The Troll is sponsoring a monthly culinary throwdown. this time it is "obamanation meals". This challenge involves feeding a family with very little money and still delivering essential nutrition; a critical consideration since you will need to do everything you can to prevent disease or sickness because your health care options will be nada very soon. i think the future will be like in Logans Run you get a certain age (i.e. no longer able work hard enough to give the State 80% of your income) and you'll just go into a box and get vaporized. your survivors will receive a tax credit if you do.
I thought, whats more cost effective than walking out to my garden and finding whatever's ripe and ready, sauteing it up and serving it with a local trout filet which can be had for about a buck fifty. but in all honesty? each baby squash and tomato costs about $20 when i consider the money i have spent on tilling, and compost and mulch and organic soaps and sticks and cages and fences and fungicides and seeds and tools and fertilizer and my precious time.
while i admired my "lemon ice" sunflowers and marveled at the sacred geometry at its center (fingerprint of the Creator) i thought: creamed tuna! seems a natural progression does it not?
this was a meal my mom made when we were kids and it was a favorite of my brothers and mine. it is very cost effective and it tastes great. so here goes.
you need: bread, chunk light tuna -not albacore!, milk, butter, flour, onions, carrots, broccoli, eggs, and an open mind. hard boil the eggs and set them aside to cool.
cut the veggies up small. put a couple of spoonfuls of butter in a skillet and saute the onions, broccoli and carrots all at once. if you are cooking for children you want the veggies to be soft not crisp. when everythings cooked down, get a spoonful of flour and sprinkle it over the veggies and stir. i dont know how much flour but not too much. just enough to lightly coat the veggies. now add milk all at once. i dont know how much you'll know when because you want it to not be thick or too runny.
meanwhile, put the bread in the toaster or oven to make "toast points". i like the Pepperidge Farm Very Thin wheat for this. but while you are making the toast don't let the veggie sauce get too thick! now that the toast is in the oven add the tuna to the veggie mix and add more milk if you need to. you want this to pour over the toast.
lay the toast points out. you need them to be a bit crisp so they hold up under the creamed tuna. slice the boiled egg and add to tuna and pour or spoon over tuna. i messed up and mine got too thick, hence the addition of the word "spoon" but trust me, when my MOM made this it rocked. and looked better than this:
wow. this doesnt look that good, does it? it tasted good though. you get the savory tuna infused with buttery goodness, the carrots add a hint of sweetness, the egg offers extra protein and the broccoli adds color and vitamins. add a simple green salad and a glass of sweetened sun tea you made earlier in the day. (extra Obama points!! no energy used to heat water for tea!) Serve it on a kitcshy farmy tablecloth on nice china and it tastes a bit better.
For dessert, open freezer and take out pint of chocolate chocolate chip haagen daaz ice cream that you bought with the money you saved on meat. set it on the counter to soften. stroll back out to the yard and admire the "chianti" sunflower that bloomed today. when you come back in, the ice cream will be ready. enjoy!
i am again finding good company with my old friend Henry David Thoreau. my dog-eared compendium of his writings have carried me through post garden afternoons on the porch, late winter evenings and bouts of GI distress. This past sunday i celebrated his birthday as a spiritual father to us all. his words are eternal; here are a few of my favorites:
Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have.
That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.
Men have become the tools of their tools.
Being is the great explainer. 
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.
When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. 
Goodness is the only investment that never fails. 
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
