stuffed shells

So my ex is in town.  Again.  And he likes Italian food.  A lot.  So, tonight I made one of his favorites: stuffed shells.  Now, I actually made two pans (one a 13x9, shown here, and another 8x8, not pictured.) We ate about 1/3 of the shells that I cooked, so that will show in my cost calculations.  The remainder was boxed up and frozen for future "easy" meals.  And just in case you're wondering "does she ever actually pull those leftovers out and re-heat them?" the answer is yes.  Quite often, actually.

I started by boiling a whole box of jumbo shells and cooking a whole family pack of hamburger (shells $1.39, on sale, hamburger $5.68).  The shells I boiled, as I always do, with a little bit (prob 2 Tbsp) of vegetable oil in the pot, to keep them from sticking to the pan or eachother.  The hamburger was pan-fried with half a large diced onion, about 1 Tbsp "Italian seasonings" and 1 tsp garlic.  Oh, and I also set the oven for 400 degrees.  Don't forget that part.

The lump in the middle of the pan is the frozen mozzarella

When the burger was cooked, I added a 24-oz container of cottage cheese (because it costs 1/3, per pound, of what ricotta cheese does, and in pasta shells it tastes so close I dare you to tell them apart!) about 1/2 pound of bulk mozzarella (2 handfuls) and 4 slices of wheat bread, hand-torn into small pieces (about the size of a thumbnail).  This was my mother's doing.  She always added shredded bread to her meatballs, meatloaf, stuffed shells, and manicotti.  Why? Because meat averages $3 a pound, cheese averages $4 a pound, and bread averages $1 a pound.  Throwing in a little bread gives you more stuffing for your money.  It absorbs a lot of the liquid in the cottage cheese, too, hiding the fact that you're using a half-price substitute in the first place.

It was here that I ran into my first real snag of the evening: no spaghetti sauce.  I found this hard to believe, since just a few weeks ago my favorite brand, Francesco Rinaldi, was on sale for $1 a jar at Costas, and I could have sworn I bought a bunch of it.  But either that was longer ago than I thought, or we've been eating a lot more pasta than I thought.  Either way, the only jar I had was an already-opened jar, in my fridge.  It was nearly full, so that's a plus.  I briefly pondered going to the grocery store, but dinner was already running a little bit later than usual, and I didn't want to prolong deliciousness.  So, I added some ketchup to the jar, a little bit of water, and shook it up.  It actually worked fairly well.  I was surprised.

When the shells were done cooking, I drained out the hot water and poured in cold, and let it sit a moment.  I repeated that process, and the second time around, the shells were cool enough to hold in my hand.  So, I stuffed them with the good stuff and put them in the pan.  Hint: if using a coated cake pan, instead of glass, you might end up with cheese stuck to the bottom if it drizzles out, so pour about 2 Tbsp of spaghetti sauce in the bottom of the pan, smear it around with your fingers, and then stuff the shells.  

A gentle reminder: this family, including my ex, ate 1/3 of the meal prepared, so if you DON'T have a deep freezer, or a husband or teenager to eat a mountain of stuffed shells, only use 1/3 of what I've used.  I put the two pans of shells in the oven for 15 minutes with just a sprinkling of mozzarella on top.  (maybe another 1/4 lb on BOTH pans)  For a side dish, we had bread and [fake] butter.  As a family, we ate 7 slices.  I had my youngest set the table.

So our totals for tonight are... shells (of which we ate a third): $1.39 + $5.68 burger + 8 cents for 1/2 onion + $1 jar of sauce + $2.44 bulk cheese (3/4 lb mozzarella at $3.25/lb) + $2.99 cottage cheese + 36 cents bread in shells ($1.99 loaf of generic wheat divided by 22 slices is 9 cents a slice) = 13.94, divided by 3 = $4.65 for the shells.  The extra 7 slices of bread would be 63 cents, and the misc. butter and italian seasonings MIGHT be another 10 cents, so $5.38 so far, then dessert was leftover birthday cupcakes (daughter's birthday was yesterday), which was a $1 mix with maybe 50 cents homemade frosting, made 24 cupcakes ate 6 tonight, so cost of dessert was 38 cents, making tonight's GRAND TOTAL

 (and I am so ready for bed).... $5.76

Birthday princess with a meal fit for a Queen

  

white (and green) lasagna with (not Ceasar) salad

So I had said in a previous post that I didn't like to make lasagna anymore because it was one of my ex's favorites, and cooking it just reminded me that he was gone.  And yet, it IS delicious.  In fact, white lasagna was part of our wedding feast.  So here's how I make mine:  First, I pulled out some crazy cheap chicken, purchased this week.

