At least two days a week I don’t get home from work until at least 9:30 at night. On those days I’ll usually get a text from Mrs. CB asking me if I want a “Mega” when I get home.
A “Mega” is short for “Mega-Salad”. This is what used to be billed by many restaurants as a “Chef’s Salad”—a concoction of lettuce and tomato with a bit of ham usually smothered in Thousand Island dressing and it came with a couple of cellophane wrapped packets of “Club Crackers”.
But Mrs. CB really does it up right—there’s leaf lettuce along with tomato and cucumber, red onion, bell pepper, zucchini, hard-boiled egg, red grapes, sun flower seeds and Feta. It’s a great late night dinner after a long day of work when you don’t want something heavy but need something to eat. And, it’s pretty healthy; guaranteeing that your internal plumbing will be working right the next morning.
But, let’s talk about Feta. We like Feta cheese. It’s aromatic (OK, it’s pungent). It’s tasty. And a little bit goes a long way crumbled on top of a salad. You can buy it in plastic tubs at the grocery store usually at $3-$4 for a 4-6 ounce container. If you do the math, that’s anywhere from about $8 to $12 or more per pound. Definitely not Cheap Bastid food.
A year or so ago we came across a great solution. Frazier Farms, our local equivalent of Whole Foods, has it’s own Feta that comes in a block. It’s $3.99 a pound which in the world of cheese is pretty reasonable.
Now, I really can’t see the sense of spending at least twice that much per pound just to get it pre-crumbled. I takes about 3 minutes to take it out of its package, get out a cutting board and chef’s knife and crumble it into its own container. Figure it at about 5 minutes including cleaning the cutting board and knife.
And then it’s all ready to be used. Salads, “Benedict Arnold” pizzas on flatbread, mousakka. A little bit goes a long way and boosts flavor.
And, by getting it this way and crumbling it ourselves, we’re hanging on to a few bucks every couple of weeks that we can use for something else. If you do that often enough, pretty soon you’re talking about “real money”!
tasty! gonna check if my little market has their own feta. they might. have some good time to spend now checking out some of your other recent recipes. lord knows i need some inspiration in the kitchen, lately. thank you for taking the time to do this for us.
Thank you Holly. I hope you find some dishes or meals to cook that you enjoy and that save you money. You might want to check out “World’s Greatest Pizza” which uses Feta and flat bread. It’s tasty, easy and cheap! That’s what being a Cheap Bastid is all about.
Mega-Salad, is that what Elaine called her “Big Salad” on Seinfeld?
And Frazier Farms, I don’t know that one, I know Windmill Farms in Allied Gardens, but I think that’s more comparable to a Henry’s (Sprout’s now — I hate it when names change! I still remember when the one on Poway Rd was Boney’s!)
And what’s a Benedict Arnold Pizza?
Oh, and this gave me an idea for a possible Cheap Bastid money-saving opportunity: home-made salad dressing? Have you already done that?
RubeRad, thanks for your comment. Frazier Farms is a lot like Henrys/Sprouts. And, one of the things which is on my “list” to try to do is homemade salad dressing (easily enough done starting with oil and vinegar) but what I most want to do is my own Cheap Bastid Version of “Ken’s Asian Sesame”. Last, here’s a link to my post on “Benedict Arnold Pizza” which was the name of a pizza made by a now out of business pizza joint here in Vista: http://www.cheap-bastid-cooks.com/cheap-homemade-pizza-recipe/
Hey, that Benedict Arnold looks interesting with no “gravy”; and I just got a new silicone rolling mat expressly for the purpose of rolling out pizza crusts, I’ll give that a try soon!
Made the Benedict Arnold last night, and it was fantastic! Not so cheap though, because I went upscale and substituted some pricey cappicola for regular pepperoni (Mrs. Rad not so fond of pepperoni), and I couldn’t find feta any cheaper than $6.99/lb! It seemed to me the most flavor was the salt of feta and the tang of jalapenos, over a base of tomato slices. I didn’t even really notice the cappicola, maybe it would be just as good with no meat?
Never tried without meat or with meat other than pepperoni. It’s the interplay of the various ingredients which give it taste (at least to us).