Dinner Tonight: New Year's Feast!

Tonight we ate the year's most anticipated meal, usually served at Christmas but delayed by a week this time around.

• Appetizers: Rotel dip w/chicken & cilantro - my mom's specialty; puff pastries from Costco; Christmas cookies (I made these this morning & people snacked on them throughout the day - jam thumbprints, Russian teacakes and cranberry almond bark)
• Salad: I like to call it the "Hen House" salad since it is basically a bunch of ingredients from their salad bar. My mom makes homemade vinaigrette dressing to go with it, but the best part is the cheese tortellini (we're having this for dinner as a main course next week with chicken added for extra protein)
• Side Dish 1: Vegetable gratin (this link might not work since you have to log in to access it - but trust me it's worth registering to get it) - technically this is supposed to be a summer dish but I think it's the best vegetable dish I've ever had and would eat it any time of year. It's supposed to have a combination of zucchini and yellow squash, but we just used zucchini. It is combined with a garlic-thyme olive oil, topped with caramelized onions and tomatoes, more garlic-thyme oil then baked and later topped with bread crumbs, shallots & Parmesan cheese and baked some more to make the top crusty.
• Side Dish 2: Sauteed potatoes - I learned how to make these in my one semester of culinary school. The first time I made them they almost didn't make it to the table since they were being eaten right out of the pan as soon as they were ready! We haven't made them in years because they are a bit time-consuming and have to be served very fresh. We had almost forgotten just how good they were - it was the first time hubby had tried them and now he wants to know why we don't have them all the time! We probably will have to now! They are supposed to be cut into a fancy "tournee" but chunks or wedges are easier and taste just the same. Peel 2 small yellow potatoes (i.e. Yukon Gold) per person. Cut into uniform chunks or wedges. Place in pot and cover with water, bring to a boil and cook until tender but not yet falling apart. Heat half-inch of peanut oil in large skillet over high heat. Add potatoes to oil and cook until brown on one side, turn and cook until brown on all remaining sides. Drain on paper towels and sprinkle liberally with salt while still hot.
• Main Dish: Prime rib, w/Paula Dean's house seasoning. We actually just use a standing rib roast and call it prime rib - technically not "prime" but good enough. Thanks to living in the beef capital of the world (I just proclaimed that - wonder where it officially is?), we get really good beef at our local grocery store for really reasonable prices. Still, this dinner cost about $80 in meat alone, though we fed 8 people and had excessive amounts of leftovers. For comparison, a heat-and-eat prime rib dinner for 2 from our local grocery store costs $35 or $17.50/serving, so I think we came out a lot better than that. For some reason the roast took a really long time to cook, but the wait was worth it. The seasoning combines with the little bit of fat on the outside and makes this garlicky, crackly crust of goodness.
• Condiment: Horseradish sauce, inspired by Ina Garten's recipe here. I use the same ingredients as she does, but vary the quantities. This time I only used about 1/4 cup of mayonnaise and about 1 cup of sour cream, combined with about a tablespoon each of grainy and Dijon mustard, and about 2 tablespoons of prepared horseradish. The amounts are guesstimates, I just keep adding things until I like how it tastes. This year it was apparently the best it's ever been, since even my brother asked for the recipe and as far as I know he never even cooks.
• Dessert: Pecan pie and cranberry-apple crumble. My mom made the desserts and they were a hit, but I only tried the pecan pie. I almost didnt' get a chance since apparently people were snacking on it at lunchtime - good thing she made two. The pie was good but I was still so full I think my taste buds were on overload and didn't really enjoy it like they usually would.

All in all this was a really successful and tasty meal - definitely a good way to start off the year and hopefully we'll get to finish it in a similar fashion with the same dinner next Christmas!

Dinner Tonight: Jack Stack To-Go

Tonight we had a family NYE dinner @ my mom's featuring Jack Stack to go. It was tasty but would have been much better fresh. Good thing hubby's grandparents gave us a gift card for Christmas so we can go enjoy it sometime soon!
We had brisket, ribs, sausage, baked beans & hubby requested an order of fries which he graciously shared with me. I have always said that fries are my biggest weakness and without them I might actually be able to be skinny!
My mom also finally made the ham and rice pilaf we were supposed to have for Christmas dinner. All of my family made it safely to town despite the weather doing it's best to stop them. We are so tired of snow and cold!

