Sequestration Meal #623

 

Low spend, high flavor! This is rice, spicy Korean ketchup tofu (recipe from My Korean Kitchen), hobak buchim (Korean zucchini pancakes--recipe from Korean Bapsang) with dipping sauce, and Korean-style carrot salad (recipe from Lavender and Macrons).

I have made the tofu and the carrots before and knew I liked them. As for the hobak buchim, I had zucchini that needed using and a bag of Korean savory pancake mix, so why not? It turned out that the pancakes were the best part of this meal. Seriously, I adored these. It may just be the well-seasoned pancake mix, but it was the best thing I've cooked in a very long time.

Koreans would serve this more elegantly, of course--a bowl of rice with each side in its own dish--but I like everything together like this, even if it looks messy.

So the thing that makes this low spend is that I already had everything and didn't need to buy anything for it. If I did have to buy all this stuff, though, the basic ingredients are all pretty cheap, too--tofu, zucchini, carrots, rice, etc., while, although you don't use much of them at once, the condiments would be a significant outlay if you bought them all in one go. Fortunately, I am going for moderate living here, not total miser living.