Fresh ingredients, simple techniques and great food.
Lunch
A combined post office and shopping trip had us close to Viva La Fiesta so while Foodie Greg shopped Ralph’s, Philip ordered one chicken and one asada wet burritos to go.
They were both pretty good and almost too much food. Good food and good value for $10.00 per serve with tip.
Dinner
Because of the huge lunch we decided to return to the remaining Cauliflower Cheddar Soup for $3.41 per serve.
Lunch
We ended up at The Country Deli for lunch where Philip had his usual marinated skirt steak with eggs, while Foodie Greg had a pastrami on rye with fries.
Lunch at The Country Deli runs $21.62 per person (average) with tax and tip.
Dinner
After trying the Cauliflower Gruyère Soup in early December, we turned to the concept with Cauliflower Cheddar Soup figuring that cheddar is less expensive than Gruyére! The recipe made four serves for us because we dropped the potato (to reduce carbs) and used only four cups of chicken stock.
Tonight’s soup was really very good, and every bit the equal of the gruyére version, for $3.41 per serve.
Lunch
More toasted sandwiches including left overs from last night.
Todays sandwiches were both interesting and tasty for $1.43 per serve.
Dinner
Thursday night steak night! Tonight a dry aged NY strip steak with an interesting beet, orange, watercress and halloumi salad.
Tonight’s steak was perfectly cooked and the salad is a great complement, except we felt that feta would be a better cheese choice than halloumi. A good meal, if a little expensive, at $14.26 per serve.
Lunch
With an avocado to use, our sandwiches were based around that: one with a Lemon Pepper Salmon pouch and the other with sliced smoked turkey breast.
Both sandwiches were tasty and satisfying for $2.59 per serve.
Dinner
A return to the Crispy Spiced Lamb & Lentils with Tomato Cucumber Salsa and a Lemon Tahini dressing. They are supposed to be served in a lettuce cup but we got the wrong sort of lettuce, so we served it as a salad. The lamb recipe came from the linked page, but the salsa and dressing were created by Foodie Greg.
The lamb and lentil recipe serves four. The dressing and salsa just two.
We added a little spice to the lamb mix based on our experience last time, but otherwise this is a great combination. A little easier to eat as a salad than in lettuce cups and pretty good for $4.59 per serve.
Lunch
With a chicken breast to use up we sliced it and shared across two identical toasted sandwiches with sliced cheese and Dutch mustard.
It was a satisfying sandwich for $1.65 per serve.
Dinner
Although a long term favorite of ours we haven’t had Southwest Beans and Sausage with rice, for a year. It’s surprising how many cultures have some kind of bean and rice dish: not coincidentally that combined rice and beans have all the amino acids needed for the body to create protein and grow muscle.
The recipe makes four serves and it basically just involves cutting up stuff, opening a couple of cans, and cooking some rice, which is always faster in the pressure cooker!
Dinner tonight cost $2.78 a serve. It’s a very tasty, warming stew with a little heat from the andouille.
Lunch
The typical Burbank Monday was disrupted and Foodie Philip was home for lunch and had a toasted roast beef, chutney and cheese sandwich.
A good, quick lunch for $1.09 per serve.
Dinner
Tonight was “cook’s night off” with the protein coming from out supermarket roast chicken, the salad from the remainder of yesterday’s salad kit and a mix of black rice and cooked edamame from the refrigerator.
Dinner tonight was a decent, but not exciting, meal for $4.44 per serve.
Lunch
Because it was the weekend we added egg(s) to our flatbread quesadilla with the cider braised pork.
Lunch today was a good quesadilla for $3.48 per serve.
Dinner
Although we had a little of the cider-braised pork on our lunch quesadilla, we went full on with the vinegar-braised pork shoulder chops, although we substituted a little maple syrup for the sugar.
We served with baked Japanese sweet potato, and a Tahini, Pepita and Apricot Slaw.
The pork was perfectly tender and had a nice sharp flavor. We chose not to serve the liquid, but drizzled balsamic reduction on top. The salad was acceptable but definitely not the best of the salad kits we’ve enjoyed. Sadly, the Japanese sweet potato – perfect for mash – became mealy when baked and neither of us finished it. Overall, a good meal with a generous serve for $8.64 per serve.
Lunch
Today we returned to toasted sandwiches. A new favorite snack of Foodie Philip’s is a Liverwurst, Shallot and Mustard sandwich. The flavor combinations build on each other to transform the sandwich into something unlike any of the ingredients. We also toasted a roast beef and tabouli with mustard aioli, although we held the tabouli back until after the sandwich was toasted.
Each sandwich was particularly tasty and very different from each other. Not a bad lunch for $1.54 per serve.
Dinner
We’ve been enjoying exploring what we can create with smoked trout. Tonight we flaked up some whole smoked trout fillets (from Trader Joe’s) on top of the purple potatoes stacked on a bed of watercress.
The whole fillets are less salty than the canned smoked trout and we enjoyed them more.
The lemony dressing, potato, watercress and trout all blended together into a really great meal for $4.60 per serve.
Lunch
After a side trip to Jon’s Market we enjoyed a baguette, with roast chicken breast and kumato. It’s hard to beat a simple meal when every ingredient is perfect.
A great lunch for $2.13 per serve.
Dinner
After the last shrimp experiment we decided to do another. This time simple butter poached shrimp sous vidé with soy savory oatmeal and butter/soy bok choy. We used butter and soy to tie the different dishes together.
Every component was excellent. The shrimp perfectly cooked (of course), the savory oatmeal is way more tasty than mashed potato, and the butter/soy bok choy tied both components together while bringing its own fresh sweetness.
Dinner tonight was very tasty for $3.83 per serve.
Lunch
Today we simply repeated yesterday’s lunch: refried black beans, cheddar, cider braised pork shoulder and pickled onion quesadilla.
Lunch today was a good quesadilla for $2.63 per serve.
Dinner
We liked the idea of marinating and grilling the sirloin whole before adding the satay sauce, so we did it again, serving with black rice and Nigella Lawson’s Vietnamese Chicken Salad, without chicken and built on bok choy instead of cabbage.
The leaves of the bok choy are quite bitter, but the stems balance that by being quite sweet, so the salad worked particularly well, and the satay sauce was a different – and better – recipe, or we just didn’t follow it well last time!
Dinner tonight was $8.32, which is definitely high for satay but the beef was really tender with a good beef flavor. One of the better tasting steaks we’ve had. The peanut sauce is really tasty – none was left – but it should be noted, does not pair well with red wine! The change in the salad to bok choy was a good one and the black rice has a good nutty flavor with a little more chew than white or brown rice. It was a good pairing for this meal.
