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:

Chicken drumsticks and potato chips

The theme for tonight is "finger foods"



These "chicken wings" are not actually wings; they're drumsticks from the Crazy Cheap Chicken purchased for $1.18/lb.  And they're huge.  This pack of 12 drumsticks was purchased for $4.24.  If you can't tell the size from this photo, 2 drumsticks would be an adult serving.

 

Before I even began to cook the wings, I made dessert: I've been saying that I couldn't find any more 99 cent brownie mixes; they're all $1.50 now.  But THIS was $1 a few weeks ago (I bought several). 

 

Unfortunately, this is a "snack size" mix, so even though the package says "makes 12" the batter was spread really thin.  Even after baking, it was only about 1/4 inch thick. To thicken it up, I had a little fun...

I made a peanut butter layer by mixing 1/4 cup peanut butter, 1/4 cup sugar, and one egg, and spreading it over the cooked brownies.  Then I put it back in the oven for about 5 minutes more.  (When the peanut butter layer cooked, its color lightened a little).  Then, I sprinkled most (probably 80%) of a bag of chocolate chips on top, and put it back in the oven to melt.

 

 

 

While the brownies were cooking the first time, I sliced three potatoes (out of 14 in a $1.99 bag) into thin strips and set them in a glass bowl to soak up some vinegar and salt (to make salt & vinegar chips, of course).  It didn't work -- they should be marinated in the fridge overnight for that -- they just came out tasting like regular homemade chips.

 

 

I turned on my deep fryer and put in the drumsticks, setting the timer for 15 minutes.  Drumsticks should be fried a minimum of 12 to make sure they are completely cooked.  Even when the timer went off, I thought they looked a little pale, so I did them for an extra 5 minutes to be safe.

 

Now, I had looked up a recipe for "asian hot wings" (kind of like a general tso's flavor, with honey, ginger, hot sauce, and a bunch of other stuff).  I didn't have 3 of the more exotic ingredients so I made several substitutions.  They didn't come out bad, but my storebought BBQ sauce was better and less time consuming, so I'm not going to repeat the recipe here.  Trust me, it wasn't worth the effort. 

 

I made 12 drumsticks in 3 flavors tonight: 4 in my homemade asian sauce, 4 in storebought BBQ, and 4 in a "spicy ranch" (3 parts ranch dressing to 1 part hot sauce).  Out of the 12 (very large) drumsticks, we ate 5: 2 for me, 1 for each kid.

 

The wings were a hit!

 

 

 

My daughter and I had the chips.  My boys didn't like them so much...

 

The face he made after tasting a chip.  Seriously.

 

Tonight's total: $1.77 worth of wings (5/12 of the pack which cost $4.24) + $1.50 worth of sauce (no real way of judging the cost of the homemade sauce but the more expensive between the ranch and the BBQ was the BBQ, and that was $2.  I only used 1/4 of the bottle on the 4 drumsticks, so if you figure I would have used 3/4 of a bottle on all 12, and that the BBQ was the most expensive, then I spent about $1.50 on sauce) The potatoes used to make the chips were 3/14 of a $1.99 bag, or 43 cents, and the vinegar and salt were probably another 10 or 20 cents.  Heck, let's call it a quarter.  The brownie mix was $1, the peanut butter, egg, and sugar probably 50 cents, and the chocolate chips were $2 a bag, and I used an estimated 80%, or $1.60's worth.  There were 12 brownies, of which we ate 6 when all was said and done, so that's half of $3.10, or $1.55, making tonight's total: $1.77 wings + $1.50 sauce + 68 cents chips + $1.55 brownies = $5.50

Crazy cheap AND delicious!  This calls for another brownie!

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

Cajun chicken and cauliflower

 

 

I know I've done a lot of chicken recipes but this was delicious, easy, and crazy cheap, so I just couldn't help myself.  First off, this was part of the crazy cheap chicken purchase from early July. 

 

 

 

These drumsticks were so very, very cheap.  They were sold by the pound but there were 14 drumsticks for $3.18  There were also 4 thigh/drums for $2.51 in another package.  Tonight, I cooked 4 of the 14 drums and 2 of the 4 thighs, making the cost of the chicken $2.17. 

 

To season it, I added a bit of water in the bottom of the pan (to keep it moist) and sprinkled on generic cajun seasoning.  By the way, I had previously cooked 7 of the14 drumsticks, freezing the rest for later.  These final 3 were re-bagged to save for yet another meal.  They were cooked at 400 for 40 minutes.  While they were cooking, I mixed up a bisquick coffee cake. 

 

 

As a side, I waited until the timer was down to 10 minutes and then steam-microwaved an entire bag of broccholi and cauliflower with some butter, some garlic salt, and some black pepper.  Dinner came out great and was enjoyed by all! 

