Sour Cream Pesto Chicken

I was looking for a tasty new way to prepare chicken breasts when I stumbled onto a fussy recipe that inspired me.

Simply mix four tablespoons of prepared pesto with four tablespoons of sour cream. Marinate two chicken breasts in this mixture, then bake at about 375F until cooked through. As an added touch, sauté the breasts in a non-stick frying pan for a few minutes to give them a lovely brown coating. The result is very flavourful, moist, and tender.

I served this chicken with homemade biscuits (leftover from lunch) and a tossed salad.

Tomorrow, I'll make a sandwich of the second breast (thinly sliced) with tomato on a panini bun.

Ludicrously Easy and Insanely Delicious Chicken, Redux

LEaIDC is easy, but messy, to make, since it splatters like mad. I need to thoroughly scrub the stove for the new tenants, so I figured I might as well have one last batch of this stuff.

I served it with multigrain noodles tossed with leftover No Name cream of vegetable soup (quite good), broccoli, and cauliflower.

Inevitable questions:

You don't have many vegetables on your plate!
A: I nibble on salad or crudités while I cook, easily consuming three or four helpings worth of good stuff!

What, praytell, is your food lying on?!
A: My dad's serving platter, which is what got me into blue and white dishes. All my beloved antique blue willow is boxed up in storage right now, but I just couldn't risk never seeing this plate again.

Why is your food lying on a serving platter?
A: My beloved antique blue willow is boxed up in storage and my new dishes are in the moho. I've been eating out of serving bowls and bakeware all week. It makes proper portioning difficult since these dishes seem so empty compared to my regular dishes!

A Sign That You've Been Single Too Long

You have this sort of conversation with yourself:

-Dinner might be good.
*Yeah! But I don't feel like cooking.
-Have you ever felt like cooking in the past few weeks?
*No.
-You're not eating out AGAIN.
*Fine, then I'm not eating.
-How about... chicken in barbecue sauce?
*We have neither chicken nor barbecue sauce.
-GT has both and is right around the corner.
*So is Subways.
-*glares*
**glares*
-Maybe they'll have those frozen yoghurt things you like, too...
*FINE!
-*smugly* You're so easy to bribe.

And that's how I wound up having chicken baked in barbecue sauce, noodles on the side, and crudités (red pepper, cucumber, tomato). With chocolate covered coffee-flavoured frozen yoghurt for dessert. And leftovers for tomorrow.

I'm glad my evil twin wins these conversations.

Ludicrously Easy and Insanely Delicious Chicken

This fabulous dish has only two ingredients:

-chicken breasts (frozen)
-white wine vinegar Dijon mustard

It takes two days to make. The first day, I had the chicken after just the first step and it was okay. Second day, it was delicious!

Coat the bottom of an oven proof dish with a generous amount of the mustard and lay the frozen chicken breasts on top. Brush on another generous amount of mustard.

Allow to thaw/marinate all day.

Bake the chicken until done. I believe my oven was at 350 and that the cooking time was 30 minutes.

Remove from the oven. Cool. Return to the fridge in the same dish.

Allow the cooked chicken to marinate one more day in the mustard which will now be mixed with cooking juices.

When ready to serve, cut up the chicken into bite-sized pieces. Place in a hot non-stick pan with the marinade. Cook until the chicken browns and the marinade starts to create a crispy coating.

Soooooo good. I love mustard! I bet this would even be good cold in a pita bread with lettuce, tomatoes, and a dab of low-fat sour cream.

Chicken is becoming less and less foreign!

Quick Soup

Background to this soup:

1) When I was a child, I learned to enjoy my veggies 'as is', without any sort of sauce, cheese, butter, or spices on them.

2) I think that a lot of the new recipes coming out these days are too complicated and filled with ingredients that mask the wonderful taste of certain veggies.

3) In my universe, broccoli is its own food group.

So...

Rae's 15 Minute Cream of Broccoli Soup

Ingredients:

-One large head, or two small heads, fresh broccoli (frozen will do if broccoli is not in season)
-Two cups spring water mixed with 1 tbsp vegetable broth powder
-1/4 to 1/2 cup of cottage cheese OR sour cream OR plain yoghurt OR milk OR cream OR soy milk (etc.)
-freshly ground pepper

Method:

Prepare the broccoli by cutting it all up, stalks and all, into bite size pieces. Do remove the tough outer part of the large stalk.

Put into a large microwaveable dish. Pour over the prepared vegetable broth.

Nuke 5 minutes. Stir. Nuke 4 minutes more.

Pour into blender, add the cottage cheese (or whatever), and liquefy. The resulting mixture will be thick and chewable as well as sipable.

Return to the microwaveable bowl and nuke 2 minutes or until hot.

