Final Post: chicken and biscuits over gravy

First, a note: This will be my final post, for several reasons.  First, because I have said repeatedly that I'm running out of affordable, yet different dinner ideas.  I've done over 50 dinners for under $10 each.  Second, because the purpose of this blog (for me anyway) was to keep me writing during a slump.  I'd written a book under a pseudonym, published it two years ago, and hadn't written anything worth reading since then.  So, a fellow writer suggested keeping a blog just to keep me busy until I DID have a new idea.  Well, the slump is over, folks.  I've been working on a novel since August, am really excited about it, but haven't really had the time to write much (28 pages done in nearly 3 months is NOT good) and have been considering, for several weeks, ditching this project altogether so I'd have more time to work on my novel.  Lastly, and probably most importantly, google's "free" photo hosting service says I've reached my limit, and it won't allow me to upload any more photos without paying a service fee.  Ironically, I haven't used about 1/10th of the photos I've uploaded, and if I could "delete" them from the hosting service to make more room, I would, but I can't seem to figure out how...

So in a nutshell: 1) out of affordable dinner ideas, 2) writer's slump is over, and 3) no more (free) photo space.

So without any of the photos I took of tonight's dinner, here's the recipe and costs: (but it's much less fun this way)

First, I made the biscuits: 2 and 1/4 cups bisquick mixed with 2/3 cup milk, roll out on a floured board (I just use more bisquick) cut into circles, and bake at 450 for 8 minutes or so.

Second, cook chicken (I did a little more than a pound) in a frying pan.  I thawed the frozen chicken in the microwave, sliced the raw chicken into small chunks on a plate, and cooked them in a frying pan with just a little water to help them stay juicy.

Third, add gravy (I just bought a small can of chicken gravy for 88 cents when it was on sale a few weeks ago) to the pan of cooked chicken.

Pull the biscuits out of the oven, and cook a side dish of vegetables (I did a half a bag of frozen peas, purchased for $1.33, in the microwave with a Tbsp of butter for 4 minutes, stirring at 2)

For dessert, we had store-bought fudge-pops (generic, box of 12 for $3.29)

The prices were: $2.53 for the chicken: 1.16 lbs of boneless, skinless breast meat at $2.18/lb, 88 cents gravy, $1.05 worth of bisquick powder (I rounded up to 2.5 cups since I used bisquick instead of flour) and 16 cents for 2/3 cup of milk, plus 4 fudge pops (1/3 of the box of 12 = $1.10) brings our total to: $5.72

Again, sorry about the lack of photos.  I may or may not fiddle with this more and try to upload them.  Probably not.

chicken romaine wraps with vegetable stew

So finger sandwiches are one of my daughter's favorite snacks.  In order to consider it a "meal", I added the stew, and made sure the wraps had protein and vegetable.  That, I feel, elevated this from "appetizers" to "dinner".  

There was some beef left over from last week's beef roast.  I had frozen it, and with this meal in mind I pulled it out last night.  Then, because I knew I needed some wheat tortillas to make the wraps, I went to the grocery store with the kids right after work.  

We found some crazy cheap chicken, coincidentally on sale; this pack was $3.34.  We also got this can of mixed veggies for 69 cents, this "romaine lettuce head" for 98 cents (yeah!) 2 lbs of onions for 88 cents (yeah!) and the tortillas for $2 (not so yeah...)  Salad dressing is $2 a bottle this week - not a fantastic price, but not bad.)

I put two pots of water on the stove.  In one, for the stew, I put 3 bullion cubes, about 2/3 of the beef, the can of veggies (which was almost ALL carrots, so I added these peas.  Then, because I couldn't leave well enough alone, I added onions (diced the smallest one out of the bag)  and corn.)



In the other pot, I put 2 of the 3 chicken breasts (third in the freezer) and set the timer so they could boil.  Then I diced the onion, mentioned above, and put half of it in the stew, saving the other half for the wraps.

To make the wraps, I put down a tortilla, some dressing, a single leaf (they were big), more dressing, and some meat, mixed with dressing and diced onions.