This pack contained 3 breasts, and I only needed 2, but I boiled all 3, plus the one left over from another night, because I wanted some pre-cooked chicken for Sunday, when I will be making more chicken romaine wheat wraps for my daughter's seventh birthday party.  I then shredded it, first by dicing it with a steak knife, then by tearing it with my fingers (don't get all huffy; I washed my hands).  I put it in a bowl with 4 eggs, a handful (probably 1/2 cup) of frozen spinach, about 1/3 of a large onion, diced, and another 2 handfuls of frozen broccoli, diced.

While the chicken was cooking, I put a package of lasagna noodles in my jumbo cooking pot, covered them with water, added about 2 Tbsp (just eyeballed it) of vegetable oil to keep them from sticking together, and set them on the stove to boil.  They only take 7 minutes but I had to allow time for the water to heat up so I set the timer for 10.  I also turned on the oven to 400 degrees.

I pulled out all of the mozzerella cheese I could find without digging too deep into my deep freezer, which was 3 partial bags (having used some and frozen the rest "for later" like I often do) which probably totaled 3 cups.  I first 'greased' the pan with some Ragu alfredo sauce (LOVE this stuff, usually $3 or more but I bought a bunch when it was $2.50.  It was months ago, but it's a vacuum sealed glass jar, and can be stored for a while.) then added about 2 tsp of "jar garlic" and 2 tsp of poultry seasonings, then shook the jar to "stir" it.

When I layered the lasagna, I put down 4 noodle strips on the bottom, then a few Tbsp of the "seasoned" Ragu, a layer of "chicken/broccoli/spinach/rawegg" then a layer of cheese, but not much, since 1) that makes it a lot more fattening, but moreso because 2) I didn't have a whole lot of cheese, and I was spreading it thin.  Even so, we only did 2 layers before we ran out cheese.







So I pulled out some more expensive cheese: a finely shredded blend of mozzarella  provolone, Parmesan  Romano  fontine, and asiago.  In other words, 'fancy cheese'.  It was on sale for $3 a bag last week, but even so, I hated to use it on this when "regular mozzerella" would do.

The last layer was just noodles, then the remaining sauce, and the remaining cheese.








To make the salad, I just pulled out some more romaine lettuce, added some bacon bits, and started looking for my ceasar salad dressing.  I couldn't find it, though I searched high and low.  Literally.  So I finally pulled out this Sweet Vidalia Onion dressing I bought on sale for $2 a few weeks ago.  I used a little less than half a bottle, so I'm calling it 80 cents instead of a dollar.  It tasted good without any croutons, and I don't like them very much myself, so I didn't bother making any.

When dinner was served, it looked like this: 

Dessert was some Halloween candy, superbly discounted.  Original label: $7.99, then marked at half off for $3.99, then marked at 75% off at $1.99, which is what I bought them for.  These jellybeans came in individual packets of 5 or 6 each.  We just opened them all up and put them in a candy dish, then took "a handful" each for dessert.  I'm going to REALLY overestimate and say we ate half the bag, or $1 worth.  Even though I know we did not.

If you were slicing this pan into all-adult portions, a whole pan is cut into 12 pieces.  I know, because I've worked in Italian restaurants. So 4 adult portions would be 1/3 of a pan.  Since my youngest is not quite five, we only ate 1/4 of the pan as a family, but for the purposes of calculations, I will consider "a family of four" to eat 1/3 of the pan...

Time for totals: chicken was 2/3 of a pack that cost $3.92, one jar of Ragu alfredo at $2.50, one box of lasagna noodles, which vary in cost from week to week but usually cost between 1 and 3 dollars, and I probably bought for $2 or less, and since I tend to overestimate to stay on the safe side, we're going to call $2, four raw eggs (which are usually $1.90 a dozen, so this is 1/3 of that, or 63 cents), spinach and broccoli, which even combined wouldn't be 1/2 of a bag, which normally costs $2 or so, but the broccoli was on sale for $1 a bag last week (huzzah!), so to call it 50 cents would be over-estimating the amount used, but slightly under-estimating the cost of a whole bag.  The salad used about 1/4 of a head of romaine lettuce, which cost 98 cents this week (sale price still current at Costas, folks), and about 1/3 of a container of generic bacon bits ($1.20 at best buys across from Charles Cole), which brings our total to: One-third of the pan of lasagna, which contained: $2.61 (chicken) +  $2.50 (Ragu) + $2 (noodles) + 63 cents (raw egg) + 50 cents spinach and broccoli combined + 10 cents (a few tsps seasonings) = 1/3 of $8.34 =  $2.78 (lasagna) + 25 cents (lettuce) + 40 cents (bacon bits) + 80 cents (salad dressing) + $1 dessert 

= $5.23

Since I over-estimated in a lot of spots tonight, I'm going to call this an 'under $5 meal'.  In case you were wondering, the remaining lasagna will be packaged in tupperware and frozen for a quick meal another day.

