Day 2 | Dinner
Backyard Lasagna/Quiche
No photo, I’m afraid, because it just wasn’t that pretty. Composed of some lasagna noodles given to me by a friend a couple of weeks ago (and forgotten about until now), two eggs, some cheddar cheese I had from before I started this project, yellow daylily buds, and plantain and dandelion leaves.
Approximate total cost (excluding cheese): $0.12
Twelve cents. Seriously. I’ve had worse meals at major restaurant chains, and I don’t mean McDonald’s. The only downside to this meal were some of the older plantain leaves, which were frankly gross—not because of their flavour, which was mostly fine, but because of their texture, which was incredibly tough and chewy. If you ever cook with plantain, make sure to get only young leaves.
The rest of the meal was very tasty. It’s hard to go wrong with eggs and cheese, and the young plantain and dandelion leaves tasted like slightly bland spinach, while the daylily buds contributed a more green-bean-like flavour and a mushroom-y texture. There was one absolutely delicious mouthful that I think must have contained the two dandelion buds I managed to find—dandelion buds are often used in stir fries due to being more flavourful than the rest of the plant. Some people even claim they taste like mushrooms. I’ll have to find some more to try.
As the month goes on, I’ll run out of the butter and cheese I had previously bought (and eventually the daylily buds as well, as the season winds on). Nevertheless, these first two days have made it clear to me that a determined person could eat at least two solid meals a day in an Ohio summer on much less than $100/month.
Disclaimer: If you can’t identify a plant with 100% certainty, you have absolutely no business eating any part of it. Unless you have extensive experience with plant identification, I don’t advocate scavenging your own food.
