The Sunday Chef - Remix

I added a post on Sunday the 21st but took it down because I was made to realize that I would be violating copyright by posting exact recipes. But I've decided that I can still post the photos of my efforts, and if any of you want the recipe, I can email it to you. As long as the recipe is not up here for the entire world (as if) to see, I think I'm in the clear.

Anyway, I thought of the new segment, The Sunday Chef, when I was organizing my pantry, refrigerator, and freezer before going shopping on Saturday. The fewer things I needed to buy, the better, so I started taking stock. After making three lists of all the items contained in the three food-holding areas, I made a fourth list of all the dishes I could make from these things. I had a lot more options than I realized. Like everyone else, I'm trying to keep my food budget low without sacrificing quality. And, we just like good food. Still, I needed some staples, so it was off to Costco.

I bought some boneless chicken breasts, a 5-pound whole, untrimmed tenderloin, mushrooms, lettuce, coffee, and a few other things - namely fruit. I went berry wild! Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries.

We had one portion of the tenderloin, cut into steaks, for dinner that night, along with a mushroom pilaf and a salad. Did you know that a 5-pound tenderloin can be cut to make three meals? At an original cost of $50, this comes to $16.66 per meal. Divide this by four people, and each person eats for a measley $4.16. The cost for Saturday's dinner was around $24, including wine. Way cheaper than in a restaurant for the same caliber meal.

Sunday we had Yakitori, a shiitake and brown rice soup, and a carrot salad - all Japanese-themed. For dessert, the berries! I made a berry tart. It was very simple, and the recipe came from a magazine that I bought at Costco, too. The recipe calls for puff pastry, cream cheese, vanilla, sugar, cinnamon, jelly or jam, and berries.

Ingredients

All that got turned into this:

The Final Product

Everything but the cream cheese and the puff pastry came from Costco, although one can purchase cream cheese there. About 10 pounds of it; but since we wanted to save a little room in our arteries for the fat in the puff pastry to go straight to our hearts, we decided against it.

In any event, if you want any of the recipies, let me know. Maybe we can start a recipe swap. See you next week on The Sunday Chef!