Month: March 2016

Lunch

Toast an onion bagel, smear with cream cheese, top with capers and wild caught smoked salmon.

• Six bagels are $1.99 or 33c each
• Wild caught smoked salmon is $5.99 or $3.00 a serve
• Cream cheese is $1.69 for the pack, or 42c per serve

Lunch today cost $3.75 for about twice as much smoked salmon per serve as you’d get at a bagel place.

Dinner

Tonight’s dinner is a perfect example of how easy it is to great a great looking, and tasting, meal. This would be perfect for a date night dinner: minimal preparation, maximum flavor.

Once again we used the pre-cooked Trader Joe’s fully cooked pork belly, braised some endives and prepared some sprouted red rice. This was our first experience of red rice alone, instead of in a mix. It was not significantly different from brown rice.

• The pork belly is $6.49 and we had half each or $3.25 per serve
• Four Belgian endive cost $2.49 or $1.25 per serve
• The sprouted red rice is $3.49 for the pack. We used half and served half each, or 88c per serve.

Dinner tonight took about 20 minutes of simple preparation – not even any vegetable prep – and cost just $5.38 per person for a meal that would be more than four times that in a restaurant.

There’s a very good chance it would be exactly the same protein – the pork – as I would get in a restaurant. The dirty little secret of the restaurant trade, is that most proteins come prepared to the restaurant. There has been a recent trend to make those also available to the public by adding retail packaging. This pre-cooked pork is exactly two restaurant serves and ready to finish in each restaurant’s signature style. Or your signature style.

Lunch

Today we put together another quesadilla with tortilla’s instead of flatbread, but today we added chicken breast.

• The eight-pack of tortilla cost $3.29 or 41c per serve
• Half a can of refried beans, shared across two halves: 33c
• Fontera salsa is expensive (and tasty) at $4.69 a jar, but it breaks down to 16c a serve
• 2 oz of cheddar split between two is 50c per serve
• One chicken breast $2.00 or $1.00 a serve

Lunch today cost 2.40 per serve.

Dinner

Time to reuse that delicious liquid for the Cioppino and add fresh seafood.

As it did on March 12, dinner tonight cost $9.78 a serve, for a very generous serving.

Lunch

Because we started with a whole roast chicken for the Cobb Salad, we used the legs and thighs for lunch today, with a deli salad of mixed grains.

• Each serve of the roast chicken is $2.00
• The salad was $3.29 and we halved it for $1.65 per serve.

Lunch today cost $3.65 per serve.

Dinner

It was time to reheat the Reuben Casserole and have another nosh! As it did on Tuesday, the Baked Reuben Casserole cost $4.80 per serve.

Lunch

Today was a very atypical day for the semiSerious Foodies: up early so Philip could take the Oath of Allegiance and become an American Citizen. So we joined with a friend who took us out to lunch at the Country Deli in Chatsworth.

The serving sizes are very generous: whether you have the marinated skirt steak with eggs and home fries, or the Texas omelette it’s hard to finish the serve.

While technically we didn’t pay for anything, it’s about $18 on average with tax and tip.

Dinner

In order to celebrate the new Citizenship, we had that most American of salads: Cobb. A Cobb Salad is almost entirely preparation as the only cooking required is to boil the eggs and fry off the bacon.

It also leaves the ingredients themselves as the star. When there’s no fancy sauces, spices or flavoring – other than a mild dressing on the green leaves – each ingredient has to be superb. By choosing carefully, the basic Cobb can be elevated into a gourmet experience.

• Blue cheese crumbles are $3.49 for the pack and we used about 1/3 or 58c per serve.
• You can tell by the deep gold yolk that these are pastured eggs: 50c each -one per serve – but worth it for the taste.
• The avocado is direct from a friend’s tree: a Fuerte instead of the more common Haas. I don’t know if it’s the breed, or the freshness, but this avocado was creamy and full of flavor. Normally about 50c per serve.
• Organic bacon is $8.99 for the pack, but it’s only two slices per serve, or $1.13 per serve.
• The cooked roast chicken was $7.99 but one quarter was used, or $1.00 per serve.
• The organic cherry tomatoes were $2.49 for the pack or $1.25 per serve.
• Add 10c for the greens.

Dinner tonight was an example of how great a simple dish can be, when the ingredients are excellent. All up it cost $5.06 and was better than any Cobb Salad we’ve had in a restaurant. And never chop a Cobb Salad. That would be a crime against texture and flavor!

 

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 !

Lunch

For lunch we decided to head for Jons up the freeway in Simi Valley to get one of their baguettes, cheddar cheese and liverwurst.

• The Jon’s baguette – fresh from the oven in the store – was $2.69 but we only shared half today or 67c per serve
• The full liverwurst pack is $3.20 but we had under 1/4 each or 80c per serve
• 8 oz of cheese is $5.88 from Sprouts but we used around 1/4 or 74c per serve.
• The sauerkraut was $6.99 for 18 oz or 44c per serve

Lunch today cost $2.65.

Dinner

It’s a tradition that we have corned beef, boiled potatoes and boiled cabbage for foodie Greg’s birthday, so that’s what we did.

• The 3 lb corned beef round was $28.59 but we served half, or $7.13 per serve – that’s for double the typical restaurant serve
• Two onions add 12c per serve
• The cabbage was 67c but we served half, or 17c per serve
• The potatoes were 45c per serve

Dinner tonight cost us $7.87 for a very generous serve.