The Spice Investment and Home Cooking | brokeGIRLrich
A few weeks ago, we had two friends come up from London and spend the weekend with us and I was really excited to cook. Also, cooking at home is cheaper than eating out, right?
We have two other friends who visit a lot, but they are both vegetarians and we've got a really set rhythm to what we do when they visit regarding food.
But I got it in my head I kind of wanted to… show off… a little when our other friends came up to visit. And I decided I was going to make my Aunt Linda's brisket recipe.
Which I have done, in the past… in the very distant past… and never in England. But I remembered the recipe as being super simple. I mean, I needed like a brisket and a can of chili, how rough could this be?
Well.
Well…
The recipe is super simple. Lowry's seasoning, lemon & pepper seasoning, then into a pan with some Lipton's instant onion and mushroom soup, a can of chili and some water.
It turns out that if you cook like all the time and have a really well stocked kitchen, this is no problem.
But I felt like making this recipe was death by a thousand little financial cuts.
I went Lidl to look for what I needed and found nothing from the list. Then I rode my bike into the city and checked out ASDA, where I found a can of chili and some lemon pepper seasoning but where on earth was anything else I needed for this recipe?
So I turn to Amazon and pay $14 for Lipton onion soup mix and all-purpose seasoning, which isn't even Lowry's because that's clearly a U.S. thing, as the cost for that was sky high, and now I'm hoping Badia is essentially the same thing (which… yes? I didn't notice a difference). I think I'm going to start calling this the spice investment. It doesn't have to apply 100% to spice, but I feel like spices are what getcha in a new recipe. It all seems straightforward and then for a tablespoon here and a half a teaspoon there, you're suddenly shelling out an extra $15 for the recipe because you don't already own these things.
I also stopped had to go buy a pan ($9.44).
Almost $30.00 in and we're just ready to start cooking. Except I need the meat. And brisket is really hard to find in the U.K. So I go to the butcher.
Then 4 kg of brisket was $35! Is this how much meat costs? That's so crazy.
And $65 later, we're in business. Without even considering the sides. And also the sheer terror now that I could mess up this meal and essentially have to throw away $65 and probably order a pizza.
This probably doesn't even warrant a blog post but I was flabbergasted that this little project quickly added up to this amount.
I did calm down a little more when I realised that we actually got 7 servings across three meals out of this nonsense, so just under $10 a serving then… or if I was a more prepared human and only paying for what I needed specifically for the brisket, like $6.50 a serving, which I guess it actually getting into normal meal numbers.
But have you ever experienced some weird sticker shock when undertaking a project that just… keeps needing more? Some other little thing and bam, there's another $4 and another $4 till you're like… what have I done? Why did I think this was necessary?
I also though I should serve them an egg casserole for breakfast, which also turned out real good but similarly resulted in like an extra $15 in spice investments. At least I suppose my spice cabinet is slowly gaining some momentum.
