The other day I had a hankering for some French Toast which is a bit unusual for me because I’m not so much a “sweets” type of person. I’ve had good and bad french toast outside in restaurants, it’s pretty much been a tossup. So making it at home seems a good bet especially for those times you get a craving for it.

French Toast, or Pain Perdu (Lost Bread), was originally meant to be a way to fix up bread that had gotten old. This pretty much qualifies as Cheap Eats because you’re using stuff that otherwise might get thrown away.

The basic recipe is beat up an egg, dip toast in it, and fry that. Most add some sort of milk and sugar to the mix. The key is that you want it to be sort of crispy on the outside but buttery and velvet smooth on the inside. Pretty tough.

I think a lot of it has to do in the type of bread you choose. I hadn’t made french toast in awhile so I decided to go off a Cook’s Illustrated recipe. They did all sorts of testing and came up with the bread of choice being something called “Challah”(I believe this is Jewish?) They said to stay away from supermarket Italian or French breads beacuse it comes apart. White Sandwich bread seems to be acceptable though. I used bakery sandwich bread because it’s thicker and crisps better, but you can probably use Wonder as well.

Here’s the recipe as modified by me:

Quick French Toast

6 slices day old sandwich bread — $0.30
2 tbsp melted butter — $0.10
1 egg — $0.05
3/4 cup milk — $0.15
1.5 tbsp sugar — $0.05
1/3 cup flour — $0.05
2 tsp vanilla extract — $0.20
1 tbsp oil or equiv “Pam” spray — $0.05
1/4 tsp salt — negligible

Total: $0.95

Heat up a skillet till it’s really hot, 3-5 minutes. I like to use a really flat pan (like for pancakes), and if you’ve got it use a Cast Iron pan. In the meantime, beat up the egg in a shallow plate, whisk in melted butter, milk, vanilla extract, sugar, flour and salt, in that order.

Soak each slice of bread for about 30 seconds a side in the batter mixture. Take it out and shake it to remove excess. Put some oil in the pan and swirl with a paper towel. Alternatively, you can use those “Pam” sprays. Fry the bread until golden brown. It’ll be about 2 minutes for first side and then 1 minute on the second. You made need to experiment based on temperature of pan. Serve while hot, hopefully with maple syrup!

Continue reading “Quick French Toast” …

A quick post just to let you know that today is in fact July 11, which is otherwise known as a day of celebration for that quickee mart we all love 7-11! I believe they do this every year, where they offer a Free Slurpee to anyone who comes in. I’m not sure what size that it is, but they do say “specially marked cups” so I’m assuming it’s a smaller size than the normal.

I have good memories of 7-11 Slurpees from when I was a kid. I’d always get cherry or coke slurpees, and actually I don’t exactly remember but I think those might have been the only flavors before 1980? The brain-freeze that goes along with them? Well, you learn to live with it. I also used to really like the “Icee” drinks that had the polar bear on them. These were sold at stores like Gemco…

Anyhow, here is the text of the above graphic blown up a bit in case you can’t see it:

One slight catch: NOWHERE could I find a list of the so-called “participating stores”. This isn’t being offered at all the 7-11s. Interestingly, enough I went to a 7-11 just a little while ago on an unrelated errand not knowing there was a Slurpee special going on. They didn’t have it at the one near my house, so I didn’t even know about it until later today.

Anyhow, so if there is one close to you, go check it out and see if they are having the celebration at your 7-11. Because even if they’re not, you can pick up some of their yummy nachos with super fake cheese sauce, cheapo hot dogs and microwaved hamburgers…

Cheap Eats Score: 8/10

As promised earlier, I’m finally getting around to reviewing local area eateries near where I live. As you can imagine, besides reviewing fast food places and “quick sit down” places there aren’t too many chances to review actually restaurants since I try not to eat out too often. That is Cheap Eats Rule #1: avoid eating out when you can!

But anyhow, the other day I happened to be in Pasadena (for the Pasadena City College flea market) and decided to try out an old favorite of mine: Zankou Chicken. You might have heard of this Southern California fave without even knowing it, since Beck sings about it in his song “Debra” (off of the Midnight Vultures CD. Hey, if it’s good enough for Beck…

The first Zankou Chicken was actually opened in Beirut, Lebanon (1962). The owners, the Iskenerian family, then moved to L.A. and opened up the first American Zankou in Hollywood. In the early 90’s, they branched out into heavily Middle-Eastern influenced Glendale, CA and eventually spread to Pasadena, Anaheim, West L.A. and Van Nuys and will be opening in Burbank soon.

There are a lot of strong opinions about Zankou Chicken on either side of the “like-it, hate-it” camps. Some people say it’s the best roast chicken they’ve had while others say they have had better elsewhere, and for cheaper. They have a pretty famous strong garlic paste sauce that has always been a hit. Besides the classic rotisserie chicken you can also get plates which include the garbanzo bean and tahini based hommus (or hummus), pita bread, chopped tomato and these crazy purple-pink marinated turnip pieces.

Some of the more unconventional items on the menu are Shawerma (Marinated beef from a spit), Tarna (Marinated spiced chicken from a spit), Falafels (Fried mixture of Garbanzo, Fava beans, and split peas), and Mutabbal (Eggplant mixed with garlic and sesame)

I’ve always been somewhat split down the middle about the restaurant. I’ve certainly had better tasting Falafel wraps and Shawerma plates elsewhere, but the roast chicken was always really good. Crispy skin and not dry, even for the 1/4 white meat plate. I think the kicker that kept me coming back was the price, which was fairly cheap. The good quality Roasted Chicken Wrap with garlic paste for about $2 was excellent.