Then, I wrapped it up and sliced it into "snails",
turning them on their side and "displaying" them.  I made four wraps: One beef and honey mustard, one chicken and ranch, one chicken and thousand island, and one chicken and ranch with no onion, for my youngest.









Instead of putting each wrap on a plate for each one of us, because I knew that was too big of a serving for my kids, I put some of each wrap on a serving platter and had each kid pick 3 "snails" to go with their soup.  (It might not seem like much, but each full sized wrap made 6 snails, so 3 was half of a wrap, or a kids' serving).  Emily took four, "because they're delicious."

And she's right.

The soup was good but my oldest just does not photograph well.

Dessert was full-sized candy bars, purchased on sale (50 cents each) the day after Halloween and masterfully hidden for a full week, but eventually discovered when I pulled them out to get one for myself.

Our total for tonight is: 2/3 of $3.34 chicken, or $2.23.  4 leaves off a 98 cent head of lettuce, lets call it 10 cents, a few Tbsp of different salad dressings, which cost $2 a bottle, so 50 cents, max, 1 onion out of an 88 cent bag (of six) = 15 cents, 69 cent can veggies, a little bit of frozen peas/corn to fill out the stew, call it 50 cents max, 3 out of 25 boullion cubes, which cost $1.59 a container, or 19 cents, and 50 cent candy bars x family of 4 = $2 dessert, bringing our total to: $6.36

This is good mom! Bunnies LOVE carrots!

not goulash, yes pumpkin

Editor's note: Ok, so one of the reasons I was hesitant about this project (crazy cheap dinner, that is) is because I knew that, eventually, I would run out of recipes.  But (shock and awe!) I haven't yet made goulash.  My daughter pulled out my copy of Rachel Ray's Family cookbook, Yum-O! a few days ago, and opened it up to the garlic-filled Ghoul-ash, and asked if we could please please please make this?  I said sure, (love the pun!) but we'd wait until tonight and use my mother's recipe, not Rachel Ray's.  Just the same, I read hers and it sounds... um...very different from every other goulash ever made.  Right down to the dill and pimentos.  So I got out all the ingredients for my mother's super-delicious goulash:  

Yep, that's it.  Top-cut hamburger made from locally grown beef, probably $5 a pound in a store, so that's what I'll call it.  For me it was free.  Have I said I LOVE my hometown?   The rotini was $1 a box and I only used about 2/3 of the box.  The onions were previously calculated at 14 cents each, and the can of tomatoes was $1.49 but I ended up not using it.  Which is why I can't really call this goulash, since to me, goulash always includes diced tomatoes.



So, I started by putting on some water to boil the rotini, thawing out the burger in the microwave, and then putting it in my large skillet to cook.  I diced half the onion (other half in the fridge) and put that in with the burger.  I expected to have lots of drippings to brown the onion, but this was apparently top-TOP-cut burger, because there was none.  I mean, maybe an eighth of a teaspoon of grease from the whole pound but basically, NONE.  I didn't want it to dry out so I added 1/2 cup or so of water.  Without really knowing why, I added a bullion cube.  ???  Who knows ???    I added the rotini to the water and turned down the heat on the burger meat  to medium, and set the timer for 6 minutes (I like my pasta medium-well).  I couldn't get the idea of dill out of my head, so after some (very) quick decision-making, I sprinkled on 1/2 teaspoon of dill before any other spices.  So all that was in the pan was burger, 1 bullion cube, some water (mostly evaporated already) onion, and dill.  And at this point, it smelled delcious.  I mean, so, sooooooo good.  And I just couldn't dump tomatoes on top of that delciousness.  It would be culinary murder.  So even though I've already done beef bechamel, I did it again.  I scooped out the burger meat (and onions) and set it on a plate, added a cup of milk, another bullion cube and another half-teaspoon or so of dill, let it reach a boil, and mixed in some flour to thicken it up.  Then I put the burger and pasta in the sauce, and mixed it all up.  Mmmmmmm....

As a side, I just took 1 cup of frozen pumpkin meat, microwaved it, and added salt and pepper.  In less than 20 minutes from beginning to end, we had dinner for four.

