Skillet Cheeseburger and Oven-Baked Fries

A simple cheeseburger made just to have some extremely addictive Oven-Baked Fries!

I went to my local Target, now a SuperTarget, after work in hopes of finding something that sounded good to have for dinner. No luck.

When ready to cross the lot to my truck, I decided to make a quick swing into Henry's Market. I smelled meat grilling in the air and did not want to eat fast food so made a last-ditch effort to prevent my truck going into a drive-thru.

I wandered the store and nothing sounded reasonable as far as time or taste was concerned. Until I saw that ground beef was on sale for $1.99/lb. Normally, I buy ground beef for $2.49/lb at Costco. And I had a potato at home...fries sounded really good. Burger and fries? Oh most definitely.

I swung through the fresh bread section and snagged a bag of buns.

Then a tomato.

At home, I divided the beef into Ziploc freezer bags and saved enough to make a couple thin large patties, generously salted and peppered.

Taking turns, each patty was fried in a hot cast-iron skillet. First on one side taking care not to press on the patty (that'll only force the juices out and I wanted a moist burger!). Once the top of the patty was nearly covered in a pool of red juices and the edges browned, the patty was flipped.

Immediately the second patty was carefully covered in highly-expensive cheese. The first patty was allowed to cool and then refrigerated for lunch.

Meanwhile a bun was split open and allowed to broil until nicely browned.

The bun was dressed with ketchup, mustard, diced onion, pickle, mayo, lettuce and the fresh tomato before the cheesy beef was placed smack in the middle.

Mmm. Oh yeah, good, really good with the fries*. So, so very glad I didn't give in to the drive thru. Mmm. Yeah.

Cost:

• beef: $0.40
• bun: $0.37
• fixin's: $0.50

Total: $1.27 for the burger; $0.15 for the fries. Dinner tonight? $1.42!

*The first time I made fries for one, I used one Russet potato and a too large baking sheet, resulting in too-baked fries. This time, I used one Russet potato in a 7x11" baking dish and they came out perfectly!

Samyang Ramen

Ramen, ready to eat straight from the pan.

Without a food plan for the week, I turned to a regular staple in my pantry, Samyang Ramen. I buy cases of the stuff. And in each case are 20 of these packages:

Dad calls this the "geriatric" ramen as it is not insanely spicy-hot.

I get water, 500 cc or about 2 cups, on to boiling over a high flame. While waiting for the boil to become raging, I open the package and get the veggie and seasoning packets ready. And I'll grab an egg from the fridge.


Once the water is at a dangerous looking boil, I add the brick of noodles, followed immediately by the veggie and spice packet components.


After a couple minutes, I flip the noodle brick.


And add an egg.


As soon as the egg is cooked completely, the heat is shut off. The ramen stands a minute or two to cool off and the noodles to finish cooking.

This entire procedure takes about 7 minutes. If it takes you 10 minutes, you have a crap stove-top or have overcooked your egg/noodles. Please don't do that.

Dinner like this runs about $1.

Blackened Salmon and Cast Iron Grill Pan Asparagus

Blackened Salmon and some "grilled" asparagus

Dinner tonight was on the fly as I didn't have any sort of a clue what to make. No plan this week. And that's because I went golfing when I normally make my plan. I can't say "oops" as I knew this would happen.

One last frozen salmon filet in the freezer from Costco (when did I buy this salmon?  Is it possible it's from...no, it can't be!) some questionable, week-old, asparagus in the fridge. Oh yeah, that's dinner.

I prepared the salmon as I did last time, but used a cast iron pan, which certainly cooked the fish a lot more quickly than my non-stick -- heat was reduced quickly to low. And the asparagus I did on the grill pan with the butter leftover from the fish.

Not spectacular, but a nice change from what I've been eating lately. Think pizza and lasagna. Yep, nice change.

Dinner was about $4 (just a SWAG) and done in less than 30 minutes.

Grocery List, Week of 080810

This week's plan is non-existent. I have no intention of going to the store for groceries.  I'm going to be scraping stuff together based on what I have in the kitchen cupboards, buying pizza, eating a lot of lasagna or stopping at the store regularly to concoct something to eat.

081010, HMart

• Rainbow Roll (for lunch): $6.99
• California Roll: $3.99
• TOTAL: $10.98

081210, Henry's Market:

• ground beef, 85% lean: $5.93 @ 1.99/lb
• hamburger buns: $2.99/14 oz or pack of 8
• romaine lettuce: $0.88/head
• tomato on the vine: $0.62/0.41 lb
• pineapple: $2.99 ea
• orangedew melon: $1.80/5.41 lb
• TOTAL: $15.21

081310, Stater Bros.:

• russet potato: $0.40 @ $0.99/lb
• Vlassic hamburger dill pickles: $3.49
• TOTAL: $3.89

Grand Total: $30.08

Chef Salad-ish-ish

Deviating even further from a Chef Salad, I made Chef Salad-ish with carrots substituted for tomatoes, dressed with some Italian. 

Tell you what, it still tasted damn good.

Round Table Pizza

Round Table large King Arthur Supreme

After a week of eating Chef Salad-ish salads and roast beef sandwiches or wraps for dinner, I wanted something else. Being Friday, a pizza was called for, even though I had pizza regularly for lunch.

I prefer to buy from Mom and Pop sort of places, but I'll be honest. I had a bit of a buzz-on and driving was not to be done on my part. So I called Round Table, a chain located strictly on the west side of the US of A (including HI and AK), that I knew with certainty would deliver to my apartment. That's what chains do, right?

After ordering a King Arthur's Supreme, I chatted with Rodney on the phone. The pie was delivered right around the 45 minutes specified.

It came in this box.

And it looked like this when I opened said box.

Sure enough, there were pepperoni, Italian sausage, Italian dry salami, linguica, white mushrooms, green peppers, yellow onions, and black olives.

And this is what two slices looked like when plopped onto my plate.

While the crust is pretty thin, as in nearly microscopic, the toppings and sauce are good. Round Table says the sauce is "zesty" and I'll give them that. Each bite is on the spicy side, which is better to me than being sweet when it comes to pizza. If I wanted sweet, I'd have cookies for dinner.

My brother is not a fan of pizza (which is simple freakery to me) and he prefers Round Table. That counts for something.

Large Round Table King Arthur Supreme ran me $23.29. And I gave the driver $5 for delivering the pie and keeping Spooky in the apartment while I signed for it.

Cost of Take-Out Lunch, Week Ending 080610

This week, the first in a long time, I spent no dollars on lunch.

• Monday: leftover Pizza Land pizza
• Tuesday: leftover pizza
• Wednesday: leftover pizza
• Thursday: lasagna leftovers
• Friday: lasagna leftovers

Gotta love the leftovers!