Lunch
This week’s chicken was $6.99 or $1.75 per portion. Part of the gamble of a supermarket roast chicken is that it can become overcooked sitting out, and sadly this one is.
- Roast chicken:$6.99 split four ways and into two serves today: 87c
- One quarter of the $2.74 salad is 69c
- The flatbread is 50c
- Add some hummus at 30c
Lunch today: $2.36 per serve
Dinner
Tonight we cooked Serious Eats’ Beef Stew because there was one pound of stewing beef in the monthly meat delivery. You can certainly buy cheaper stewing meat than $9.79 a pound but everything we’ve had in the meat delivery has been worth the extra in flavor.
We did it with one pound of beef, not the three in the recipe, and added more mushroom to balance it. Greg swapped out chicken bone broth for the chicken broth/gelatin combination because bone broth has gelatin and more flavor! He also dropped the pearl onions. Accordingly there are five serves in our version.
It’s a very unusual recipe with a sauce made in a blender; meat, mushrooms and some of the vegetables fried off in the pan; and some vegetables going into a stock. It was obvious that there was stock-in-progress when vegetables went in unpeeled and/or whole.
Sure enough, they get fished out later. Then the meat, mushrooms, cooked diced carrots and pearl onions go back in to simmer while cooking the potatoes and meat.
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The cooked components waiting to be added back to the stew after the stock vegetables are removed. The stew beef was $9.79 or $1.96 a serve
- Garlic about 2c a serve
- Carrots – $1.99 or 40c a serve
- Fingerling potatoes – $2.50 or 50c a serve
- Mushrooms $3.98 or $1 a serve
- Tomato paste – 20c a serve
- Chicken bone broth – $5.49 or $1.10 a serve
- Sourdough bread – 60c a serve
- Sundry seasonings, anchovies etc 50c a serve
Tonight’s beef stew cost us $6.10 a serve. With a long slow cook it develops great flavor. Although meat light this has amazingly deep umami thanks to the mushrooms.