Ricky Don't Lose That Menu, You Don't Want To Call Nobody Else...

Since I’m not spending as much time on social media these days, I worry up and coming chefs like Ricky LaBlue won’t get enough meal ideas and instead will make the same steak meal he specializes in over and over again. To alleviate that, here are my meal plans for the weekend, of which little money was spent.

This morning, for example, I went looking into my freezer for stuff to rescue from an almost certain frozen death. I buy stuff when it’s on special in some quantity, put the excess in the freezer, then hope I remember to use the various chicken, shrimp, fish and other stuff before the Nationals win another World Series.

Today’s search prompted me to go to the grocery store to pick up about $20 worth of stuff to turn what I found into several meals. Here’s how it turned out:

1. Found a package of frozen Northwest white fish I’d obviously gotten a great deal on at LIDL a while back. I bought some cabbage to make slaw, a cucumber, some fresh tortillas and a tomato. Those ingredients, plus salsa and sour cream I already had, will make for some very nice fish tacos.
2. Found a Tupperware container of chopped BBQ. When I take a pork shoulder and make it into BBQ, it’s too much for just the two of us. I bought some fresh hamburger rolls, and along with the slaw being made for the fish tacos and some thinly sliced onion, can be made into some nice BBQ sandwiches. Will also bake a tray of baked beans so we can be like cattlemen and eat BBQ and beans.
3. Found a couple of frozen chicken breasts (I’ll buy the big pack at $1.99 a pound when they’re on sale and split them into two portions, freezing one of them). They’re now defrosted and I bought some apples to peel and chop up. The apples, chicken, sweet pickles, boiled eggs, mayo and the rest of the onion from the BBQ sandwiches will make a nice vat of chicken salad which will become lunch for few days.
4. Since I had to hard boil eggs for the chicken salad, it’s a waste to only boil the three I needed. So I boiled a dozen, and the rest will be converted to deviled eggs, which never last in the refrigerator very long, and are a nice compliment to any meal you’re making. Like BBQ and baked beans.

This should get us through the weekend until Monday. And that $20 included a box of extra large Little Debbie Oatmeal pies, the stuff of which Ricky obsesses about (he once tweeted we need to have a national conversation about how addictive they are). Las Vegas has placed odds that the oatmeal pies won’t last the weekend as long as the meals do 😊