A good time was had by all, especially my youngest:

shrimp and clams with creamy garlic shells

So I know we just had seafood last week but when I cleaned out my deep freezer (and found that last pound of cheap fish) I also found these Clams in the shell that I had purchased at least three months ago, and I thought we'd better eat them.  Turns out, I don't really like clams that much on their own.... but more on that later.


So I started by assembling my main ingredients (I put the scallops back for another day).  Pasta shells: $1 (I used the whole box even though I knew it would be too much.  Don't ask me why.)  Clams, $3.99, I counted, 22 clams inside, (we ate 13, but more on that later), and a pack of salad shrimp, $1.29.
I boiled the shells, which only took a few minutes, strained them, and set them aside.  While they were cooking, I made a creamy garlic sauce with: 2 cups milk, 1/2 stick real butter, and the following seasonings "to taste" (didn't measure just shook on what looked good)


garlic powder (not real garlic, I know, I'm shocked, too.) and onion powder (this one was because I was too lazy to dice an onion and the pasta shells were done waaaay too fast and I just wanted dinner on the table already) salt, pepper, and old bay.  Oh, and parsley, and I stirred in the shrimp and the strained pasta and let it simmer for a while.  It smelled delicious.








To cook the clams, I followed the directions on the pack: In the same pot that I'd cooked the shells in, (because they were now strained and in the pan with the shrimp) I put: 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1 Tbsp of vinegar, 1 Tbsp vegetable oil, and 1 tsp diced garlic, then put the clams in and put on the lid over high heat for 4 minutes "until shells opened".

Then, because I wanted something green, I shredded just a little bit of lettuce.  I guess you can call it a salad, seeing as we put dressing on it, but it was just lettuce in a bowl with dressing.  

Maybe it was a garnish?  I'm still not sure.  Anyway, it kinda rounded out the plate.

Emily's the only one who liked it enough to ask for seconds, and between the four of us, we only ate 13 clams, so I took the remaining 8 out of their shells and mixed them in with the leftover pasta and shrimp.

Which is just as well, because when my ex finally got here, he ate about half of the leftover seafood, and all of the remaining lettuce, leaving me with one adult serving as "leftovers".

Dessert was chocolate-marshmallow ice cream cones in waffle cones this time.  

*yum*  

Except for the youngest, who wanted applesauce.

So, the total for tonight: $3.99 clams, $1.29 shrimp, $1 pasta, 1/4 a head of lettuce (purchased weeks ago for I don't remember how much but I think it was $1.39 but we'll be generous and round up to $1.60) for 40 cents, 3 ice cream cones is tricky: the waffle cones are 12 for $2, or 17 cents each, just eyeballing the amount of ice cream we used it looks like maybe a 10th of a container, and the ice cream was on sale $2.50, so that would be 25 cents worth of ice cream in 3 cones, but again, I'll be generous and double that, and call it 50 cents, and the applesauce was 1/8 of the container (he had a 6-oz yogurt cup full and it's a 48-oz container) which originally cost $2.50 as well, so 1/8 of that is 31 cents, 2 cups milk cost 44 cents, and a half a stick of butter cost 25 cents, since I bought a 4-stick box for $1.99.  The seasonings weren't more than 50 cents, making our total: 

$9.19

For five servings.

And that was rounding up a lot.

seafood and creamy garlic shells and more!

It all started a few weeks ago when we were all shopping.  I was just going up and down the aisles, seeing what was on sale and looking for any staples I might need for the house.

 

 

Emily saw these "shells" and said, "We could eat those with our ocean animals!"  In case you may have forgotten, when our family took a vacation earlier this year, we bought three of these "seafood combination" packs.

 

Since the pasta was $1 a box, we bought one box of "small" and one box of "medium".  Since last time I cooked the "ocean animals" I just did them in butter and herbs (and lemon juice and vinegar) I decided to do tonight's in a cream sauce: First, I poured the frozen "seafood combination" into a frying pan and set it on the stove.  I added about 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup water, 1 Tbsp vinegar, and the following seasonings:

 

Then I put on a lid, turned the heat to a "six" (medium-high) and let  cook.

