It all started...

...this morning. 
  My husband and I recently quit our jobs to embark on a wonderful new adventure with some friends who were opening their own restaurant.
For countless reasons that I will not bore you with, we both knew that it was the right decision.  However, we also knew that in leaving our very stable source of income (and by ours I mean his), we were taking a giant risk.
A few months later, we are in the dreaded period of: business is not that great yet, but we love being a part of this project, but we are not making enough money, but this is my favorite job I've ever had (and it's in my line of work), what the f.... are we going to do?
I've never been one for wondering, so I did what I had to do:  I got another job to supplement our income.
I am a few weeks into that new job, and once they paychecks start coming in, we will have a little more breathing room. 
 Meanwhile, the last couple of weeks got me thinking about other times in our lives when we weren't very financially stable.  One particular time came to mind, late fall, early winter of 2008.  We had just moved to Boston, after traveling and spending time with our families for six months.  When we rented our sublet, we had enough money left for first and last month, and that was about it.  I got a job as pastry cook at "one of the best restaurants in Boston" where I was under payed and overworked (both of those are understatements) but I would be actually making money, so it was better than nothing.
Needless to say during those first months in Boston, we were in a very tight budget.  As a cook, who is also very interested in nutrition and in sustainability, feeding myself and my husband is at the very center of my existence.  So, I got creative and figured out how to get delicious and nutritious meals on our scarce budget.  I often think of one of the dishes that we ate so much that winter, because of how tasty and heart warming it was.  It was a beautiful stew of tomatoes (canned), garbanzos (canned as well) and squash (very abundant in the winter in Massachusetts).  On good weeks, I would add some sausage to it. On other weeks,  kale or spinach were the new ingredients.  We would eat it over brown rice, and in that bowl, we were getting a complete meal, or as my husband likes to say: food groups.
Inspired on that dish, and by a dear friend who is a single mother of a lovely three year old little girl, I decided to try to document all the wonderful meals that I have come up with that fit the label of cheap, delicious and nutritious.
When we can, we get our fruits, veggies, meat and eggs at the farmers market.  But when we can't, we shouldn't compromise our taste buds or our health.