Nickel & Dine – FoodWatcher

Why Instant Pudding Is My Secret Weapon for Summer Desserts

Nickel & Dine is a budget column by Rebecca Firkser, food writer, recipe developer, and expert budgeter. This time, Rebecca is teaming up with our friends at Walmart to share tips for easy summer entertaining, featuring her signature flavor-packed, time-saving recipes plus a few of her must-have hosting items from Walmart—order ‘em online for pickup or delivery.

Ah, pudding. I don’t see how anyone could not love the creamy, classic treat. (I know a lot of folks, in fact, who do not love pudding and I simply do not get it.) Made with just a few fridge and pantry staples—like sugar, cornstarch, milk, sometimes eggs and butter, plus vanilla extract or cocoa powder—it’s an affordable dessert that tastes like a million bucks.

10 Clever Tricks for Transforming Store-Bought Pizza Dough

I’d like to shake hands with whoever was the first to sell pre-made pizza dough. Though not particularly complex to make from scratch, DIY pizza dough is time-consuming (mostly due to rising and resting) and sometimes, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. And even when I do technically have the time I don’t always want to wait—there are far too many tasty treats to be made with pizza dough. From pigs in a blanket to quiche crust, store-bought pizza dough can be so much more than, well, pizza crust.

For Restaurant-Quality Meals on A Budget, Fire Up the Grill

When a perfectly grilled steak or vegetable dish is laid in front of you at a restaurant, it seems to hit all the senses at once. You listen to the sizzle while admiring the crosshatch marks on the steak or charred bits of wrinkly skin on the eggplant. As you inhale that smoky scent, you dig in—it cuts with barely any effort. And then the first bite, bearing a thousand layers of flavor from time directly over a flame. That contrast between scorched exterior and buttery interior simply couldn’t have happened in a skillet alone. Here’s a secret: This symphonic experience has less to do with the restaurant or expensive ingredients than it does with the tool, and you can very easily get any style of grill, at any price point, to suit your lifestyle and achieve restaurant-quality results right at home.

10 Affordable Kitchen Staples You Should Always Keep On Hand

When cooking on a budget, the best tool in your arsenal is a well-stocked pantry and refrigerator. There are a few items that should simply always be in the kitchen (looking at you, olive oil and salt), but there are also budget-friendly proteins and flavor-boosters I use daily—more on those in a minute. If you’re trying to spend less on meals and on cooking in general, I recommend adding some of my top 10 budget-friendly kitchen staples into your weekly or monthly shopping cart, from ingredients to equipment. (Bonus: If you’re shopping online or in-app at a retailer like Walmart, you can find everything you need in one place for easy peasy in-store pickup or delivery—no need to spend visit multiple stores.) I’ve also included some recipes along the way, so you can make good use of these affordable standbys.

Passover Seder for $25? Totally Possible.

Nickel & Dine is a budget column by Rebecca Firkser, assigning editor at Food52. Rebecca usually shares an easy, flavor-packed recipe that feeds four for $10 or less—this is a special edition: a $25 Passover for six to eight.

Passover seder is a…

Passover seder is a festive meal. Guests are encouraged to recline at the table, and drink many glasses of wine while enjoying multiple dishes throughout the evening (literally, there’s a prayer book that tells us to do all these things). My childhood memories of the holiday are around a dining room table—specifically, several of my dad's cousins’ tables, pushed together in the middle of their New Jersey living room. And as I grew up, I found myself wanting to host my own seder. I wanted to bring together a gaggle of loved ones over those pushed-together tables and a very delicious meal.

The $30 Thanksgiving

Do you hear “Thanksgiv…

Do you hear “Thanksgiving dinner” and start to fret about your checking account balance? Because when I volunteer to host such a meal, I’m not worried about what anyone thinks of my mismatched plates or nervous about who won’t love what I’ve made (to these, I say “so what, who cares!”). But I do stress about money.

A Wallet-Friendly Way to Stretch Any Salad

I try not to be the kind of person who tells you a dish you’ve made is missing something. But also, that big salad you’re about to dive into definitely needs pita chips. Let’s back up: When it comes to summer dinners—whether I’m having people over or it’s just me—come dinnertime, I gravitate towards simple meals that show off summer produce. I’m talking toasts, cold noodles, dips, salads. And when I go salad, there’s only one non-negotiable part: adding chips. Pita chips, specifically.

I understand there might be skeptics about this addition, but hear me out. Obviously you know about croutons in salad. And perhaps you’re familiar with Tuscan panzanella, stale torn bread and tomatoes soaked in oil and vinegar; or fattoush, the Levantine salad of greens, vegetables, and toasted or fried flatbread—this crispy-carb-tossed-in-tangy-dressing is the vibe we’re going for. Like croutons, pita chips add a welcome crunch to salad, but their flat shape also makes them something of a scooping device, excellent for making sure every last bite of cucumber or feta gets into your mouth, not left clinging to the side of the bowl.

How to Make Filling & Flavorful Dinners in $2.50 (or Less!)

I’m always looking for a good deal. I buy my clothes from resale sites and my glassware at antique stores—and before the pandemic forced us to eat at home every night, I regularly opted to make dinner instead of dropping $40 at a restaurant. This penchant for thrift often led me towards recipes that slant on the cheap side, but I discovered that most budget-friendly recipes simply don’t suit my lifestyle: hefty casseroles and pastas to serve a large family (I live in a two-person household); cheaper cuts of meat swapped in for thicker chops to make a big, meaty entree (I rarely eat meat, and when I do, I don’t want it to take over my meal); and ingredients purchased in uber-large quantities (my apartment has minimal storage).

While these styles of recipe are indeed helpful to many, to find recipes I like and save money, I decided to take matters into my own hands in the form of a monthly recipe column called Nickel & Dine. Every one of these recipes makes at least four servings, and will run you about $10 in total—that’s just $2.50 per serving!