Cheap Eats

Cheap Eats is what I had been looking around for on the Internet. Meals under a buck, for when I'm down on my luck. But I want something good not something that is yuck. If you want meals as cheap as possible boil some white rice and then ball it up. Garnish with steamed grass clippings. There's your cheapest meal for those of you who don't have taste buds or who are unfortunate enough to live in rural China. But I want something with flavor. Say it with me, fla vor. Now shout it, FLAVOR! I wanted something that would not only be cheap but also not break the bank. So I stumbled upon a recipe for Kotonk Chow Fan. It's a Hawaiian dish. Doesn't it just sound flavorful? It wasn't =[ It's english name is spam fried rice. Stop whining, I hear you, "but Ben you said you wanted flavor!" I'm getting there!

Kotonk Chow Fan/Spam Fried Rice

 3 cups of cooked, refrigerated Japanese (white) rice;

 1/4 of a full container of Spam ham / other savory meat-like thing;

 4 green onions, sliced moderately thin;

 2 eggs, beaten like they owe you money;

 salt and pepper – be generous!

Sounds like it could be okay. But look closer. It calls for a quater of a container of spam. Well I'm not going to leave 3/4s of a can of spam in my/Seth's fridge. Logical answer? Quadruple it! 1 gallon = 128 oz. There are 4 quarts in a gallon, 2 pints in a quart, and 2 cups in each pint. That means there is 16oz per cup. So I needed 12 cups/192oz of rice. So I go out and buy 12 cups of rice. Now rice is one of the things that I can cook. It's very simple and strait-forward.

Easy (yet plain) White Rice

1 cup rice

2 cups water

pinch of salt

dab of butter

Put those together in a pot that can have a lid, but leave the lid off.

Stir it ever now and again.

Place on the stove medium high heat until it reaches a rolling boil. That is a boil that does not stop or slow when stirred.

Now when you have reached your rolling boil reduce heat to simmer and cover it.

Wait about 10 mins and then take it off the heat and onto a cooling rack.

Wait 5 more minutes and then take off the lid. It is very important that you do not remove the lid from the time you first put it on until now. Not even just to peak in.

The last step is to fluff it with a fork. Simple, yet plain.

So now that I have cooked my 12 cups of rice I have 36 cups of cooked rice =[ Very not cool. What am I to do with 24 cups of drab white rice? That is for another post; what I did with the 12 cups I intended to make is for this one!

So now with my refridgerated rice in hand It was time I attempted the spam fried rice. I had already diced up the green onions and had them stored in the fridge. Rinse them with cold water after you store them btw. So now I opened up my spam cans. I cut them up into little pieces and then we fry them in the skillet. For this I used butter and a large cast iron skillet. (Nicole is helping at this point so if I take credit for something she does I really am sorry) After frying the spam you should put the rice in the skillet too. The recipe I have says Ideally you should cook the scrambled eggs seperately and then mix them in at the end but you could do what we did and put them in with the rice. Once the rice is hot and the eggs are scrambled you add in the green onions. Since our batch was so big we made two batches and the mixed them together. Use your spatula to make sure nothing sticks to the bottom. Keep it moving. All throughout the frying process be liberal with your salt and pepper

So now that it is all done Nicole and I eat have a plate of it. It was rather bland. It tasted very much like beige to much and it had a mushy texture. We ran out to Hartland and picked up some Teriyaki sauce but when we got home it said teriyaki marinade on the bottle. Either way it only kind of helped.

There are some key things I learned in this adventure:

1. Never, EVER, quadruple a recipe the first time you make it

2. 1 cup of uncooked rice = 3 cups of cooked rice

3. Check the stuff you buy to make sure it is what you want to buy

Ben's Ratings (Scale 1-nearly inedible to 100-Iron chef flavor!)

Taste: 54 The taste wasn't bad, but only because it hardly was there.

Aesthetics: 70 It did look kind of appetizing, but nothing special. Like a ramen cup

Cost: About 50 cents a serving. CHEAP CHEAP