Feta

At least two days a week I don’t get home from work until at least 9:30 at night.  On those days I’ll usually get a text from Mrs. CB asking me if I want a “Mega” when I get home.

A “Mega” is short for “Mega-Salad”.  This is what used to be billed by many restaurants as a “Chef’s Salad”—a concoction of lettuce and tomato with a bit of ham usually smothered in Thousand Island dressing and it came with a couple of cellophane wrapped packets of “Club Crackers”.

But Mrs. CB really does it up right—there’s leaf lettuce along with tomato and cucumber, red onion, bell pepper, zucchini, hard-boiled egg, red grapes, sun flower seeds and Feta.  It’s a great late night dinner after a long day of work when you don’t want something heavy but need something to eat.  And, it’s pretty healthy; guaranteeing that your internal plumbing will be working right the next morning.

But, let’s talk about Feta.  We like Feta cheese.  It’s aromatic (OK, it’s pungent).  It’s tasty.  And a little bit goes a long way crumbled on top of a salad.  You can buy it in plastic tubs at the grocery store usually at $3-$4 for a 4-6 ounce container.  If you do the math, that’s anywhere from about $8 to $12 or more per pound.  Definitely not Cheap Bastid food.

A year or so ago we came across a great solution.  Frazier Farms, our local equivalent of Whole Foods, has it’s own Feta that comes in a block.  It’s $3.99 a pound which in the world of cheese is pretty reasonable. 

Now, I really can’t see the sense of spending at least twice that much per pound just to get it pre-crumbled.  I takes about 3 minutes to take it out of its package, get out a cutting board and chef’s knife and crumble it into its own container.  Figure it at about 5 minutes including cleaning the cutting board and knife.

And then it’s all ready to be used.  Salads, “Benedict Arnold” pizzas on flatbread, mousakka.  A little bit goes a long way and boosts flavor. 

And, by getting it this way and crumbling it ourselves, we’re hanging on to a few bucks every couple of weeks that we can use for something else.  If you do that often enough, pretty soon you’re talking about “real money”!

That’s the Cheap Bastid Way:  Eat Good.  Eat Cheap.  Be Grateful!