Lunch for Week IV

Well, with the Fall weather beginning (HA !! 80 degrees this weekend !!) I went back to making my Split Pea Soup (with Bacon this week)

It has 16 ozs of green split peas.

The instructions on the bag say not to pre-soak them, but I have found that they cook much faster after being soaked.  Overnight in this case.

1 pound of thick cut bacon fried to perfection !!!

Unfortunately, I was out of crushed red pepper flakes so I added a couple of squirts of Tabasco sauce for a little zing.

Have you ever seen anything more beautiful !!??!!

And of course, the finished product !

Peas             $ 0 .99

Bacon         $  3.99

Crackers   $ 1.00

Lunch for Week III

Made another big batch of “General Tso’s Chicken”
Made it this time with a double batch of sauce (I need to find somewhere I can buy it in bulk!!)
Also, I did not coat and fry the chicken, instead I just sauteed it.
I found a 5 pound package of chicken thighs at Jewel-Osco for .99 a pound and spent a little time in the kitchen de-boning it. (I don’t mind be the prep monkey in the kitchen)

So for the 5 pounds of chicken, I made my lunch for the week, made dinner for three, and put some in the freezer. Not to bad!!

Lunch for the week II

I was able to find the above bag of chili fixin’s at Big Lots for $2.99 and with the ground beef coming in around $3.00, this week’s lunch will run about $6.00.

I am not a big chili eater but this mix has a really good mix off spices and seasonings.

Lunch for the week I

Just for a change of pace, I did not make my usual “Split Pea & (fill in the name of a pork product) Soup”

Being the notorious cheap bastard that I am, this lunch for the week will be just under $5.00.

Normally that amount of meat would have only been 2 lunches, but I do need to lose about 20 pounds so I am going to be making a  (more) serious effort to eat less !!!

Finished product.

When using the canned vegetables, the secret is to mix them with the cooked meat, cover and remove from the heat.  That way the vegetables won’t get overcooked.  Yes, I could use fresh vegetables but sometime it’s much easier to open a can !!

Supermarket Standoff: Best Tasting Bacon

http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/686/supermarket-standoff-best-tasting-bacon/

“Carnivores, rejoice. This edition of Supermarket Standoff puts front and center the meat that claims unabashed adoration from food writers, chefs, and dudes ’round the world. Bacon has inspired large-scale festivals, questionable hygiene products, and now an international holiday. People love bacon.

A lot of it is produced in the U.S.–more than 2 billion pounds each year–which became quite clear when we were researching for this taste test. We whittled down the large volume of brands by choosing classic hickory- or applewood-smoked versions. We included both cured and uncured bacon; the latter is rising in popularity due to health-conscious baconnoisseurs. (Not-so-fun-but-at-least-educational-fact: the term “uncured” is a little misleading, since it’s meant to indicate that the bacon is free of pork-preserving sodium nitrite. But uncured bacon generally uses celery juice, which releases natural sodium nitrate and nitrite anyway.)

Some of our tasters prefer their bacon crispy and charred, while others wanted it chewy and ham-like. Whichever camp you’re in, you can be guided by both our top picks and nutritionist Marissa Lippert’s favorites.”

The grocery store that I shop at has a terrific “slab” bacon that is my favorite.