And we’re back with recession cuisine Tuesdays. I know it’s been a minute. But I’m sure our collective post-holiday bank accounts have many of us scraping the backs of the cupboards to make tuna-carrot-millet surprise. Oh, that’s just me? I tend to get too personal in these blogs sometimes.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. One of the best ways to save money is to cook your own food. It’s also one of the best ways to eat nutritiously and lose weight. Sounds like a win-win situation, right? Well…the problem is that so many of us live such busy lives that a healthy dinner is often a pizza with vegetables on it! Yes, I know that trick, telling yourself it’s good for you because you ordered it with onions and peppers. Well, it’s better than nothing, of course.
But here’s what I tell my clients. Our culture is sorely lacking in tradition. Can you decide to start a new tradition? On Sundays – and this is particularly nice in the winter – cook up a bubbling vat of stew. It’ll perfume the house with the scents of caring, love, garlic. It’ll make you feel all homey and cosy. You’ll have something to eat off of for a couple days. And you’ll feel virtuous, because you saved money.
Here’s your first recipe for Sunday Stew Day. There are more under ‘recession cuisine’. Sobaheg is Wampanoag (one of the Native American tribes in Massachusetts) for ’stew’. How appropriate! Now remember, people traditionally did not use recipes. They threw whatever was handy into a pot. So in that sense, the tuna-carrot-millet surprise is actually a pretty traditional way of cooking. This sobaheg recipe draws on ingredients that would have been local to this tribe. The method of cooking was recorded by English settlers in the late 1600s, and the recipe itself appears on the website for Plimoth Plantation - a fantastic recreation of the colonists’ original community in what is now Plymouth, MA.
Sobaheg
½ pound dry beans (white, red, brown, or spotted kidney-shaped beans)
½ pound yellow samp or coarse grits
1 pound turkey meat (legs or breast, with bone and skin)
3 quarts cold water
¼ pound green beans, trimmed and cut into 1-inch lengths
½ pound winter squash, trimmed and cubed
½ cup raw sunflower seed meats, pounded to a coarse flour
Combine dried beans, corn, turkey, and water in a large pot. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, turn down to a very low simmer, and cook for about 2 ½ hours. Stir occasionally to be certain that the bottom is not sticking.
When dried beans are tender, but not mushy, break up turkey meat, removing skin and bones. Add green beans and squash, and simmer very gently until they are tender.
Add sunflower flour, stirring until thoroughly blended.
subscribe ( 
