Blueberry Cheesecake (photo by Flickr user Daryll Jann Bumanlag)

That’s right: Blueberry Cheesecake food pr0n!

Blueberry Cheesecake (photo by Flickr user Denise Chan)

And maybe even a recipe? Sure, why not! Here’s a few links to Blueberry Cheesecake recipes at:

• Epicurious
• The Food Network (Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake Bars)
• The Barefoot Contessa (okay, it’s actually a Mixed Berry Cheesecake, but are you really going to argue with Ina?)
• Bon Appetit (No-Bake Blueberry Cheesecake)
• And a video recipe from The Minimalist himself, Mark Bittman (also no-bake, and really easy to make for those in a hurry)

I’m going to try to whip one up this evening, although since it’s hotter than Hades here, I’m gravitating towards the Lady Cheaterly no-bake versions.

What’s your favorite kind of cheesecake?

So definitely don’t make a whole turkey, because who the heck is going to eat it all anyway? You and your 6 girlfriends? C’mon, guy, be a romantic for once. Invite only your best girl, and cook her something impressive.

Cook her a sweet-ass roasted turkey breast, with garlic mashed potatoes.

“But wait,” you say, “Didn’t you just tell me NOT to cook a turkey?” I did. It’s not actually a contradiction, because cooking a turkey breast, is a freaking snap. Just ask my favorite minimalist, Mark Bittman, from whom I’ve learned everything I ever needed to know about cooking good food cheaply.

You’re probably not going to believe me when I say that it’s cheap, too, but it is. Celebrity Intern and I paid about $6 for a nice, meaty turkey breast at the H-E-B, and it easily serves 2 hungry people, with even enough leftover to make your sweetie a sandwich the next day.

Okay, you’re salivating, right? You’re sold! So how do you cook the damn thing? Simple.

1. Heat your oven to 450 F.
2. Bust out your roasting pan (or if you’re a broke-ass like me, craft a little “tray” for the turkey out of tinfoil, and put the tinfoil tray on top of a baking sheet), put the turkey breast in it, and brush it with olive oil.
3. Season the turkey with salt and pepper, and maybe a little thyme if you’re feeling wild and crazy.
4. Stick it in the oven for between 30 and 45 minutes. Bittman says to baste it every 15 minutes, but I find this step unnecessary; the olive oil will lock all the delicious juices in, so just take it out when your thermometer reads between 155 and 165 F.
5. Let the breast rest for 5 or 10 minutes, then carve that sucker up and EAT!

Did I say it was easy? It’s crazy easy, really. And if we’re about anything, especially on romantical “holidays,” it’s BEING EASY. (*rimshot*)

Okay, cool, but plain old turkey isn’t a meal. Spruce this thing up and make it look respectable with some tried and true mashed potatoes. But let’s get funky on this biz and make them über-tasty GARLIC mashed potatoes instead, shall we?

To get down:

1. Stick your potatoes (preferably red ones or nice Yukon Golds) into a pot of water, so that they’re covered. Toss in a couple of cloves of garlic, whole, for good measure. Bring ‘em all to a boil. Yes, you should leave the skins on. They taste better this way, so quit whining.
2. Boil your potatoes until you can stick a knife or fork in without any trouble. Timing here depends on the size of your taters, so anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour may be required (i.e. start these at the same time you’re starting your turkey).
3. Once boiled, drain out the water and add in 1/2 stick of butter, 1 c. milk or cream and a few (3 or 4) cloves of minced garlic. Get mashin’! (Bittman notes that here you can be a wild and crazy Frenchman like Joël Robuchon and add 2 sticks of butter, along with your 1 cup of cream, which I heartily endorse if you are so equipped; butter, as we all know, is the grease of love.)
4. LET’S EAT!

Put it all together with a bit of gravy (yes, I bought mine at the store; it’s Heinz Homestyle Roasted Turkey Gravy, and I won’t tell if you won’t), et voila!

So…. succulent…

Yes, we are quite fancy with our white wine and books showing off in the background, aren’t we? Care to join us and make it a threesome? (Just kidding.) The white wine you want, for the record, is a nice Beringer Pinot Grigio for only $5 a bottle.

To make the whole thing utterly romantic and indulgent without breaking the bank on chocolates and feeling too bloated to do what you both came to do here (*hint-hint*), what would be the perfect end to this meal? Two mini Häagen-Dazs Single Serve Cups from the grocery store. At $1 a pop, you can get the delicious Dulce de Leche, Chocolate, Vanilla or Strawberry flavors quite reliably, and sometimes even the Coffee one as well. Bite-sized and affordably decadent; can I get a “Hell yeah!”?

TOTAL DAMAGE:

• Turkey breast, $6
• Garlic mashed potatoes, $2
• Gravy, $2
• Wine, $5
• Ice cream, $2

GRAND TOTAL FOR A ROMANTIC DINNER FOR 2 = $17

Where else are you going to get easy, inexpeez suggestions like these to score with your lady-friend on Heart-Day for less than twenty bucks? NOWHERE BUT HERE, BABY.

Dare to live cheaply and eat well, on Valentine’s Day and every day. Embrace your inner Minimalist!

