A walk back Memory Lane

I was not sure if I should post this. But nowadays there are still lots of people who need to make meals when money is sparse. When I was young, my parents did not have a lot of money and Mom only went back to work part time when I was 9 years old. There were month with other costs, that forced her to cut down on spending money for food. But that did not mean that the 3 of us went hungry. Fresh produce went on the table most of the time, but sometimes she went for a  ready made ingredient. Meat was not the main ingredient, it played a second fiddle. But we had meat a least 3 times a week.

You can find many blogs I´ve written here that are low cost and feed a couple of people on a small budget. Without skimping on good produce. I love to eat them still nowadays.

Now back to cooking. Canned meats are well known. There are so many different things to buy - like Spam in the US, Hot Dogs in cans, sausages and patés in small cans. A long time ago beef from overproduction in Europe was cooked and canned and sold everywhere. It was cheap and tasted good. Bronze metal cans with just a print on top saying cooked beef from Europe production. No fuss, no labels, just the printed cans.

recipe for 2 or 3:
1 can cooked beef (about 400 g)
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 cube beef stock
50 ml white wine or water
1 tbsp creme fraiche
salt and pepper

served with a good amount of rice and spinach with cream.




Start the onion and garlic in some of the fat that the can contains. You can discard it and use oil instead. Let them go soft.
Cube the beef and add it to the pan and cook for 3 minutes- remember, it is already cooked.
Sprinkle some of the stock cube, add water or wine and add the creme fraiche.
Warm it up again and that is all the cooking done in that pan.

If you do not like spinach, like it did when I was a child, serve it with any other kind of veggies or just a bowl of salad.