 

 

Emily had seconds, and ate the last of the cauliflower.  Then she started snitching other peoples' cauliflower.  Finally, it was time for dessert!

 

 

So, our total for tonight was: $2.17 chicken, $1.69 broccholi/cauliflower mxi, previously calculated dessert at $2 a pan, we ate less than half a pan as a family tonight, so even being generous with rounding, $1 dessert tonight.  Total cost = $4.86. 

Breakfast for dinner (part 2)

Tonight I wanted something fast and easy.  The kids wanted breakfast for dinner again.  I made somthing a little different than my usual breakfast for dinner, which is normally pancakes and eggs.  Tonight I started with hash browns: I diced 4 medium potatoes (about a fourth of a bag, which cost me $2.99.  I had to buy a brand new bag tonight 'cause I used up the last of my potatoes last Friday.  So, 75 cents worth of potatoes, a dollop of margarine, a bit of water and shake on the cajun seasoning like there's no tomorrow.  Oh, and fry in a pan on medium-low heat.  Keep the skins on for this; just wash them.

The omelettes were simple: lunchmeat ham (bought roughly 20 slices for $2.50 when it was on sale a few weeks back, froze it so it wouldn't spoil.  I used 4 slices in the eggs, so 1/5 of $2.50 means it was 50 cents worth of ham.  A single onion of negligable cost (really, really small onion, about 1 tbsp worth put in the eggs, and the rest put in the hash.) 

A bunch of bananas at 49 cents a pound (we ate 2 as a family and assuming they were REALLY heavy bananas we'll be generous and call it $1 worth of bananas.  Also, bought a bag of cheese at $2.99 and used about a fourth of that, too, so 75 cents of cheese.  Eggs were free for me (WIC item) but since they're normally $1.80/doz, and we used a third dozen (4 eggs) we'll call it 60 cents worth of eggs.  Last, but definitely not least, everyone had a cup of yogurt, since they were 3 for $1, so that's $1.34 worth of yogurt.

So our total tonight was: 0.75 potatoes + 0.50 ham + (negligable) onion + 0.60 eggs + 0.75 cheese + $1 bananas + $1.34 yogurt = $4.94

chili con carne and corn bread muffins

Last night, my daughter wanted soup for dinner.  Specifically, she wanted chili.  Her exact words: "We had chili at school once and it was delicious."  Now, chili recipies vary: some folks add corn or potatoes to give their chili a little starch.  Some folks (most that I know) add hamburger meat, which is technically, chili con carne (latin for "with meat") or chicken, or make a "white chili".  All chili recipes have two factors in common, though: Pepper and beans.  Note, I said, "pepper", not "peppers", although most contain actual pepper meats, some only contain pepper spice or dried pepper, or "chili seasonings" which is a generic-store concotion containing, among other things, pepper.  After a thorough search of my cupboards, refrigerator, and freezers, I found a lack of both.  I did have a bag of dried kidney beans, but they needed to soak for at least an hour and it was already 5 o'clock.  So last night, I made our actual dinner, a very quick one, then started the chili so I could serve it tonight.  It didn't hurt that today was a day off of work for me, which meant I'd be able to work on it all day.

As I said, I began by soaking the dehydrated beans, which I did by covering them in cold water, bringing them to a rolling boil, boiling for 2 minutes, then removing from heat and leaving, hot and covered, for an hour.  In short, I followed the directions on the bag.  I used a whole bag of dried beans that have been in my cupboard for years.  I know, because when I was nursing my now-four-year-old son, I received WIC checks that allowed for a jar of peanut butter or a bag of dried beans.  Just once I got the bag of beans, and it has sat in my cupboard for years.  Not that dried beans go bad, which is one of their virtues.  They're an apocolypse food.  Once the beans have soaked and re-hydrated, you rinse them and put them back in your giant chili kettle.  Or whatever you have for such things.  On top of the beans, I added 1 and a half large onions, diced. 
In a very large skillet, I cooked this entire family-sized pack of hamburger meat, which I bought ages ago for what I can only deduce was $5.57, due to my amazing, Sherlock-Holmes-ish deductive skills. 
         I cooked the meat with 4 spoonfuls of garlic-from-a-jar, stirring every few minutes with a spatula, then used the same spatula to lift the meat out of the grease pool (it was that crazy cheap "less than 78% fat" burger that's got the most fat and grease out of any burger you can buy) rather than get meat grease all over my strainer.

