Accidentally vegan

Tonight's Sunday night dinner was something of a bean convention. Our dueling main dishes were a "Bevy of Beans" and ginger garlic green beans. Our third dish was a cranberry spinach salad, which was also quite good. It's hard to call any of the dishes our "main course" tonight; instead we had a group of three dishes, all using some similar ingredients, that produced our first B&H vegan meal.

Mmm. There's the ginger garlic green beans, topped with a bit of an Asian-inspiried sauce that included soy sauce, Asian sesame oil, rice vinegar and sesame seeds.

The "bevy of beans" dish (below) was a mix of fresh fava and green beans (from Iovine's at RTM) done up with chopped basil, garlic, lemon zest and finished with lemon juice. Quite a nice combination, and more in a Mediterranean style. I credit Jeff's creative direction in selecting two bean dishes that shared a few ingredients but yet took on entirely different flavors and textures.

Jeff also put together a cranberry spinach salad with toasted almonds and sesame seeds (picture below). For me, the salad was the winning dish of the night. I enjoyed the sweetness of the vinaigrette dressing, but Jeff felt it was a bit much.

Overall, it was another quality dinner, and we were vegan for the evening without even trying. Nice simple, cheap but fresh and wholesome ingredients tonight. We made enough that we'll each get another meal of leftovers out of it, which definitely helps keep our costs down, as you'll see in the breakdown below.

Let's see how it shakes out on the money side (money per person is amount spent for what we actually ate tonight):

Ginger Garlic Green Beans: $0.80 per person (seriously!)

Bevy of Beans: $0.98 per person (again, seriously)

Cranberry Spinach Salad: $1.18 per person

Total per person for this meal: $2.96

A new record for Broke and Hungry!

Filet Mignon with a Red Wine and Balsamic Vinegar Reduction

Tonight Jeff, David (my college buddy from Wooster) and I put together another successful dinner. Tonight's menu was filet mignon with a red wine reduction. Then, since men cannot live on meat alone, we added a side dish of sauteed onion, asparagus, mushrooms and red bell pepper. Oh, and then we added a side of our leftover summer salad from earlier in the week. And corn-on-the-cob, too.

Oops, I forgot to mention the bruschetta... this is where we started the evening. This is really just a great, simple dish. I focused on cutting up half a loaf of Italian bread, applying a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, then a leaf of basil, slice of tomato and of marinated mozzarella. Drizzle on a bit more olive oil and throw it in the oven at 375 for 20 minutes and you've got the perfect way to start your night. So much fun to eat your appetizer while you cook your main course.

Cost: Bruschetta

Mozarella: $2.50

Tomato: $0.40

Basil: $1.00

Baguette: $0.30

Subtotal: $4.20 or $1.40/person

We also like to drink as we cook. We tried out a new gin tonight, Bluecoat Gin from Philadelphia Distilling. If you're a gin lover, you should give this gin a try. It's drier than Tanqueray but more flavorful than anything you'll find across the pond. It paired perfectly with cucumber and lime. Plus, it's local (about 2/3 of the ingredients in this meal were locally-sourced).

Drinks: Bluecoat Gin and tonic with lime and cucumber: $1.00/oz x 9oz = $9.00 or $3.50 per person

For our main course we went with a steakhouse classic: the filet mignon. I know, I know, filet mignon and a blog called, "Broke and Hungry" shouldn't mix, right? But one of our arguments in this blog is that you can eat well and cheap. Credit Jeff with the cheap-ish find at Fresh Grocer.

We started the main course preparation by sauteing together a vegetable mix: onions, red peppers, asparagus and mushrooms. As you can see, it looked damn good.

Then David ably made up some corn-on-the-cob for us. Finally, we also used our leftover cold summer salad (previous post) to complete our vegetable side courses.

So what does it take to eat this as your vegetable side course?

Corn: $1.50

Asparagus: $2.00

Onion: $0.20

Red bell pepper: $0.50

Left over summer salad: $2.50

Subtotal: $6.20 or $2.07/person

I'd say that's within most budgets.

Finally, the main course. Jeff's special filet mignon with red wine and balsamic vinegar reduction. Jeff seared the meat, then added the wine/vinegar sauce and cooked another few minutes, leaving the interior of the meat rare, but then reducing the sauce down to a sweet little gravy, which was drizzled over the steaks and the sauteed vegetables.

So what's the review? The steak may honestly have been the best steak I've eaten in years, while the sauteed veggies were heavenly. Simply an amazing meal with amazing company. Another winner in the stomach. Let's get the final verdict on the pocketbook:

Meat Main Course

Filet mignon: $9.00

Red Wine & balsamic vinegar reduction: $2.40

Subtotal: $11.40 or $3.80/person

FINAL TOTAL: $21.80 or $7.27/person

More photos:

Pan Seared King Salmon and Summer Salad

Tonight Bryan and I went to Reading Terminal Market after work and picked up a few vegetables in season--corn and tomatoes. I also bought some pesto stuffed brie and one pound of King Salmon.

While Bryan worked on cutting up the 2 green bell peppers, a purple bell pepper, 4 ears of corn, four tomatoes, 1 cucumber, and a red onion, I made our favorite summer cocktail--mint cucumber gin and tonic.

Bryan finished the salad with Kalamata olives, olive oil, lemon juice and oregano. We didn't have feta cheese to make it a true Greek Salad (plus corn), so we set aside some blue cheese and will call it a summer salad. Cheap and delicious and huge.

Total cost for the salad: $10.00

Cost for tonight's serving: $2.50

Cost per person tonight: $1.25

Next we took our salmon filet and quartered it. We saved two filets for later in the week and coated the other two with olive oil and a mixture of spices--salt, garlic, basil and parsley.

Then we fired up a skillet and cooked those suckers up something nice.

Total cost of fish: $20

Cost for tonight's serving: $10

Cost per person tonight: $5

We drizzled a little more olive oil and lemon juice over the fish and plated with the salad.

For one of the hottest days of summer, this was a refreshing, tasty quick, easy and inexpensive meal.

So, how much does it cost to eat great in a recession?

Appetizer (pesto stuffed brie): $3.80

Fish: $10

Salad: $2.50

Total: $16.30

Per person: $8.15

Also each cocktail cost < $2.50

Mint: $0.80

Cucumber: $0.50

Tonic: $1.00

Lime juice: $0.05

Tanqueray: $6.40 (~$0.80/oz)

More pictures now...