Did we slip into a time warp? Today was a repeat of July 12!
Lunch
Gyro slices are still available at Trader Joe’s and are more tasty than roast chicken for about the same cost per serve.
- The fully cooked sliced gyro/yeros meat is $3.99 per 10oz pack. There are really four serves, so each serve is very slightly cheaper than the chicken, at $1.00 per serve.
- The flatbread is 50c
- Hummus is $3.99 per container and we used about 1/6 or 33c per serve
- We served 1/4 of the tabouli salad or 67c per serve.
Lunch today cost $2.50 per serve.
Dinner
Since the last time was such a success, when we saw pair of thin cut pork chops in our Prather Ranch meat delivery we had to smoke them again even though we did this a week ago!
Once again we brined the chops. We generally brine pork to ensure it stays moist during cooking. It also brings a little saltiness to the meat, which, when combined with the smoke, makes the pork chops reminiscent of, almost, ham flavor.
We’ve avoided the fry off in the past out of concern that it would overcook the pork, but tonight the chops came out of the smoke a little under-done, so we used a quick fry to finish the cooking and add some maillard reaction flavors to the outside – not that we noticed them against the smokiness!
Again we used an Envy apple after the success. It retained it’s texture and was crips and wet with a good balance of sweet and tart. Foodie Greg prefers the dressing as a mix of mayonnaise and cultured sour cream. The tartness of the sour cream offsets a little of the fatty mouth feel of the mayonnaise and is a better complement for the salad. And we didn’t grow up in the South of the USA!
- The thin cut Pork Loin Chops were $9.95 or $4.98 per serve
- The Envy apple was $1.29 or 65c per serve
- Celery bunch $1.49 for 12 stalks and we used 1/4 or 18c per serve
- Instead of walnuts, we used pecans where the pack was $4.49 but we used about 1/4, or 57c per serve.
- Cultured sour cream is $3.29 for the container, or 33c per serve.
Dinner tonight cost $6.71 per serve and is an excellent example of how a simple meal with only five ingredients can be elevated when every one of the ingredients is of the highest quality. It’s hard to imagine how this could be better from a restaurant.