Food for the week

Over the last year or two, I've mostly been brown-bagging my lunch to work. I've been a lazy brown-bagger; mostly I'd dump half a can of soup into a microwaveable container, grab a cup of yogurt and a snack, and I'd be done. Since I work in an office with a fridge and a microwave, eating lunch at my desk is all too easy.

Maybe it's just a phase, but for the last couple weeks, I've gone back to cooking meals in one huge batch and bringing individual servings to work for lunch. I really don't like cooking. My motivation for doing this was to try to get more green leafy vegetables into my diet, and to eat less salt (canned soup is far too salty in general).

This week's recipe:
1 large bunch of organic red chard - $2.87
2 15 oz cans Eden Organic chick-peas (garbanzo beans) - $3.60
1 15 oz jar Ethnic Gourmet Punjab Saag Spinach Sauce - $3.60
8 new potatoes (small potatoes) - $1.00

This is a sort of stew so it doesn't matter too much how you cook things, but I did it like this:

• Cook the chard in a large pot till tender (about 30-45 mins), meanwhile microwave the potatoes till barely tender (10 mins).
  
• Remove chard from pot, leaving remaining liquid in the pot. I didn't dry off the chard after rinsing it clean to begin with, so there was a lot of liquid, maybe 2 cups.
  
• Add Spinach Sauce to the liquid in the pot, bringing to simmer.
  
• Add potatoes and chick-peas to the pot, let simmer 10 minutes.
  
• Add chard to pot. Stir. Done.
  

Prep time: about 30 minutes. Cooking time: about 30 minutes. Servings: 6-8. Cost per serving: about $1.60.

I've frozen the extra servings for use over the next week or two, since I don't like eating the same thing day in and day out. I felt a little trepidation before trying it, but it worked out really well - flavorful, not excessively salty. Quite nice.