Sorbie's frugal kitchen

a mommy blog interlude

I’m currently living my longtime dream of lesbian tradwife/itinerant artist/neighborhood eccentric/independent scholar/restaurant cook. It’s the best lifestyle I could possibly ask for. The only wrinkle is that this vocation doesn’t exactly rake in the chips. My girlfriend is a PhD candidate, so neither does she. We don’t want for much, though. We are very fortunate to live in a place where there is a strong ethic of sharing, a culture of generosity. Also, there’s always university students moving out of their apartments and heading off to the coasts and leaving all of their furniture on the curb for anyone to take. I have heard the end of spring semester called “Hippie Christmas”, and indeed, some double digit percentage of my household items were curbside acquisitions. My life is pretty abundant, even though there have been times it’s been quite materially scanty.

There is, of course, the issue of feeding ourselves. We don’t struggle to do this, but we are necessarily strategic, frugal, and low-waste.

When I manage my kitchen this way I am honoring my grandmother, who was the queen of making frugality feel abundant and taste delicious. Here’s a bit about how I do it. What follows isn’t anything revolutionary, it’s just my limited-run mommy blog. Read on for some recipes. These are recipes I use all the time and delight in sharing with my loving girlfriend.

I’ll just get the general advice out of the way right now. The best tips I have for keeping a frugal kitchen are the same as your grandmother’s: buy the cheapest versions of the most versatile and nutritious ingredients, come up with creative ways to turn those into foods you actually want to eat, repurpose leftovers in fun ways, and don’t waste anything. The freezer is your friend. Like I said, nothing revolutionary.

It’s easy to throw in the towel and turn to premade foods if the foods you make yourself don’t taste that good. I promise you can make foods that taste 500% better than the factory-made equivalent, and you can probably do it way, way cheaper, too. If you just don’t have that much spare time to spend in the kitchen, I forgive you. You still might get something out of this article, especially the final recipe.

A note on ingredients: I use a lot of normal ass ingredients—no fake meats, no fake milks, no avocado oil, no coconut sugar, no spelt flour. I always use full fat dairy (and I like to buy the good shit from the local dairy when I can, though I often can’t). I cook with a lot of butter and animal fats. These are our personal preferences, and in my case it’s my Midwestern American culture; but I also believe that buying and eating this way is an easy path to a balanced, nutrient-rich diet. In the recipes that follow, I’m sure you could sub in coconut oil or oat milk or whatever your preferred niche ingredient is. I don’t know anything about gluten free cooking or baking except for the small amount I do at work, so good luck with that.

A note on measurements: I’m doing US imperial measurements by volume here because it’s what I’m used to. Nothing that follows is so finicky that it wouldn’t survive a simple conversion to metric, though. (Most home cooking is that way, despite what Bon Appétit magazine or whoever would have you believe. Unless you’re doing something insanely technical, a few grams’ difference of most ingredients will not hurt you, really and truly.) As for abbreviations: “C” for cup, “T” for tablespoon, and “t” for teaspoon.

Stock

Stock is of course the gold standard historical method for squeezing every drop of nutrients and flavor out of your ingredients. I’m connecting to the cloud of ancestors when I make stock. As I’m writing, I have a big stock pot on the stove. It’s filled with the last months’ worth of scraps, which I had been caching in the freezer in a large ziploc. Such scraps include but are not limited to parmesan rinds, onion tops and skins, celery trimmings and carrot peelings, sprouted garlic, herb stems, and the occasional chicken bone. This particular batch also includes pork bones from work. You can really add almost anything you want to the stock pot; I even add bolted lettuce in the summertime. Here are some exceptions: no brassicas (kale, turnips, cabbage, broccoli, etc.), no other bitter greens, no citrus rinds, nothing else very bitter, no very starchy veggies.

I just throw my scraps in a pot, cover them with water by an inch or so, maybe add a few extra aromatics, put the lid on, put it on low heat, and let it work for at least two hours, not more than three. Then I kill the heat, let the stock steep and cool til it’s the temperature of warm bathwater, then strain it. Then I decide how I’m gonna use it. (I’m soaking some white beans for bean and sausage soup as I write.) I portion what I’m not going to use right away into quarts, label and date it, cool it in the fridge, then freeze it. It keeps for months if your freezer is any good. Pull some out to make soup or flavor a sauce at any time.

