Alrighty, folks. Here is my effort for the $10 Dinner Challenge:
I whipped up panko-crusted pork chops, smashed yams with butter and honey, and a roasted broccoli "casserole." It broke down thusly:
- package of 6(!) thin-cut boneless pork chops $5.94
- 1# yams $1.69
- 1/2 onion .25
- 1# broccoli .99
- garlic .05
- sprinkling of grated mozzarella cheese .25
- sprinkling of parmesan cheese .25
- flour for dusting pork chops .10
- egg .15
- drizzle of honey .25
- butter pat .25
- olive oil for frying the chops .25
- salt and pepper free!
- panko breadcrumbs (technically these were free, Progresso sent them to me) but let's say .25/ounce, I used 4 ounces so $1.00
Grand total without breadcrumbs: $10.42
Grand total with breadcrumbs: $11.42
I was surprised to learn that I went over my budget. Had I just steamed the broccoli I would have been well under $10 but I wanted to roast it with garlic and onion and top it with cheese because I wanted to see if I could jazz up a veggie and still stay under $10.
This yumminess blew my budget.
I could have also omitted the panko, but I wanted to try it and man was it delicious. Although the idea for the challenge was inspired by Prego pasta sauce, I purposely chose not to use pasta the base of my meal. I chose pork chops which cost as much as 5-6 packages of dried pasta. I'm going to try again and will post my results. Oh, and I was flipping through Rachael Ray's magazine at the hair salon yesterday and noticed she has a regular section called $10 Meals or something like that. Rock on!
For those of you that participated: thanks for playing along! Let's see how you all did! (I'll keep updating as the links come in.)
