Home-cooked Convenience Food

Shirred eggs- cheap, quick, easy- and if you don't have a microwave I'll share some variations below.

I love to read old books, particularly a series written in the 20s and 30s. One of the things I notice in those books is that whenever the heroine (a hardworking office girl or teacher, usually, trying to eke out a living on an impossibly small sum while living in some hole of a one room apartment) eats when she's too tired to cook is eggs. Eggs are the convenience food of the poor. Unlike a banana, orange, or chicken leg, nearly all of what you get is edible, and it's just about pure protein. Cent for cent it's a highly frugal purchase, your carton of eggs.

Shirred eggs in the microwave take two or three minutes to cook from start to finish.
You'll need a microwavable bowl and a saucer to set on the top as a cover (you can use saran wrap to cover the top).

Melt or heat one teaspoon of fat in the bowl- butter, margarine, cooking oil, lard, the fat from cooking something else. You're broke, save the fat from cooking, and one teaspoon isn't going to glut anybody's arteries.

Carefully break two eggs into the bowl (save the shells).
Pierce the yolks gently with a fork.
Pour one tablespoon of liquid over them- it's supposed to be cream. You can use milk. You can use water. If you have scored a free cup of coffee somewhere that offered those convenience things of cream and sugar, you could try saving a small coffee creamer in those little plastic cartons and using that (I do not know how it would work, but I am not sure why it would not).

Cover the bowl, either with a tight layer of saran wrap or with a saucer. Put your microwave on 60, or bake, or some setting just a little over half power, and cook for 2 to 2 1/2 minutes. Let stand one minute. Salt and pepper to taste.

The yolk will be soft cooked, bright yellow, but not at all runny.

Bowls and saucers are available for the change you find in the street at thrift shops.

If you don't have a microwave, bake them in the oven (see below). If you don't have any cooking appliance at all... save money by pinching, scraping, self-denial, looking for change in the street, asking a church if you can sweep their sidewalks or shovel dog poop, or pick up trash at a park for a few dollars or in barter for one of the following:

A hotpot
electric skillet
toaster oven
small crockpot

If you get a crockpot, instead of shirred eggs, boil the eggs in the hot pot, then remove eggs and add ramen noodles to the boiling water. Peel and dice the eggs, adding them and any bit of veggies you could scrounge into the water with the noodles (a green onion, snipped or bitten into pieces; the green onion bit growing from the top of an old onion, a few spinach leaves, the leaves from a stalk of celery, purslane you picked wild- that stuff is very nutritious, dandelion greens, beet or turnip greens....). Or... break an egg or two into the water, boil it, and then add the noodles (with vegetables as above). It won't be pretty, but it will be nourishing. Eat it all, including the broth.

Or you can boil a few eggs on a day when you aren't so tired, and eat them through the week. If you have no refrigeration, you can try to keep them cool by wrapping them in a very wet cloth and putting them where enough air causes enough evaporation to keep them cool, a cardboard box in a shady spot, on a window sill where the sun does not shine, slightly cracked open, in an unheated part of your apartment or house in the winter, circumstances vary. Change the cloth daily. Keep in mind that a hen only lays one egg a day, but she doesn't start setting until she has a clutch. Unrefrigerated eggs keep longer than we moderns assume.

If you scored an electric skillet, make an omelette.

If you scored a toaster oven, have baked eggs. Essentially you do the same thing you did for shirred eggs for the basic recipe- heat oil in a small baking container- look at your thrift shop, perhaps save a tuna can if you're really desperate, although I am not sure about what's in that tin and if it's safe for baking.

Break in the eggs, top with a spoonful of liquid if you have it (or do without) and bake at 375 for about 10 minutes (watch it and see when it gets to the texture you like). You can add a bit of diced onion and/or tomato and garlic for extra flavor, but this is supposed to be when you're dirt poor and dog tired, so you probably just want the baked eggs.



Why should you save the egg shells? Keep a container of the following sorts of kitchen scraps: egg shells (break them up really well), coffee grounds, teabags, bits and pieces of peelings from vegetables and fruits. Add a bit of dirt to it. Turn it or shake it every day or two. Eventually, you will have enough compost to grow something small- an herb, a bit of greens, your own purslane, a bit of mint- mint is easy to grow from cuttings.

Other quick and fairly cheap foods when you're too tired to cook:
Crackers and tuna or cheap lunch meat
Bananas, apples, or oranges in season
A bowl of oats (not quickoats, get old fashioned oatmeal and just pour liquid over it and let it soak. Or cook it in a hot pot, microwave, or electric skillet if you need it hot- it doesn't take long)
Popcorn and fruit (some stores give away small bags of free popped corn. Take advantage when you can, and use it to eke out a meal that day).
Bread with.... (did you know that a grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich tastes pretty decent?)
fried potatoes, hash browns made from scratch (very easy- grate or shred, spoon into hot oil, flatten, fry like pancakes, salt and pepper to taste)


It also helps to cook or prepare a little extra when you are not too tired. Bake an extra potato or two to have later, either diced and fried, or baked with eggs, or diced and in broth.
Slice or dice extra onion or carrots, keep half in the fridge for the next day.
Grate more cheese than you need.
Make a larger than normal batch of pancakes. Eat some for breakfast or supper. Save others and use for the bread for a sandwich.
Put together something for dinner in the morning, before you wear yourself out. Have it all ready to go in the oven or stewpot, and then you only have to turn on the heat at the end of the day.
Keep a handful of cheap convenience foods on hand- dried beans are much cheaper, but if you run out of the beans you soaked, cooked, and frozen ahead of time, opening a can of prepared kidney or pinto beans is cheaper than eating out. Add a sliced hot dog and/or some cooked rice and reheat. Cheap Pork n beans with an extra hotdog diced in (fry it first for added flavor), refried beans, corn tortillas (fry a corn tortilla, spread with refried beans), or fry some ground beef (either in patties, or as usual) and freeze in individual portions for use later.
I do not consider spam and hamburger helper to be cheap, btw.
Use a crockpot.



Or eat out, if that's what really floats your boat. It doesn't make you a more holy, sanctified, superior person to eat this way. Eating this way is a means to an end. It helps you live within your means, and that's important, but there are other ways to do that as well. Eating out does not make you an inferior person.

However, eating out when you don't make enough money to support that choice and then complaining that it's somebody else's fault you're finances are pinching, and arguing that somebody else, anybody else, 'owes' you more? That is the attitude of an immature human being.