Can I have a home cooked meal for $5.00?
With the cost of everything shooting up I have been looking a lot closer at what I am spending and trying to find ways to cut the costs. As I sat thinking about this while the TV droned in the background, a commercial for a national chain of sandwich shops came on. they were touting their $5.00 dollar foot long sandwiches and I decided to see what I could come up with for $5.00 dollars. I went shopping at the local grocery store in town and went to Wal-mart as well. I came up with a couple of different simple dishes that I think are more satisfying than a foot long sandwich and will feed 2 to 4 people.
Pasta with tuna, red wine and capers
In the event that I came off as a total food snob when I referred to baked ziti as plebian (even though I think it’s completely delicious!), here’s one of our favorite recipes that most food snobs wouldn’t even consider making (because there’s canned tuna in it). We did, however, serve it to a food snob far more snobby than the likes of me, and it was a well-loved meal.
About 7000 years ago, or something closer to fifteen years, I acquired a fun little cookbook by Barbara Russo called Quick and Easy Elegant Pasta (long since out of print, unfortunately for you!). It’s all true. The recipes are so simple to make, with few ingredients yet lots of flavor, and there really is something distinctly elegant about each recipe. Whether an ingredient or a combination of ingredients, an interesting method or presentation, there’s something special about each of these recipes.
Over the years, her recipe for linguine with tuna and red wine has morphed into something revered in our household, both for the amazing base recipe Ms. Russo created, but also because we have altered it to suit our ever-changing culinary sensibilities.
John’s burritos will make you feel like a cheater – Recipe Test Drive
It’s embarrassing, it really is. I call myself a cook, yet I made this ridiculously easy meal for dinner tonight and we all fell over ourselves loving it. It feels a little wrong, like I cheated on cooking a dinner. There’s something not quite right about a meal with essentially four ingredients, but somehow it worked for us tonight.
John’s burritos consisted of the tortilla, ground meat (we used grass fed beef), a can of re-fried beans and cheese. I know, I could hardly believe it either, but nothing in it sounded gross, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.
Chocolate coconut milk ice cream – pardon my drool
As I sit down to my laptop, I am unconvinced as to whether I will even be able to write this post. As soon as I start describing the homemade ice cream we made tonight, I’m sure I’ll be running to the freezer — multiple times — to snitch from the double-batch I made. Yeah, this post will never get done unless I exercise extreme self control.
You really, really cannot imagine how good this chocolate coconut milk ice cream is. Sure, you’re probably out there crying me a river because Owen and I can’t eat a lot of dairy without getting sick, sick, sick. I surely don’t feel bad for us — we’re in frozen dessert heaven.
Cucumber tomato salad with fresh basil – Fresh Foodie
Join Debbie as she raves about whole foods, rants about chemicals and generally celebrates cooking and eating with fresh, local, nutritious foods. And sometimes she might get a little feisty….
Sometimes you’ve got to make a basic dish, one that celebrates all there is to love about freshly harvested food. Can I just brag about our cucumbers for a moment? Or should I say cucumber, because it’s the only one we’ve gotten off of our pathetic plant this year, but I do believe it was the best cucumber I’ve ever tasted in my life — no, not just because we grew it. It was superiorly crunchy (even compared with two local farms’ cucumbers) and juicy and had a distinctive “snap” when you bit into it. Perfect.
Something special had to come of the magical cucumber. We tend to just eat what we pick as close to immediately as humanly possible, though cucumbers thwart us with their thick, tough skin. Which was a good thing, in this case, because it was still around to make a simple side dish that was so fresh and yummy and actually highlighted the perfect texture of my prized cucumber.
French fries, oven-roasted and crunchy as all get out
I’m sure you’ve fallen into the same trap with your kids. No matter how healthy you try to be, as soon as they’re old enough to start ordering their own food at restaurants, they discover the kids’ meals… and the French fries. I really have a bone to pick with pretty much every restaurant in the northern hemisphere, because if they didn’t celebrate the French fry as a vegetable, then perhaps children across America would be eating more broccoli.
Nevertheless, the four-year-old loves French fries, so we give him French fries, often and in great, heaping quantities. But stop! Before you report me to the Department of Social Services, we make him oven-roasted potatoes cut in the shape of French fries, and he doesn’t know the difference. And yes, mine are as crunchy — sometimes crunchier — than the deep-fried versions at your local watering hole… uh, I mean restaurant where you’d appropriately take your kid. Yep, that’s what I mean.
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Broccoli with leeks and manchego – Do More with Less
Gourmet cooking doesn’t have to entail hours of cooking with a list of ingredients longer than your normal grocery list. Create meals bursting with complex flavors that will please every food snob in your life, easily.
I am a huge fan of the side dish. It doesn’t take much to give a side dish a little something special, and it makes the whole meal better when your sides have their own flavors. I could have just steamed my broccoli tonight, but instead I added just a few ingredients and gave it a personality all its own.
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