Looks good, too, and smells simply divine, but then I might be biased...
What we have here is
one dozen eggs, beaten into complete submission ($1.32 because I get them in bulk)
8 medium potatoes (free-ish, grown from ones I would have thrown out because they had gone all soft and sprouty, which is *SO* a word)
a few leaves of chard (definitely free, because I've been harvesting that one head of chard since May, so that one seed has DEFINITELY paid for itself)
some onion greens I cut off the bunching onions that are finally popping in the garden (slackers and let's call it free, the onion bulbs are still there, after all)
a few leaves of herby yumyum out of the garden, two kinds of Basil and some strawberry spinach that self seeded itself in a pot (Not entirely free, I did buy one of the Basils as a microscopic little plantling, so call it $0.05 for the 4 leaves I plucked off that one)
Spices and home made ranch mix (call it $0.50, even though it's probably closer to a few cent)
-a few pinches of black pepper, a few of ground fine oregano, a sprinkling or 5 of ground garlic, basically seasoned to taste and in our case to repel vampires, it is October...
an hour and a half in the oven, so maybe another half a buck? ($0.50 but it's probably much closer to the national average of $0.11)
at least 6 meals for $2.37, let's be fair and amortize the cast iron enameled crock and the miscellaneous items I am counting as practically free and call it an even $2.50, which is still only $0.42 per meal, and that's if we absolutely gorge ourselves. There's a lot of food in that pot, and it's really quite filling.
Calling it a win. Especially because those potatoes were in danger of following their 'parents' in becoming soft and sprouty (we've had this argument, it's completely a word, trust me), so this is actually mostly a braggathon about using something up that was in danger of going over to the dark side.
I don't have a name for this dish, because let's face it, not only did I make it with stuff I had laying around, I also probably will never re-create it exactly like this ever again. It's kind of how I cook.
The basic underlying principle here is that you take some eggs, season them up in a way that you know will appeal to your palate (if you've never done that, go easy, you can always add more, taking out is a bit more difficult), then beat them like they cut you off in traffic, add some cut up potatoes (the smaller the pieces the faster this will cook), some other veggies you have on hand (chard, peppers, onions, green beans, zucchini, asparagus, you get the idea), cut those up into manageable pieces and stir the whole thing, then pop in the oven at 350 for an hour and a half, or less, depending on how deep your dish is (mine is pretty deep and it's kinda full) until the potatoes are tender and the egg has set, a toothpick is rather helpful in determining this. No eggy goo and goes in nice and easy: It's ready to devour, which trust me, you will want to :)
That's all I got for now.
Happy Pinching
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