The kids were fairly skeptical about the pumpkin meat.  My oldest said straight up that he would not eat it.  I insisted that everyone try some.  They all ate their pasta first.  In case you forgot, it was the opposite the first time I served this: everyone ate their vegetables first, because they didn't want to try this strange pasta concoction...

 And my youngest drowned his pumpkin in salt and pepper before he'd even touch it.

In the end, everyone ate what was on their plates, but they requested that I only put pumpkin in desserts from now on, and never, never cook it this way again.

But we all LOVED the non-goulash.  

Dessert was halloween candy, and the calculation here is easy:  The most expensive candy is the mini-bars, and at DG, they're 8 for $1.  So I told the kids to take 2 pieces each, and I knew that it would be at most a dollar.  My oldest actually declined dessert.  He wanted to leave the table and go build with legos.  I took 2 mini candy bars, and my other 2 kids gladly ate their brother's share.





So, our total for tonight is: $5 top-notch burger (Free for me, but I'm special) + 67 cents rotini (2/3 of a $1 box) + 7 cents onion (half of 14 cents) + $1 dessert + 23 cents (1 cup milk) + 50 cents (2 bullion cubes and 1 teaspoon of dill) + 80 cents that I would pay for 1 can of canned vegetables, even though my kids didn't like the pumpkin meat anyway...

= $8.27

So, again, sorry I didn't make the tomato-y goulash.  But this was friggin delicious.

Actually, I am not sorry at all.

sloppy joes and seasoned potato wedges

 

So one of the recipes I've been keeping to myself is my mother's recipe for sloppy joes.  These things are so, so tasty they may just change your mind about sloppy joes for the rest of your life.  In my daughter's words, "These are much better than the school sloppy joes, Mom."  So, Friday night, I assembled my ingredients and got started, dessert first.  As usual.

 

This recipe for peanut butter no bake cookies is the best I've ever found, and I can't even give proper credit to my source because I copied it down in my recipe file over a year ago and no longer remember my source.  But here it is:  First, I assemble all six ingredients.  Then, because speed is the key to nobakes (you don't want them solidifying in the pot or over or under cooking) I measure out in the following manner:  In the pan itself, I put 1/4 cup (which is also 1/2 a stick) of margarine and 1/2 cup of milk, which I put on medium heat until the butter is melted.  

 

While that's happening, I measure out my 3 cups of oats and put them aside in a large tumbler, and stir two cups of sugar into the milk/butter combo, dissolving it completely.  I then turn up the heat on the pan to a medium-high and set the timer for four minutes.  In that four minutes, I measure out 1 full cup of peanut butter and 1 tsp vanilla.  I also set aside a cookie sheet with waxed paper on it, keeping the waxed paper handy (you'll need about 3 sheets).  Also, I stir it a couple of times so that the sugar/milk/margarine doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.  When your timer goes, your sugar/milk/margarine should be at a rolling boil.  If not, keep it on until it is, then let it boil about a minute more. 
 

 

Remove the pot from the heat and stir in quickly your peanut butter until smooth (beat it like fudge) and your 3 cups oats, then spoon quickly onto the waxed paper, putting paper between each layer of cookies.  Then put another sheet of paper (or another cookie sheet, or both) on top of the whole shebang, and put it in the fridge to cool.  The top layer helps prevent any potential in-fridge spills, of which there are surprisingly many in my household. 

 

These cookies are large (you can make them as large or small as you like) about twice the size of an oreo.  And there were 22.  But before they were even cool I ate one.  So we'll say this recipe made 21.

 

 

Then, I started dinner: I pulled out a 1-lb bag of burger (I had bought a 2.8-lb family pack and split it into 3 baggies for freezing) but realized that it looked small in my pan, so I added another (and was rewarded for my efforts with plenty of leftovers).  While the burger was browning I diced an onion (recipe calls for one small but I only had "medium-sized" ones so at first I only diced half, but with the extra burger added the other half) and pre-heated the oven to 375 for the potato wedges.  A good rule-of-thumb is one large or 1.5 medium potatoes for an adult serving.  I used one large and three medium.

