Author: Philip

Lunch

Surprisingly, some of the gyro slices we purchased last week are still in the refrigerators, so there’s lunch.

• 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!

Before smoking 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.

It would be traditional to take the smoked pork chops and give them a quick, hot fry off to make them look more appealing, and to create a little maillard reaction, but with the thin cut chops, we feel it would over-cook the meat and make it tough, so we left them as they came out of the smoker.

Tonight’s apple was a type we hadn’t tried before: Envy. It retained it’s texture and was crips and wet with a good balance of sweet and tart. Foodie Greg prefers the dressing without mayonnaise, so cultured sour cream was used.

• 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.

Lunch

Back to the regular Burbank Monday schedule, and an In and Out Burger Double Double Animal Style.

Lunch today was $4.03 with tax.

Dinner

Once again we had Emeril Lagasse’s Stir Fried Beef and Broccoli using our Prather Ranch ‘fajita’ beef. We have yet to use the ‘fajita’ beef for fajitas!  This is a very simple dish, but very tasty. We upped the garlic and ginger in the sauce and replaced the honey with sweet chili sauce. We don’t mind a bit of spicy heat!

• The broccoli florets where $2.99 or $1.50 a serve.
• The beef came from our farm-direct meat delivery as ‘fajita steak’  for a fast cook at $10.21 or $5.10 a seve.
•  The ginger and garlic was 28c or 14c per serve
• Pressure cooked red rice 92c per serve.

Dinner tonight cost $7.66 per serve.

Lunch

Since we had some great bacon from our meat delivery, why not a classic Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato roll? Top quality ingredients elevate the simplest food, and this was no exception.

• The bread came from the 3/4 remaining of the $3.99 par-baked roast garlic loaf or $1.50 a serve.
• Bacon is $1.00 a slice or $2.00 per serve
• The Cos Lettuce came from the gifted lettuce
• The tomatoes were $2.79 and about 1/3 went on the BLT, or 47c per serve.

Lunch today cost $3.97 per serve.

Dinner

When the Foodies first met, a regular meal together was a “half Karls, half Canadian” pizza from Old Castille – then on Bondi Road. We’re now a little too far outside their delivery zone, so we decided to create our own Canadian – a fish pizza.

We smoked the cod, because we can and to add some additional flavor, and swapped out cream cheese instead of sour cream because the cream cheese would not melt and run as easily.

We could have made the dough from scratch, but for $1.19 why bother?

For an appetizer we had some padron peppers we’d been given, fried off in the remaining bacon fat from lunch. Yum.

• Pizza dough is $1.19 from Trader Joe’s or 60c per serve
• 8 oz of cream cheese is $1.69, and we used about 1/2 or 42c per serve
• The frozen cod fillet is $1.71 or 86c per serve
• Another 1/3 of the tomatoes or 47c per serve
• Allow 25c for a generous serve of capers each
• The 4oz pack of smoked salmon $5.99 or $3 a serve.

Tonight’s Pizza cost us $5.60 per serve, mostly because of the smoked salmon! Compare with the original at $22 for a large, or $11 per serve!

Lunch

After wasting time waiting for a table at Brent’s Deli and finding ultimately that the promised wait time was, at best, optimistic we decided on supermarket sushi, since that was out next destination anyway.

• Lunch today cost $11.24 per serve

Dinner

What to do with a beautiful, organic cos lettuce, when you just had a meat delivery that included organic bacon? Salade Lyonnaise is a simple salad that originated in Lyon, France. It’s really tasty.

As an alternative for croutons we took par baked bread, cubed it and baked it off. Not as crispy hard as most croutons, but better suited for mopping ups the deliciousness that is the combination of the bacon fat dressing and the egg yolk. When frying off the bacon, retain the fat to use in the dressing instead of olive oil.

We choose pastured eggs over organic, since a chicken is supposed to have a varied, and bug-filled, diet, which isn’t possible if you’re guaranteeing organic!

• An organic lettuce is about $1.99, but we used half, or 50c per serve
• A pastured egg is 50c each, with the average of our two serves being 75c
• The par-baked bread is $2.50 for the loaf, and we turned 1/4 into croutons, or 32c per serve
• The bacon comes from our Prather Ranch meat delivery, so it a little more expensive, but it’s full of flavor and we can be comfortable that the animals were raised humanely. At $1 a rasher, it was $2.00 per serve.

Dinner tonight cost $3.87 and was perfect.

Lunch

Slice some leftover steak, add tomatoes, horseradish cream (homemade, of course) and sandwich in a toasted onion bagel, and that’s lunch.

• The Cross Rib Roast was $3.56 a serve, which halved for the bagel or $1.78
• The baby cherry tomatoes were $3.99. We used 1/3 or 67c per serve
• An onion bagel is 33c per served
• Add 10c for the sour cream and horseradish.

Lunch today cost $2.88 per serve.

Dinner

Since we had some ground pork left in the Prather Ranch delivery from last month (and a new delivery today) we decided to do a repeat of the Stir Fried Shanghai Noodles with Ground Pork and Cabbage, which makes four generous serves.

The mung bean sprouts add a nice crunch and a refreshing wetness.

