tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21658946369205847112011-07-07T19:15:22.196-07:00Meet, Eat, and be Frugal!J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.comBlogger221100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-11302362199953525612010-01-29T22:36:00.000-08:002010-01-29T22:44:19.720-08:00

This blog entry is sadly late, as I’m getting ready for a trip out of the country, but want to get it published while my memory is still fresh. This was a vegan night led by Guest Chef Phil Gelb (http://philipgelb.blogspot.com/). Here’s what we made:Winter Vegetable Bean Soup—I’m generally not a fan of soups that have lots of chunky stuff in them, and this one was definitely that. I tend to

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-88164173883882030472010-01-19T11:50:00.000-08:002010-01-19T11:51:15.546-08:00

http://oaklandlocal.com/article/frugal-foodies-adventure-community-and-cuisine

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-2417806509584338132010-01-19T11:47:00.000-08:002010-01-19T11:48:51.755-08:00

This story has a few typos and a few factual errors, but should help tell the story about Frugal Foodies debut in Seattle:http://crosscut.com/2010/01/18/food/19514/

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-52649192204644564942010-01-17T22:20:00.000-08:002010-01-17T22:25:54.391-08:00

This was the first vegan night using a series of menus provided by Julie Motz. We’re calling these “Julie’s Vegan Nights”, and this first one did not disappoint. We made a series of dishes, some rather easy, at least one quite involved, and the full house seemed to enjoy themselves quite a bit. Here’s what we made:African Yam Soup with Ground Nuts—you all may know that I love a good soup, and

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-72922949157200488452010-01-17T20:09:00.000-08:002010-01-17T20:15:06.224-08:00

I was lucky enough to be in attendance for the grand opening of the new Frugal Foodies in Seattle last Wednesday. It was quite a night and quite a menu. I'm not going to review the menu now but I will be sure to copy it at one of the Frugal Foodies here in Berkeley. Their menu was all about beets, and it wasn't too "beety". In fact, some of the recipes were out of this world. Here's what

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-67305952288807621302009-12-24T23:30:00.000-08:002009-12-24T23:33:57.368-08:00

‘Twas the night before Christmas and finally a bit of time to write a long-overdue blog entry. Frugal Foodies didn’t happen this past Tuesday as we didn’t have enough registrants, and I had planned to dedicate the evening to catching up on the blog (from the week before) but a game of Scrabble got in the way. And fortunately so since I now get to include something about a dinner I had last

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-63118636614538193562009-11-28T20:20:00.000-08:002009-11-28T20:25:17.687-08:00

We did this night as a special vegetarian Thanksgiving event, and I was committed to having something a bit out of the ordinary, something that didn’t make me feel bloated at the end of the meal, something that was not all about the Tofurkey. And on all fronts, the meal did not disappoint, and I actually think that I liked it a bit better than I liked the real Thanksgiving a few days later, at

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-74668100833849518462009-11-28T18:50:00.000-08:002009-11-28T18:55:40.558-08:00

I’ve been remiss about writing this entry since I’ve been far too busy with my paid work for the last couple of weeks. It’s been nearly three weeks since I enjoyed this meal, and I’ve really wanted to blog about it even though my memory certainly does not get better over time. In any case, here goes my belated review, sadly less lucid and detailed than I would have liked…November 10th was our

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-68498568069713056362009-10-27T22:57:00.000-07:002009-10-27T23:01:57.557-07:00

I’m sorry that it’s taken me an entire week to get this blog entry up, but I’ve been slammed with some projects, and it’s taken me all week to finish the leftovers and digest all of the really dairy rich dishes that we had on this Guest Chef Night. It was the first time in Frugal Foodies history that we had a virtual guest chef, Cecile Poyet, who wasn’t able to make it up from San Jose. She

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-72735192836294242352009-10-14T17:56:00.000-07:002009-10-14T18:00:26.129-07:00

Last night was October’s vegan night, and I decided to reprise some recipes from a previous night that I had not yet reviewed. Or better stated, I reused two recipes from before and added two others, all from a corny but fairly good cookbook called “Famous Vegetarians and Their Favorite Recipes”. And it turned out to be a decent night with one doozy and the other three better than average. In

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-46949088315498460752009-09-22T22:54:00.000-07:002009-09-22T22:57:41.524-07:00

Tonight at Frugal Foodies was all about the melons, and I think that we had five different types that we prepared. One of the challenges of a Special Guest Ingredient night, as I’ve mentioned before, is trying to have all the dishes taste sufficiently distinct as to not bore the senses. Not sure if we were up to the challenge on this front, but everyone did leave full, if not bloated. And what

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-42277415429992120942009-09-10T00:55:00.000-07:002009-09-10T00:58:47.983-07:00

