Category: Daily recipe

Lunch

On the way to do some work on our newly purchased home, we stopped in at the Country Deli in Chatsworth for lunch. With coffee, 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. A hearty feed before heading off to dig a channel for a box drain!

Dinner

Fortunately Greg planned a much lighter dinner: Pan seared scallops with butter ponzu sauce; mango, avocado and arugula salad with meyer lemon vinaigrette. The sharpness of the meyer lemon against the avocado is a perfect balance.

The scallops need to be dried before pan searing in a hot pan. One minute 30 seconds per side. And serve.

Ponzu is a citrus-based sauce commonly used in Japanese cuisine. It is tart, with a thin, watery consistency and a dark brown color. Like soy or tamari (a gluten free soy) it pair beautifully with butter in a simple, but delicious sauce. Three tablespoons of butter and one tablespoon of butter. Mix over heat.

Chop the ripe Mango and avocado toss in meyer lemon juice. That also prevents the avocado growing.  Dress the arugula with a generous amount of olive oil (to taste). Toss together and serve.

• The Kroger Wild-caught Scallops cost $14.99 or $7.50 a serve
• Mango cost $1.49 or 75c a serve
• The Hass avocado was $2.99 or $1.50 a serve
• The pack of baby arugula cost $3 and we used less than 1/3 in total, or 50c each serve.
• It’s hard to quantify the small amount of butter and ponzu sauce but let’s say 25c serve.

That’s $10.50 a serve: easily 2-3 times that in a restaurant. Good scallops are beyond delicious and the slightly sharp salad is a perfect balance for the butter ponzu sauce.

Lunch

Once again Sushi from Ralph’s (Kroger) because that’s where we shopped for ingredients today. $6.50 a serve today.

Dinner

Tonight’s dinner is Pioneer Woman’s Baked Beans recipe with a few minor changes:

• Greg used dry mustard instead of dijon
• Instead of barbecue sauce, he used organic ketchup
• and the final change was molasses instead of brown sugar because it contributes more flavor and is less sweet than brown sugar. Brown sugar is refined sugar with molasses sprayed on it.
• Only two cans of beans went in. Again organic.

Pioneer Woman says 18 serves, but that would be as a side dish. Served with a muffin as an entree (main) and a couple of eggs on top I’m going to assume 4 serves to keep the math simple.

Bacon was purchased on special: 24 oz for $8. Our four rashers are roughly 3 oz or about $1 split over four serves: 25c.

The onion is less than 50c and the bell pepper $1, or 38c a serve. The two cans of organic beans (Simple Truth) were on special at 99c each, or 50c per serve combined.

The other ingredients might add up to another 25c per serve: molasses, ketchup, dry mustard and vinegar.

Total price per serve (assuming 4): $1.38. Served with an English Muffin, adds 50c a serve, and two eggs are 50c each, adding another $1 per serve. (We choose free range eggs, which are somewhat more expensive than conventional. It also explains the deep golden color.) Add it all together and we had a delicious meal for $2.88 a serve.

While this has the most wonderful smell when its cooking, the special treat is the bacon that’s been macerating in the beans during the slow cook. Savor it.

Lunch

As is our regular Friday lunch pattern, we bought lunch: today a Cuban sandwich from Wild Carvery here in Burbank. It’s a huge sandwich so we halve it and the included salad. Even half is a good sized portion and cost us $7 a serve. It’s also an interpretation of a Cuban.

Wild Carvery uses only organic, GMO free ingredients so we feel comfortable buying from there.

Since dinner is a repeat of the Scotch Broth that’s lunch in the featured image above.

Dinner

For dinner we had an encore performance of the Scotch Broth from two nights ago. $3.75 a serve. Actually less, as there is still one good size serve left after the four planned serves.

Because the collagen from the lamb shank has had time to set, the repeat was more unctuous than the original.