• The pork came from our Prather Ranch meat delivery – 1 lb of ground pork cost $8.47 or $2.12 per serve
• The pre-cooked organic noodles retail for $3.19 or 80c per serve
• The various seasonings add around 30c per serve
• We used one third of the $1.29 spring onion on two serves or 22c per serve
• The mung bean sprouts are $1.49 and we used half or 75c per serve.
• Instead of cabbage we used the remainder of the coleslaw mix from the supermarket which was $1.25 but we used less than half, or 16c per serve.

Dinner tonight cost $4.35 per serve for a filling and very tasty dish.

Lunch

The gyro meat is back in stock at Trader Joe’s, so add some hummus and tabouli in a wrap, and that’s lunch!

• 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

One of the interesting side effects of a monthly meat delivery is the inclusion of cuts we would otherwise not be aware of, or consider. This month we got a Beef Cross Rib Roast. At first it seems like a slow-cook cut, but research suggested roasting, which we did to medium rare.

There seem to be 6-7 serves in the roast, but we’ll call it six for easy math.

The creamy blue cheese sauce with asparagus and peas was a repeat and still pretty damned good!

• The Cross Rib Roast was $21.37  or $3.56 a serve
• The gnocchi was $1.69 or 57c per serve
• The half pint of cream is $1.99 or 67c per serve
• The asparagus was $2.99 but we only used half, or 50c per serve
• The crumbled blue was $3.49 for the container. We used half or 58c per serve.

Dinner tonight was definitely restaurant worthy and cost $5.88 per serve.

Lunch

Time to eat the remainder of Sunday’s Popeye’s Fried Chicken, but with home-made red beans, and rice.

• Eight pieces of chicken were $9.99, but that makes four serves in all, making each serve $2.50
• Red beans and rice $2.09 a serve.

Lunch today cost $4.59 as a mix of home-made and store bought.

Dinner

In a lunch-for-dinner mode, we had our version of a quesadilla. Adding eggs makes it dinner!

We prefer fried eggs sunny-side up, but it’s difficult to keep the yolk soft and runny, while cooking the white so when out we tend to order ‘over easy’. The real trick to getting a great result is to use a saucepan lid over the eggs during the second half of their cooking. This is a gentle steam of the top, setting the white.

• One flatbread (half of two) costs 50c a serve
• Half a can of refried beans, shared across two halves: 26c
• A very generous serve of salsa is 20c per serve
• 2 oz of cheddar split between two is 50c per serve
• Each egg is 50c or $1.00 per serve.

Dinner tonight cost $2.46.

 

Lunch

Since we were both in Burbank, with a modified Monday schedule, we opted for Jack’s ‘shack’ bacon cheeseburger. This is a really good burger, more toward the Australian style. An Australian burger would be expected to have lettuce, tomato, grilled onion, tomato sauce (not ketchup, they’re different) and pickled beetroot. A works burger would also have bacon, cheese and a sunnyside egg.

But this burger is great too! Lunch today cost $6.00 per serve with tax.

Dinner

I suppose there are more ‘American’ recipes for Independence Day, but smoked pork sausages with the remainder of the Apple Slaw, seemed good to us. The stove-top smoker is getting a workout this week!

• The pork sausages are $6.23 for four, or $3.12 per serve
• One Granny Smith apple went into the slaw, or 20c per serve
• Coleslaw mix from the supermarket is $1.25 but we used less than half, or 16c per serve
• Add 6c for the dressing per serve
• We used about 1/15 of the $2.99 bbq sauce bottle, or 10c per serve.

Dinner tonight cost $3.64 per serve.

Lunch

We were out and about during the late morning and lunch, so we stopped in at Popeye’s on the way home for some dark and spicy fried chicken, with red beans and rice on the side.

• Eight pieces of chicken were $9.99, but that makes four serves in all, making each serve $2.50
• The large Red beans and rice was $3.99 and we shared that for $2 a serve.

Lunch was $4.50 a serve.

Dinner

We still had Pork Spare Ribs from our Prather Ranch meat delivery, so what better to do on a Sunday night than to smoke them and serve with a green apple slaw? The green apple slaw is a basic coleslaw with green apple added, for extra crunch and a counterpoint to the sweetness of the BBQ sauce. Instead of making a sauce we chose Trader Joe’s Organic Sriracha & Roasted Garlic BBQ Sauce. This stuff is really good!

We pre-cooked the ribs in the pressure cooker then smoked them in the stovetop smoker to finish them.

The apple slaw dressing was made with a little egg free mayonnaise, sour cream and apple cider vinegar. We thought we were making slaw for tonight, but there are really four serves from one half pack.

• 1.7lb of Pork Spare Ribs cost $10.64, but the actual meat serve is more like 6oz per serve, or $5.32 per serve
• Trader Joes’s BBQ Rub and seasoning (coffee and garlic): about 25c per serve
• One Granny Smith apple went into the slaw, or 20c per serve
• Coleslaw mix from the supermarket is $1.25 but we used less than half, or 16c per serve
• Add 6c for the dressing per serve
• We used about 1/8 of the $2.99 bottle, or 19c per serve.

Dinner tonight cost $6.18 per serve.