I may have mentioned it before but I'm cheap. One word in our vocabulary that is sure to excite us at the store is sale. We have three pretty nice grocery stores really close to our house and we hit all three regularly. Why three? Because each has different sales pegged to the loyalty cards. I'm not going to spend an extra dollar per pound for ground beef at store A when I am picking up my sale soda there just to save a 2 minute drive. So what to do when you haven't thawed anything and dinner time is approaching? Well unless you are sure of the store don't plan the menu before you go, pull something from the freezer for tomorrow and hit the grocery store.
Hit the proteins first as they are the center of the meal. There is a very good chance that there is going to be a sale item in chicken, fish, pork and beef at any given time you go to the store. Other good options for a central protein include raw and cooked sausage as well as stuffed pastas. Settle on the item that will fit with what you are cooking tomorrow (you don't really want to do pork chops 2 nights in a row, right?) and your cook/prep time. Then head to the fresh produce.
This is where the art comes in. Sale produce also goes on every week but it's hard to match some times. You want to think about your main protein and how it would taste with the the veggies you have arrayed before you. Let me walk you through last night's meal.
At the fish counter I saw some amazing scallops 1/3rd off. regularly around 12 dollars they were on sale for 8$ a lb (sounds a tad pricey I know but compare to McDonalds prices that is less than 2 meal deals (size large)). Next I hit the veggies and saw some really nice oyster mushrooms on sale for 2$, then picked up some nice small roma tomatoes (89c) and finally artechokes 1/2 off at 2 for 4 dollars. So to add it up with one small lemon I spent 15.50$. Compare that to any instant food and decide which you would rather eat.
Now for the prep. Cleaned and soaked the artichokes in lemon water (they blacken faster than apples) then boiled them in lemon water (salted) for about 5 minutes and let them hang there for a bit. Next I cut and seeded the tomatoes, sliced the mushrooms and let the scallops dry on a paper towel (top and bottom). Prep work is done. Heat a skillet and add a small amount of olive oil. You want the pan pretty hot but not hot enough to smoke up the oil. Cook the scallops for two minutes a side (if they look cooked then they are over done). They ended up being lightly brown on each side (also season to taste, salt and whatever you like). When done remove to a plate. Cook the mushrooms in the same pan, when they become tender and start to exude liquid, add in the artechokes and tomatoes. Hit the pan with the juice of one lemon and deglaze the pan (that means use the boiling liquid to scrape up the yummy bits of scallop juices that are sticking to the pan), you can use a touch of white wine and butter here too, hit it with a touch of salt to taste and you are done. I combined the veggies into a sauce for the scallops so you can serve them on a bed of the veggies or just put the veggies on the side and placed the scallops next to them. Cooking time was 7 minutes and it was very yummy. This will serve three to four depending on size and appetite. Figure on 4-5 big scallops for an adult portion and 1-3 for the kids. We are lucky in that our toddler will eat or at least try anything and he does love seafood.
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