Ladle into a cup or bowl, sprinkle with ground pepper.

Look at the colour of this thing, nothing like the anemic soup sold in restaurants. This soup is an excellent topping for a baked potato and moistener for mashed potatoes.

Culinary Rediscovery

About fifteen years ago, I became a vegetarian. It didn't happen overnight, but I eventually phased out all meat from my diet, except for the odd bit of tuna or fish 'n chips introduced in later years. I can't remember why I chose this route, but I was a vegetarian for at least ten of those fifteen years, not eating any animal flesh, including fish and seafood. Soon as I started to let in the fish, I stopped calling myself a vegetarian, but I still wasn't eating any meat that came from flying or walking creatures.

For the last year or so, I've debated reintroducing chicken into my diet. I eat fish, so why not chicken? Every time I'd have a bite, it would be all right, but nothing to write home about. I didn't like the pasty nature and unless the meat was highly marinated, it tasted like, well, chicken. It wasn't very inspiring.

Since I've started to track my food intake in Fitday, I've begun to realise just how imbalanced my dietary intake is, with fat reaching about 35% of my daily caloric intake with protein being at 15%. Those numbers should be reversed. It didn't take me long to conclude that animal protein, like fish or chicken, were my best bet for boosting my protein numbers without upping the carb and fat numbers, too.

At a salad bar this week, I loaded up on all kinds of wonderful veggie dishes, but added one bite of marinated chicken. It went down fine; the marinade was nice but the chicken had that pasty texture that turns me off.

Feeling emboldened, I stopped at the grocery store yesterday and decided that I wasn't walking out of there without some chicken to prepare for dinner. I decided to use my fish-introduction method: buy ridiculously expensive pre-seasoned meat. I spent a good twenty minutes looking at all my options and decided that a package of two Maple Leaf chicken breasts marinated in a 'Santa Fe' sauce made the most nutritional sense. Unlike a lot of other products I'd looked at, this was 100% chicken with real ingredients, not 'chicken product' with a bunch of chemicals on the label.

I assumed that 'Santa Fe' marinade would be rather 'tex-mexy', so I picked up tortillas (on mega sale, woohoo!) and a yellow pepper. At home, I popped the chicken in the oven, then set to work sauteing sliced onions and peppers.

I then made up the tortillas fajita-style, using a bit of cottage cheese in lieu of sour cream (but, of course). The result was surprisingly satisfactory. I only ate one of the breasts last night, of course, and I didn't dread eating the leftovers for lunch today.

Chicken has yet to wow me, but I'll keep working at it. If this weekend has been any indication of future success, I'll do just fine.

But, please, don't expect me to tuck into roast beef within this lifetime. :)

Cottage Cheese, Redux

There's a terrible little Italian-wannabe restaurant in the Market in Ottawa that shall remain nameless, but which offers one over priced and over caloried dish that I occasionally find myself craving--roasted red pepper penné.

Last night, I was poking around the pantry and freezer, looking for something fun to top my pasta with. I found myself holding red peppers that I had recently roasted and frozen.

Hmm...

Well, I blended until smooth a cup of cottage cheese (1% fat) with roasted peppers, a bit of garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and tossed it with penné and a half oz of pecans. The result was insanely delicious and cheesey roasted red pepper penné for 600 calories (drop the pecans to bring the meal down to 500 calories), 14 grams of fat (4 if you drop the pecans!), 40 grams of protein (39 if you drop the pecans), and 78 grams of carbs. Add in a huge green salad (hold the dressing) and you have a healthy, nutritionally-sound meal that feels very indulgent.

Cottage cheese rocks. :-)

Quick Meal

I love baked potatoes but struck them off my diet years ago because I think it's wasteful to turn on the oven to bake a couple of potatoes and because I like my potatoes drenched in grease and salt. A baked potato was just an excuse to over indulge in sour cream.

Well.

My search for low fat, healthy lunches prompted me to try a recipe for a microwaved baked potato. I rarely think to use the microwave; it's something I've only had now for a few years. To my immense surprise, I discovered that the microwave can bake a potato in 4 to 10 minutes, depending on its size. The result is most satisfactory. The flesh is firm and flavourful, and the skin toughens a bit even though it doesn't turn crispy and chewy the way it would in the oven.

For toppings, the recipe suggested a half cup of low fat cottage cheese, herbs, salt, pepper, and 'something crunchy.'

The cottage cheese replaces the sour cream most satisfactorily and keeps the potato flesh nice and moist.

Since the potatoes cook up so quickly, I even have time to make them up at lunch. They make a nice, filling lunch that isn't heavy.

I suggest undercooking the potato by about a minute. Scoop out the flesh and mash it up with your ingredients, then return the mixture to the potato. Nuke for a minute or two, then enjoy.

