Jan 6: Popeye’s Chicken with BBQ Ranch Salad; Deconstructed Pizza Casserole

Lunch

We reheated the remaining Popeye’s Fried Chicken and served with a Dole BBQ Ranch Salad. The chicken reheated well and the salad has a little sharp edge to it that we enjoyed.

• Chicken is $2.98 for two pieces
• The salad kit was $1.79 and we use 2/3 or 60c per serve.

Lunch today was filling, tasty and cost $3.58 per serve.

Dinner

While we’re not fanatics we’ve been advised to shy away from too much carb at an evening meal, so why not a deconstructed pizza: all the flavor with none of the bready crust.

We used ground beef and flavored it with Trader Joe’s 21 Spice mix, plus a little more mushroom than the recipe called for, and used fresh tomatoes. All up we made four serves.

• The dry aged ground beef cost $9.17 or $2.30 per serve
• Five kumato were $3.49 and we used four, or 70c per serve
• Mushrooms were $4.38 or $1.10 per serve
• The mozzarella was $5.99 or $1.25 per serve
• The sliced pepperoni was $2.99 and we used about half, or 38c per serve
• Add 45c for oregano, oil, spices.

The best part of a pizza is the topping and this is all topping! It carries the flavor of a meaty pizza, although the fresh tomatoes dropped a little too much liquid and lacked the flavor punch expected from a pizza. We’ll definitely repeat with some tweaking for $6.18 per serve.