As we save up to buy our first home, we’re on a big money-saving kick. A big part of that is keeping up our lifestyle, eating the foods we love on a budget, so low-cost restaurant-quality meals are a big bonus.

Our favorite local gyros place (at least for cheap gyros) is about $4.50 for a huge sandwich. Not bad. But the gyros kits from nearby Grecian Delight Foods (I’ll be driving past their plant tomorrow, actually!) makes two good-sized meals with TONS of leftovers—enough for some more sandwiches, maybe a delicious gyros omelet, all for under $7.

I paired tonight’s dinner with the leftover potatoes from Sunday’s lamb dinner. Definitely worth staying in for a night of American Idol (okay, that’s just me and not the hubby—go Adam Lambert!!!)

CONFESSION: I hate eating at Italian restaurants. Italian food is one of my favorites to eat, but whenever I order traditional Italian at a restaurant I tend to think “I can make this better.”

To make restaurant quality meals shortcut-style I love the frozen pastas at my local Butera Market, and this cheese stuffed manicotti is one of my favorites. The sauce is a mix of baby eggplant, onion, spinach and garlic sauteed ’til the eggplant was nice and soft. I added some seasoned ground beef and a jar of tomato basil sauce, topped it off with mozzarella and fresh grated parmesan, and baked it for 45 minutes.

Easily restaurant quality for under $3 a serving!!

This Sunday dinner was my first attempt at cooking a leg of lamb. With the helpful advice of my friend Tracy I made a delicious herb marinade. I started with the leftover mint from the chilaquiles and chopped it finely. To this I added dried basil and rosemary and 6 chopped cloves of garlic, salt and freshly ground pepper, olive oil and lemon juice. After spreading the marinade over the lamb I marinated for nearly 8 hours. This is a good starter recipe for quantities and I used it for reference, but, as I am prone, I totally winged the quantities on the herbs.

To make the potatoes I tossed them with the leftover marinade, some olive oil and Penzey’s Fleur de Sel, the best salt in the world.

Absolutely incredible. This had our entire Sunday Night Farscape group making yummy noises but otherwise eating in silence. I must admit, that’s my favorite part, knowing all this was worth it.

Lured by the promise of sushi in the shapes of flowers, bunnies, and bears, my husband and I were transfixed when this toy was shown on a random blip about the Tokyo Toy Show. We immediately sought it out online and bought one.

Sure, it’s probably not going to be anywhere as easy to make bear sushi as it claims in this commercial if you follow the link, but we had to try.

It’s for science.

CONFESSION: I was unimpressed by Frontera Grill. I’ve been fortunate to eat at Rick Bayless‘ Chicago restaurant twice, and while the ceviche is incomparable with any other, everything else was way too smoky for my taste, which is sad because Mexico: One Plate at a Time is one of my favorite cooking shows and I have huge amount of respect for Rick Bayless and what he’s taught me about Mexican cooking.

That said, the Frontera Mexican Pantry products are among the most delicious prepared sauces around. Every time I use them the food is easily restaurant quality; and I’d much rather eat this than the food from the actual restaurant. This time I used the Red Chile and Roasted Garlic Enchilada Sauce. I filled the corn tortillas with shredded chicken that I mixed with caramelized onions and poblano peppers, cooked with some brown sugar to add some extra sweetness. Some chihuahua and sharp cheddar cheese rounded it out.

Seriously. Chicken Helper. I know. Doesn’t it look awesome? Yeah, it was.

I make a mean jambalaya from scratch. But Tuesday night isn’t the night to make things from scratch, especially on Fat Cat Tuesday.

Tonight we added a new member to our family, our newly adopted fat cat Pippen, so naturally we needed some cajun goodness to celebrate! And Chicken Helper (Hamburger Helper’s little sister) is a great way to start. But, of course, I can never just let it go like that.

What did I add to give this a more authentic N’Awlins flavor?

• 1 lb Chicken (per the recipe)
• 1 Turkey Smoked Sausage
• 1/2 lb shrimp
• Penzey’s Hot Chili Seasoning
• Dash of Penzey’s Gumbo Filé Seasoning
• 1/2 cup spaghetti sauce (for some proper tomato fllavor; usually I add a can of diced tomatoes)
• 1/2 diced white onion
• 1 diced red bell pepper
• 1 diced poblano pepper

Add the shrimp at the very, very end to avoid overcooking it. Authentic flavor with a really quick prep. Not as good as my Jambalaya from scratch, but definitely a close second in a pinch!

Tonight’s dinner had me pretty concerned. Remember that ham I talked about? Well, it was time to use it up, so I decided to improvise. I was skeptical about my choices until my first bite, but it turned out really delicious! All the tasty goodness of pot pie and surprisingly quick to make.

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 cups of chopped ham (I suspect chicken would work just as well!)
• 1 cup chopped baby carrots
• 1 chopped green pepper
• 1 chopped whole onion
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 can Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup
• 1 can water
• 1 cup shredded cheese (I used swiss… yum!)
• Butter or olive oil
• 1 can Reduced Fat Buttermilk Biscuits (1 can of Grands size, 2 cans of smallish biscuits would work)

CONFESSION: I make the best lasagna. It’s true. Whether it’s my vegetarian lasagna or my combo, I do it best. I can’t order lasagna in Italian restaurants because all I can think is “mine’s better.”

