Eating in a box

We're staying with the recession cooking blues this week. Today we let our local grocery store help tell me what we should eat (cheap). I've taken advantage of the "buy this and get all this free" in previous bentos, but i've never really made a full meal off what they offered. Literally, I saved $16 dollars from coupons! Unfortunately, this bento presents very little in the way of photos and new recipe innovations (save one, hence the picture of the beans). You would be surprised how much food you can get if you look at the local Sunday flyer for your grocery store. Today's bento features what my local grocery story thinks of as a Texan Easter dinner. That means Brisket, salad with ginger sesame dressing, spicy charro beans and corn chips. I added in the free texas toast as a sandwich option for the folks not afraid of gluten. Once again I'm amazed at what it takes to fill lunch box on the cheap today's bento bring us in at $3.64 which helps make up...

As I said last post this bento is all about economizing and making due with what I have on hand. Hopefully, you'll find my creations entertaining and fun. This certainly was a challenge for me to make some creations from a mish-mash of stuff in my pantry. As you can see my pantry is a mess, there's foodstuff from every cuisine I've ever dabbled in. The picture to the left is only the top 2 shelves, there's another two and a floor (and yes, they are packed to the brim, and yes, there's only two of us right now). Minus the stuff I rummanged from the fridge and freezer this is what I ended up choosing for my challenge. Peanut butter, coconut milk, some rice, GF flour, some canned goods, and some obscure goodies I bought once upon a time in a japanese market. Yes there's more, but those are the highlights that got me some inspiration. My biggest problem was the lack of fresh ingrediants. All I had in the fridge was some green onion, egg and frozen chicken. Everythi...

I'll admit, my goal of $6 a bento is pretty hard to match at times. Recent bentos have exceeded that goal, but as I stated in my rules, I can splurge if I find myself in a surplus. Also, food prices have been soaring since I first started this blog so $6 for the amount and variety I provide is pretty hard to accomplish. With today's bento I set about "far exceeding" this goal and seeing exactly how much I can squeeze. This would have been termed a Gluten Free Recession Bento had it not been for the condensed cream of mushroom I used for the Stroganoff. Had I found a good substitute, this menu would have been gluten free. One more note: With the exception of spices used, I bought everything else just to see how much I can squeeze and still have a good bento. Wanna guess the final cost? I'll tell you at the end of the post. Let's start with Beef Stroganoff. Ground beef has been a staple of cheap cooking. Yes, 80/20 ground beef is significantly cheaper than 93/7 ...