2nd Jan 2012 dinner

Our first budget meal for the year was a 30-minute roasts chicken.

Butter
Oil
2 Large Maryland Chicken Pieces
2 Virginia Rose potatoes, cut into 2cm cubes
2 Carrots, cut into large chunks
5 Garlic cloves
1 Spring Onion
Half a lemon
Chopped Taragon
Cup of chicken stock
Big blob of Dijon mustard
A dash of brandy
Baby peas on the side

All of this comes to about $10.

To cook this, we fried the chicken, potatoes, and carrots in the butter and oil (only with hot oil- never add ingredients to cool oil!).

After frying everything, we transferred everything to a covered roast tray, seasoned and added lemon juice and zest, sprinkled some Taragon on, and roasted for 35 mins at around 220C.

While roasting, we reduced the chicken stock, Dijon mustard, and a little brandy into a gravy, and put aside for pouring onto the finished product. Baby peas were microwaved until hot.

When the roast came out, it had about a cm of water at the bottom - I've got no idea where this water came from! Ended up being more of a steamed meal than a roast, but it still tasted alright.

3rd Jan breakfast

This morning we did a big breakfast:

2 Eggs
4 Pieces of rindless bacon
1 Beef sausage
1 Italian Chorizo
1 Large tomato
Chopped button mushrooms

This all comes to about $8.15.

Everything was cooked on very hot gas with oil, and the results came out something like this:

The Beginning

We are a couple living in Sydney.

Each day for lunch and dinner we will spend a total $20 - this is not very easy when living in a city with such a high cost of living. Each day we will show our meal, along with the cost.