Playing Catch Up...

So although I've been eating all week and trying to get a plan together in my head for the upcoming Hunger Awareness Week Challenge, I have yet to put any time in on blogging about such stuff.
Monday night I had a lovely prawn po boy with Mama Lil's Kick Butt peppers. A quick saute of onions and red bell peppers with garlic, toss in the prawns and deglaze w/ just a pinch of white wine and into the baguette and topped with the kickbutt peppers and drizzled w/ a wee bit of the pepper oil. Peeled & deveined prawns were on sale for $5.99 so a half pound got me this dinner and another of the same sandwich for lunch at work the next day. Figuring that my baguettes cost about $.75 each and the veg was probably about $.25, that gives me two yummy budget meals for $2 each. Keeping it real with the budget never tasted so good. It certainly pays to watch the sales at the local grocers. I accompanied this with a PBR tallboy and felt like I was in N' Orleans for less than $3 total.

Tuesday was bacon wrapped scallops over steamed broccoli and brown rice. Now this one took a bit more prep time but was oh so worth it. I par-cooked the bacon in the microwave until almost crisp but still pliable enough to get around the scallops. A high heat pan w/ just a bit of olive oil for about 90 seconds on a side. Deglaze the pan with a little white wine and toss in some fresh chives from my garden patch and just enough butter to emulsify. Nuke some broccoli, stir some asiago and garlic into some freshly steamed brown rice and you end up with something like this...

Again, I got another meal out of a half pound of scallops for lunch the next day. Scallops were $9.99 a lb; I stumbled on this sale while visiting a market in search of wild mushrooms (nothing on that front yet this year so still using dried) where I don't usually have an opportunity to shop and look what it turned into.

Wednesday and Thursday was just a bit of fridge diving and coming up with stuff like omelettes and leftover sandwich meat for dinners and lunches but I did just fine until last night when dinner was Irish whiskey and Mac & Jack's for our post-tax season "we all survived another year" celebration of success with the workmates. It's a good thing that doesn't come around too often is all both my head and my wallet are telling me today but it was good to get out and splurge a bit before heading into living on $35 in groceries next week. That's another post so keep checking back...

Hasta