Fast Food Hack with a Bonus

This is a fast food burger bun that has been kept in our freezer after an outing to McDonalds -- that's frost, not mold.

When it comes to Sunday lunches out two of our family members have a penchant for McDonalds. So we do choose that establishment once or twice per month. It doesn't hurt that it can be very affordable. However, I'm not a huge fan of all of the bready stuff -- burger/sandwich buns. What I do love are salads. When we choose McDonalds, I order a side salad ($1.99), and a McChicken sandwich ($1.00). I open the salad and sandwich and scrape the lettuce and mayo from the McChicken onto the salad, then I slice the chicken patty into strips to add to the greens -- my own chicken and greens salad. If the McDonalds has Caesar dressing, then I get a Chicken Caesar salad for $2.99. And yes, it is tasty -- so much so that one of my daughters now follows me in her fast food lunch choice.

bread crumbs from the above, salvaged burger bun

Here's the bonus. You know that I don't like to waste food. McDonalds packages the salad dressing with a fork and knife in a plastic bag. I use this bag to hold the burger bun that is leftover from my McChicken after removing the lettuce, mayo, and chicken patty. Once home, I pop the bun into the freezer. When I make meatloaf, I pull one of these saved buns from the freezer and pulse into crumbs in the food processor to add to the ground meat. Nothing wasted, and I got just the lunch that I wanted at a reasonable price.

To give you a price comparison, the same McDonalds has a Chicken Southwest Salad that sells for $4.79 and a Chicken Bacon Ranch Salad that sells for $4.59. Both of these salads contain a comparable amount of food to my chicken salad concoction. Yet, my salad is 1/3 cheaper.

How about you? Do you ever take the various components of fast food items and concoct something more to your liking? Would you save a burger bun to use as bread crumbs for another meal?

Back to Blogging: Putting the Alphabet in Soup

Thank you, all, for your kind words this past week, both here and privately to my husband or me in email. My father-in-law passed away last Thursday afternoon. It was teary -- hard to be unselfish when loved ones pass into the afterlife and leave the rest of us behind. Anyway, thank you all so much for your kindness.

I wanted to share something that I bought a couple of weeks ago, as I thought it was a terrific grocery bargain and a way to make homemade soup fun for children of all ages. So, you know that I scour the Hispanic aisles at the grocery store. I find fantastic bargains there (remember the tea cookies for 37 cents a package?). This time, I bought alphabet pasta for a whopping 38 cents a 7 oz. package at WinCo. That's just under 87 cents per pound, which while not the lowest price that I've ever paid for pasta, it was a pretty good deal considering that it kicks homemade soups up a notch when it comes to kids. When my son was small, I bought a US brand of alphabet pasta, but I recall that it was much more expensive than the Hispanic brand.

One night, during this very hectic period, I needed a quick dinner that used scratch ingredients. I made a chicken and vegetable alphabet soup, using a chicken breast, carrots, celery, some of the alphabet pasta, chicken soup base, and dried rosemary. It was delicious. Combined with tangerines and grilled cheese sandwiches, we had a complete meal 20-25 minutes after walking in the door. Due to the small size of the pasta, it cooks up very quickly -- about 6 or 7 minutes of boiling along with the chicken, vegetables, water, and seasonings. Check the Hispanic aisle in your grocery store or an ethnic market in your area. The brand is El Guapo.