Dinner Tonight: Boneless Buffalo Wings

One of our favorite places to eat out is Buffalo Wild Wings. They make really good wings, both boneless and regular. Contrary to my mom's belief, bonelss wings are not actually wings with the bones removed. They are more like chicken nuggets tossed in wing sauce, little bites of white meat chicken breaded and deep-fried.
I have an aversion to using my deep fryer since it makes the house smell like grease for days, so I have never attempted to make my own buffalo wings. Since we aren't eating out much, we basically just have to live without them or eat alternatives like Buffalo Chicken Pizza.
When I went to Hen House's Holiday Open House, they had their deli's boneless wings available as part of their samples. They were pretty tasty, and I thought they'd be a good thing to grab for dinner but they were around $7/lb which seemed pretty high. So, when I saw they were on sale this week for $4/lb I decided to put them on the menu.
I bought a little over a pound (the amount that fit in the quart-sized container). The instructions said to microwave for 1-2 minutes until hot, but I thought they'd be too soggy if I did that. Instead, I put them in the oven while it was preheating to make the fries. The fries had to cook at 450 degrees so I didn't want them to be in that high of an oven for fear that they would burn or dry out, so I removed them once it was preheated and stuck them back in for the last couple of minutes to make sure they were nice and hot.
The sauce that they use is a bit sweet but fairly good. My favorite sauce at Buffalo Wild Wings is the Spicy Garlic and it is much better, but for the price I think these were worth it. It was also worth it to not have to attempt to fry them myself.
I just served with fries, celery & blue cheese for dipping.

--------------------------------

Estimated cost of meal

Chicken: $4.55
Fries: $1.25
Celery: $.50
Blue Cheese: $.20

Total: $6.50

Former life total: Dinner @ Buffalo Wild Wings: $30

Leaner Life Savings: $23.50 or 78%!!!

Dinner Tonight: Baked French Toast

I had really high hopes for this dinner, but unfortunatly it did not live up to them. In the past, I have always burned French toast and it never turns out that well. When I stumbled across a recipe that suggested baking it instead of pan-frying or using a griddle, I thought that could be the solution to all of my problems! I started by making a custard with milk, eggs, sugar, syrup, vanilla, salt and cinnamon. Then, I drenched the slices of French bread in the custard and let sit in a buttered casserole dish "overnight" or in my case all day while I was at work.
The recipe said to bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees, flip the pieces over and cook another 4 minutes. After I took them out to flip them, I could see the bread was still very soggy and the first side was not golden brown and crusty like I had hoped. I cooked for 10 minutes instead of 4 but it was still quite soggy. I needed to leave the house to get to a baby shower and didn't have time to wait for it to cook longer, so I ended up transferring it to a pan on the stovetop to try to crisp up the edges. This helped a bit but it was still way too soggy.
It was a valiant effort to try something new, but I think in the future we'll just have to stick to regular French toast. The flavor of the custard was actually really tasty, so I will be using similar ingredients, though probably leaving out the syrup as hubby said it was a bit too sweet for his taste.
I served with bacon and orange juice, our breakfast staples.

---------------------------------

Estimated cost of meal

Bread: $.75
Milk: $.20
Eggs: $.25
Seasonings: $.50
Bacon: $1.25
OJ: $.25

Total: $3.20

Former life total: Breakfast @ Gomer's: $18

Leaner Life Savings: $14.80 or 82%!!!

Dinner Tonight: Tuna Casserole

After three not-so-anticipated weeks on the menu, tuna casserole finally made it to our table. Hubby was not very excited about this meal because apparently the last time I made tuna casserole (probably about 2 or 3 years ago) it was a Rachael Ray Italian-style recipe and he hated it, so now he associates all tuna casseroles with that experience.

