With the Christmas shopping season in full swing, your wallet might be feeling a bit thin.

The author of a recent cookbook, “Good Cheap Eats: Everyday Dinners and Fantastic Feasts for $10 or Less,” has some suggestions for compensating by cutting down the food budget during this expensive month.

Jessica Fisher knows the feeling of a thin wallet. She and her husband struggled with debt from 1998, when they took out their first mortgage, to 2007, when they found themselves with two mortgages and “sky-high credit-card bills.”

Part of the family’s return to a balanced budget involved learning how to cook good food on the cheap. Mrs. Fisher, already a blogger at lifeasmom.com, even found herself writing so frequently about “good cheap eats” on that blog that she decided to start a separate blog at goodcheapeats.com.

“You write what you know,” she said, noting that for many years, the family’s grocery budget was around $100 a week to feed eight people – and $100 doesn’t go very far in their home area of Southern California. Granted, the family now spends a little more than that; with three teen boys in the house, it’s unavoidable. But the family is also at the financial place where they are able to spend a little more and not break the bank, in part because they ate “beans and rice – a lot of beans and rice” for many years.

Mrs. Fisher had wanted to write a cookbook since she graduated from college in 1994. The blogs helped her fulfill that dream: she’s written “Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook” and “Best 100 Juices for Kids” in addition to “Good Cheap Eats.”

Twenty years ago, she’d have needed to “get a culinary degree and go to journalism school” in order to write a cookbook, but blogging has changed that, she said.

Her family also helped fulfill her ambitions by taking the form of food critics, and they can be “pretty harsh,” she said. Her husband started ranking her recipe tests on a baseball scale: a meal could be a “home run,” “triple,” and so on, all the way down to a “strikeout.” Dishes didn’t make the cookbooks if he didn’t grade them as at least doubles.

Fisher family favorites in “Good Cheap Eats” include Poblano Chile Enchiladas (see recipe – Mrs. Fisher says it’s a “super-cheap meal to make, and it feels like a million bucks”), Armchair Quarterback Chili, and Beef Stew With Pumpkin and Hominy.

She has several suggestions for lowering the food budget during this holiday month. And two of those three favorites – the enchiladas and the chili – correspond with her first suggestion.

• Go meatless. “We do this two or three times a week, and even my boys are cool with it.” She said the key is that “if what you’re making has enough flavor,” no one will miss the meat.

• Take inventory before you go shopping. Particularly at the holidays, when people are making once-a-year dishes, they might wander the store aisles and wonder if they have cloves at home. Unsure, they buy the cloves, only to get home and discover they’ve now got four containers of cloves.

• Use seasonal ingredients. Now isn’t the time for hot dogs; they tend to be on sale in the summertime. Flip through the grocery-store circular and note what’s on sale, she said.

• Cook smaller amounts of food. Mrs. Fisher has read that Americans end up throwing away 25 percent of the food they buy. If we cook too much, “people get sick of it and it gets thrown out,” so her suggestion is to avoid preparing vast quantities of food – or if you do, freeze half. Even for holiday meals, don’t go overboard, she suggests; make two pies instead of five.

• Enjoy simple meals. “Every meal doesn’t have to be an event,” she said. “We tend to overcomplicate, particularly at the holidays. Just simplify.”

“Good Cheap Eats” retails for $16.95 and is available through bookstores and online booksellers. Other recipes and tips are available at goodcheapeats.com.

Holiday

Heavenly Cookie Shoppe: Homemade Christmas cookies ($8 per pound), specialty goodies and crafts. 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 6, at Christ United Methodist Church, Bethel Park. Proceeds benefit mission projects. 412-835-6621.

Joy of Cookies Cookie Tour: Visit more than 30 Lawrenceville businesses to sample shopkeepers’ favorite cookies. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7. Free. lvpgh.com/cookietour.

Miscellaneous

All-Clad Seconds Sale: Dec. 5-7 at In the Kitchen, Strip District, and Crate, Scott. shopinthekitchen.com and cratecook.com.

Preservation Celebration: Swap your canned goods for others’, enter a pickle contest, enjoy snacks and samples, and hear presentations. 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, at The Cloakroom in East Liberty. Co-presented by Pittsburgh Canning Exchange and Slow Food Pittsburgh. $15 admission. For tickets: eventbrite.com (search on “Preservation Celebration 2014”).

Healing Foods: Presentation focusing mainly on whole grains and their uses. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 10, at East End Food Co-op. Free. Reservations: 412-242-3598.

Charitable campaign

Food Pantry Holiday Makeover: Vote for your local pantry! North Hills Community Outreach was selected as one of 150 food pantries across the United States to compete to win a “holiday makeover.” The 75 food pantries with the most online votes from now through Dec. 12 will receive $20,000 for the makeover. The campaign will provide funding for infrastructure improvements or equipment purchases. If NHCO wins, the organization would buy a walk-in freezer. To vote, go to walmart.com/holidaymakeover and select the food pantry through the 15101 ZIP code or by searching on “North Hills Community Outreach.” You can vote once per day.

■

Poblano Chile Enchiladas

PG tested

16 ounces sour cream

16-ounce jar salsa verde

12 corn tortillas

6 poblano chiles, roasted, halved and seeded (see note)

2 cups shredded cheese, such as cheddar or Monterey jack

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch pan with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk the sour cream and salsa verde together until smooth. Spread ¼ cup of the sauce over the bottom of the prepared dish.

Soften the tortillas by warming them briefly in the microwave or on a hot griddle.

Assemble each enchilada by placing half a chile and a small handful of cheese atop a tortilla. Roll up the tortilla and place the enchilada, seam side down, in the prepared pan. Continue rolling until all the enchiladas are assembled, reserving ½ cup of the cheese for the topping.

Pour the remaining sauce over the top of the enchiladas. Sprinkle the reserved cheese over the top.

Bake the enchiladas until heated through and starting to bubble, 20 to 30 minutes.

Note: To roast chiles, preheat broiler, rinse peppers, and poke a hole in one end of each. Lay them on a baking sheet and broil, turning, until all sides are black and charred, 5 to 10 minutes. Place chiles in a covered dish or paper bag, or wrap in aluminum foil, to steam the skins loose. Wearing gloves, pull charred skin from pepper flesh, remove stem end, and cut or tear peppers open to remove seeds.

-- “Good Cheap Eats” by Jessica Fisher (Harvard Common, Sept. 2014, $16.95)

First Published: December 4, 2014, 5:00 a.m.