Flower pic taken at my parents’ house over the weekend. I’m slowly training myself to pay attention to the ways that light falls, and I really like how this turned out–the foreground flower lit strongly, and the rest of the flowers fading into the distance.

My parents’ backyard is like a jungle. They have plants bigger than I am–lots of them. I’m such a veggie-growing person that the idea of flowers makes me nervous. Also, to be fair, the pollen makes me nervous. Because you know, it’s just what I’d need to spend an extra three weeks locked up inside so that I don’t breathe in the pollen.

So despite my lack of flowers, the veggies continue to produce–we’ve finally started to get lots of tomatoes, and last night for supper, Maura and I julienned our first sweet pepper.

Which brings me, of course, to supper. I’m a big reader of blogs, and often tend toward ones that involve food. I’m a huge fan of Cheap Healthy Good, which talks about finance and food. (I want desperately to try to make her seitan, if you’re wondering.)

As I was making supper tonight, I started thinking about how I felt like we ate the same meal all the time. Then I started doing math, and while we do have it all the time, we’re probably eating one of the cheapest, tastiest meals that we could cook up.

For four meals (three of us at supper; me at lunch the next day) I’ll cook a cup of rice (about 40c–I buy rice in bulk at $20 for 25 pounds), a block of tofu (about 12 oz, $1.19 at the local hippie health-foods shop), and pickle some cucumbers, carrots, and cabbage. (The cucumbers are about 50c each, carrots are $1 a pound [and I use two or three, so maybe 1/3 a pound], cabbage is about $1 a head [and we use half, so another 50c.]) Last night we had a red pepper from the garden that ended up with the veggies, but I only use those if they’re free. (Which, speaking of, why are red peppers so expensive? You can buy disgusting green ones for a third of the price of delicious red ones, but red ones aren’t any harder to grow. I don’t get it!)

Red pepper aside, the cost of the meal so far is about $2.90. The only other things that get used are rice vinegar (which is cheap–a 1L bottle costs about $4, and we only use about 1/2 of a cup–about 50c worth), soy sauce (about the same as rice vinegar, but we only use maybe a tablespoon total–5c), powdered ginger, and powdered garlic. Those last two cost so little that I’m not even going to add them in, since we’re literally talking about a penny or two. I’ll usually use something to glaze the tofu with, but it’s whatever’s around (most recently, peach-poblano jam) and it doesn’t add more than a few cents.

The rice gets cooked with water, a little rice vinegar, and some ginger. Slice the veggies thin, and toss them with most of the rice vinegar, a little soy sauce, the ginger and the garlic. Let them sit while the rest of the meal is cooked. Tofu gets sliced, patted dry, and put into a dry, hot skillet, then cooked until both sides are brown. When it’s done, mix together a little soy sauce, a little vinegar, and whatever you have (we usually use jam or orange juice). Pour it over the tofu and cook until the sauce is absorbed, and you’re done.

I feel guilty that we eat it all the time, but it’s so easy and inexpensive! The veggies soften up in the brine while the rice and tofu cook, and the whole meal takes about a half an hour to cook–when the rice is done, so’s everything else.

We end up with four meals for around $3.50, plus it’s one of Maura’s favorite suppers. Hard to argue with that.