Category: Daily recipe

Lunch

Feeling lazy today we heated a Trader Joe’s Tarte à l’mignon, or Alsatian Style Onion Tart. Following the reheat instructions in a convection oven rendered the result slightly undercooked. This is probably one of those times when a conventional oven heating from the bottom, will do the better job cooking.

• The tart was $3.99 or $2 a serve.

Dinner

Tonight’s dish is one we used to cook regularly, and then the supply of chile powder ran out! Red Chile Chicken and Rice with Black Beans packs a great fiber load. We skipped the green onions or cilantro, substituting avocado. The recipe makes four serves.

It’s a good basic dish, but the addition of Rick Bayless’ All Natural fonder Gourmet Mexican Salso – Chipotle roasted tomatillo and garlic, adds a great kick, and the avocado adds a flavor and texture contrast.

This time, the chicken tenders remained very tender because Greg barely fried them off, then let them steam over the dish for 10 minutes. They were just cooked, retaining all the tenderness the cut is known for.

• Organic chicken tenders $9.35 or $2.34 a serve
• Large onion, oil and garlic, around 15c per serve
• The can of black beans was 99c or 25c a serve
• Chicken broth is $1.99 or 50c per serve
• One cup of rice is about 1/3 of the $2.99 pack of short brown rice or 50c per serve
• Four avocados were $2.76 and we shared one at 35c per serve
• The salsa is $3.99 for a jar and we used about 1/4 or 50c per serve

Dinner tonight cost us $4.69 a serve.

Lunch

Another Burbank Monday, so another In and Out Double Double for foodie Philip. $4.02 with tax.

Dinner

Time to use up the last of our January meet order from Prather Ranch. We skipped February’s delivery because of the move, and we’re well stocked again with the March delivery.

We last had the Beef Cross Rib Steak as a Filipino Style marinated steak but, given that Los Angeles is having what it pretends is “Winter”, the weather dictated something warming: Pioneer Woman’s Pot Roast.

This is not a great cut of meat so marinating or slow braising in a pot roast is a great way to get the best from the protein. We had two individual steaks about 9.5 oz each.

• The steaks were $6.20 per serve
• Onions are 20c per serve
• The carrots were 69c or 35c per serve
• One cup of red wine is around $1.33 or 67c a serve
• Two cups of broth is half a $1.99 carton or 50c per serve
• The mushrooms were $1.99 or $1 a serve
• The Rosemary came from our own plant
• Add another 15c for oil, seasoning and Thyme.

Tonight’s dinner cost $9.07 for the pot roast, which we served with the other half of Sunday’s baguette, for a total of $9.74 per serve.

Lunch

Today we were at the FCPeXchange event where lunch was supplied. Subway-style sandwich platters, but for us, lunch was free.

Dinner

The plan was to reheat the left-over Eggplant, sausage and ziti casserole from yesterday, but a group from the seminar went to Gordon Biersch so we had the Gastro Pub burger, again.

With tax and tip, that runs out at $16.02 per serve.

Lunch

For lunch we had an English muffin with avocado and wild caught smoked salmon.

• The muffin is 50c
• The smoke salmon was $5.99 from Whole Foods or $3.00 a serve
• The avocado was 99c or 50c per serve.

Lunch today cost $4.004 a serve.

Dinner

Eggplant, sausage and ziti casserole: from a hybrid of recipes. The basic inspiration is from an Emeril recipe from Food Network. When we’ve cooked this in the past we found the recipe to hav41$e too much oil, so we grill the eggplant.

Instead of Emeril’s meat sauce we used a metacook recipe. The béchamel sauce stayed untouched, although made with half-n-half.

• The meat came from our meat box and was somewhat expensive at $8.83 lb for the beef, or $2.21 per serve.
• Onion works out at 15c per serve
• Carrot is 17c per serve
• Celery is 11c per serve
• Bacon cost $4.99 for the container, but this recipe used about 1/4 of that, or 31c per serve
• A glass of wine is 20c per serve
• A half pint of heavy cream (for the meat sauce) is $1.99 and it was all used in the meat sauce or 50c per serve
• A pint of half & half is $1.49 and half is used in the béchamel, or 19c per serve
• The eggplant cost $1.92 or 48c per serve.

Dinner tonight cost us $4.32 per serve. We have left-overs for Saturday night, as we expect to be home later than usual.

Lunch

For lunch we had the remains of the Slut’s Spaghetti from Monday night.

As it did then, lunch today cost $1.76 a serve.

Dinner

A quick dinner because we were heading out to the Home Owners Association annual meeting. We used the leg and thigh from our Whole Foods organic chicken, left over lentils from Saturday night, and some baked sweet potato.

• 1/4 of the chicken is $3.50
• The lentils work out to 75c per serve
• The sweet potato was 99c and we shared half at this meal or 25c per serve.

Dinner tonight cost us $4.25

Lunch

Back to our roast chicken pattern, except we experimented with our local Whole Foods: our $6.99 chicken is now a $13.99 chicken! It’s organic, but I’m not convinced organic is right for chicken because chickens can’t be free range (which they should be) and have their diet controlled to be organic.

• 1/4 of the roast chicken – breast, divided between us is $1.75 per serve
• Five Lavash sell for $3.99 or 80c per serve
• We added left over lentils at about 70c per serve
• Spinach from the garden rounded out the meal.

Lunch today was $3.25: much higher because of the chicken and lavash.

Dinner

For dinner tonight we had the Sausage, Potato and Kale soup we cooked on Sunday.

As it did on Sunday, dinner tonight cost $3.70 per serve.

Greg used the induction cooktop to cook originally on Sunday, but also to reheat because the induction cooktop can be set to a temperature, and won’t exceed it. When set to 195ºF it won’t ever get higher, so the soup won’t boil when being reheated.

Lunch

Lunchtime found us in Santa Monica ahead of Philip giving a Lumberjack Presentation, so we ate Le Pain Quotidian where we both had:

PARIS HAM & AGED GRUYÈRE served with mustard trio

• 12 oz of fully cooked pork belly is $6.49 or $3.25 per serve
• 17.6 oz of steamed lentils is $2.99 but we only used half, or 75c per serve
• The onion and celery add another 14c per serve.

Tonight’s quick, but very tasty meal, cost $4.14 per serve.