I have to confess here that I am a grocery addict. K is the kind of person who always prefers to buy organic, and we drop a lot of dough at the farmers’ market and Whole Foods every week. (I’d love to shop more local than WF, but our options are limited nearby.) So this… This is a challenge, okay?
But I figured it out. I did math and everything. I labeled what I actually paid in the photo below–which obviously worked out to a bit over $4–but I am *certain* you can get the key items for less than I paid. Just wanted to be transparent about reality, here, and not be a disingenuous jerk about how to eat for super cheap when I don’t know shit.
This is all the fixings for a pretty basic brown rice mujadara with a side of sauteed kale. There are some pantry items in here I couldn’t easily calculate, but if you’re coming at home, you probably have enough of the necessary stuff to make it work (a cooking oil, some basic spices, salt & pepper, bouillon). The recipe I use calls for the rice and lentils to bake in a Dutch oven for an hour at a low-ish temp, but I threw it in my rice cooker instead, and it worked perfectly well. It’s adaptable and simple.
Choosing a large onion when I only needed a medium one meant I could use onion in both dishes, so I did. The extra third got sliced into quarter moons and sauteed until golden, then I added the kale leaves and chopped stems with a little water and let it wilt. I also splashed a little vinegar in there at the end, which isn’t absolutely necessary, but if you’ve got it…
This is really simple, healthy, and easy to make it work with pretty inexpensive ingredients (like, for example, I am sure there is less expensive kale out there, but I wanted to be honest). But if you have more, you could just as easily add more good stuff.