, my friend, for you have running water at your house, or at least I certainly hope you do. Three-quarters of a cup of sugar is 14¢, and 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder is 13¢ for the fancy, imported type.
By now you know that I abhor food waste. And I feel strongly that this should also apply to beverage waste. You’ve probably already noticed a mention or ten of leftover wine being repurposed in many a dish upon these pages, but what about that coffee that gets left behind each morning? Why should we waste that as well? Well, heck, we don’t have to—just store the leftovers in an airtight container and place them in the refrigerator for a day or two before you intend to make this, and then, on the appointed day, take the 5 or so minutes of actual active time it takes to fashion this refreshing dessert, which, with the addition of just a little milk in a glass, can also double as a fancy frozen coffee shop–style drink. So sit back and bask in your frugality. For you, my friend, you do not let a thing go to waste, no, you do not.
From Poor Girl Gourmet: Eat in Style on a Bare Bones Budget
Serves 4, $5.00 to $10.00
Estimated cost for four: $6.67. The chicken legs should cost no more than $1.49 per pound. Rounding up, we’ll call it $4.50 for the 4 legs. At $6.99 per pound, ¼ pound of olives will cost roughly $1.75. The olive oil will cost us 24¢, and the thyme approximately 18¢. If you do not have a good Italian or specialty deli in your area, jarred olives (with pits) are fine to use. In that case, you will use approximately half of the jar, and at $3.59 per jar, that’s an increase in price of approximately 30¢.
Continuing in my usual inspired-by-Italy theme, this recipe arose from my desire to recreate—in a budget-conscious fashion—the flavors of a meal of roasted duck with olives that I had on vacation in, yep, Italy. The olives alone were an epiphany—I had never before had roasted olives and was swooning over the dance of mellowed salty and buttery flavors that the roasting had imparted. Though you are welcome to try this with duck legs, I have substituted the more readily available—and don’t you just know it—inexpensive, chicken legs. We enjoy this dish at our house with either Basic Polenta (page 118) and Roasted Garlic Collard Greens (page 94) or Buttery Mashed Potatoes (page 121) and Roasted Cauliflower (page 108). Uncork yourself a Sangiovese wine, and imagine you and your beloved sitting in a Tuscan piazza, warm breezes and the smell of roasting meats wafting through the air.
As a successful freelance producer for network and cable television, Amy McCoy once enjoyed gourmet food with little concern for price. Then the recession hit and the freelance work all but disappeared. But in the economic downturn, McCoy found her mission: to eat the best food she and her husband could while spending as little as possible.
To that end, McCoy created her blog, poorgirlgourmet.blogspot.com, where she offers up her insights alongside delicious gourmet recipes that are inexpensive to prepare. McCoy lives on a gentleman’s farm in southeastern Massachusetts.
