Summer Meal Series #5: Chicken-Broccoli Crepes
This summer, I’m going to be posting a series of fifteen low-cost, tasty, and easy-to-prepare meals that are literally straight from my own kitchen.
Hey, look, homemade crepes!
OK, before we get going, it should be noted that this meal is pretty much as easy to prepare as you want it to be – and at almost every turn, we chose the more difficult route.
Actually, to be more specific, Sarah chose the more difficult route. She did most of the preparation of this recipe and was the one that made most of the difficult choices. I’ll be using the adjective “we” to describe the effort because there was some trade-off here and there, but she did most of the effort for this recipe.
What difficult choices did we make? Rather than buying a package of crepes at the store, Sarah chose to make the crepes from scratch. Rather than buying a package of pre-shredded Swiss cheese, Sarah chose to buy a chunk of Swiss and shred it herself. In both cases, the result was a tastier and healthier and less expensive meal, but it certainly added to the prep time. Those two things alone more than doubled our prep time, turning a meal that could probably be in the oven in fifteen or twenty minutes into something that involved more than an hour of work.
So, let’s dig in and see how we got there.
The inspiration and model for this meal came from this cookbook, Low Cost Cooking, that we came across in a yard sale for $0.25 (the cover has a $0.50 sticker on it, but we came late to the sale). Can you guess when it was published by the cover design and heavy use of earth tones? If you guessed “late seventies or early eighties,” you’re a winner! It was published in 1980 and is apparently long out of print.
Yes, we shop at yard sales and consignment shops for cookbooks. They’re actually great sources for cookbooks. I’d estimate half of our cookbook collection is from such sales.
Anyway, on to the recipe…
Here are the ingredients for everything including the crepes. One of the advantages of making things like crepes on your own is that you can choose what goes into them – organic milk and farm eggs, in this case.
I’m going to mark off the making of the crepes in their own section. If you wish, you can simply buy a package of crepes at the grocery store instead of making your own.
Making Crepes
Here’s what you need just for the crepes.
1 cup all-purpose flour ($0.15 or so)
1 1/2 cups milk ($0.30 or so)
2 eggs ($0.15 or so)
1/4 teaspoon salt ($0.02 or so)
1 tablespoon cooking oil ($0.05 or so)
In other words, you’ll be making about 16 crepes for about $0.65 – or about $0.04 per crepe. If you buy them, they’ll be substantially more than that.
Making crepes is really easy. Just mix all of the ingredients in a bowl until they form a batter, then heat a small skillet over medium heat with just a drop of oil spread all over the surface of it. Put about two tablespoons of ...
