Frugal Sunday Dinner 3/13/2011

Our menu yesterday consisted of

• Oven-fried Chicken Parmesan
• Poultry Stuffing
• Green Beans & Potatoes
• corn
• biscuits
• Punch Bowl Cake
• ice tea and lemonade

There were 9 of us at the table yesterday.  (Baby Lili was sleeping in my bedroom.)  We had a guest preacher staying in our home also.

I wish I had taken pictures of the meal, at the very least one of the Punch Bowl Cake.  Or better yet, of Sweet Pea who sat guarding it the whole time dinner was in the oven.  Or perhaps of that moment at the table when she took a bite and started sputtering like an engine in need of a tune-up.  Until then, no one - and I mean no one - knew she didn't like coconut.  That Sweet Pea!  She sure has the potential of adding a touch of levity to any recipe!

The Punch Bowl Cake was not "Plan A" for my dessert.  I intended to serve a golden butter cake with chocolate fudge icing (the icing is my mother-in-law's recipe) but the layers fell apart coming out of their pans.  Of course!  What did I expect when there was a guest for dinner? Hence the need for "Plan B," the Punch Bowl Cake.  I think Sweet Pea wished there had been a "Plan C."   

Anyway, besides the corn that came out the freezer, the biscuits, and the drinks, I will share where I found the recipes.  You'll need to use your imagination to see it.

The Oven-Fried Chicken Parmesan recipe was from The Kraft Cookbook.  It was published in 1977 to celebrate 75 years of Kraft.  I've owned the book since we married in 1978.  I doubled this recipe and used only thighs and legs that I bought on sale a couple of weeks ago.  Every other ingredient is a staple around here, including the parmesan cheese.

The recipe for Poultry Stuffing is in the book Fix-It and Forget-It Recipes for Entertaining, a slow cooker recipe book.  This recipe was a good way of using some of the free bread that I've been blessed with in abundance in recent weeks.  I put a loaf through the food processor and we were in business!  At one point our visiting preacher joked that he thought I was making bread pudding, which means he must've thought the Punch Bowl Cake had fizzled and that I'd moved on to "Plan C" for dessert.  Very funny!  Hmm. On second thought, I wonder if Sweet Pea likes bread pudding?  Maybe we'll find out next week.

I used a recipe for Green Beans & Potatoes from Busy People's Slow Cooker Cookbook.  It was very good and used bacon bits for texture and flavor.  Canned beans are the basis for this recipe.

The Punch  Bowl Cake was also found in a cookbook, but one compiled for a fundraiser.  And since the person who submitted the recipe is my aunt, I don't think she will mind if I share it.  Come to think of it, I think she got this recipe from me in the first place because I was making this dessert several years before this cookbook was published.  Either way, no one will care that I share.

Punch Bowl Cake



1 pkg. butter recipe cake mix
2 6-serving packages of vanilla instant pudding (my store doesn't sell this size anymore so I used 3 4-serving sizes instead)
5 c. milk
3 bananas, sliced
2 (20 oz.) cans of cherry pie filling
2 (20 oz.) cans of crushed pineapple, drained
1 1/3 c. coconut (which shall be omitted in the future thanks to Sweet Pea!)
1 (16 oz.) container of frozen whipped topping
pecans, chopped (which I had already omitted because others in the family don't like nuts)

Bake the cake according to directions and allow to cool. Break into pieces (my cake did this for me, sigh)  and place in the bottom of punch bowl.  Beat pudding and milk.  Cover cake with half of pudding, half of bananas, 1 can of pie filling followed by 1 can of pineapple, half the coconut.  Repeat the layers.  Spread whipped topping over the top and garnish with nuts and more coconut if desired.  Refrigerate overnight.


The worst part about the punch bowl cake is that it takes up so much space in my already over-crowded refrigerator!  This is where the crock-pot recipes were helpful.  Many of their ingredients are shelf items and very little that had to be prepared ahead needed to be refrigerated.  And I did use both crockpots again yesterday.

It was a little bit harder to determine the cost per person for this meal.  We had left-overs of everything, including the chicken, so Pastor Dad, The Bear, and I will get another meal out of this.  Obviously this increases the number of people it will feed and diminishes the cost per serving.   My most expensive items were the chicken at about $7 (the total cost on the packages), and the canned goods for the dessert that I bought on an emergency run back to the store.    There's no way this meal cost more than $1.75 per person and I'd say that estimate is high even though the biscuits were canned (bought for less than $0.30 per can during one of the savings events of recent weeks).  

If I can keep my cost between $1.50 and $2.00 per portion each Sunday I am one happy hostess.