Leanne is a food studies scholar in NYC and has provided the internet two fantastic cookbooks where you can find on her site! I found this via reddit somewhere and was incredibly impressed by the food porn pictures and her recipes. They’re incredibly simplistic and cheap. I think she wrote it for budget conscious students. It goes to show with a bit of elbow grease, ‘cheaper’ foods can be exciting. The recipes are largely vegetarian based and I’m excited to see that, I need to cook vegetables a bit better than my standard boiling.
The way I cook resembles hers a lot but with a lot more meat. I’ve been thinking that it’s not that hard to eat large amounts of protein and have it cheap as well. Last week I made a lamb tagine where I went to safeway and bought 6 lamb shanks which was about $5/lbs. It came out to be $24 and $4 per shank. Not too bad in my opinion, and I consider that rather pricey for meat already. The rest of the ingredients in there were raisins, apricots (ironically probably the most expensive by weight for this recipe), tomatoes and onions.
I’d want to say I’d cook the recipes in her books more, but I’m perpetually on a ‘lean gain’ phase where I’m trying to maintain muscle mass (high protein requirements) but trying to lose the fat. I definitely plan to reference the books to look for more interesting ways to spice up my vegetables though.
