Here's what happened: I was at Mega for a 10% off day (Friday, select locations only) and I decided to splurge and buy a bag of frozen spinach. First I checked the fresh produce section to see if there were any suitable fresh greens that would work out cheaper. But there weren't. They had chard, but the bunches were small, buggy, and wilted. And cost 8.99. But I decided against that in favor of spinach, because once I cleaned, chopped, and wilted the chard, it would have been a lot of effort, and not so much chard.
So I bought a bag of frozen spinach, for just over 20 NIS with the discount.
My family likes spinach, so I justify the purchase of a bag of spinach every so often.
I wanted to stretch it to last a few meals, so here's the first spinach recipe I made, using about 1/3 of the bag.
Spinach and Cottage Cheese pancakes
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/3 package of spinach (about 265 grams - maybe 8-9 oz?)
400 g cottage cheese (approx 1 lb)
2 cups whole wheat flour
salt, pepper to taste
nutmeg if you like it
Mix well. It will be pretty thick. Spoon heaping spoonfuls into a hot, oiled skillet, and brown on both sides. Serve hot.
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| Ok so this is not the best picture. But as you can see, I used very little oil to cook these in my enameled cast iron frying pan. And I really like that blue pan. I have the same in green for pareve, and one in red for meat. I also have a regular, not enameled cast iron frying pan. That one is pareve, and gets used almost every time I cook! |
Variations: you can lower the cost of this by using less expensive greens than spinach. Sometimes chard or beet greens are a lot cheaper. Here in Israel, you might try lowering the cost of your cottage cheese by subbing PART of it with Eshel or Gil .
If you have a couple extra shekels, these are really amazing when you use 1/2 cottage cheese and 1/2 feta cheese. This will raise the cost a bit, as feta DOES cost more than cottage cheese, so this is not a good option when looking to lower your costs.
I looked in Mega today. White cheese that I was using is about the same price as cottage (although SKI seems to be a tiny bit cheaper). Eshel and Gil (leben) are much much cheaper. I forgot to look up the calcium content of the leben though. We don't drink much milk so that's important to me.
ReplyDeleteYes, I checked too! That's why I recommended Eshel and Gil, although the calcium content is a good question... I'll try to remember to check it all out. maybe I should write it all up.
DeleteI'd be interested to know what exactly leben is. From what I can gather, gil is leben with 3% fat and eshel is leben with 4.5%. But what is it? I once tried to ask our tipat chalav nurse (after she invited me to ask her anything) and she shouted me down that leben is not yogurt and don't use it. I'm thinking that maybe it's a by-product of the milk with limited nutritional value?
DeleteOf course I could google it - I will one day.
Deleteas far as i know, leben is cultured milk, just not the same as yogurt cultures, that has been allowed to drain off some of the whey. there is no reason to think it is honestly not nutritious, but it likely has a slightly lower protein content because of the drained off whey.
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