This is a blog for poor students (and other frugal people) in the Boston area (and other areas). Being thrifty doesn't mean that you can't eat well. Every week, I'll show you a new way to eat well without spending a fortune. Like the Poor Student on Facebook to see the latest posts first!
After I got a Poppery II from the Goodwill store, I tried roasting a batch of Sumatra beans. Initially, I thought it would be very similar to the Popcorn Pumper because the two machines looked similar on the inside. However, it was a little more difficult to determine the right amount of beans to use at first because the lower wattage of the Poppery II meant that the beans would spin slower in there (than in the Pumper). So, I ended up having to finish off the first couple of batches of beans in the toaster oven. Unlike the previous experience of using the toaster oven, this time I used my GE convection toaster oven. The results were much better because the heat was evenly distributed this time. You can see in the picture below that the beans were a uniform color. If you compare this to the results from the previous post on coffee roasting results, it's obvious that the convection oven helped to create a more even roast.
Sumatra light roast, finished off in the GE convection toaster oven
Previous uneven roast finished off in the Black & Decker toaster oven
The Light Roast is actually more flavorful!
I prepared the coffee using my espresso machine and the crema was very thick. That was already a good sign. The surprise was that this light roast actually has more flavor than the darker roasts that I had been drinking since I figured out how to create dark roasts in the Popcorn Pumper. I was able to taste more of the bean and taste the "hint of fruit" that was mentioned on Sweet Maria's site. There was also a little more earthiness in the lighter roast. With darker roasts, the smokiness often overpowers the subtle flavors of the coffee bean. While I like the smokiness sometimes, I figure I might as well taste the coffee bean too if I'm going to pay a little more for the "better" beans. Otherwise, I might as well buy the cheap beans to do dark roasts because most dark coffees taste very similar. If you plan on drinking only dark roasts and want cheap beans, go for the "Poor Man's Blend" on Coffee Bean Direct (5 lbs of green coffee beans for only $23).
To combine the smokiness with the flavor of the bean, try blending the light and dark beans. This might give you the best of both worlds.
In the end, this was a very happy accident. It was a good thing that I wasn't able to create a dark roast with the Poppery II because I can now enjoy Sumatra coffee more and taste all the flavors that are hidden in that bean.
In the next coffee roasting post, I will do a comparison of the Popcorn Pumper and the Poppery II.
Most college students will have quite a few slices of pizza during their 4 years in the dorms or wherever they live. In one recent episode of the TV show, Nightline, pizza was shown to be in higher demand during recessions because it's such a cheap meal. So, it's no surprise that pizza is such a popular meal for poor college students. Unlike the rest of the population, there are fewer fluctuations in demand. This is why I thought that a post on pizza would be appropriate for this blog.
In my previous post on making pizza in the humble toaster oven, I didn't really get into the ingredients themselves. The point was to show you that the toaster oven can do things you might not expect were possible. This post is about the ingredients. At this point, you might be wondering why you should even consider making your own pizza? Getting a pizza delivered usually costs around $10. Depending on what you put on your pizza, you can make it at home for much less and with not much time or energy. The trick is to make a lot of dough at one time and then store it in the freezer. Defrost a portion in the fridge over night when you think you'll have pizza.
Get some Pizza Dough
Making the dough is what takes the most time. If you really don't want to make your own dough, you can usually buy the dough for very little money. Most supermarkets and Trader Joe's sell balls of dough for about $1 to $2 each. If you're willing to spend $2.50 (plus tax) for a ball of really tasty dough, try the balls of dough from Oggi Gourmet at Harvard Square. They're located in the Holyoke Center (by Au Bon Pain) and don't really advertise that they sell dough, but they do. Just ask for "a ball of dough". I try to get some every time I'm in the area. It's actually better than the stuff you get from supermarkets and worth the extra couple of bucks. It's still cheaper than ordering pizza! Most balls of dough from any place are enough for two medium to large thin crust pizzas.