The problem is, there’s no recipe for me to share. It’s different every time. But while I don’t have a recipe to share, I do have techniques. My favorite technique is for my trademark Lazy Lasagna, always a favorite at dinner parties. This is great for a large group or for a good week’s worth of cooking. Freeze extra portions in vacuum-sealed bags for quick lunches later!

Why is it lazy? Well, because lasagna is layers of noodles and cheese, right? What about cutting out the extra work and getting the cheese and noodles all together? I use cooked ravioli—the Jumbo Vegetable Ravioli from Mr. Luigi’s Ravioli Co. is by far my favorite— to cut the cooking time by more than half. It’s a shame there doesn’t seem to be a way to order these online, because they’re extraordinary.

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There was something about the Chilaquiles Verdes (think Mexican lasagna) recipe I saw on Daisy Cooks that inspired me to try it from scratch before I attempt to design some shortcuts around it. And believe me, from the fresh salsa verde to frying my own tortillas, this was a labor and time-intensive dish. There are opportunities for shortcutting that I’ll definitely do in the future.

That said, this was absolutely unbelievable and better the next day. While I’ll probably skip making my own tortilla chips next time and just use premade (too much work for something that ends up mushy), I might just keep making my own salsa verde. I’ve never been a fan of salsa verde but the sharp garlic flavor just made this magical.

I didn’t have a copy of Daisy’s recipe, so I eyeballed it based on what I learned from her recipe on the show. My own Daisy-inspired recipe and instructions follow behind the cut.

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About a month ago we got a great deal on a whole ham in the discount meat bin. $7 for a TON of ham. The up side? A lot of really good smoked ham. The downside? That’s a lot of ham, and for us, ham is a sometimes food, which means getting creative. I’ve been wanting to try making scalloped potatoes for some time and this was a good opportunity. I combined a few different recipes to come up with this one.

It turned out PERFECT. Rich, delicious, with a sauce that made me lick the bowl. Seriously, I licked the bowl.

INGREDIENTS:

• 5 small yellow gold potatoes, sliced thin
• 1 medium white onion, sliced
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1.5 cups half & half
• 1 cup shredded cheddar
• 1 cup chopped ham

Preheat oven to 400º.  In a saucepan, melt the butter with pepper (again I’ll sing the praises of Penzey’s Shallot Pepper) and Garlic Salt to taste. Add the flour, then when it’s all melted, add the half & half. Stir this until the sauce starts to thicken. Remove from heat.

Sauté the onions in olive oil (butter works too) until cooked through. In a separate bowl toss potatoes, onions, ham, cheese and sauce. Spread in a baking pan and bake for 45 minutes.

Perhaps my favorite part of shortcut cooking is calling a dish something more impressive than what it actually is. But Velveeta cheese sauce just doesn’t have the same ring to it as Jalapeño Cream Sauce.

This meal was thrown together on a whim. My husband craved Velveeta chili dip the previous night, leaving us with a large brick of Jalapeño Queso Blanco (generic) Velveeta. By the next evening he wanted buffalo chicken, I wanted pasta, so we improvised, coming up with what ended up being just fantastic.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2″ cubed of Velveeta or comparable cheese spread. I used queso blanco w/jalapeños
• 1/4 cup of half & half
• 1 small carton of Kitchen Basics chicken broth
• 1 tablespoon corn starch (dissolved in water and added near the end to thicken)
• 1 cup Trader Joe’s Fire Roasted Corn
• 1 tsp Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo Sauce

Simmer this until the cheese is melted and the sauce is reduced a bit. Between the broth and the cheese there’s really no need to add any other flavoring. The corn is the key in this sauce, adding a toasty sweetness, the fire roasted kernels giving it more complexity than simply adding sweet corn. This created a spicy, rich cream sauce that defies the simplicity of its ingredients.

For the chicken, I baked chicken breasts with a generous amount of Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo Sauce, chopped it in chunks and served it all up with some whole wheat rotini.

CONFESSION: I hate prepping tofu. I’m a huge tofu fan but extremely picky about density and texture. That’s why, whenever we visit Mitsuwa, our favorite Asian grocer, we load up on their fried tofu. Mitsuwa has large slabs of already fried extra firm tofu with vegetables embedded in it that take all the work out of prep. It’s one of my favorite shortcuts! We’ve used some of this before (the tofu cutlets, as in my pad thai), but the ones we bought on our last trip were large, meaty slabs that looked perfect for building a meal around.

I diced the tofu into 1/2-inch cubes, which went a lot further than I anticipated. Then I added in a can of seitan and we were in business.

What’s seitan? It’s wheat gluten, which doesn’t make much sense to me. I fell in love with it at Flat Top Grill’s Mongolian BBQ, and now I use it to add great texture and sweetness to my Asian cooking.

For this dish, I used a prepared Mo Po Tofu Sauce form the Asian grocer, some Hoisin sauce to give the sauce some body and tame the flavor, some onions and multicolored sweet peppers. I served it all over brown Asian rice. The texture of the tofu was simply perfect for this, and with the seitan too it was easy to forget we were eating vegetarian.