Okay, maybe in Hawaii, but I’m talking contiguous 48, peeps. Shut up, California.

Anyway, before 2010 finally draws its curtains shut and we miss our chance entirely, I wanted to highlight some of Shoestring Austin’s BEST OF 2010. We found some delicious restaurants, made some tasty recipes, and found a lot of cool things to dig about this town in this, our first year in Austin, and I just want to give mad props to the people and places that made it worthwhile.

So without further ado, here’s what made our year!

Best Chips and Salsa: Beanitos and Texas-Texas salsa – delicious, local, good for you!

Best Farmers Market: Barton Creek Farmers Market – granted, this was the only one we hit up in 2010, but we’ll remedy this in 2011 for a more even-handed awards ceremony, mmmmkay?

Best Local Charity: I Live Here, I Give Here - helping Austinites keep money in our community with focused giving campaigns that highlight different charities on a monthly basis

Best Mexican: La Tapatia - tasty breakfast tacos, delicious migas, affordable prices and no lines! (R.I.P. our previous fave, A La Carrera)

Best Cheap Wines: Gato Negro and Sea Ridge - find ‘em at your local Randall’s or H-E-B for only $4! Ya can’t beat deals on delicious wine.

Best Cheap Recipe Apps: Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything On The Go app ($4.99) and Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals ($7.99) – the Minimalist and the Naked Chef both kick ass in the kitchen, and their apps (available in the iTunes store) will help you achieve culinary greatness with much less pain than the average cookbook or highfalutin’ app. LOVE!

Best Staycation: Ye Kendall Inn (Boerne, TX) – mixing business with pleasure, Celebrity Intern and I stayed at this very cool hotel in San Antonio, and savored their decadent food at their award-winning Limestone Grille. Highly recommended if you’ve got the scratch for a romantic weekend get-away!

Best Comedian: Tig Notaro – Ok, so Tig is actually originally from Mississippi, but we saw her in Austin, so we’re counting her as our fave comedian of 2010. Deal with it! If you’re looking for homegrown talent, however, we also saw Lucas Molandes, who was voted the Funniest Person in Austin for 2010, so we will wholeheartedly endorse him as Austin’s funniest comic.

Best Tips for the Broke-Ass Traveller: Rideshare, couch surf, explore your own hometown, and get the hell online for crazy deals! – ‘Nuff said.

Best Italian Recipe: Italian Sausage-Pepper-Onion Wraps – Easy to make, any time of year. Colorful. Delicious. Lower on carbs than your average pasta pot. DIG IT!

Best Chili: Cook’s Illustrated Beef Chili with Bacon and Black Beans – The recipe is a secret (unless you Google “Cook’s Illustrated Beef Chili with Bacon and Black Beans” and find an unauthorized copy, which you TOTALLY didn’t hear from us), but the chili is delish. Savor it in the winter months or sweat your cheeks off in the summertime to its delights. Either way, a surefire winner.

Best Homemade Tacos: OURS! – Here’s the recipe so you can recreate them for yourself. YOU’RE WELCOME.

Got a fave dish, restaurant, or other inexpensive Austin score you’d like to share? Let us know @shoestringATX on Twitter or in the comments section!

What’s a recipe hound to do? Hit the Internet and find it for free!

Here are some of our favorite cooking sites and inexpensive (or free) apps you can download for a great recipe in a hurry.

Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything On the Go app

As previously mentioned on this blog, we love Mark Bittman and his minimalist approach to cooking. With all the right ingredients, you can easily whip up something mind-bogglingly good, sometimes with only 3 to 5 ingredients. If you’re looking for a great way to get acquainted with his methods, check out his iPhone app, How to Cook Everything On the Go, for just $4.99.

To get acquainted with Bittman for free, subscribe to his Minimalist podcasts through iTunes and enjoy watching the man in action with new recipes by video once a week.

Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals

Jamie Oliver’s iPod app 20 Minute Meals is also highly recommended. While his recipes aren’t quite as simple as Bittman’s (“20 Minute Meals” occasionally coming off as a misnomer when you factor in longer prep times for all the chopping his recipes involve), we’ll forgive him this minor flaw. Probably because he’s the Naked Chef and we just want to pinch his cheeks!

In any case, Jamie Oliver’s noble quest to bring you a hot, fast, healthy dinner in 20 minutes (along with his Food Revolution, replacing burgers and fries in school cafeterias with actual nutrition) earns him high praise from the Shoestring blog.

Plus, the “grocery list” function on this app is, as Jamie might put it, BRILLIANT.

This app is just $7.99 and well worth the price.

AllRecipes Dinner Spinner

If you want a fun, free app to shake up your tired routines, check out AllRecipes.com’s Dinner Spinner. Offering a selection of the website’s most popular recipes, you can spin your dish type, ingredients and amount of time you’d like it to be ready in to sort out your choices.

For $2.99 you can go Pro and get all of the site’s recipes, plus a variety of bonus features like the ability to transfer recipes wirelessly using Bluetooth and access to your personal Recipe Box.

