Frugal Sunday Dinner, 3/20/2011

The date is not a mistake. Not only did we not eat here yesterday, but I did not have opportunity last Monday to discuss the previous day's meal. We were busy with special services at church all week so my attention was focused elsewhere.

Special services also means special guests around the Sunday dinner table. As a consequence, I spent a bit more money than usual for the meal, at least I thought that at first. But upon further inspection I discovered that I actually got more mileage out of this meal than anticipated.

Our menu was a classic dinner of roast beef with gravy, baked potatoes and fixings, baked sweet potatoes, California-style veggies, and rolls. We had hot fudge cake for dessert.

The biggest problem I encountered, besides the fact that I wanted this meal to turn out well, was that I had to buy just about everything for it because there were no roasts in my freezer or potatoes in the bin. I also had no cake mix, sour cream, or time to make rolls or hot fudge sauce from scratch. In other words, I had to buy practically every ingredient. Thankfully, that doesn't happen very often. But since it did, I know that I paid exactly $44.93 for the meal. And since I know I fed 13 people that Sunday I also know the price per person to be about $3.46. OUCH!

But that's not the whole story. We had leftovers, and lots of 'em!

On Monday, I took some of the leftover roast, gravy, California veggies, and one baked potato and combined them to make beef stew. Since we had homeschool co-op all day and little time to prepare dinner before the evening church service I was able to feed the three of us a meal made from the leftovers without it seeming like we were eating leftovers.

On Tuesday, I used two of the leftover baked potatoes and combined them with milk, sour cream, and cheese to make loaded potato soup. There were enough slices of roast left (sans the gravy) for sandwiches. This was another quick meal designed for a church night.

Since there were 13 fed on Sunday and 3 each on Monday and Tuesday, the total number of people fed from that $44.93 was actually 19. This brings the cost down to $2.36 per person which is within my target parameters for a nice Sunday dinner.

As always, I'll leave you with the directions for the dessert that was served. If you have a Shoney's, Frisch's, or other restaurant that serves a hot fudge cake, then you'll know what this looks like.

HOMEMADE HOT FUDGE CAKE

Bake a chocolate cake in a 9 x 13 inch pan according to the directions on the box. Allow cake to cool but DO NOT ICE IT! When ready to assemble, cut cake into squares. Slice each cake square horizontally to make a top and bottom layer.

Place a slice of vanilla ice cream between the cake layers sandwich-style. Heat homemade or commercially prepared hot fudge sauce and place a generous portion on top of each cake/ice cream sandwich.

Put a dollop of whipped cream over the fudge sauce and finish with a cherry on the top. Serve immediately.

Makes 15 generous servings.