This week was our vegan week, and many of you may know that I fear veganism. I’d like to be vegan, seems like a good thing to do for the body and for the planet, but it just seems so hard, and not altogether tasty. Add to this the fact that we had an attendee that ate no onions or garlic, so we were basically doing Sattvic vegan dishes. In other words, lower your expectations. Here’s what we

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-20845639055510833622009-09-05T09:59:00.000-07:002009-09-05T10:03:48.804-07:00

This night at Frugal Foodies was dedicated to wrapped foods, and there are so many of those out there that it was quite difficult to choose. So I picked a long-time favorite of mine, Aram sandwiches, a more recent favorite of mine, fresh Vietnamese-style spring rolls, and two new recipes. It was important to not confuse the wrapped food species with the stuffed food species, both because I tend

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-18841507749069203452009-08-25T22:43:00.000-07:002009-08-25T23:12:43.778-07:00

Tonight was all about the tomatoes, with the goal being to enjoy wonderful tomatoes, but not be tomatoed out by the end of the night. That's the challenge of any Special Guest Ingredient Night. Do it up just right...not too much and not too little. And I think we did better on that front tonight than at corn night 4 weeks ago. Here's what we had...Brie and Sun Dried Tomato Crostini--this was

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-48399485076280012792009-08-25T22:22:00.000-07:002009-08-25T22:23:15.223-07:00

This is kind of a cool plug for Frugal Foodies...Friends Don't Let Friends Eat SoloAugust 25This Weekly Yelp brought to you by Eat Real FestivalPull up a chair, it's time to feastaway in the East Bay!Sayonara, sobriety!Sake Club's first birthday at Takara BreweryYou make fundraisinglots of fun:18th Annual Rubber Ducky Derby for Children's HospitalDirector's cut varietals:Francis Ford Coppola wine

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-26499189368286792362009-08-19T18:36:00.000-07:002009-08-19T19:19:41.778-07:00

Last night was a Guest Chef Night (and a benefit night for DiversityWorks, www.diversityworks.org), and I have to say that I was a bit skeptical about the menu before we started cooking. Normally when I don't think that a menu is going to go together so well, I let the guest chef know and try to push the menu in a particular way. But last night's guest chef was Jennie Chuang who was serving in

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-44944152167663370902009-08-12T15:17:00.000-07:002009-08-12T15:29:21.875-07:00

...why those tofu nuggets tasted so floury. The group that worked on them cut them much much thinner than the recipe suggested (the recipe said 1 inch cubes and these were about 1 inch x 1.5 inch by .5 inch--or even less in some cases). I'll spare you the math, but the result is a higher surface area to tofu ratio--we'll call that SATR--which means more floury. Again, not sure how much of a

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-58486916992263543232009-08-11T20:01:00.000-07:002009-08-11T23:47:02.518-07:00

Today's our first of the monthly vegan nights at Frugal Foodies, which will be the second Tuesday of the month from this night forward. We've done vegan nights before and they've been quite popular so I thought it might be nice to do them once a month. In any case, I opened the night by confidently saying 'vegan nights aren't so hard to plan as long as there aren't other dietary restrictions',

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-60343792263586609932009-08-04T22:56:00.000-07:002009-08-05T14:56:12.271-07:00

The theme for tonight was Fresh from the Garden, and the idea was to take advantage of all the people who'd told me that they'd have an overflow of fruit and vegetables this time of year. Only problem was that people's gardens were not quite as far along as they had expected, so the bounty was a bit less impressive. No worries, Berkeley Bowl came to the rescue to round out the offerings, and we

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-73838235061604137872009-07-31T16:27:00.000-07:002009-07-31T17:50:20.242-07:00

I know that I'm a few days late on posting this Frugal Foodies review, but as I was blessed with a fair amount of left-overs from Tuesday night, the recipes are still fresh in my mind. Please note that I'll be using the rating system described in the previous post, and all the recipes will be included at the bottom of the entry.This Tuesday was our Special Guest Ingredient Night and we featured

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-31461704860491041932009-07-30T16:21:00.000-07:002009-07-30T16:54:05.048-07:00

As some of you may know, Frugal Foodies costs $8 per participant, at least at the time of this writing. So instead of using stars or forks or some other proprietary thing like "froogs" as the rating metric, why not use a range of 0-8 bucks? I'd love it if no dish at any restaurant cost more than $8, so I'm going to refer to something really fabulous as an 8 buck dish. And since we serve 4-6

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2165894636920584711.post-5743512255997124342009-07-30T14:36:00.000-07:002009-07-30T14:53:36.837-07:00

I've been meaning to do a blog for Frugal Foodies for a long, long time. Fact is that blogging has scared me, and it wasn't until six months ago that I jumped into the blogging fray with the better-than-expected travel blog, www.djiboutiorbust.blogspot.com. And now it's time to start publishing something about the mostly tasty treats that are cooked in my home just about every Tuesday night.For

J Moses Ceaserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16027825015979647181noreply@blogger.com0