The wedges were easy: slice the potatoes "long ways" into halves, then slant your knife and cut each half into "wedge" shapes.  The "medium" potatoes I cut the halves into four wedges each; the larger potoato I cut each half into six wedges.  That gave me 36 potato wedges.  I put them on a cookie sheet, sprayed that sucker with butter flavor cooking spray (generic Pam) and seasoned them; half the tray with "cajun" and half the tray with "italian".  I did it this way because (1) my oldest doesn't like the "cajun" and (2) after half the tray, my "cajun" was gone.

Then, into the oven. 

By now, the burger was done and so were the onions.  I didn't have a lot of grease because this was "quality" burger, but if you do have a lot of grease, this is where you drain it off.  Now, I add the rest of the sauce to the burger, in the same pan: 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup catsup, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup vinegar, 1/8 cup (or 2 Tbsp) mustard, and 1/8 cup worcestire sauce.  Stir it all together, put a lid on it, and turn the heat down to simmer.  Set your timer for 10 minutes and check on the potatoes.  If they need stirred, make sure you re-spray and re-spice them.  If they're done, they're done.  The sloppy joes should simmer for a minimum of 10 minutes to really soak up the flavor.  If they start to dry out, add more water and stir.  (I would also add that 25 minutes is kind of a "maximum" time, too.  If you cook them any longer, you're not going to get any more flavor, and you're just prolonging the deliciousness for no good reason.)

My oldest was really

tentative at first...

But then
he devoured his food




I've already said that
my daughter enjoyed the meal

And once he pulled out all of his onions,
my youngest enjoyed his meal, too.




Surprisingly, we each only ate one cookie. 
They were quite large, but that doesn't usually stop us.




Now, for the totals: 
The burger was $1.98/lb and I used 2/3 of a 2.8-lb family pack, which makes the cost of tonight's burger meat $3.70.  A single onion (1/7 of a 98-cent 3-lb bag) was 14 cents, and 4 potatoes (out of 15 in a $1.98 5-lb bag) was 53 cents.  Let's assume 25 cents for an ounce or two of generic Pam and some seasonings.  Let's also assume 50 cents for the combined cost of catsup, sugar, worcester and vinegar in the sloppy joes. That makes the "dinner" part of tonight $5.12.

The no-bakes are tricky to calculate, but I'll do my best: 1/2 stick of margarine (depends how much it is when on sale - can range from 59 cents on a dollar saver at Costas to 99 cents to $2.50 if you buy a brand name, I'm gonna go "middle of the road" and assume $1.29/pk, or 1/2 stick = 16 cents.  If milk is $3.60/gallon, then 1/2 cup = 11 cents.  If peanut butter is $2.50 a jar than 1 cup = (roughly half) $1.25.  If oats is $1.85 at DG for a "small" container (which, according to the label, contains 13 servings of 1/2 cup each, then 3 cups cost 86 cents.  The cost of a teaspoon of vanilla is negligible; let's assume 10 cents.  The cost of 2 cups of sugar when a $2 (4-lb) bag contains (according to the product label) 454 teaspoons.  Seriously?  Well, I wasn't a math major for nothin'...  Ok, so there are 3.5 teaspoons in 1 Tbsp, and 16 Tbsp in a cup, which tells me that 4-lb bag contains about 8.11 cups.  So each cup cost 24.67 cents and 2 cups cost 49 cents.  Which is about what I would've guessed anyway... But now I know.

So this batch of 22 (ahem) or 21 very large no-bakes cost 16 cents margarine, 11 cents milk, $1.25 peanut butter, 86 cents oats, 10 cents vanilla, and 49 cents sugar, which makes them 14.14 cents per cookie.  Like I said, we only ate four with dinner last night.  In fact, we still have some, which in this house is nothing short of miraculous.

So $5.12 dinner + 4 times 14.14 cents cookies = $5.69

 

And did I mention there were left-overs? 

There were left-overs, so I'm billing this dinner as "under $5"

 

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.