For those of you who are willing to get your hands dirty and try making your own dough, a bread machine will save you a lot of time and effort. All you have to do with one of those is put the ingredients in the pan, choose the mixing function (so it mixes the dough but doesn't bake it), and start it. In about 1.5 hours, you have a ball of pizza dough! Go to any thrift store and there will probably be a bread machine selling for about $10 or less. As an added benefit, you can bake your own funny-looking bread in it too. Actually, it's better to mix the dough in the machine, take it out, put it in a baking pan, let it rise for an hour or more, and then bake it in the oven. That's just my opinion though - do whatever you have time to do.
The basic ingredients for dough are flour, sugar, yeast, salt, and water. Flour will be about $2 to $4 a bag and sugar is quite inexpensive at CVS. If you plan to make your own pizza and bread for an extended period of time, you can get 2 lb bags of yeast for less than $10 at BMS Paper Company or at haymarket in the middle-eastern store. Even though you don't need a lot of yeast for each batch, the stuff you get at the supermarket is not cheap. Try to find some friends who might want some yeast and divide that 2 lb bag. It freezes quite well. I've had the same bag in the freezer for over 2 years and it still works. Just take out a few ounces at a time and put it in a clean jar to store in the fridge.
Roll out the dough
If you sprinkle some flour on your pizza pan before rolling out the dough on it, you'll have an easier time cleaning up afterwards. Now, when I say, "rolling out," I don't really mean that you need a rolling pin to flatten it. All you really need to do is to press down on the dough on the pizza pan a little bit at a time and eventually, it will stretch out enough. If it doesn't seem to stretch out enough, let it sit for a while and then try stretching it again. When the dough gets to the edge of the pan, throw the toppings on and put it in the oven.
Throw the toppings on!
The toppings are relatively easy to prepare. Grate the cheese and chop up everything else. At haymarket, you can get a chunk of cheese (around 6 to 8 oz, depending on the type of cheese) for $3, 2 chunks for $5, or 3 for $7. If they have cheddar, muenster or mozzarella, that's going to be about 8 oz. You shouldn't need more than half a chunk for a small pizza. For sauce, buy the pasta sauce that goes on sale every now and then (usually 3 jars for $5). Go easy on the sauce though because too much sauce will make dough soggy. The thinner the dough, the lighter the toppings need to be. Otherwise, you won't be able to pick up the pizza and have it stay in one piece.
If all of these instructions are a little overwhelming, here's a video by Sousoukitchen to show you (in English and in French) how to make the dough using a food processor to mix the ingredients to get the dough together and the rest of the process step by step.
Average cost of a homemade pizza:
Let's say you make 6 pizzas with one bag of flour ($4 a bag), which comes to 67 cents a pizza. Two lbs of sugar at CVS is only $3 when it's on sale. There are 9 cups in one of those yellow Domino round containers. Let's say you use 2 Tbsp per pizza, which means it will be less than 10 cents a pizza. The yeast should also be less than 10 cents a pizza. For salt, if you seriously don't have any, go to your school cafeteria and take a couple of salt packets. Water is free. So, the dough should cost about 87 cents to make. The cheese is the most expensive part. If you use half a chunk of cheese, that's about $1.50 or less, assuming that you bought only one chunk of cheese at haymarket. The amount of sauce you use will be very little, so let's say that's about 17 cents (10% of the Ragu jar from CVS, on sale for 3 jars/$5). Tally it up and each cheese pizza costs only $2.54. Any toppings you add will be extra but probably won't add up to anywhere near $10. Now you know why Domino's makes so much money.
Save even more by using the toaster oven (to save electricity)
If you have a large toaster oven, you can bake a pretty big pizza and use less electricity that you would with your regular oven. If you have a smaller toaster oven, it's possible to make small pizzas that feed one person. Two personal pizzas can probably fit in a small toaster oven. It should take about 20-25 minutes at 400 F to fully bake the pizzas. Larger pizzas will take a few more minutes. However, each oven is different, depending on size and accuracy of temperature. Watch the cooking process closely at first to make sure you don't burn it.
I suppose the non-dairy stuff that's made from just bananas cannot really be called "ice cream" because there's no cream in it. If it makes you feel better, call it banana fluff because that's what it tastes like. I should also mention that another blog that features this banana ice cream idea is "Kitchn". That blog has excellent ideas that go beyond what I do here. Check out their 4-ingredient peach frozen yogurt. For those of you who really want dairy milk but are lactose intolerant, there's a post about making your own Lactaid milk with lactase drops. It's by someone named "Tammy". I haven't tried it but it makes sense because lactase is the enzyme that helps you digest lactose.
