Recession Diary: The Recession Diarist cooks

(Editor's note: Unlike past recessions, the current downturn has taken a significant toll on sectors of the economy virtually unscathed by earlier economic crises. This is the latest in a series on one family's struggle.)

SKOKIE, Ill., Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Writing about the $50 party I threw for my friend's birthday prompted numerous posted comments, e-mails and phone calls asking about the menu and how I did it for $50.

The party menu: The appetizers were a hummus platter with Moroccan-cured olives and pita chips; a tuna mold with tiny pumpernickel, grape tomatoes, mild olives and dill pickle slices; cashew nuts provided by a guest, sangria and various juices.

The main course was field greens salad with colorful garden vegetables and tarragon vinaigrette dressing, cold roasted asparagus with creamy horseradish sauce, garlic bread, fettuccine in a tomato-basil-brie sauce, and red and white wines.

For dessert, we had fruit salad with lemon sauce, mint-chip-and-chocolate-chip cheesecake, coffee-mocha cheesecake, two flavors of ice cream, coffee, tea and a "boughten" layer birthday cake prettily decorated with a music theme (my friend is a professional musician) provided by another guest.

Our receipts for the party actually showed an expenditure of about $80. I calculate Fred and I ordinarily eat dinners costing $3 per person. Our meals usually include small amounts of beef, chicken, turkey, fish or tofu, with fresh fruits and vegetables. For health benefits and flavor, fresh produce is so far superior to canned, and in most cases, to frozen -- and only slightly more expensive -- that I would rather give up toothpaste, if necessary, to be able to afford it.

We ate our dinner the night of the party along with our guests, and we consumed only leftovers for dinner for four nights afterward. Therefore, we did not spend the $30 we ordinarily would have spent for five nights of dinner.

Eighty dollars minus $30 equals $50, so, we spent $50 on the party.

Leftovers also meant I didn't use the energy in my gas cook top or electric oven for meal preparation -- nothing other than microwave warm-up. Talk about money-, time- and especially labor-saving!

Yeah, when pinching pennies, one starts factoring in that kind of stuff, but I won't take them into consideration as offsetting the expense for the party.

There were also leftovers of certain ingredients I was able to use for other meals after the party. For instance, the leftover cream for the dinner's coffee made a garlic sauce frozen for serving over pasta or cooked vegetables in a future meal.

We had priced several coffee liqueurs -- a big-ticket item by our standards these days -- for a cheesecake topping recipe for the party. Fred always examines the price-per-ounce, meaning we often buy larger rather than smaller quantities. We bought a 750 ml bottle for $8, including tax.

I was willing to spend so much on a single ingredient only because liqueur has a 450-year shelf life.

I could take the rest of my own life to use up the bottle, but I know I will make that cheesecake again and again, as I had carefully perfected the recipe for those who, like me, love coffee-flavored desserts.

If I use the liqueur only for cheesecake topping, I can make it 11 more times at a total cost, with the other topping ingredients, of less than $1 for a 9.5-inch-diameter cheesecake.

Stay tuned, however, for a far more interesting use for that liqueur!