This time I didn't try to get fancy and just made a regular tuna casserole, after consulting my mother for her recipe and then tweaking it a bit for our tastes. I thought it turned out pretty good, but it was still just tuna casserole which isn't all that exciting I suppose. I'll list the recipe but to be honest I kind of made up the seasonings as I went along and the amounts are just estimates. Hubby likes it with cheese on top - I never would have tried this but it actually is kind of good. Cheese makes almost anything better.

My mom adds pimentos to hers - I knew hubby wouldn't go for that so I roasted some red pepper to eat with mine to get the same flavor (hence the strange red glob in the picture).

Tuna Casserole

2/3 lb egg noodles, cooked

Canned/pouched tuna (I used the family-size pouch since I had a coupon, about the equivalent of 1 large or 2 small cans)

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1/2 soup can milk

2 tsp dried chopped onion

1 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp hot sauce

2 tsp worcestershire sauce

1/2 tsp dried dill

1/2 tsp celery salt

Salt & pepper

1 cup potato chips, crushed

1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded (optional)

Combine all ingredients except chips and cheese. Pour in casserole dish, top with chips. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, add cheese and bake until cheese melts, about 5 minutes more.

---------------------------------

Estimated cost of meal

Noodles: $1

Tuna: $2

Soup: $.50

Milk: $.15

Spices: $.50 (??? really hard to gauge)

Chips: $.40

Cheese: $.30

Biscuits: $1

Total: $5.85

Former life total: Dinner @ Waid's (can't really think of a good comparison, so just choosing one of our old standbys): $23

Leaner Life Savings: $17.15 or 75%!!!

Menu Plan Monday - Happy New Year!

After a crazy week where nothing seemed to go as planned, here's hoping for a little less chaos this week. Oh, wait, my whole family is coming to town - that won't be happening!
Friday will mark our 3rd Christmas celebration, barring any more blizzard warnings. My whole family will be together for the first time I can remember, including the extended part such as it is (we have a very small family). In addition to my brother and sister-in-law and their kids being here as planned, we are getting an unexpected visit from my only cousin and uncle and one of my two remaining grandparents! It should be a fun and probably crazy time.

• Monday: Tuna casserole - I vow to finally make this after 2 weeks of putting it off
• Tuesday: Baked French toast (never tried this before, but I usually burn it when I try to do it in a frying pan, so hopefully this will be more successful)
• Wednesday: Boneless buffalo wings (from the deli), french fries, celery, blue cheese
• Thursday: Jack Stack BBQ w/the family @ my mom's (we were going to retry the ham/baked beans, etc from last week but my uncle requested Jack Stack)
• Friday: Christmas #3 starring prime rib, horseradish sauce, sauteed potatoes, vegetable gratin, salad & crusty bread (I look forward to this meal all year and this time don't get it until next year!)
• Saturday: Dinner out w/family or using one of our Christmas gift cards
• Sunday: Maybe another dinner out, or make-your-own pizzas

For many more menu plans, visit orgjunkie.com!

Dinner Tonight: Turkey Burgers

Yay! The snow has finally stopped for the most part and I was able to get out of the driveway and go grocery shopping. Some sense of normalcy has returned following the biggest snowstorm in seemingly forever (the first blizzard in KC since 1989!).
Tonight I made turkey burgers, using my new burger press I got for Christmas. I just season them with garlic powder, seasoning salt and pepper. As a new twist, I found some chipotle cheddar sliced cheese to put on top instead of the usual regular cheddar. It was really flavorful and added a nice heat to an otherwise fairly mundane turkey patty.
I just served with potato chips since I didn't feel like making fries, plus we're having some later in the week. I also had some baby pickles, which probably look a little odd in the picture. I got some nice pretty photogenic half pickles on sale today, but decided to use up the rest of my other jar before opening the new one. Wasn't that oh-so-frugal of me?

------------------------------

Estimated cost of meal

Turkey: $2
Buns: $1
Cheese: $.80
Toppings: $.75
Chips: $.70

Total: $5.25

Former life total: Dinner @ Five Guys: $19

Leaner Life Savings: $13.75 or 72%!!!