(not beer) battered fish

So I wanted something fast and easy, and I found the last of this crazy cheap fish in my deep freezer the other day, so I had planned on making beer battered fish.  Now, I don't usually have beer in the house but I thought for sure one of my friends or neighbors nearby would have at least one can to sell me.  And I didn't want to buy a six-pack just for this.  So I searched around for a recipe for just "battered fish".  There wasn't one in any of my five cookbooks, but I found this beauty on the internet.  The batter was not as light and fluffy as it would have been with the beer, but the only alternative would've been dragging all 3 kids into a bar  to get a six pack, or into the beer distributor to buy a case.  Not. Gonna. Happen.

 So I thawed the fish and decided to slice an onion and make battered onion rings.  All you do is mix: 1 cup flour, 1/4 cup baking powder (yes, CUP), 1 tsp salt, 1/2 cup milk and 1/2 cup water.  Mix it thoroughly, and dredge your fish and onion rings through it.  Now, the online recipe said to fry them in a pan of oil.  I just turned on my deep fryer and fried them there.  Should've done them in a pan.  Why?  Because any molecules of loose batter are now semi-permanantly stuck to my deep fryer basket.  And the edges where it initially boiled over.  By the way, only takes 3 minutes on 375 for the fish, 2 for the onion rings.

So in five minutes of cooking (and roughly 10 of prep) I had a complete meal for my kids.  Only I realized the boys might not eat the onion rings.  So I made some broccoli (about 1/3 of a bag) for the boys.  It's healthier anyway.  It turns out everyone had some of everything.  Which is fine by me.

All done, mom!  What's for dessert?

When the broccoli was cooking in the microwave (a little butter and garlic salt, nuke for 3 1/2 minutes, and voila!) I stirred up some instant butterscotch pudding:  2 cups milk and 1 packet of pudding mix, stir for 2 minutes, pour into tupperware (or in my case, dixie cups) and chill.  By the time we were done eating, the pudding was ready.

So our total for tonight was: $3.29 for 1 pound of crazy cheap fish, 2 onions (out of a 98 cent pack of 7 onions) 28 cents, 1/3 pack of frozen broccoli (1.88/pk) for 63 cents, 2 1/2 cups milk (55 cents), one pack instant pudding (50 cents), and probably another 50 cents worth of flour and baking soda, giving us a total of $5.75

And there was enough left over to give a full adult serving to my neighbors.

Even though they didn't have any beer.

ShakeNBake (Sort of) and Squash Pie (Really)

 

 

Again, I know I've been doing a LOT of chicken here, but the kids wanted some tonight, and I was in the mood for something quick.  I used some more of these crazy cheap drumsticks. 

I didn't actually have any "shake N bake", but I had these bread crumbs which I mixed with generic Italian seasoning, then just dragged the thawed drumsticks through the now-seasoned bread crumbs. I baked them in the oven on a cookie sheet at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, until the crumbs were browned and the chicken peeled easily off the bone (and I could see it wasn't pink inside.  That helps, too.)
 

 I had this corn on the cob that someone had given to me,

which I boiled for 12 minutes to beautiful perfection. 

 

 

The squash pie I actually made several days ago, and it's been sitting in my fridge.  So I cut smaller slices for the kids and a large slice for myself, and heated it up for a few seconds in the microwave, and, well, the kids didn't like it at all.  I, personally, loved it.  I think the kids didn't like it because it looks like a fruit pie, like apples or pears, and it tastes like squash.  I mean, technically I guess squash is a fruit.  Only it's not, according to my younglings.

So I ended up eating 2 1/2 servings of pie, and they didn't have any dessert because in this house, you get what you get.  By the way, I just used my favorite apple pie recipe and substituted squash for the apples.  This is also super-duper good with zucchini, but for that, I use a pear pie recipe.

 

Total for tonight: cooked 10 crazy cheap drumsticks, (kids ate 2 each, I ate 4) purchased at the almost unbelievable price of $2.31. Three ears of corn (free for me, gift from my ex's grandma, only 3 because I ate a whole one and broke the others in half, then I ate the remaining extra half as well.) which would cost $1.99 if you bought them right now from the grocery store, so we'll call it that.  The pie, again, was free, excluding the sugar, flour, cinnamon, and crisco, but which would cost a MAX of $2, and we (meaning me) ate less than half the pie, or $1 worth.  SO: $2.31 + $1.99 + $1 = $5.30 

TANSTAAFL, folks.