To this I added a family-sized (32-oz) can of diced tomatoes, and put the whole thing in the fridge (with a lid) for today.  As I said before, today, I had the day off, so I went to the store with the kids and got 3 bell peppers, one red, one green, one yellow, for $3.69.  They were packaged together for $4.59 but, with a little bit of math, I found I could save 90 cents by buying them separately.  If I bought Birds Eye frozen stir-fry mix, I could get the bag for $3.59, but (a) it would have onions in it and I already added onions, and (b) it would cost more per pound since the frozen bag was only about 60% of the weight of the fresh peppers and (c) I would still have to dice them since they were pepper and onion strips not diced chunks which is what you (or at least I) put in chili.  So I spent 20 minutes in the store with 3 kids on the peppers alone.  (grumble)  The only good thing is that after I diced all three peppers I only needed to use about half of them, so I was able to put the remaining diced pepper in a freezer bag for later use.

So, today, I added the fresh diced bell peppers and the seasonings, which for me included 7 beef bullion cubes, a little worchestire sauce, (I always have to spell-check that one) another spoonful of garlic, salt, pepper, paprika, chili seasoning, basil, and, because I decided it wasn't "tomato-y" enough, but putting in another jumbo can of tomatoes would be too much, I added a jar of my favorite spaghetti sauce.  This also added a bit of flavor that wouldn't have been there before, but she tasted, and she saw that it was good.  I brought it to a boil, then took it down to slightly more than "simmer" on my stove's dial (a "three", for those who care about such things).  I left it on "simmer" for over an hour.  (Oh, and added some water so it wouldn't dry up and stirred it every twenty minutes, so that the stuff on the bottom wouldn't burn permanantly to the kettle) 

When it was done (about 1 pm today) I removed it from the heat and let it cool to room temp, then put it in the fridge.  I didn't put it right in the fridge because I didn't want to over-work my fridge trying to cool down my milk and butter and fresh fruit AND a big kettle of something that was just boiling.  Anyway, at about 4 pm I took the now-cooled kettle out and ladeled it into plastic quart-sized "zippered freezer storage bags" which is a nice way of saying generic ziploc.  I did this, by the way, by putting a bag in a 32-ounce tumbler and ladeling into the cup.  This kept soup from getting all over the outside of the bag. 


This resulted in 4 bags of chili for another day (or another 4 days, as it were) and left me with enough chili in the bottom of the pot to serve with dinner tonight.

Our side dish tonight was cornbread muffins, which is kind of obvious, when you think about it, as THE thing to serve with chili, when the chili is your main course.  If your chili is not the main course, of course, then it should be served with something else which will be the main course.  Of course.

Sorry about that, I've been watching a lot of VLOGBROTHERS while I waited for my picture of a pepper to load, which it ended up not doing anyway.

So anyway, I made some muffins using a crazy cheap corn muffin mix, which just happened to be the last in my cupboard.  I think I bought it for 67 cents (3 for $2).  I'm gonna go with that.

And I made them using cupcake wrappers from the cupcake spree of two weeks ago for ease of removal.  When all was said and done, we had a satisfying, delicious dinner that only took parts of two days to prepare, and the kids were so filled that they didn't even want dessert, which was store-bought butterscotch pudding, but which they will happily eat, I am sure, very, very soon.

The cost of tonight's dinner must be calculated as a whole, then proportioned:  The beans were technically free for me, since they were a WIC product (given away by the PA government for nursing mothers and mothers of young children - I don't even know if they give away beans any more) but I'm going to assume that someone buying beans would have to pay $2.50 for them, since that's what I think I paid last time I bought a jumbo can of beans.  The meat was $5.57, the peppers $3.69, but I saved half in the freezer for later use, so I used $1.85 worth of peppers tonight, and the onions, sold in a 3 pound bag (about 5 medium-sized onions) for $1.99, of which I only used 1 and a half onions, came to 60 cents.  The can of tomatoes was $1.79, and the jar of sauce was $1.67.  The random spices and such probably totaled less than 50 cents.  Adding that all up, the entire pot of chili cost somewhere around $14.48.  Since I used 1/5 of that tonight (four freezer bags plus what I served with dinner) tonight's chili cost $2.90.  Now then, the cornbread mix cost 67 cents, and I used all of it, plus 1/3 cup of milk and 1 egg (honestly, practically nothing - if a dozen eggs is $1.79 each egg is 15 cents, and eggs at Costas were a dollar saver item this week, which meant they were less than that even), plus "fake butter" (spread, actually called "A change for the butter") that I mixed with honey in a re-used (as in reduce reuse recycle) yogurt cup to make a honey butter spread, so I'm gonna round that 67 cents up to $1.  The pudding that nobody ate was made from a SureFine pudding mix (mixed with whole milk and cooled in the fridge for 5 minutes according to the box, 20 minutes in real life) and cost 69 cents.  So the total of dinner plus dessert was $4.59.

There was even about 16 oz of soup left over tonight, and 2 cornbread muffins, which I offered to a neighbor.  So goodnight to all my Potter County neighbors, who need a little warmth on this "chili" spring evening.