Lunch
We had another attempt at the Trader Joe’s Tarte à l’Oignon -Alsation style onion tart. We had a little more success in the regular oven, but it still didn’t firm up like we expected it to.
- The tart was $3.99 or $2.00 a serve.
Dinner
The challenge with the classic corned beef dinner is how to use the remaining corned beef. We’ve experimented with various Reuben sandwich ideas, but today we found the perfect solution: an oven-baked Reuben Casserole.
Without a doubt this is the best use of corned beef and reuben sandwich ingredients. We loved it, despite foodie Greg’s dislike of “bread puddings” (including French Toast). Technically a strata because of the layering, it embodies all that is good about a reuben, but better!
The recipe makes six good size serves.
- Six slices of rye bread are roughly half the $1.99 loaf, or 17c per serve
- The other half of the corned beef is $14.30, or $2.40 per serve
- Trader Joe’s have a Sauerkraut with Persian Cucumbers which combines two ingredients for $3.99 a jar, or 67c per serve.
- Packaged, shredded Swiss Gryere $4.99 or 83c per serve. Although we used the full packet, it was probably closer to three cups than four.
- A pint of half and half is $1.49 and half was used or 13c per serve.
- Organic eggs are 50c each or 25c per serve.
- Greg made “thousand island” dressing with a mix of mayonnaise and shrimp sauce, for about 20c per serve
- We skipped the caraway seeds for taste reasons but the mustard adds another 15c per serve.
Dinner tonight cost $4.80 per serve and is way better than the traditional boiled meal. It turns out Trader Joe’s have just started stocking sliced corned beef, so we don’t have to prepare the whole 3 lb !