In this post, I'd like to show you another way to make the banana ice cream, using unfrozen bananas. First, to recap the previous post, here are the results of the chocolate banana ice cream for jocks, which was made using frozen banana chunks. It was definitely more fun to eat than a smoothie. I had to add 1/4 cup of liquid to the mixture to bring the bananas and protein powder together to form a creamy concoction.
Freshly made chocolate banana fluff made with frozen banana chunks
When I tried to process just the frozen bananas and the protein powder, I just got a very mealy mixture that did not look very good. After adding 1/4 cup soy milk and processing the mixture again, I got the result you see in the picture above. It was smooth and creamy. It wasn't very sweet and that might turn some people off. If you have a sweet tooth, add 1/4 cup sugar. However, I thought it was sweet enough with the sweeteners from the bananas and the protein powder.
I then portioned out the mixture and stored the ice cream in some cleaned out yogurt containers. They are the perfect size (8 oz). After freezing for a few hours, it looked more like hard ice cream. The thing is, if you freeze it too long, it might get too hard and icy. At that point, you'll have to thaw it for about 10 to 20 minutes before eating it. No big deal.
A few days later, I tried the recipe again without the soy milk but added a tablespoon of honey. Since honey is a liquid, the bananas got creamy without having to add any soy milk. The result was also a little thicker than the batch made with the soy milk. So, if you don't want to add any soy milk to your frozen bananas and want it to be a little sweeter and thicker, try blending banana chunks, 1/4 cup chocolate protein powder, and a tablespoon of honey.
It looks more like hard ice cream after freezing a few hours
Another way to do the same thing is to use a blender to puree all the ingredients together and then use an ice cream maker to finish the process. The advantage is that you won't have to freeze the bananas. However, you'll need to chill the mixture for at least a couple of hours before pouring it into the ice cream maker and that you'll need an ice cream maker. Check your favorite thrift store and see if there's a cheap one. If not, the cheapest machines at department stores go for about $30 or less. You don't need anything fancy.
When you put a banana in your ice cream mixture, it actually functions as a thickener. Some recipes suggest using an egg or two and heating it up until it's thick. Well, we're students and don't have time for that fancy crap! Use a banana and you won't need to heat anything up. Also, you can use less sugar because the banana supplies a bit of that too. Genius, right?
Okay, so here's a suggested recipe for making ice cream using bananas as a thickener. You'll need:
a 13.5 oz can of coconut milk
1 ripe banana
1/4 cup honey or sugar (use more if you like it sweeter)
flavoring ingredients (e.g. cocoa powder, protein powder, vanilla, etc.)
Blend it all up and then chill it in the fridge for at least a couple of hours. Then, turn on your ice cream machine and pour in the chilled mixture. In about 20 to 40 minutes (depending on your machine), you'll have a nice non-dairy soft-serve ice cream. Freeze it in an air-tight container for a few hours if you prefer a harder ice cream.
Choco Roll is a relatively new snack from Taiwan. Online, they're $2.41 a box (as of July, 2011). I saw it on the shelf during my recent trip to C-Mart. It was $1.99 for a box (7 individually wrapped rolls) and looked promising. This comes in taro flavor too. For review of that, click here. For the pudding flavor, here's a picture and a review of my first impressions:
My fingers are covering "Product of Taiwan"
The chocolate by itself was not wonderful. However, in combination with the "pudding" and the cookie center, it was ok. Even after leaving it out at room temperature for a day, the center did not get soft like pudding. I guess it tasted a little like vanilla pudding. The best part of this snack is the texture. I liked the crunch of the cookie. However, the chocolate could have been better made. It had an almost waxy texture that wasn't particularly pleasant. Maybe the kids would like it.
The picture on the box really raises one's expectations a little too high for those of us who have had pudding and good chocolate. It's sweet but not in the North American way. I think people who enjoy the lower amounts of sugar in Asian sweets might enjoy this enough to buy it. Overall, I'd give this snack a 3/5. If you want an Asian snack with a good chocolate coating, go for the Japanese snacks.
