Author: Philip

Lunch

Wild caught smoked salmon on an English muffin with cream cheese. Because it’s a 4 oz pack, it’s a generous serve of smoked salmon each.

• Smoked salmon – normally $6.99 but Greg bought it for $5.99 on special or $3.00 a serve
• The English muffin is 50c a serve
• Cream cheese is about 60c a serve.

Lunch today was $4.10 a serve.

Dinner

Something else was planned, but we ended up spending more time than expected finding a flooring contractor, and went for leftovers instead. Two serves of the red beans and rice, with a fried egg on top.

• Onion, oil and garlic and seasonings about 15c per serve
• Each can of organic beans was 99c and we used three, or 50c per serve
• We used then other pack of andouille sausage from Greg’s double purchase: $4.40 or 73c a serve
• Chicken broth $2.29 or 38c a serve
• The rice: 33c a serve
• One organic egg, 50c a serve.

Tonight’s quick dinner – the slowest part was cooking the rice – cost us $2.59 each serve. I’d have  liked an extra egg, but we only had two to share between us!

Lunch

Greg purchased two wraps yesterday, but half a wrap proved to be enough, so we finished the other half today. $2.00 a serve.

Dinner

From the steakhouse to the South! Barbecued spareribs with red beans and rice. One advantage of the monthly meat pack is that there is a lot of protein in the freezer! Choose one and build a meal around it, and tonight spareribs seemed like a good idea. Although 1.5 lbs seems like a large serve, remember these are more bone than meat.

The red beans and rice can take up to four hours to cook, but for us it was done in about two and half, and the kitchen smells wonderful while it’s cooking. It’s a slow cooker recipe, but Greg experimented – again – with using the induction cooktop and a large cast iron pot. Since the induction cooker can be set to pretty much the same temperature as a slow cooker, it seemed like it should work. And it did. This recipe makes six serves.

We found the Creole seasoning to be mostly salt, but fortunately the beans were unsalted so it balanced out. The heat from the andouille sausage builds during the cooking.

Pressure cooking the meat with it’s sauce took 20 minutes.

The spare ribs were perfectly cooked and had great flavor. The red beans and rice was amazingly good – way better than any we’ve tasted elsewhere. (Other red beans and rice recipes we’ve tried in the past were good, but not this amazingly good.)

• The quarter slab of spareribs cost $10.12 or $5.06 per serve
• The ingredients for the sauce, let’s say 75c per serve, although it’s probably not that much
• Onion, oil and garlic and seasonings about 15c per serve
• Each can of organic beans was 99c and we used three, or 50c per serve
• We used the other pack of andouille sausage from Greg’s double purchase: $4.40 or 73c a serve
• Chicken broth $2.29 or 38c a serve
• And the rice: 33c a serve

Tonight’s meal cost us $8.00. There are four serves of the red beans and rice for a couple of other meals.

Lunch

Working on our house – constructing a pathway – totally distracted from food today and it was late before we grabbed some wraps from Ralphs nearby.  Each wrap was $3.99 and it turns out half is enough. $2.00 a serve.

Dinner

Clearly another ‘steakhouse’ night with steak, potatoes and creamed spinach/arugula. The sirloin tip came from our monthly meat package. In Australia that cut is known as ‘rump’ (which is different from rump here in the USA) and was my father’s favorite steak.

Grilled in the outdoor kitchen here at Avalon Burbank. We should make the most of it before we move out. You may notice that we like our beef generally on the rare/blué side.

Sirloin tip is not a tender as filet, but it has great flavor, particularly this steak from our supplier.

We did the crash hot potatoes on January 7, and they’re a regular side for us because they mix a creamy interior with a crisp exterior. Creamed spinach – or a spinach/arugula combination – is incredibly easy and very, very tasty.

• Tonight’s steak was nearly 11 oz for $6.11 or $3.06 per serve. That serving size is just slightly below a standard restaurant protein serve of 6 oz. We prefer to go ‘meat light’.
• All the $2.99 spinach and arugula mix was used, and half the $4.69 whipping cream. (We tend to go premium for dairy so we can be happier about the lives the cows live.) $2.67 a serve.
• We’ll allow 55c for the potatoes and seasoning.

Tonight’s steakhouse meal cost $6.28. Now go to a steakhouse and have a 6 oz steak, and two sides and see what it costs.

