New Feature: Dinner From This Weeks Deals

A few weeks ago, I began posting about the various meat and produce sales at the stores in our area.  My hope was that it would help us to decide where to shop in a given week and not feel like we had to run to every store and grab every deal with such high gas prices.

Now I want to begin sharing a recipe with you using one of meats (and hopefully a few more items) that are on sale for that week.  I am going to *try* to make this be a weekly feature, but I actually cannot take credit for the one I am posting tonight.  My husband came up with it and cooked it all himself.  Also, I did not even purchase the meat this week.  I had a huge bag of it in my freezer from the last time it was on sale.

So, here is the complicated little story of how this dinner came to be:

Yesterday morning, I spent some time stalking one of my new favorite blogs The Happy 'Lil Homemaker.  She has a TON of great recipes, and I was seriously wanting needing some new recipes, so I picked a few chicken recipes I wanted to try.  I thawed out this huge bag of boneless skinless chicken breast that had been taking up space in my freezer.  Seriously there was 7-8 lbs of it in the bag.  Then I went shopping at Albertson's this morning and totally forgot that every single one of the recipes I had chosen needed some form of shredded cheese and I was completely and utterly cheeseless. =(

I had asked my dear husband to slice the chicken up into small chunks so that we could at least get it cooked and ready to add to the meals, and then I would try to come up with something because I really was not feeling like running back out to the store to get cheese.  Well, the aspiring chef in him took over and he came up with this awesome dinner idea using things we had in the pantry.  

Here is what we ate (the aspiring chef in him also insisted on garnishing it with some fresh basil from our plant):

Here is what he did:

First, he took some of the chicken -about 1-1 1/2lb- and dredged it in seasoning (salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, italion seasoning--don't ask me how much.  We never measure such things around here..LOL)  Then he tossed it in some Italian Breadcrumbs and fried it down in a little Olive oil in a skillet.

For the sauce, we had one can of Hunt's spaghetti sauce in the pantry, and to that he added a can of tomato sauce, paste, and some fire roasted tomatoes, and I'm sure he seasoned it up a bit more himself.

The roll is actually some of those Grands biscuits from my Albertson's trip this morning.  He split them in half, spread on some garlic butter he whipped up, and put them back together, and spread more on top.  They were good!

Then we made half a pack of Ronzoni thin spaghetti I had gotten free at Kroger a while back, and a bag of frozen corn.

Now just for fun, a little bit of math (because I'm a nerd like that):

A couple of stores had Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts for $0.99 this week (they were also $1.79 at Albertson's, and more than I was willing to pay elsewhere).  I am going to make two columns, one for lowest/coupon prices, and one for average sale prices without coupons (which is still going to be WAY cheaper than you think!)

1 1/2 lb chicken @ $0.99/lb  =  $1.49  or  @ $1.79  = $2.69

1/2 Pack Pasta  with coupons = FREE or  @  $1.00  =  $0.50

Spaghetti Sauce with coupons = $0.50 or     on sale   =  $1.50

Tomato Paste (store brand)     =  $0.33                    =  $0.33

Tomato Sauce (store brand)    =  $0.25                    =  $0.25

Roasted Tomatoes(guessing)   =  $0.50                    =  $1.00

Biscuits                                   =  $0.49                    =  $1.00

Frozen Corn (Aldi)                  = $0.95                     = $1.00

                                                  $4.51          or           $8.27

This meal fed 4 people (kids are 5 and not quite 2) with a little leftover.  It could have easily fed a family of 5, or it would be a nice lunch for my husband if he had to work tomorrow.

I did my calculations assuming you would have bread crumbs, a bit of olive oil, and some butter and seasonings on hand.  You will notice that I included only sale prices and not shelf prices.  That's because those are just too high!  Period.  I don't even want to think about it. ;)

I hope this will give you a little encouragement to shop the sales and plan your meals from that.  Next time I hope to include a few more sale items in the recipes, and I guess I will be heading back to the store for my cheese. =/

Have a great weekend!