Yesterday was all about cooking in bulk. For two reasons. One, so I don't have to cook everyday and every meal and two, to use scraps. The first project was eggplant lasagna. Still thinking veggie meals. Have a few planned to help balance out our already mentioned recent meat overabundance. Eggplant is a great vegetable to use as a substitute for meat in many recipes. It can be roasted, baked, fried and stewed. Dan makes a mean ratatouille with it and I like to use it with tofu to make a vegetarian Filipino adobo.
For the lasagna, the eggplant was sliced into half inch rounds and then was quickly browned with the barest of oil just coating the pan. Eggplant loves to absorb oil and since I didn't want to use alot and have my lasagna be too oily, I just put in enough to coat the saute pan. Then it was simply one of the layers in the baking pan along with pre-cooked lasagna noodles, ricotta mixed with egg, mozzerella cheese and tomato sauce.
The tomato sauce was just a store bought jar. Frankly, it's too sweet of a sauce but we're going on the 'beggars can't be choosers' mentality on this one. I tend to be a label reader too. So at the very least I pay attention to whether or not the sauce I buy is full of ingredients I can understand and facts like the carbohydrate type and sodium content.
Covered in foil, the lasagna was baked in a preheated 375 degree oven for 30 minutes, then the foil was removed and more cheese was layered on top and it was put back into the oven until the cheese was browned to my liking. We've cut the pan of yummy lasagna into 8 portions, which will be eaten for various meals over the week. That's 4 meals for each of us assuming we share equally. Total cost is $7.39. that's $0.92 per portion. Better believe it!
So I also made some chicken stock. One of the things culinary school taught me is that it's always good to make your own chicken stock. There are some decent BROTHS out there in the market. I personally like to go to Whole Foods for broth when I need to. And still would even on the extreme budget we're on. Sounds crazy, right? I mean, it's Whole Foods. They are a huge promoter of selling healthy and organic and environmentally conscious products, which I like, but they tend to be on the pricey side. Tend to be. They have a few products that are worth going there for because, surprisingly, they're cheaper than anywhere else. One of those things is their 365 Everday Organic Broth. I always get the low sodium. And it is cheaper than any other broth I've seen at a regular grocery store, it's lower in sodium, it's organic understandable ingredients and it tastes good. But I've digressed.
Chicken stock! Make it! Why? It's economical and easy. It uses scraps, in this case the raw bones from whole chickens I'd used previously in the week and had stored in the freezer. You get to control the sodium content, meaning there's none added to it to begin with. You can add what you want later when you use it to cook. The bones provide gelatin, something lacking in most store bought broths. Gelatin gives homemade stocks a mouth feel to your soups and sauces that you can't get from a broth. In general, you just know what you put in it. All that's in a basic stock - chicken bones and pieces like chicken wings, carrots, celery, onion, peppercorn, bay leaf, thyme parsley and alot of water. Throw it all in a big pot and let it simmer for a minimum 3 hours. I ended up with 3 quarts of reduced stock, useable in the future.
And then there was the bonus. As I was pulling the chicken carcasses out of the pot last night to strain the stock, I noticed all the little bits of meat still on the bones. Now granted, most of the flavor has been pulled out of them, but I needed to try anyway. So, after I had strained the stock and put it back on the stove to reduce (something I do just so it doesn't take up as much storage space), I sat down and picked all the meat off the bones. I then made a simple chicken salad out of it adding mayo, mustard, honey, celery and S&P. I admit, it's not phenomenal. In fact, I'd just call it edible. People who like canned tuna or chicken, I bet they'd love it. But, like I said, edible and once again we go back to the "beggars can't be choosers" mentality. Going to have to acronym-ize that. "BCBC".
And extra bonus! Dan came home from work last night with two boxes of FREE CRACKERS! It was kismet. So we have stock stocked away and chicken salad to fill out the week with little snacks and meals as well, all at a total cost of $3.15.
We add in the sausage, eggs and rice we had for breakfast, and the leftover refried beans and tortilla chips we had for lunch and the total cost for the day was $12.90. But remember! A couple meals for a couple days!
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