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.

Every time about this year, I run into younger friends who say how much they love barbecue. Each time I hear it, I usually counter with “if you love it so much, why don’t you make it at home so you can have it more often.”

This is usually quickly followed by a look from my younger friends that suggest I’ve just asked him to go dig up some uranium in the back yard.

So let’s go over this. One. More. Time.

Making pulled pork barbecue is about as easy as it gets. It’s only about a quarter step up from boiling water. And when it’s on sale, you can make as much as you could probably eat in a month for 10 bucks.

The cut of meat you need to make barbecue from is called either a pork shoulder of a Boston Butt. It normally sells for between $1.79 to $1.99 pound and around holidays like Memorial Day, it’s usually on sale. Harris-Teeter, for example, is selling a Smithfield pork shoulder/Boston Butt for 99 cents a pound this week (what you should see at Harris Teeter should look exactly like the picture above), which means WE are having barbecue this weekend. For you folks who skipped math, that means a good sized 8-pound shoulder is going to cost under $8. Or about what you’ll pay for one barbecue sandwich at a Nationals game.

After you’ve purchased one, you need to allow two days before you plan to serve it. I bought one today, will follow this process, and we will have it for lunch on Sunday. Here’s what you do:

A shoulder tastes best when slow cooked with a dry rub applied, so you need to make one. There are a lot of ingredients you can use, but they usually fall into three categories: something sweet, something salty and something savory. The something sweet is easy: brown sugar. The something salty is pretty easy too: salt. The savory includes things like garlic powder, onion powder, chili powder, paprika, maybe even cumin. Add equal parts of the sugar, salt and the savory ingredients you like and mix together.