Ricotta/farmer’s cheese/tvorog/by any other name

A problem in my house is that I don’t always go through a quart before it spoils, and I have been known to cry when this happens. To avoid this scenario, at my girlfriend’s advice I’ve taken to making ricotta the second my milk threatens to turn. I can’t believe I went so many years without doing this. It’s so easy and so high-reward.

You just take your milk, put it in a saucepan over medium low heat, bring it to 200ºF (or just below a boil if you don’t have a thermometer; it’s not that fussy. I like to temp mine to make sure I’m not kidding myself because I got impatient), kill the heat, add a few tablespoons of lemon juice (or vinegar) per quart of milk, add some salt to your taste, give it a quick stir, then let it curdle for 10 minutes or so. Then you can strain it through a cloth. I like to let mine sit on a colander for 30-45 minutes because I like my ricotta on the dry side (à la farmer’s cheese), but you can just give yours a quick little squeeze if you want. You don’t have to save the whey (the lemony, high protein, micronutrient-dense milk juice), but I always do, and here’s why:

Breads galore

So what do you do with whey? Well, if you’re the type, you can add it to a smoothie as part of your fitness routine. I’m not the type, so I put it in bread. Glorious, glorious bread.

I usually use some variation on this very average, very easy, no-nonsense white bread recipe, slightly modified from The Prairie Homestead. On April 23, 2025, the cost per loaf is something like 95¢ if you use the most bare bones version of the recipe and Aldi ingredients. The price is more like $1.75 if you do a more enriched loaf. Cheaper than the cheapest grocery store bread these days, and way more flavorful and nutritious, especially if you choose to use whey and butter. And all you really have to do, other than knead it once for 10 minutes, is check on it after an hour, then throw it in the oven.

1 1/3 C water (or milk, or beer, or whey!!!)
1 T sugar (I like to use honey when I have it)
1 egg, room temp
(a few tablespoons of melted butter) (this will extend your bread’s shelf life but isn’t strictly necessary)
1 packet (2 1/4 t) active dry yeast
1 t salt (more like 1 1/2 t if your salt is coarse)
3 to 3 1/2 C AP flour

Bring your liquid to 115ºF-120ºF. Whisk in everything else up to the butter, if using. Place this in a large bowl. Sprinkle the yeast in and let it bloom for at least 5 minutes. Once it’s foamy, you can work the flour into the liquid a bit at a time. Once all of the flour is incorporated, tip the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it for 10 minutes, or until it’s elastic. (You can use a stand mixer and a dough hook for this, but I don’t have those.)

Grease a large bowl. I always use butter for that because I use butter for everything conceivable. Place your dough in the greased bowl and turn it over so it’s coated in grease. Cover the bowl with a damp towel or some plastic wrap and set it in a nice warm area of the kitchen. (I have an old school gas oven that’s a little warm even when it’s off, so I just put my dough in there. You can put yours near your radiator, or you can put your oven on the warm setting and place your dough ON TOP OF, NOT INSIDE OF, the oven.) Let it sit until it has doubled in size, about an hour.

Now you can decide what kind of bread product you’re going to make.

IF NORMAL BREAD LOAF:

Preheat your oven to 350ºF. Punch down the dough and roll it out into a thick circle, then roll it up into a loaf shape. Place it in a greased standard 9”x5” loaf pan. Let it rest, covered with a nice damp towel, for another 20 minutes or so. You can now brush it with egg wash and sprinkle some additions (sesame seeds, flaky salt, whateva) on top, but you can also just leave it as it is. Bake it for 25-30 minutes, rotating halfway through baking, of course, until it’s got a good color. Remove from the pan to cool. This keeps for a few days in the bread box. If you choose to put it in a plastic bag to keep it fresh, please make sure it’s all the way cool first.

IF ROLLS:

These are great for eating with dinner, but they are also great for making breakfast sandwiches the next morning.
Preheat your oven to 375ºF. Divide the dough into 15 or 16 pieces (you can use a scale to do this, or you can just eyeball it) and shape them into rolls. Place them in a greased 9”x13” pan, or two greased 9” rounds. Cover with a damp towel and give em a 30 minute rise. Brush em with egg wash and top with stuff if you like. Bake 20-25 minutes.