Lunch

Lunch today was both easy and cheap. A wholemeal wrap at 67c and half a chicken breast. That $7 chicken had two serves of leg, used last night. Half a breast per wrap, halves the $1.75 a serve to 88c. We added some of the leftover Vietnamese Salad from last night (already paid for in last night’s calculations) for a cost per lunch wrap of $1.55.

Dinner

Tonight Greg cooked Emeril Lagasse’s Stir Fried Beef and Broccoli. The organic broccoli was purchased on special for $1.79 or 80c a serve. The beef came from our farm-direct meat delivery as “fajita steak” – basically a fast cook steak perfect for stir fry. $10.21 is expensive for just under 12 oz (although that will provide a good size portion each) or $5.11 per serve. More conventional sources would be around $8 lb or $6 for our 12 oz or $3 a serve.

Greg 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 ginger was 28c or 14c per serve.

Greg slow cooked sprouted brown rice (instead of the pressure cooker, which is normally used for rice in our kitchen). The pack – 6 serves – was $5.49 or 92c serve.

Total for the meal with our protein -around $7 a serve. With more conventional beef, the serve would be $4.90.

 

Lunch

More leftovers. Today we had the leftover pot roast on a wholemeal wrap. The pot roast was $4 and the wrap 67c. If anything it was even better than last night.

Dinner

Nigella Lawson’s Vietnamese Chicken Salad, but kind of deconstructed. Instead of chopping the chicken and mixing into the salad, we’re serving a chicken leg (thigh and drumstick) with the salad beside. Having made this recipe both ways, we prefer the chicken separate. Besides, the weather is cold so having warm chicken makes it more winter friendly.

The chicken component comes from a supermarket roast chicken. In this case a $7 chicken, which will contribute to three meals. Tonight we’ll have one of the legs each, for a cost of $1.75 per serve.

The napa cabbage is going to be less than $1 or 50c a serve. Cirina provided ours out of her CSA box. The limes for the dressing were 33c but only about half the juice was used, leaving the rest for the accompanying Gin and Tonic.

All up this meal was under $2.50 a serve. The chicken breasts will each serve as a protein component in a lunch wrap over the next two days.

Lunch: Sushi

One of the things I love about living in Southern California is the abundance of decent sushi. Sushi is not something that Australia didn’t do particularly well when I lived there, nor even on recent trips. It’s a regular thing for us when grocery shopping and lunch co-incide. If the weather is good we like to continue on to a park and eat there, just to be outside the office/apartment for a while.

Lunch was a mix of spicy tuna and cucumber avocado rolls and totaled $17 or $8.50 a serve. Compare that with dinner at $3.80 a serve!

Dinner: Classic American Meatloaf with cauliflower and parsnip mash

During the time my mother and niece were visiting from Australia, Greg wanted to expose my niece to American classics, and some modern interpretations. Tonight he cooked it again for Cirina Catania.

Greg chose Barefoot Contessa’s classic recipe but used 1 lb (250 g) each beef and pork. This is a great recipe and with the mix of meats has more flavor than you’d expect from something this simple. We also cook a mushroom and red wine meatloaf, and a turkey, bacon and chipotle meatloaf with a recipe we created. All are great.

Because we get a direct-from-farmer meat delivery, the ground pork and beef were about $8 each. Grass fed, organic ground beef or pork usually runs about $6 lb. The other ingredients are inexpensive. It makes five generous serves so we still come out at around $3.40 a serve or with regular organic ground meats around $2.60.

For the mash, take a head of cauliflower and break it into florets. Cut up two large parsnips into cubes about 1″ on each side. Greg uses the pressure cooker to cook the vegetables (only three minutes!), but you could steam, or even boil them. (Boiling tends to lose flavor into the water.)

Let the vegetables steam until the steaming stops, otherwise the mash ends up too sloppy.

Mash the cauliflower and parsnip or use a Cuisinart like we do, with some butter, lemon, garlic and sea salt to taste.  (But a quick search will find many interesting variations on the basic recipe.)