Epicurious.com

Call us old-fashioned, but we like the Epicurious website more than their Epi iPhone app. It’s free, which is nice, but it’s not quite as functional as some of the other apps out there. Plus, users have complained that it doesn’t sync with your online recipe box, which is a bummer. (And since AllRecipes.com will do this for $2.99, you might as well use theirs!)

Tequila Shrimp recipe from Epicurious.com (photo by Romulo Yanes)

Still, the Epicurious website does have a lot of great recipes, and they divide them up in ways we adore. The Seasonal Cooking section varies recipes depending on Mother Nature’s availability, so you can feel good about buying products that will be less expensive and earth-friendly if they’re grown locally. International Cooking brings global variety to your dishes (and is sortable by country), while the Holidays & Celebrations breakdown offers menus based on traditional holiday dishes for everything from Bastille Day to Weddings.

Be sure to check out their Dinner Rush recipes with quick menus, including hits like the Tequila Shrimp shown above—not to mention fabulous wine pairings—for every night of the week!

What are some of YOUR favorite
cooking apps and websites?

Enter Mark Bittman, aka “The Minimalist.” New York Times food writer Bittman is all about cooking inexpensive, minimally time-consuming recipes with good, fresh ingredients, and has written several excellent books on the subject, including the brashly titled How To Cook Everything. And now, there’s an app for that: How To Cook Everything On The Go. (Click on the link or image below to download from the iTunes store for the iPhone or iPod Touch.)

For just a buck ninety-nine ($1.99), Bitty will literally teach you how to cook everything, without having to connect to the Internet. It’s a great self-contained app that offers easy access to a wide variety of recipes, kitchen basics, ideas for quick dinners and even lists compiled by Bittman like “Top 102 Essential Recipes,” “10 Soups to Eat Hot or Cold,” “16 Sauces for Any Simply Cooked Tofu,” and “15 Meat Dishes That Are As Good or Better The Next Day.”

With Bittman’s cooking methodology, it’s all about getting good, fresh ingredients and not screwing them up. His recipes are simple (or minimalist) mainly because he will teach you how to mix and match recipe ideas with whatever you’ve got in your cupboards, how to keep the right ingredients stocked at all times, and how to quickly and easily prepare straightforward meals. Most recipes offer a “variations” tab that will show you how to change up your old favorites, to keep things interesting, and they’re often cross-linked to accompanying dishes that pair well.

Truly, a great app to invest in, and at $1.99 it’s well worth the price.

One of the recipes I’ve recently tried from the app is the Radish Salsa, which offers a unique take on an old favorite. While Bittman doesn’t include tomatoes in his recipe, Celebrity Intern saw yellow tomatoes on sale at the grocery store and couldn’t pass up a deal, so we tossed in a few for the following colorful and tasty results:

Photo (and yellow tomatoes) by Celebrity Intern

Looks great, tastes great, and can be served up solo or stuffed into the taco of your choice. Yum!

Ingredients for this salsa include: chopped radishes, English cucumber (the long skinny kind), red onion, scallions, garlic, jalapeños or serrano chiles, lemon juice cilantro and salt and pepper. Toss in a few tomatoes (red or yellow) if you like, or download the app to check out Bittman’s unique Thai-inspired variations on the theme.

Sad to say, so far we just haven’t found anything that measures up to that pure garlic kick we love. (Heck, I even emailed Renée’s to ask where I could find ‘em here in Austin, but so far their customer service department hasn’t bothered to reply.) We’ve tried Ken’s Creamy Caesar, Marzetti’s Supreme Caesar (they make a mean Ultimate Blue Cheese dressing that we use as a dip), Marie’s Creamy Caesar, and Safeway Select Fresh Garlic Caesar. The closest we’ve to the Holy Grail of the Renée’s Caesar is a mixture of Ken’s and Safeway’s Caesar dressings, and even that’s only okay.

What we really need to do, though, is whip up some homemade Caesar dressing, complete with anchovies!

Here’s the recipe I’ve got from Mark Bittman (the New York Times’ Minimalist) that I want to put to use, one of these days:

This recipe is from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything: The Basics, which is an excellent book (and now an iPhone app!) for anybody on a shoestring budget looking to get away from Kraft Dinner and ramen noodles on a nightly basis. It’ll teach you everything you need to know, and serves as a great Bible in the kitchen, the way some people look to Betty Crocker cookbooks or Julia Child. Since Bittman’s a lifelong minimalist, he’ll teach you how to produce big flavor from just a few good ingredients, and how to get the most of out of even the barest of kitchens (the dude actually cooks brilliant meals in a classically cramped NYC apartment with one of those miniature stoves and refrigerators, so he knows whereof he speaks).

In the meantime, I would suggest spicing up the Caesar with a turkey breast or even pork cutlets, pan-fried to perfection, if you think you’d be into it but don’t have the rotisserie chicken on hand. It’s a surprisingly versatile salad, and impresses people when you present it with real, hand-grated Parmesan cheese. I think that’s probably the key to looking good in the kitchen, in general, as a friend of mine once confided that her husband swore she was a brilliant chef solely based on her ability to buy the “good” Parmesan and grate it herself.

Rock on over London, rock on Chicago. Caesar salad in the hizzouse!