IF DEEP DISH PIZZA:

Preheat the oven to 450º. Line two 10” or 12” cast irons with cornmeal or farina. (You can just do a baking sheet if you want, probably.) Divide your dough, shape it, and press it into your pans. Top with TOPPINGS. (You can do standard pizza fare, or you can go nuts. The pizza format is a great vessel for leftovers. One of our favorites was from the other month when I had leftover masoor dal, and I topped the dough with that and some farm cheese and parm. When it came out of the oven I topped it with a pepper and onion slaw and drizzled on some lemony yogurt sauce. It would have been awesome with cilantro, but I don’t buy fresh herbs from the supermarket because they’re an absolute racket (I grow myself of buy local when in season; the rest of the year I go without). We ate it with my grandma’s peach chutney from last summer. What I’m saying is that you can and should really stretch and trouble the definition of pizza.) Bake for 15-20 minutes, until good and crusty.

According to the Prairie Farmstead recipe, you can make cinnamon rolls from this dough too. I’ve never tried that but I’m sure it’s pretty good. You could make fruit and nut bread by adding some chopped dried fruits coated in flour and nuts of your choice. Or you could do the same with technique with olives. You could put toasted spices inside or on top. You can do anything. Probably.

Pancakes

We eat some version of pancakes something like fortnightly, sometimes even more frequently. It’s another cheap (less than $2 per batch, and it makes 3 or 4 hearty servings, up to 8 light servings), yummy, and extremely versatile recipe. As with most things, I use a variation of the Joy of Cooking¹ recipe. I’m certain Irma Rombauer would approve of my sharing it here with you:

1 1/2 C sifted AP flour (or something like 1 1/4 C if you don’t feel like sifting)
1 t salt
3 T sugar (less if you want)
1 3/4 t baking powder
1 or 2 eggs
1 1/4 C milk²
3 T melted butter

Sift or whisk the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, thoroughly whisk the wet ingredients. Add the wet to the dry and STIR GENTLY until a lumpy batter forms. Don’t overmix it! Overmixing leads to tough pancakes; a gentle touch leads to a tender, cloudlike pancake.

Heat up your griddle or pan over a low to medium low flame. It’s the perfect temperature when you drop some water on the pan and it spits and bubbles a bit. If the water doesn’t spit, the pan is too cool. If the water evaporates immediately, it’s too hot.

Generously grease the griddle with butter or bacon fat. Drop the batter by the heaping tablespoon or by the scant quarter cup; they expand quite a bit. You could technically make them bigger, I guess, but they will take much longer to cook and be a little more finicky.

At this point you can add your inclusions to each individual pancake. There’s the normal old blueberry or chocolate chip, of course, but you can do ever so much more. You can use any low-moisture berry you like; I really like serviceberries when they are in season (I “forage” them from random neighbors’ trees). Another personal favorite of mine is chopped bacon in some pancakes, bananas in others, then eating them in an alternating stack. You can add walnuts, candied ginger, figs, butterscotch bits, you name it. Or you can keep them just the way they are.

The pancakes are ready to flip when the edges are a little bit dry and you can see bubbles rising in the center of the pancake. They are done when, well, they’re cooked all the way through. A telltale sign is watching the steam: when the cakes stop steaming, it means they’re dry all the way though, which means they are done. This technique isn’t reliable if the cakes have berries inside, though. If you’re nervous, just open a cake in the center and see if it’s wet.

These are best eaten immediately. You can keep them warm by putting a clean towel over them as they come off the griddle. I love to eat mine with a slathering of butter. You can get Real American and eat em with maple syrup, as my girlfriend does. Or you can do what we sometimes like to do and eat them with jam. (I always have way too much jam for reasons I'll get into later.) Or, if you’re a different kind of Real American and also a maniac, you can eat them with peanut butter. You can eat them with lemon curd. You can eat them with fresh whipped cream and fresh berries. You can eat them with poached pears. You can eat them with cooked apples. You can eat them with cheese. You can do anything you want with whatever you have.

If you have leftovers, you can freeze them and pop them in the toaster or re-fry them when you’re ready to eat them. Our favorite thing to do with these leftovers, though, is have McGriddle-style pancake sandwiches for dinner. The other day we had bacon egg and cheese McGriddles on leftover banana pancakes and they really rocked.

Oh, and check this out. If you don’t have milk, you can use sour cream or full fat yogurt instead. These cakes are a lot cakier, more like muffin texture than pancake, but the flavor is awesome. I bet you could sub in a bit of ricotta, too, but keep some of the milk.

