Wandering Adventure Party

I’ve been on a quest to make better pizza. Now that I’ve got a happy crust I’m able to work on other parts. I got new pans so I can make two at a time. Which means I can have different toppings that cook at different times from my wife’s toppings.

Her: under the cheese is banana peppers and olives. On top is pepperoni. Me: tomato, onion and sardines

This is part of my plan to be able use leftovers for fried rice and pizza. But toppings are insanely cheap. It’s hard to put more than a dollar in toppings on a pizza unless you are buying really premium stuff.

Cost per person for no toppings besides cheese: $2.50. officially cheaper than mid grade freezer pizza. Can you order this anywhere? It’s pizza

It’s taken a few days but the tomato soup is finally done. We ended up with about four quarts. We ate two of them today. Send more tomatoes.

Cost per person: $1.20 per person. Mostly in bread and cheese since the tomatoes were free and we used cheap balsamic in the soup. Can you order this anywhere? Of course. But also no.

Smoked sausage sandwiches with provolone. Escabeche and pickled sweet peppers from last year when a neighbor gave me pounds of surplus peppers.

Cost per person: $6.03 not including any mustard or picked peppers. But, as you can see, this is an unreasonable serving size. One sausage per person with the commercial pasta salad would be $3.34 Can you get this anywhere? Maybe?

I had some free brown rice to use. I knew there had to be a beans and rice recipe out there for that. The last three ingredients of the first recipe I saw included dry sherry, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. That was a combination I needed to try.

I was going to scale the recipe up and some of the numbers just didn’t look right. For example it wanted so much onion that it would overload the recipe. I took the picture of the mise en place after cutting the onion in half and knowing that the three ingredients are the end were definitely going to need adjustments. I ended up doubling all but the soy sauce just before serving.

It’s getting harder to trust recipes.

But was I able to get it to work? Yes.

Cost per person: $2.45, a little more than the bread and butter.

Basically $3 per person and most of that is cheese.

Pizza 1: honey ham, home grown bell pepper, mushroom.

Pizza 2: pepperoni, mushroom, olive, banana pepper.

Cutting board: made from poplar. Made from passive aggressive spite. You should never frame a board like this one is. The normal swelling of wood as it absorbs and sheds humidity will cause it to snap itself apart. It was made in 2019 to test if a thin enough board could survive. I have only ever used it for cutting pizza because poplar is soft for a hard wood and every knife and pizza cutter leaves a mark. It’s great for end grain boards but not face or edge grain.

Anyway, the board refuses to break despite more than 200 pizzas.

Pizza. Leftover birria, smoked mozzarella, serrano, jarred sauce and hand made crust.

Probably too much serrano.

Cost per person, $2.79? New category? “Can you buy this anywhere?” No. No you can’t.

I pickled/canned about four pounds each of jalapenos and carrots. But I had some peppers left over. Also I had shredded cheese leftover from yesterday’s burritos, and half a pound of bacon from yesterday’s dinner.

Well that sounds like the start of a wonderful dinner. Poppers would have been too much work. I have a bag of potatoes… Oh. Let’s do this. Jalapeno bacon potatoes au gratin.

Cost for pickled peppers: $1.30 per pint Cost per person for dinner: $3.40 (realistically I ate two full servings so this should really be $1.70 each for four people.)

Sometimes I end up with the weirdest one offs of meat like pre cooked burger patties for free. Fried rice is the perfect way to use them up and clear out any veg scraps too.

This is the time added fresh ginger. I planted some and now have a supply of fresh ginger to use without paying a fortune.

Eggs free from the yard.

Cost per person: maybe $1

Meat was free. Squash was homegrown free.

Cost per person, $2.00 Cost per person if you had to buy everything: $6.75

Meal prep. Except it’s snack prep. I eat way too many Walmart mini microwave burritos. The 4 oz ones that come in a $4 pack of eight. Basically 11.9¢ per ounce

It’s hard to make an exact clone at home because making tiny burritos is difficult due to the urge to over fill. These are larger so one instead of two for a snack. These aren’t as cheap. 100 ounces of ingredients for $17.38 not including the seasoning. So let’s say 19¢ per ounce but are more flavorful (homemade taco seasoning), better texture because they aren’t 50% tortilla and a whole lot healthier.

So it’s all trade offs. But the results are worth it.

These go into the chest freezer and then get bagged.

Wife isn’t feeling good. This is sometimes the result of anemia. She takes iron supplements but occasionally you just need steak.

Cost per person: $13

My wife found 12 pounds of vine ripe tomatoes and decided we need to make some tomato soup. But that’s for tomorrow. Today is some mac and cheese and a perogadilla. Both topped with a bit of fresh made pico de gallo.

I remember when I was a teenager and I actually read the box of mac and cheese. It suggested putting one tablespoon salsa in a batch. It seemed like not enough but I followed the directions and it was amazing.

Cost per person: $1.60 per person.

This one should be really easy to figure out.

I was trying something different for making bread. Wife wanted fajitas. We compromised.

Mushrooms, pork steak, bell pepper, onion, carrot, broccoli, homemade chilli powder and some cumin.

Tortillas are definitely easier to work with for fajitas but the bread was really tasty.

A rather standard veg fajita mix served with oven fries coated in an excessive amount of homemade taco seasoning. At the last prep minute I decided to slice up a smoked sausage and crisp it up before adding the veggies to cook. A little queso fresca on top.

We are adding this to the permanent menu.

Cost per person: $2.20 Can you order this anywhere? No place serves oven fries but there are Mexican places that have French fries they could dust with some seasoning before topping with fajita veg.

Corn dogs and fake Doritos.

Cost per person: $2

Roasted potatoes, tomato soup, eggs, peppers and emergency goat cheese.

I roasted the potatoes, transferred them to a pot, took some of the balsamic tomato soup from yesterday and poured it in to simmer for a bit.

Eggs free, potatoes $1.89 for 5 pounds, tomatoes free. So using up my emergency goat cheese ($2), time to rotate stock, was the largest expense.

Cost per person: $1.30 Can you order this anywhere? No.

Whichever of you wanted potatoes in the tomato soup got your wish. Sort of.

In 2021 I turned 7.5 pounds of pork roast into canned seasoned pork with the idea that I could heat it, drain off the juice and wrap it in a tortilla. They were tasty. Today I used the last of them. But I wanted to test out making tortillas with a different flour than I normally use so as a backup I made rice. Tortillas have some scratch made chili powder for color and flavor. Rice is turkey stock instead of water. I think I like this better because I get to keep all the juice.

Cost person: $3.89 Can you order it someplace? Any Panera Is it the same? You’d need to order the catering size salad to get this much.

Home grown eggs and bell pepper. Cost per person: $1.80