Cheap End-Time Eats
February 7th, 2011Plus Surprising $17 Brandy
I made a Costco mission. I needed Granny Smiths for drying. I also got some phenomenal Costco mozzarella to freeze in pizza-sized portions.
I still haven’t found another mozzarella that compares, for New York style pizza.
Sadly, the impulse buy bug bit me. I saw a huge jug of Korbel brandy for $17. Korbel champagne is excellent, and it runs $9 per bottle, so I had to see what the brandy was like. I assumed it would be pretty bad, but still useful for cooking.
I know I’m going to get comments about the champagne. If you drank Korbel many years ago, you probably got a bad impression of it, but I swear, it’s good now. I was very surprised when I tasted the improved version. It’s crisp and dry, with enough sweetness to keep it from tasting acrid, and it doesn’t seem to have the green “sappy” taste wines like Cordon Rouge have.
Anyway, the brandy is startling. I like the full flavor of Remy Martin VSOP a little better, but this stuff is very, very smooth, and the flavor, apart from a slight lack of intensity, is exactly what I look for in a brandy.
I checked out the flour while I was there. They beat Gordon Food Service to death. They charge about $17 for 50 pounds of flour. It’s Conagra bread flour. I don’t know how good it is, but fortunately, my pizza comes out great regardless of the flour. Might be problematic in rolls, however. Still, this is survival food, not party food. It will be good enough.
Edit: I checked around, and I found some info posted by a respected pizza guru. He calls Costco Conagra flour “excellent,” so it must be pretty good. Not bromated, but he seems to like the performance anyway.
Depending on the type of pizza, one bag will produce something like 40 pies. The two bags of mozzarella will produce roughly the same number of pies. I have two giant cans of sauce, which is enough for at least 60 pies. A ballpark approximation gives me a price of roughly one dollar per pie, before toppings. Ridiculous. If they were merely good, it would be a stellar bargain. For some of the best pizza in South Florida, it’s so cheap it’s insane.
The strange thing about my survival supplies is that they’ll make such fantastic food. I’m saving stuff like ham hocks, beans, pizza makings, dried apples, country ham, and pasta. That’s good chow, people. I don’t eat that well NOW.
The older I get, the more I convinced I am that you have to be an idiot to think good food is expensive. Some good things, like prime beef, cost money. But think about ham hocks, cornbread, greens, pork butts, ribs, choice rib eyes, whole chickens (for smoking or making dumplings), whole pigs, dried beans, salt pork, and rice. It’s all cheap, and it makes for very special meals.
Vegetables and fruit will take some effort. Maybe I should learn how to grow calabasas. I already have cooking bananas, which are probably high in some nutrient or other. I have some dragonfruit plants, but they haven’t produced yet. I’ve grown beans in the past, but it’s tough to keep the rust from eating them.
I should either start canning greens or look for a good price on a few cases of canned collards.
Fish…I got that covered. I’ll go to the marina where my dad docks his boat. They hate it when you fish there, because they have a bizarre attachment to the huge clouds of snapper that live under the boats, but you can fill a bucket with foot-long mangroves (grey snapper) in an hour. If things really get rough, I can cast a net for mullet. They taste great smoked, although they aren’t much fried.
Anyway, things are looking good. With this good stuff waiting to be eaten, it will almost be sad if the floods don’t come.
February 7th, 2011 at 8:44 PM
I’m not sure about floods but I have had a feeling that bad times are coming to the US. We have gone so far astray morally and spiritually that the correction is going to be severe. My life has changed so much in the last few years, mostly bad, but it has made me see how much I need God everyday. I still backslide and may never be what some call a “good” christian but I have found refuge in prayer when it seemed I was being dragged over one cliff after another by forces that I had no control over. I am trying to simplify my life and learn to live with a lot less “stuff” than before. And I have been saving food stuffs that have a long shelf life for some time now and it’s already paid off in savings and a small feeling of security. Might find out how long canned food will really last if things go like I think they will. I pray for us all daily.
February 7th, 2011 at 11:55 PM
Since you live in South Florida a coconut tree or two is an easy way to produce a lot of tasty calories with little effort. I also thought of fish as a backup source of protein. I’m not good with a cast net so I bought a couple of minnow traps to catch bait with. I’ve got a gig to spear my mullet with.
Look into Everglades’s tomatoes and Seminole pumpkins. Both are supposed to be easy to grow in South Florida. I have several varieties of tomato in my yard now and the Everglade’s are more vigorous and are blooming heavily. The Seminole pumpkin vines seem to be doing well also. The iguanas got two of the pumpkin vines but they’re another source of protein if I need it!
February 8th, 2011 at 8:47 AM
Are those marina fish safe to eat, with all the gas and oil in the water? Or maybe there isn’t gas and oil in the water.
…
How are you doing surviving the middle times we’re in now?
February 8th, 2011 at 11:01 AM
Look into Mylar bags and O2 removers. You can lengthen the shelf life of beans and pasta to 8-10 years. Flours can be stored for 5 years or so. This is assuming a 70 deg. ambient temperature.
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Also, I buy a lot of freeze dried and dehydrated stuff from http://store.honeyvillegrain.com/
February 8th, 2011 at 4:17 PM
Have to agree with you on the Korbel. It’s a nice sparkling wine, and you can’t beat the price. Every once in a while, Costco will stock some other winners in the sparkling wine category. If you ever see them peddling Zardetto Prosecco, grab what you can. It’s about $9 a bottle, and very tasty. I’ve found that you can get some great Proseccos for $10 or less, and they beat the snot out of any high-priced champagne out there.
February 8th, 2011 at 4:21 PM
Korbel used to be pretty lame. I still can’t get used to the new quality.
February 8th, 2011 at 10:29 PM
Cheap eats! I still have yet to eat a filet mignon in my lifetime.
I like cognac over brandy though.
I guess I sacrafice high piced food for an occasional glass of high priced booze.
I grew up eating harvested wild game, field greens, and cornbread.
You can feed a family of four with a couple .22 long rifle cartridges, an hour of gathering, and 25 cents worth of corn meal.
February 8th, 2011 at 10:38 PM
But Cognac is brandy!
February 9th, 2011 at 11:18 AM
In my experience the Costco ConAgra flour is top-notch stuff. I’ve used it for bread, rolls, cakes and (of course) both thin and sicilian-style pizzas for a couple of years now and there’s been no drop-off in quality from King Arthur flour, which is what I used previously.
February 19th, 2011 at 4:42 PM
You say that have Mangrove Snappers near you? I am envious. One of the best tasting fish out there. I used to catch or spear them in the Keys and had them cooked up within two hours.