Another one of our favorite pancake variations doesn’t use the above recipe at all. It’s 100% easier and quicker to make this batter, because it uses a mix. That mix is… Jiffy corn muffin mix³. Pure Michigan, baby! I follow the recipe on the box but add some extra milk to make it more pancake batter consistency, then drop and fry it on the griddle as above. These cakes are more fragile, so take extra care when flipping them. They are awesome with a slathering of butter and some tart jam, and bacon on the side. They also make yummy McGriddles. One box makes something like 8 to 10 substantial pancakes.

Hash/colcannon/hoppel poppel by any other name

A winning styling of a small amount of leftovers: mash them with potatoes and fry the lot. “Colcannon” has cabbage and is Irish. “Bubble and squeak” is a silly English name for the same. “Hoppel poppel” features scrambled eggs and is of German origin, and therefore also deeply Midwestern. Whatever you call it, it’s the best. Here’s a generous two person recipe that’s kind of similar to how we do it at the brunch place I work for. Double or triple to the size of your family and your heart’s content.

3 medium potatoes, cubed (I peel mine for this purpose) (sometimes I even use sweet potatoes)
half a small onion, small dice
up to 1 C leftovers (meats, veggies, whateva), roughly diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced/grated
red wine vinegar or lemon juice
heavy cream (use milk if you’re a coward)
S+P
(eggs)

Boil the potatoes in generously salted water until they are very soft. Meanwhile, fry up your onions in a large skillet and add the leftovers. When both are done, combine them in a large bowl with the minced garlic and a few splashes of vinegar, and give it a light mashing to your desired consistency. Loosen it up a wee bit with a few glugs of heavy cream. Season it all to taste with salt and fresh cracked pepper.

Wipe out the pan in which you fried your onions and heat it on medium high heat. Add a few tablespoons of bacon grease or butter. When it’s good and hot, add the hash in two (or however many) portions. Press them down until they’re half an inch thick or so. Fry for maybe five minutes, check to see if they’ve got a nice brown crust, and flip them, carefully.

Meanwhile you can start poaching or frying some eggs (we like sunny side up) to eat on top, if you like.

When the hash is done, plate it, put an egg or two on top of each portion, and weep with delight.

The ultimate struggle meal: peanut noodles

This recipe is adapted from Eric Kim’s recipe as it appeared in the New York Times. It would be an act of violence against the working class if I allowed a paywall to stop me from sharing it (and in fact I first found this recipe pre-stolen on someone else’s blog). It takes maybe 10 minutes max and is ridiculously cheap. Oh, and it’s so tasty that we eat it with gusto at least once per week. One time we even added in some leftover sloppy joe. That was crazy, but also pretty delicious. Here’s the two serving recipe. Multiply or divide as needed.

2 packs of ramen, flavor packs removed and set aside OR 6 oz spaghetti
4 T peanut butter (Jif, Skippy, or other palm-oil-laden budget stuff works best)
2 T chili crisp (the original recipe says butter, you can do that if you don’t like spicy)
2 t soy sauce
grated parmesan or similar
(spinach)
(fresh veggies, julienne) (we like carrots or bell peps)
(pickled jalapeños)

Boil the noodles in a pot according to the package directions. If using, add a few handfuls of spinach right before you turn off the heat. SAVE A CUP OF THE COOKING WATER, then drain the noodles. In the hot pan, add everything else, stir with chopsticks til it comes together into a sauce, and add in the noodles. Loosen the sauce as need with the reserved pasta water. When it’s all glossy, put it in bowls, top with parm and/or sesame seeds or whatever else.

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Thanks for reading! If you like the mommy recipe blog style, great, there will probably be more to come. If you don’t, you can skip those posts. If you also delight in frugal home cooking, please let me know what you do in your kitchen!

1. Joy of Cooking is the American home cook’s bible. It was written by a Midwestern housewife of German descent in the 1930s. I can’t tell you how much I recommend it; it’s got every technique you could need, and plenty that you don’t. My only caveat is that you have to get an edition that was published before 1980. Around that time they started cutting out a lot of the most useful old school info (stuff about butchery, old preservation techniques, and old world German recipes, mostly), and the portion sizes ballooned commensurate with all American portions. I don’t mean to do crazy diet culture or anything, but it really isn’t good for you to overeat. And it’s also not economical!

2. Irma’s recipe doesn’t use vanilla extract, and I don’t care much for it in my pancakes; I like mine on the savory side. If you like vanilla, you can do a scant teaspoon.

3. I bet you didn’t know that you can order in bulk directly from Jiffy himself! You can. You can get a 24 pack of corn muffin mixes for $15, and they will ship from right here in sunny southeast Michigan to anywhere in the continental US.