So tonight I'm trying two foods I've never made before. I have made Caesar salad from a bagged mix before, but in my opinion, that just doesn't count. I have to say, they both came out splendidly, but the corn chowder was a bit thin for my taste, so I would only add 1 cup of milk, not two, the next time I make it. But this recipe made enough for my family of four, plus seconds for Emily, with enough left over to feed all four of us another night. So I would say this makes probably 8-10 adult servings.
So the first thing I did was look up a recipe. I checked Betty Crocker first, but it called for two ingredients I didn't have in the house, so then I went to the internet. This recipe came from allrecipies.com but they had so many variants on "corn chowder" that I went with this one:
Pan fry 6 slices of bacon on low-medium heat, crumble, and set aside, reserving the grease. In the grease, saute one small, chopped onion. Add 2 large, cubed potatoes and 1/2 cup water, cover and simmer 15 minutes, until potatoes are tender.
Stir in 2 cans creamed corn, 1 can of "regular" corn, salt and pepper to taste (I didn't use any cause it smelled soooo good as is) and 2 cups of milk. Heat through, garnish with the bacon, and serve.
I would recommend 1 cup since this soup was kind of runny, even after I boiled it for an extra 10 minutes, trying to boil it down, and ended up boiling it over...
This photo was taken after I ladeled out the finished soup into the large glass serving bowl. Ordinarily I would just serve in the pan, because (1) it means fewer dishes to wash, and (2) I'm only serving my family, so I don't care about "fancy". Tonight, I served in separate dishes because (1) we were being fancy (we like to do that once in a while) and (2) the pan was so full and overflowing there's no way I could've carried it to the table without spilling half of it on the floor. You know, I would also recommend either using a larger pan or pouring it into a pot before adding the corn and the milk.
While the potatoes were cooking for 15 minutes, I was busy preparing the Chicken Caesar Salad. I started by boiling a single chicken breast in a pot of water. It was bought on sale in a family pack of 8 boneless skinless breasts for $9.48, so each one was $1.18, assuming they're all the same size. This one was actually on the small side, and I didn't even use it all on the salad.
I got out another serving bowl and tore some lettuce by hand, then diced four slices of bread to make some homemade croutons in my toaster oven. To make croutons, dice bread 4 x 4 slices, spray with cooking spray, and sprinkle with seasonings. I just used generic "Italian seasoning", which I tend to use a lot. I put them in the toaster oven and set it to "medium" toast. They were too soft, so I did them again on "light" toast, and a few in the middle got burned. But that's ok, because we didn't even use all the croutons. 
To just feed my small family, I only tore a few leaves of lettuce, used about 1/3 of the croutons, 1/3 of the 8 oz pack of "fancy shredded mozzarella" (which means finely shredded), about 3 Tbsp of imitation bacon bits, and about 1/2 of the chicken breast I cooked. The other half was put in the leftover soup. The chicken breast took longer to cook than I thought, but again, that's ok, because I was trying to boil down the soup anyway. Since we were going for "fancy" anyway, I pulled out the good china, which, thankfully, my children did not chip, crack, or destroy while we ate tonight.
Emily liked everything, too, and had seconds of soup and her salad. Andrew had been playing with the neighbor's boys when I called him in for dinner, so he didn't stick around for dessert, which wasn't anything fancy anyway. I bought these popsicles from Dollar General for $2.25 a box, so each popcicle was 22 1/2 cents. As a family, we had 3.
Our total tonight will be skirting the ten-dollar mark, I think, because I didn't have any bacon or creamed corn, so I had to go out and buy some. Normally, I only buy bacon when it's on sale for $2.50 a box, and I buy a ton of it. This was the cheapest bacon they had and it was $3.19 a pound. I only cooked half the box, but that's still $1.60 worth of bacon, and the bacon was just a garnish.
The creamed corn was on sale for 79 cents a can, and the regular canned corn was already in my cupboard, but I did a price check while I was at the store and it's normally 85 cents a can. The head of lettuce was 1.69 but I only used a small fraction of that head (as you can see from the photo) so I'm going to estimate it at 40 cents worth, a little less than 1/4 of the head. The bottle of dressing was not on sale, $2.39, and I used about 2/3 of it, or $1.59 worth. The cheese was on sale (and still is, until tomorrow, folks), at the price of two bags for $3.19, and I used about 1/3 of one bag, or 53 cents worth. I have never seen it this cheap, not even in bulk, and bought 8 bags. Potatoes are on sale right now for $1 a bag, but the potatoes seen here were bought a week or two ago at $1.99 a 5-pound bag. I only used 2, but one was rotten (as you can see in the photo) and I had to throw it out. So I've got to make sure I use the rest of my potatoes soon. But I digress. These three potatoes were about 1/5 of the bag, or 40 cents. Onions were (and currently are by the way) only 98 cents a bag. My bag contained about 8 onions, so each one is roughly 12 cents. Two cups of milk out of a gallon at $3.49 is 44 cents. The homemade croutons used 4 slices of bread, previously calculated at 6 cents a slice, so 24 cents worth of croutons (although we only ate half). All prices listed are at Costas Shur Fine in Coudersport, PA.
And so we have....79 cents + 79 cents + 85 cents (corn) + 40 cents (lettuce) + $1.60 (half a pack of bacon) + $1.59 (dressing) + 53 cents (fancy cheese) + 40 cents (potatoes) + 12 cents (onion) + 44 cents (milk) + 24 cents (croutons) + $1.18 (chicken) + 68 cents (3 popsicles) = $9.61
And I am AWESOME.
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