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:

Corn Chowder and Chicken Caesar Salad

 

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. 

 

Luke loved the salad, but didn't like the chowder very much.  Andrew loved the chowder, but not the salad.  Still, I insisted that all the kids try each dish, but then I let my boys trade. 

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.