Amaranth & Potatoes (cost)

Note: As always, written in response to BFP's call for recipes for healthy cooking while in poverty.


I had a somewhat bland, but not too bland, quickly made, healthy meal for lunch. It cost $2.36 by my estimate.

$1 of fancy-schmancy potatoes (actually, I cooked the whole $4 pound, but this is what I ate in my stir-fry)
$0.01 salt
$0.01 sugar
water (cost not figured)
$0.02 roasted garlic (keeps well in the freezer!)
$0.10 herbes de provence

$0.35 amaranth leaves (35% of a big $1 bunch)
$0.33 onion (1 onion)
$0.33 garlic (half a head)
$0.20 ginger (out of a jar)
$0.15 sesame oil
$0.07 dried chili pepper
$0.05 mustard seeds
$0.05 garam masala
$0.02 cinnamon

I was boiling the potatoes the way they're prepared in this book w/ an addition of flavorings, so I'd have something to eat right away as I prepared my amaranth dish.

The amaranth dish was kind of a funny combination of the basic starter techniques I'm picking up from an Indian-ish cookbook and a Cantonese-ish cookbook. My order today was, "Heat wok. Pour in oil. Add dry spices. Add onions. Add ginger. Add garlic & hot pepper. Add a few more dry spices. Add greens."

And, finally, "Hey--the potatoes are done and I'm not ready to eat them--but a few of them sure would work chopped up in this thing I'm in the middle of making!"

And come to think of it, I didn't eat the entire dish...so I guess the cost was more like $1.75 for lunch and $0.61 for a snack later on.

Got other shoestring healthy eating recipes? Pass it on!
(P.S. Chop your amaranth coarsely first. Alanna Kellogg mentioned it here, and I followed her advice and it went well. I couldn't really imagine having eaten those leaves whole.)