 

 

I boiled about 3/4 of the medium shells first, then realized that would be enough and saved the "small shells" for another meal.  I strained the shells and set them aside while I made the cream sauce.  All I did was put 2 cups of milk and a half-stick of butter in the empty pot, and add the same five flavors I put in the seafood, plus a dash of red pepper for some "zing".  When it was boiling up, I sprinkled in 1/3 cup of flour, a little at a time, while stirring with a slotted spoon.  This was just enough to thicken it without turning it into a gravy.  Which, let's face it, would have been gross. Then, I added the shells I had set aside and stirred them in, and turned off the heat.

 

 

 Speaking of gross, although the kids devoured the seafood mix the last time, I didn't like it too much, so I pulled out some alternatives for myself: The fish in the ziplock baggie was caught by Andrew earlier this year, so it was free.  I added it to the seafood mix and put the lid back on.  The scallops and shrimp would've been great, but each little baggie would've been enough for only me, and I didn't want the kids mooching, so I put the scallops and shrimp back in the freezer, and just cooked (steamed in glass bowls in the microwave) about 1/3 the cauliflower and 1/4 of the peas. 

 

Even with the mountain of pasta I'd cooked (shells expand about 70% when boiled) I didn't think cauliflower, peas, and shells would satisfy me, so I pulled out this can of whole cranberries I'd bought last Thanksgiving.  (My eyes were bigger than my stomach - there was soooo much left over)  Still, I had a veritable feast and stayed under $10.  I told each kid to pick three things out of the five on the table and I served.  Then they had to clean their plates.  (This also gave me an "out": I ate peas, cranberries, and pasta)

 

 

Andrew's 3: Cauliflower, pasta, seafood

 

 

Emily chose all five, but then decided
she didn't like the berries and gave them to me.



Everybody did clear their plates, and Lucas had seconds of pasta, while Emily had seconds and thirds of the seafood.  We still had soooo much left over; I ate as much of the cranberry sauce as I could but put the rest in the compost.  We saved the shells for another day (seriously, I didn't even cook the whole box and we had half a plate left over!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everyone was so full that only Lucas wanted dessert - and while I thought for sure he would want applesauce (which is what I bought) he wanted cereal for dessert.  Of course, when Emily saw this she wanted some too.

 

 

 

And so our total for tonight was... Seafood mix: $5.99, 3/4 a box of shells, 75 cents, 2.5 cups milk, 55 cents, 1/3 bag cauliflower, 63 cents, 1/4 bag of peas, 38 cents, 1 can cranberry sauce (no idea because I bought it a year ago but let's just say $1) Side note: canned corn, creamed corn, and green beans are only 39 cents each at Costas today and tomorrow.  That's a heck of a deal, folks.  Back to the total: the cereal was "generic", $1.88/bag which says 13 servings per bag, so 2 servings for my kids was 29 cents.  So $5.99 + 75 cents + 55 cents + 63 cents + 38 cents + $1 + 29 cents = $9.59

 

So I'm under $10 AND I have 2 servings of delicious creamy garlic shells left over.  Hurrah!

 

 

 

 



Beef Bechamel (and peas)

 

So I had no idea that my homemade hamburger helper had a fancy French name until one of the nurses at work told me so.  I googled it, and apparently it's the mother of all French sauces, made with butter, milk, seasonings, and flour.  I used to make this all the time as a new bride because it's 1)fast 2)cheap and 3)easy.

First, I cooked a little less than a full pound of crazy cheap hamburger.  It was a 2.8 pound pack for $5.51, and I cooked roughly a third of the pack ($1.84).  I browned it in a half a stick of butter (25cents, real butter), a splash (1/2 cup?) of milk, one beef boullion cube, a heaping teaspoon of garlic, and, to be honest, I didn't measure, but shook on what looked good in the realm of salt, pepper, thyme, basil, paprika, rosemary, and just a dash of cayenne pepper.  In a separate pot, I boiled 1/2 pound of spaghetti (50 cents, baby!) with a Tbsp of vegetable oil (to keep it loose without constant vigilance). 








When the burger was cooked, I scooped it out with a slotted spatula and put it in the pot with the strained spaghetti.  That left me with just the cream sauce, which I thickened with flour.  I just added a teaspoon at a time, mashing it in (still on low heat) with a slotted spatula.  Since it was still a little lumpy, I poured it into a cup and used a hand-held drink mixer.  When it was still a little runny (you don't want it too thick in the pan - it's a cream sauce, not a gravy) I poured the meat and spagetti back in and stirred it all together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, because I wanted something green to go with this, I microwaved a half a pack of frozen peas (90 cents) in a glass bowl, with some butter and just a dash of dill.  (Trust me, this tastes Awesome.  Or try it yourself.)  So, as I said, I haven't made this in years, and the kids were a little skeptical of this mystery food.  They started by eating their peas. 