But this past time I went, I saw that nearly all the prices have been raised. A chicken wrap is now $3.29 and a 1/4 dark meat chicken plate is now $4.98. This is no longer Cheap Eats. They got a new glitzy looking menu lightboard, but I would have rather had the old boring menu if it meant cheaper prices. In some part, the price hike was overdue. I just can’t get used to inflation.

But I expected that the quality of the food would at least remain the same. Instead, the order of roasted chicken had crisp skin, but it was so salty that I almost had to discard it. And the crispy skin is almost the main reason I used to get it! The meat was just OK, but I had gotten the dark plate. I heard some people who got the white meat chicken plate complaining about it being dry. The chicken wraps were about the same, but it’s no longer very economical to get two of them which is what I used to often do. My wallet didn’t have the heart to divulge any more money to try and see how the Falafel fared.

Continue reading “Zankou Chicken” …

A reader of the Cheap Eats Banquet Frozen Meals series of reviews had suggested taking a look at Michelina’s line of “Budget Gourmet” frozen dinners. Supposedly, these tend to taste a little more refined than the slammed in a box mentality dinners that Banquet.

Surprisngly, I also found these for the same low price at the supermarket - 10 for ten dollars. I mean, you can’t be crazy enough to eat these things every day, so 10 frozen dinners will certainly last a long time. The trick here is also that you don’t need to buy TEN to get the dollar-per-meal price. This is that tricky supermarket psychology at work here again. For instance, I just bought three of them but still got them at a dollar each. But the price says 10 for $10, no mention of the INDIVIDUAL price. Pretty sneaky, sis.

Anyhow, first on tap is Michelina’s Lasagna With Meat Sauce Frozen Dinner. Please note that they seem to feel the need to say “Premium” on it. Little warning bells - there goes my Cheap Eats spidey senses.

One thing I liked about Banquet is they don’t mess around with trying to be “health” conscious at all. I mean, if I’m going to care about that stuff, I’ll just buy the Weight Watchers or Lo Carb brands. At Cheap Eats we’d rather get full than eat healthy! At least within reason.

So I don’t really care that this Michelina’s meal only has 9 grams of fat. Strike one. I also didn’t care for the overall look of the cooked meal… I mean take a look at it! This is clearly one of the most unappetizing frozen dinners I’ve seen. A definite Strike two. This sort of reminds me of the dirt bike riding trails in the California desert after a hard rain. I think the lunches that I remember from primary school cafeterias looked better.

So, I was hoping that this would avoid Strike 3, which is taste. Let’s just say it foul tipped, but the catcher almost caught it. It was actually halfway decent in taste. Better than Chef Boyardee for sure. The problem is in the layers of noodle and sauce. There is only ONE real “layer”, sandwiched between two noodles. To their credit, they didn’t show more than one layer of stuff on the box… so I can’t exactly accuse them of false advertising.

Continue reading “Michelina Lasagna Meal” …

In most cases, eating food that is uncooked or undercooked (with the exception of sashimi and a few other things) is definitely not a good idea. Unless your idea of fun includes a residency on the toilet and/or a trip to the doctor’s office. But these uncooked flour tortillas from CostCo were kind of interesting. In the usual manner of CostCo, they come in a double pack of 36 each.

These things are NOT cheap, and therefore I wouldn’t cover them in Cheap Eats, except that I usually get one package of 36 free because my mom buys these and she always gives us a pack because she can never finish both on her own. I believe it’s something like 4-5 dollars for the whole thing, which would make one pack of 36 about 2 bucks. You can probably get pre-cooked flour tortillas (the Mission brand or a variety of others) for pretty cheap at the grocery store.

However, those tend to taste pretty thick and rubbery… I mean if you are going to use it as a burrito wrapper slop a huge amount of ground beef, cheese, lettuce, beans, and hot sauce it’ll do it’s duty of keeping the filling inside. That’s about all it will contribute though. We used to throw the old ones like frisbees for fun.

Anyone who has had “real” flour or corn tortillas either homemade or in a restaurant can attest to just how good a tortilla can be. How good? Well, you just peel one of these uncooked frisbees off the rest in the package, plop it on a hot griddle (you can use a non-stick pan too), and let it puff up… and then you can eat it straight off the grill! No kidding, you don’t need any filling, or even butter or cheese. I cook these up for a snack and just eat them plain. Really delicious.

Granted, they won’t beat the homemade variety, but interestingly, these are made with Canola Oil instead of lard or other animal fats. So I suppose they are not too bad for you.

You can get some really good “browning” marks on these too. They start off looking like pasta dough, but as soon as you put them on a hot griddle they start to puff up like a balloon from the trapped hot air inside. Sometimes, it gets a bit unwieldy with the way it puffs up and that can lead to uneven browning. So I usually take a fork and pop holes in the places that are puffing up. If you decide
to just let it puff away, then don’t worry: they deflate pretty fast by the time you take them off.

As I said, they are great on their own, or you can just fill them with your usual burrito mixtures. And they do make good quesadillas. One thing about these tortillas is that because they are uncooked they are perishable and need to be refrigerated once opened. They won’t last more than a week or so after opening the inner package. Not that they last that long anyway… they usually all end up in my belly in a week’s time. Now, if only they weren’t so darn expensive.

A definite lower score for them, because of the price, but slightly higher because of the usability factors…

Cheap Eats Score: 6/10