Embrace your inner scotsman

We certainly do anyway, and it definitely helps in keeping food bills under control.

Dinner this evening was a fabulous affair, and if you're not at one with your inner scotsman you may find that itemising and costing out the ingredients in a meal to be a dry and joyless affair, sucking all enjoyment of the meal away and leaving a headache in it's place. I pity those people. But for those who find thriftiness a virtue it's an exercise worth pursuing.

The recipe: Random on Toast
serves: 3 and a toddler

Raw ingredients:
2 Onions ($0.40)
60gm liver ($0.40)
2 Tomatoes ($0.50)
1 Avacado ($0.80)
4 Eggs ($0.70)
a dozen olives ($0.50)
7 slices of toast ($0.30)
Leftover salad from lunch (free - recycling)
Butter, herbs (free)

Total cost = $3.60 (roughly $1 per person)

1. Chop onions and simmer with some butter and herbs for a good 10 minutes or so (onions *must* be well cooked before eating, otherwise they are much too sharp). While simmering, slice tomatoes and avacado. Set aside half the avacado in a bowl for your precious miracle. Finish dicing liver.

2. Add liver. Continue simmering for another minute or so, stopping when the liver is cooked (which will happen very quickly if it is sliced into tiny pieces). Set aside herbed liver and onions.

3. Add more butter and 4 eggs (at the same setting), and ignore. Start pumping toast out. When the final toast goes in, switch off the eggs.

4. Put one egg into the little one's bowl, mix well.
Using toast continents on each plate, make small city states of tomatoes, avacado, olives, egg, and liver/onion. Ring with barbarian Salad.

Random on Toast has served us well over the years, the basic formula is (proteins) + (fresh things) on toast.

Protein: Pretty much any good source of protein. Avacado, Liver and Egg were the workhorses here, but Baked Beans, Cheese, tinned Salmon/Tuna, mince or other meats all fill the protein hole well.

Fresh Things: Again, whatever plant material you want to eat (within reason). We're finding that new season silverbeet replaces lettuce in salads with nary a whisper.


Food that tastes great, but doesn't cost the earth.