Only when they had no choice did they dare to touch the pasta. 

 

 

 

 

 

But then....

 

 

Sooooooo gooooooood.....

 

(And dessert was applesauce)

 

 

So our total for tonight's dinner was: Hamburger ($1.84), Pasta (50 cents) Sauce (butter was 25 cents and was the most expensive part, we're gonna call the whole sauce 50 cents' worth), Peas (90 cents) and 1/2 jar of applesauce (Lucas had a cereal bowl, the rest of us had 6-oz dessert bowls) (1/2 of $2.35 = $1.18).  Total = $4.92

 

 

The best part of tonight's dinner:

The kids tried something they've never had before, and they actually liked it.

 

 

 

 

Seafood "Medley" (or something)

Ok, so the story behind this meal is pretty typical for "how I get my recipes"....

 

Something like three years ago, I was visiting my awesome sister at her home in Lancaster, PA.  I had told her how my daughter enjoys strong flavors: Salt and Vinegar chips over plain chips, Extra Garlic in her spaghetti sauce, how she sneaks raw onions when I'm dicing them, too... and how we had just made shrimp scampi with extra, extra garlic and she loved it.  So my sister asks if I think my kids would eat a seafood mix, and I'm all, "huh? what kind of mix are we talkin about here?"  Apparently, in any town larger than this one, (i.e., any town, anywhere)

you can buy this: (or something like it)

 

 

This bag came with pieces of clam, shrimp, "other mollusks", squid and octopus tentacles, imitation crab meat, and some things I could not identify with my eyes, which didn't even seem to be on the ingredients list.  I seem to recall my sister bought something along these lines...  and the kids loved it.  I mean, really, really LOVED it. 

 

So while I was down in Delaware for our family vacation this year, I stopped in a "Super Fresh"

(Rte 1, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware) for three, yes three bags of this stuff. 

(It was $5.99 a bag, in case you care, and the bag says it contains 5 servings.) 

 

 

To give a little more volume to the meal, I added a fairly large piece of Pollock from this bag.  I put it on my palm to show you the size.  It was one vacuum-sealed fillet, and, I kid you not, this bag of 4 fillets was $1.99, so this tasty morsel was 50 cents! (Jubilee in Coudersport, sale was over weeks ago, folks.  This is why I have a deep freezer.)

I let my oldest boy help tonight.  He's the one who wanted this meal the most, actually.  To add flavor, we used a big splash of lemon juice (probably 1/4 cup, maybe even 1/3 cup), a small splash (1 or 2 tsp) of apple vinegar, 2 heaping teaspoons of garlic, 1/2 stick of real butter, and some salt, pepper, and paprika.  I simmered the whole pan over medium/high heat (a 7 on my oven, for what it's worth) for about 10 minutes.

Our side dish tonight was butter-herb pasta, but instead of making it from a bag, I just boiled some mixed pasta (roughly 1/3 box "tri-color" pasta - the kind used in pasta salad - and a large handful of egg noodles) strained it, then, in the pot it was in, melted the other 1/2 stick of butter and added several shakes of old bay and several shakes of Italian seasoning.  When it was done, I put it on a plate to serve.  You can't see or taste or smell the butter and the herbs but they were there and they were delightful.

Despite how much she liked it last time, my daughter seemed apprehensive about the meal.  But once she started eating, she had seconds... and thirds...

This one is a tentacle piece.  Yum.

and when I was passing tentacles down to my eldest, at the end, she snagged them en route.  Twice.  Needless to say, there were no leftovers.











Mystery meat.  Less yum...

Dessert was vanilla wafer cookies.  Because they were on sale at Best Buy Foods for 79 cents for the whole box.  We ate maybe 4 cookies each, barely 1/4 of the box, so dessert for the whole family was 20 cents.

Our total tonight, then, was... $5.99 mixed seafood, 50 cents extra Pollock, 1/4 of a $2.69 pack of real butter, or 67 cents worth of butter, 65 cents worth of pasta (normally I only buy 99 cent boxes but this was $1.29 for the tri-color) and 20 cents dessert = $8.01 

Even allowing for the cost of the seasonings, garlic, lemon juice, and vinegar, we're not even close to $10.  And I ate octopus.  Booyah!