Good Food Cheap

If you think you have to spend a lot to eat well, then you haven’t met Amy McCoy. On her blog, Poor Girl Gourmet, the Rehoboth-based McCoy chronicles her quest to prepare high-quality, seasonally inspired meals on the cheap. She posts recipes, witty commentary and a sneak peek inside her wallet, breaking down the total cost of each meal ingredient by ingredient.

It all started a year ago, when McCoy, a freelance TV producer, found her once plentiful work drying up in the wake of the recession. She and her husband, JR, didn’t want to give up the gourmet-style meals they had grown accustomed to during flush times, but were facing a serious drop in their disposable income. So McCoy began a mission and a blog. 

"I am playing a little game (which, perhaps, I am calling a ‘game’ so as not to feel depressed that I really need to do it) whereby I am trying to feed my husband and myself for as little money as possible," she wrote in her first post. "However, a key part of ‘The Game" is that our meals have to be interesting and not call out that we are drastically cutting our grocery spending." 

The one-year anniversary of her blog isn’t the only thing McCoy’s celebrating these days. She’s nearly finished with the cookbook that sprang out of it, aptly named The Poor Girl Gourmet Cookbook. With all recipes costing less than $15 — and many less than $10 — for four servings, the cookbook aims to dispel the myth that inexpensive food is unhealthy, of inferior quality or difficult to prepare.  It won’t be out until the spring, but in the meantime you can follow McCoy’s editing triumphs and tribulations on her Twitter page. 

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