Category: Daily recipe

Lunch

Once again, The Country Deli was calling, and once again Foodie Philip had the 10 oz marinated skirt steak-rare. Served with three eggs, home fries and a bread/bagel, it’s a huge meal.

Foodie Greg’s pastrami sandwich was likewise excellent, although he was thankful he ordered a half!

Lunch at the Country Deli runs out around $20 a serve with tax and tip.

Dinner

A late change of plans away from left-over Cauliflower Fried Rice – which will come later – found us smoking some of the Prather Ranch Pork Sausages, with a mango, cucumber and feta salad of Greg’s invention.

Unfortunately the Whole Foods mango was completely devoid of flavor, which dragged down the whole meal. The sausages had a slight smoky flavor and were great.

• The sausages $12.86 for two packs, or $3.22 per serve for the best pork sausages we’ve ever had, even better with a little smoke.
• The tasteless Whole Foods mango was $1.99 or $1.00 a serve
• 1 lb of Persian cucumbers was $1.99, of which half went into this meal, or 50c per serve
• The green olives add another 40c per serve
• Feta comes in a $6.99 tub and we used about half, or $1.75 per serve
• Add 10c for seasonings and oil.

Dinner tonight cost $6.97 per serve, and would have been awesome if the mango had flavor!

Lunch

We experimented with a salad nicoise inspired tuna wrap: dry tuna salad with capers; greens and tomato.

• The flatbread is 50c
• The yellowtail tuna is $2.29 per can, or $1.15 per serve
• We split 1/6 of the $3.99 pack of kumato tomatoes, or 33c per serve
• A similar amount of greens, adds another 33c per serve.

Lunch today cost $2.31 per serve

Dinner

Even though we have lots of meat in the freezer from our current and past Prather Ranch deliveries, tonight we went mostly meat free – just a little bacon for flavor. Cauliflower is a very good substitute for rice. In the past we’ve baked the shredded cauliflower to dry it, but this time we decided to fry it off in the bacon fat (after frying the bacon to perfection). This worked really well and saves heating the house with the oven on a hot afternoon.

A little curry spice replaced ginger – mostly because we are out of ginger – and was definitely an enhancement.

• The organic cauliflower was $3.78 or 95c per serve
• Organic bacon is $8.99 for the pack, but four slices went into the recipe, or 57c per serve.
• Organic eggs are 50c each, and it averages 1.5 eggs per serve, or 75c
• Frozen peas are $2.79 per pack and we used about 1/4 or 35c per serve
• Spices and oil add another 20c per serve
• The shrimp adds $1.50 per serve.

The cauliflower fried rice with shrimp cost $4.32 per serve.

Lunch

Since we had half the gyro meat, we repeated our version of a gyro/yeros. Because we were going to use the cast iron griddle on the induction cooktop to cook a steak later, we used it to reheat the meat.

• 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

When you have dry aged Top Sirloin Steak in the freezer on a hot day, steak salad comes to mind. This is our own recipe, loosely based on a steak salad we had in Nottingham (UK) a couple of years back. It was good, but we had the waitress drooling over the description of how we’d improve it. This is the result.

Seared top sirloin (rump), steak salad (greens, sauteed mushrooms, tomato, blue cheese and almonds), with a Worcestershire Vinaigrette (Olive oil and Worcestershire sauce as the vinegar component).

• 0.8lb of Top Sirloin is $11.43 or $5.72 per serve. Because it is dry aged, we – once again – cooked to blue.
• We used the entire $3.99 pack of mushrooms, or $2.00 per serve
• Half the $3.99 pack of baby lettuce went into the salad, or $1.00 per serve
• Half the $3.99 pack of kumato tomatoes went into the salad, or $1.00 per serve
• Add 45c for the crumbled blue cheese per serve
• The almonds are $6.99 a pack but we used 1/10th or 23c per serve
• Add 20c for oil and Worcestershire sauce.

Dinner tonight cost $10.60 – or about half what we paid in the UK for much lower quality meat.

Lunch

We tried something different today. Trader Joe’s have sliced Yeros/Gyro meat available. Combine with some hummus and tabouli for a wrap with the flavors of a yeros.

There’s a little common deception in the packaging. Although on the front of the packaging it says there are enough for two yeros – implying two serves per 10oz pack – but the nutritional information has four serves in the pack. Futzing with the serving size is a very common packaging deception.

• 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

For dinner we had a repeat of the bacon and black bean chili from a few days ago. While I allocated four serves when calculating the cost per serve, in reality we got five serves.

As it did a few nights earlier, the chili with fixin’s cost $5.53 per serve, although in reality a little less.2.5

Lunch

Wild caught smoked salmon, cream cheese and capers on an onion bagel. What’s not to like?

• Smoked salmon is normally $5.99 for the 4oz pack, but today it was on special at $1 off, with another $1 coupon, or $2 a serve
• The pack of six onion bagels is $1.99 or 33c per serve
• Cream cheese is about 60c a serve
• Add 5c for capers.

Lunch today cost $2.98 per serve.

Dinner

What to do with a pound of ground pork from our last meat delivery? Stir Fried Shanghai Noodles with Ground Pork and Cabbage, that’s what. The recipe makes four very generous serves.

• The pork came from our Prather Ranch meat delivery – 1 lb of ground pork cost $8.55 or $2.14 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 shredded green cabbage was $1.29 for the pack, or 33c per serve.

Dinner tonight cost $3.79 per serve for a filling and very tasty dish.

Lunch

We decided to go out for lunch, for no particularly good reason. Our favorite is The Country Deli. They serve a 10 oz marinated skirt steak that is always good when cooked rare. Served with three eggs, home fries and a bread/bagel, it’s a huge meal.

Foodie Greg’s corned beef sandwich was likewise excellent, although he was thankful he ordered a half!

• Lunch at the Country Deli runs out around $20 a serve with tax and tip.

Dinner

Tonight we revisited Bacon and Black Bean Chili. Again we doubled up on the beans. This is an amazingly good chili. The recipe officially makes four serves (and that’s what I used to calculate pricing) but we find it makes six serves with the extra beans, and the ‘fixins’: avocado, sour cream, and spring onion.

• Bacon ends cost $4.99 for the container, but this recipe used about 1/2 of that, or 63c per serve
• Onion and garlic – about 5c a serve
• The beef we used is expensive – pasture raised, dry aged ground beef from our monthly meat delivery – at $8.95 for slightly over a pound, or $2.24 a serve
• Spices – about 10c a serve
• Diced fire roasted tomatoes are $2.19 the can, or 55c per serve
• Tomato past was 89c or 22c a serve
• The beans were 99c a can, or 50c a serve
• Each serve got half the 99c Avocado or 50c per serve
• Cheese was 55c per serve
• Sour cream – 20c per serve

All up dinner cost us $5.53 for a very filling serve.

Lunch

We used theTrader Joe’s Just Chicken’ again. As it was yesterday today’s lunch cost $2.32 per serve.

Dinner

Continuing our experiments with the new smoker, we smoked some already-cooked (but not smoked) pork sausages from our Prather Ranch delivery.

The smoking definitely enhances the flavor, although the result was a little more subtle than the meat we’ve smoked from raw. Served with a double serve of the double ‘potato’ halloumi bake left over from last night.

• The sweet potato, bell pepper, apple and halloumi bake is $1.93 per serve, and we doubled up for $3.86 per serve.
• The sausages $12.46 for two packs, or $3.11 per serve for the best pork sausages we’ve ever had, even better with a little smoke.

Dinner tonight coast $6.96 per serve.