frugal ⁽¹⁷⁾

It was during the pandemic, stuck at home and with an itchy brain, that I was watching some continuing education content from Appalachian State University in my good old home state of North Carolina, and there was an excellent hour-long lecture (click me to watch) on sustainable cooking using solar. I am cheap frugal, I like sustainability, and I like food. This all seemed like a win-win-win, plus I like to camp so this style of cooking could go camping with me and eliminate my low-key resource-anxiety (like range-anxiety, but for propane).

Through the magic of finding the right influencer for a product I already decided to purchase, I found some sort of sponsorship deal or special to make owning the All American Sun Oven, which I had settled on, more affordable. It was the pandemic. I was sitting at home anyway. So I bought one.

But then the question of what to cook came up. A Sun Oven without recipes is just a gadget and not a tool.

It turns out that in addition to being able to bake anything which can bake at lower temperatures in an oven - my Sun Oven never reports being above 300F and for planning purposes should be considered to be 250F, and that's in full sun at the beach - it can also cook any recipes that could otherwise be cooked in a slow cooker/crockpot.

Bingo.

The internet is wonderful tool for sharing information. It can be especially helpful in finding great budget options for stretching a dollar, especially with food. You found your way here, didn't you?

But the internet is also a place of fantasy. And a lot of times the budget recipes you might encounter, unless you already have the same capsule kitchen as the influencer, social media personality, blogger, or recipe developer, doesn't always mean a savings over buying that dish from a restaurant. This is why...

I make this for breakfast when I am solo-parenting. Kid never rejects it. It is packed with fat, fiber, and protein. And it is made with my personal capsule kitchen's pantry staples.

If you have been hanging out, snooping my recipe book for a while, you know that I am all about that capsule kitchen, which means that certain items which are pantry staples for others, are just an additional bit of recipe for me. Such as brown sugar.

Have you ever had colcannon? A St. Patrick's day favorite, colcannon is an Irish potato recipe. [source] At its most essential, the colcannon recipe is mashed potatoes mixed with chopped cabbage or kale. Other additions like bacon, ham, scallions or yellow onions are also common. [source]

Happy St. Patrick's Day. I'm not Christian, but due to the influence that my religion has had on St. Patrick's Day, I like to celebrate it in all of its green and delicious mealed glory. And now so can you!