Lunch

Busy day, all over the place today, so we stopped in again at the Country Deli in Chatsworth (near our ‘new’ home) before heading up to that home to clean the yard and supervise a plumber.

With an Arnold Palmer, tax and tip my $14.50 marinated skirt steak was just over $20. But it was very good. 10 oz of really good skirt steak cooked perfectly, three good eggs and crisp home fries. And a bagel.

Dinner

Because we weren’t sure what time we’d be back from the house, we planned on an easy ‘reheat’ dinner: the double potato halloumi bake from Jan 17, and the thighs and drumsticks from this week’s roast chicken.

• The chicken was $1.73 a serve
• Halloumi $3.99 or $1 a serve
• A whole head of garlic was used: 12c or 3c a serve (I feel the labor involved in peeling was worth more!)
• The whole red onion was roasted: 86c or 22c a serve
• Orange bell pepper four ways is 50c a serve
• Yam/Sweet potato was $1.03 or 26c a serve.

Tonight’s reheat dinner cost $3.74 and very little time.

Lunch

Because we needed to shop, it was easy to pick up some fresh sushi from Ralph’s at the same time. $6.39 a serve today.

Dinner

The Lemon Chicken Orzo soup is a great mid-week dish as it take little time to prepare because it uses pre-cooked chicken. The meyer lemon is again perfect for this dish because it lacks the extreme sourness of most lemon. The recipe made three very generous serves, even with less chicken than the recipe called for.

Not only is it easy to cook, but it is amazingly delicious for the tiny amount of work it takes.

We served with a par-baked Roast Garlic Bread.

Orzo is a small pasta shaped like rice, but a little bigger.

• Carrots cost 25c or 8c per serve
• Celery, thyme, oil and garlic adds 20c per serve
• Chicken broth cost 40c per serve
• The store-bought rotisserie chicken breast is $1.74 for a breast, divided into three serves makes 58c per serve.
• The orzo is $1.42 for a 1 lb box, but only half was used for our three serves, or 24c per serve
• Add in 15 c for the other seasonings, etc.
• Served with Simple Truth Ready to bake garlic bread – $3.99 for the loaf (expensive for bread but delicious) or $1.33 per serve

Dinner tonight cost $1.65 per serve!

Lunch

Back to our routine weekday lunch: chicken wraps. This week an Edamame & Bean salad.

• Roast chicken:$6.99 split four ways and into two serves today: 87c
• One quarter of the $2.74 salad is 69c
• The flatbread is 50c
• Add some hummus at 30c

Lunch today: $2.36 per serve

Dinner

A long term favorite of ours, back when we had a certain pattern to our weekly meals, us Southern sausage, beens and rice. Tuesday was generally a bean dish of some kind. 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!

• The Andouille Sausage is the most expensive component at $1.10 per serve. Greg purchased carefully and got a double pack (8 sausages) for the price of a single pack elsewhere. Tonight’s dish only used half the purchase.
• Bell pepper: 20c per serve
• Onion: 20c per serve
• Fire roasted diced tomato (canned): 37c per serve
• We used kidney beans instead of pinto because they taste better: 40c a serve
• For the herbs, 15c a serve
• And the rice: 66c a serve

Dinner tonight cost $3.08 a serve. It’s a very tasty, warming stew with a little heat from the andouille.

Lunch

A rather simple lunch using the leftover baguette from yesterday, toasted. Add some cream cheese, tomato and salami for a tasty lunch.

• 1/4 of the $2.69 baguette went to each serve or 68c
• One tomato was divided in half for 29c a serve
• 1/6 of the pack of salami went into a serve: 92c
• The tub of cream cheese is $3.99, or about 67c a serve

Lunch today was okay, and cost $2.56 a serve.

Dinner

The first time eating out this month: Gordon Birsch for our regular get together with a friend over beers. Tonight we were in the mood for a burger – the first burger of the year:

Gastro Pub

Bacon jam, housemade bleu cheese sauce, mixed greens, tomato, gorgonzola cheese and caramelized onions atop our fresh steakburger

It was a little messy, but really very good. $12.25 on the menu, but with tip and tax closer to $16. We’re still enjoying the festbier – one of our favorite seasonal beers there.

Our all time favorite burger has no steak, substituting a portobello mushroom for the protein. We should make it for you some time.