Greg found this alternate mash a year ago when my mom was on an elimination diet and nightshades (including potato) were temporarily off the table. We rarely go back to potato mash now. Cirina brought some yellow beets with her that had been previously roasted.

Cauliflower and parsnip are cheap and this works out under 40c per serve, for a total meal cost of $2.80 or $3.80 per serve depending on where you get your ground meat.

 

Lunch

Today we went for a walk in the local Burbank area and picked up a baguette from Jons supermarket, along with some liverwurst, irish cheddar and a tomato. Fortunately the baguette is one of best we’ve found in the US. You probably really have to go to France to get a great one.

The trip to Munich last September rekindled our love of liverwurst and it’s also available at Jons. So lunch was little rounds of baguette, with either liverwurst spread, or a cheddar/tomato combination. Eat until full.

Dinner: Pork hock and lentil soup

Having lentil soup for the New Year is traditional among many South American countries like Brazil and Ecuador. Beans are symbolic of money, and the pork, of progress, so pork and lentil dishes are common. In fact some combination of pork and beans is common in even more countries.

Greg found tonight’s recipe in a book he found at his mother’s home in Australia during his last trip there. He took a photo of the recipe so I can’t appropriately credit it.

It serves four and keeps well in the refrigerator for several days. In the image above you can just see the pork shoulder poking through.

Ingredients cost us about $10 excluding the parmesan for the pesto, which we didn’t make. That’s about $2.50 a serve. Don’t wait for the next New Year to try it. It was very, very good.

Ingredients

• 2 medium carrots, finely diced (20c)
• 1 leek, washed and finely cut  (50c)
• 1 celeriac, peeled and finely diced, or 1 cup of chopped celery. We opted for celery for the faster cooking time. ($1 for a bunch so 3 sticks is about 25c)
• 4 or 5 cloves of garlic, crushed. You should smell this cooking! (20c)
• 2.5 tablespoons of oil. The recipe suggest Olive oil, but we prefer to use Coconut oil because it’s more stable at higher temperatures. (20c)
• 200g (8 oz) red lentils, well washed and drained (Half a 1 lb pack for $2.50 or $1.25)
• 1/2 tsp of (freshly) grated nutmeg. There really is no substitute for fresh with nutmeg  (5c)
• 1/2 tsp of fennel seeds.  (5c)
• 6 Tbsp of chopped parsley (15c)
• 3 Tbsp of chopped mint (10c or less if you grow it yourself)
• 1 bacon hock, fat trimmed or removed. We substituted pork neck. ($4.51 or $2.99 lb)
• 1 liter (2 pints) chicken, veal or vegetable stock. In other words, a flavorsome liquid. ($2.50)
• 60 g (a generous 2 oz) grated parmesan cheese
• Pepper to taste

Method

• In a stock pot or large saucepan gently cook the carrots, leak, celeriac (or celery) and garlic in 1 Tbsp oil for 3-4 minutes.
• Add drained lentils and store, while continuing to cook for about 30 seconds. Grate and stir in nutmeg and fennel.
• Stir in about 2 Tbsp of the parsley and 1 Tbsp of the mint. Keep the rest for the pesto sauce.
• Add the bacon hock (or pork neck) and stock. Put on the lid and simmer soup slowly for 1.5 hours.
• Make up a pesto sauce by pounding in a mortar (or blender which is a heck of a lot easier, but more washing up) the remaining parsley and mint, with the parmesan cheese and 1/5 Tbsp oil, until a smooth past is achieved. Season with pepper.
• When the hock or neck is cooked, remove and cut meat into bite-sized pieces.

To serve

Put bacon pieces into individual soup bowls, and then pour the soup over the meat and top with a spoonful of the pesto sauce. Although truth be told we skipped the pesto sauce.

Accompany with crusty bread.