"inexpensive" news and stories

Planning a mellow, stay-at-home New Year's Eve this year? Looking for some new ideas to make tasty and inexpensive food for your personal celebration? Then look no further than Kim O'Donnel's post over on A Mighty Appetite. She rounds up twelve different recipes that will help you celebrate. Best of all, each one costs $20 or less.

Here are just a few of her suggestions. Have a pizza night, which with homemade dough and an assortment of toppings is really yummy and pretty darn cheap. Whip up an assortment of veggie and legume based dips (there's almost nothing easier than making hummus at home and you can always get creative with what you put in it). Her recipe for apple salsa and brie crostini is making me hungry even now.

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Red beans and rice doesn't sound like a very exciting dish, but the staple of Louisiana cuisine can actually be elegant as well as delicious, as long as you put as much care into making yours as BWJones did with his version of the dish. His recipe calls for rice, red beans, onion and a lot of spices, including sage, thyme, bay leaf, cayenne pepper, garlic, paprika and chipotle. His is topped off with crawfish, seasoned generously with Old Bay (not to be confused with Old Spice), although some would say that sausage (andouille, in particular) or ham sets the standard for the dish. The meat can be left off entirely for a less expensive or vegetarian version of the dish.

This is an easy recipe to master and an extremely versatile one. Not only can you play around with the spices, increasing and decreasing the heat, but it can work both as a side dish and as a main course.

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The holidays can get pretty expensive, with gifts, food and entertaining expenses piling on until after the New Year (especially if you want to hit one or two after-Christmas sales), so it is always great to find a way to save some money without loosing out on quality. Food is one area where it is difficult to cut back, since price and quality are often closely linked. Paying more will usually get you better meats, cheeses and chocolates, for example. When it comes to wine, however, price are quality are not necessarily as closely inked - not unless you're talking about $100+ bottles of wine, anyway. Since AOL Food has a much larger staff than we do, they went through many bottles of wine to find five great ones that are $5.99 a bottle or less, perfect for serving with holiday dinners or bringing along as a hostess gift to a party because they are guaranteed to taste good without breaking the bank.

1. Trader Joe's Coastal Cabernet ($4.99)
2. Amaicha Torrontes ($4.99)
3. Banrock Station Shiraz ($5.99)
4. Barefoot California Merlot ($5.99)
5. Barefoot California Chardonnay ($5.99)

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If you order a dozen or so holiday cookies from a bakery, you don't expect them to be piled up on a plate and covered in saran wrap, although this seems to be a perfectly acceptable presentation for gifts of homemade cookies. It's true that it is the thought that counts and that good cookies will over come any packaging, but it doesn't take that much more effort to take that packaging to a new level, which will keep the cookies fresher and make a homemade gift a showstopper.

This week, along with their collection of eight great holiday cookie recipes that are all going to be a bit more impressive than your average batch of chocolate chips, including Coconut Orange Macaroons, Scottish Shortbread, Ginger Drops and Candy Cane Cookies, the Denver Post has some great tips for packaging. For kids, try packing up "blank" gingerbread cookies in a small toolbox with frosting, sprinkles and other things they can use to customize the cookies. For cookies that will long outlast the holiday season, giving an unbaked roll of cookie dough (choose an attractive one, like the Chocolate-Coconut Pinwheels the article includes) and baking instructions wrapped up in an elegant tube that will put any store-bought dough to shame. And for the baker, consider wrapping the treats up in or on a pan, so they'll have something to use when they want to bake a batch themselves.

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The 'ole silicone whisk and the collapsible calendar. How are these two seemingly unrelated kitchen tools similar? The silicone whisk doesn't rust and get gooey where the tines splay from the handle; the other is useful and saves space. And I expect neither hurts as badly when hurled by a surly cook, or mother.

Now, I don't cook on non-stick cookware except at friend's homes, but sometimes Teflon is necessary. Take care not to scrape and scratch the surface of the pans and you don't have to worry too much about Teflon-related health issues. There are a good set of such whisks here, and I saw some at wallyworld...take your pick.

This collapsible colander is multi-use. These colanders from Chef'n save space and don't fall out of the cupboard when you're trying to get a baking sheet out. They're also great for egg tosses in the backyard.

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