Back when I first wrote about cattails, I promised a return to the subject soon for something I described as cattails on the cob. Allow me to explain this delicacy to you. In the late spring, if you watch cattail plants, you will notice that the well known sausage-like fruits of the cattail plant start to mature inside of the central leaves. Look at the leaves for a swelling and pull them out of the plant. If you slowly peel the husks away, you will find the two parts of the cattail flower inside. The upper, or male part of the flower is what we're after. These green spikes will bloom and produce pollen once they emerge from the husk which makes the season very short. If you find too many already blooming, don't fret, because the pollen is another of the offerings of this amazing plant.

Amy, Alec, and I journeyed Saturday once again to The Great Vly Swamp, in West Camp, New York. While Amy and Alec sought after dragonflies and birds to photograph, I started checking the cattails. I had just caught the season at the tail end, as many of the flowers were covered with pollen, and some of the sausage-like seed heads had already started to form. Even this late in the season, I still managed to harvest enough of the flower spikes to make an interesting side dish. Before we left the swamp, I grabbed a clean bag and collected some pollen by carefully bending the stem of the pollen covered flower into the bag and hitting the stem a couple of times. I managed to get about half a cup, but could have collected a lot more.

A quick look around before leaving gave me some other reasons to return to the swamp at a later date. Pickerelweed which will produce a nutty snack food in the early fall, and arrowheads, which produce a good wild potato substitute.

Marisa wrote about yogurt making about a month ago. I would like to re-visit the subject from an extremely frugal angle. With wild fruits coming into season (like mulberries), yogurt is a great way to serve nature's sweet bounty.

I can remember trying yogurt for the first time as a kid. Most of the brands had a distinctive sour taste, and fruit on the bottom. They came in 8-ounce containers, and sold for anywhere from 25 to 50 cents a cup. Now, with prices double that or more, and the cups shrinking to 6 or even 4 ounces (who can eat 4 ounces of yogurt and call it a satisfying experience?), I decided to re-visit the old fashioned way of getting yogurt. MAKING IT YOURSELF!

This isn't just for frugality. I really enjoy making things at home that most people buy prepared. Some of the things we purchase without questioning whether or not they could be created right in our kitchens are actually quite easy to make. Yogurt is one of them, and requires very little in the way of equipment.

There are yogurt makers that you can purchase. I have to tell you though that they are really not necessary. The only piece of equipment you might need to buy is a kitchen thermometer. You will need a thermometer that can read as high as 100 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) and as low as 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). For your first batch only, you need starter. A tablespoon of good plain yogurt works fine as long as it has active cultures (check the label). After your first batch you just need to conserve some yogurt each time to use as starter for your next batch.

Even when my kitchen is fairly bare, there are still certain things you can count on to be in my fridge or veggie bin. I always have milk, butter, flour, spices and onions. If you are like me and on any given day have these ingredients in your home, you can quickly whip up a pot of Cream of Onion Soup (from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest) for a weekend lunch or a hurried evening dinner. It's warming, cheap and can be ready in less than an hour. Pair it with a salad, or, if you're really down to the dregs, the last of that bag of frozen peas from the freezer or a perfect winter meal. The recipe is after the jump.

I know that there are plenty of people who enjoy ramen noodles, but I can't help but associate them with the image of a "starving student." Many college-age men and women still rely heavily on this ultra-inexpensive packaged meal. While none can really be considered "health food," they still make a better and more economical meal than relying on McDonald's to get you through lean times.

If you're going to eat it, you may as well make an effort to pick out a good one. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has done a very comprehensive taste test of one dozen different flavors of Ramen across a range of different brands. Their favorite was the Myojo Chukazanmai Soy Sauce flavor, while the Ve Wong Peppered Beef is one to be avoided at all costs, especially since one taster described it as "the worst instant noodle I've ever tasted in my life." Read the whole review for a rundown of the all options, with critiques of the various flavorings and noodle quality.

I thought I could do better than the Hillbilly Housewife, whose weekly menu of weiner stirfry and tuna-and-peas-over-rice didn't appeal much to my sense of budgetary gourmet. I'm not the only one, evidently. The good people at the Better Times Almanac have created what they call the "Slow Food for Poor People Challenge."

Taking the "Food Stamp Challenge," they ate on a food stamp budget for a week (about $61 for two people) and tried to make their example an even better one by employing "(1) frugal supermarket shopping, (2) preparing meals from basic ingredients, (3) buying local foods, (4) gardening, (5) food storage, and (6) home preservation of food."

Menus like "Buffalo meatloaf, oven fries, corn on the cob, green beans," biscuits and gravy, buffalo pot roast and a breakfast of "2 scrambled eggs, 1/3 lb sausage, hash brown, potatoes, rolls, apple cobbler" are a little more my speed. The drawback is that their menu is a bit repetitive (and, being from Oklahoma, relies heavily on buffalo meat). But you can hardly argue with a $60 weekly menu that employs organic eggs from free-ranging hens and meats from local cooperatives. It's a nice attempt and only fuels my desire to come up with more and better cheap-but-gourmet meals.

[photo Sarah Gilbert]