Tonight's filling was:

-cottage cheese;
-garlic powder;
-fresh chives;
-0.5oz pecans

Basil is very good, too, in lieu of chives.



One day, I had really nice 'beefeater' tomatoes and wound up making a stuffed baked tomato as a side for a small potato! I divided the cottage cheese between them and made the tomato with pecans and basil while the potato was chives and sunflower seeds. Yuuuuuuum. Just nuke the tomato long enough for the skin to become loose, then add your fillings and nuke again until hot.

Measuring and Weighing

Geeze, if I had known that 'going on a diet' was going to be this easy, fun, delicious, and effective I would have done it months ago.

No, I'm not being sarcastic!

One thing that I learned is crucial is to measure and weigh just about everything I eat to make sure I'm getting the proper portion size. That was fine for cups and measuring spoons, but I didn't have a kitchen scale. I dillied and dallied and finally bought a very effective and cheap one (under 6$) at Walmart (where, incidentally, I've been spending way too much time lately).

Until I got the scale, I 'guesstimated' the portion sizes (1 oz) for things like cheese and pecans based on standards. I sure was in for a shock when I actually weighed an oz of each. What I thought was about an oz of cheese turned out to be a little under half an oz, and pecans were around the .75 oz mark! Underestimating is definitely better than over estimating, but it taught me that 'proper portion size' can be a very reasonable amount. Grate an ounce of cheddar and you'll see what I mean.

Last night's dinner (not counting the salad entrée nor the fruit I had for dessert) came in at a grand total of 440 calories. Want to know what I had? A huge plate of pasta topped with rosée sauce. The pasta was 85g of multigrain spaghetti, and the sauce was 1 cup of stewed tomatoes puréed with one small sautéd onion, herbs, and two tablespoons of cottage cheese. I then sprinkled one tablespoon of parmesan cheese over the top. Those healthy carbs fueled my run a couple of hours later. :-)

Using Fitday, I've been tracking the nutritional aspect of my diet and find it interesting that, in the course of a week, my diet averages out to the 'appropriate' proportions of good carbs and fats, as well as protein.

I haven't cooked, nor been this creative in the kitchen, in years. It feels great.

Bird on a Mission

I'm currently more overfat than I am comfortable being, so I've made it my goal for the next few months to lose what needs to be lost.

To kick start the program, I went on a very restrictive, low-calorie diet for four days, then moved on to a much more sustainable, long-term approach.

My normal diet isn't really that bad; the problem is portion control/moderation and over-indulgence. I've set a range of calories to aim for and am using two wonderful tools to keep me in line with that goal: Fit Day and Calorie Count.

Fit Day is a fantastic FREE online journal and tool box for getting fit. You can track your diet, exercise, weight goals, etc. I use it as a meal planning tool to project my calorie intake for the day so that I can know ahead of time if I can indulge in x, y, or z. I use Calorie Count to get nutritional data for foods that Fit Day doesn't have in its data base, like a lot of fast food and prepared foods.

Long-term meal planning has never worked for me, but so far the day-to-day projections are working out just fine. Nine days in, I'm right on track with my weight/fat loss, I feel amazing (my sleep requirements have shot right down!), my energy is through the roof, and I don't feel guilty about the insane amount of money I'm spending on groceries since 90% of the bill is for fresh fruits and veggies (romaine lettuce ain't cheap, folks, and a bird goes through a lot of it eating two salads a day)!

Best of all, I am a lot more conscious of what I eat and everything tastes soooooooooo good. This afternoon's snack of fresh pineapple was quite possibly the best thing I've ever eaten. That's a bonus result of this exercise--I've cut way back on sugar (only have a bit in my coffee, plus the odd piece of good quality chocolate); so fruit is really, really, really satisfying. I know a 'diet' is working when an apple qualifies as dessert.

I'll finish off this post with a bonus 'recipe' because lunch was so delicious.

Raven's Mini Grilled Tomato and Cheese Sandwiches

Cut eight thin slices from a baguette (loaf of 'French-style' bread, the long and thin kind).

Layer the following on four slices (base yourself on the baguette surface area to determine quantities):

-a thin slice of a small tomato;
-a sprinkle of salt;
-a small slice of tomato and basil Havarti;
-a basil leaf

Gently place in a non-stick pan and toast for about a minute on each side until the bread is golden and the cheese starts to melt.

Makes four. Serve with a great big salad.

Makin' Squash

Last night I cooked the peppery acorn squash mostly according to the recipe I found. The results had potential, but needed further tweaking since peppery acorn squash is really bland.

Apple-Nut Acorn Squash

Ingredients

1 acorn squash
1 small apple
lemon juice to taste
1 tbsp (or so) of chopped pecans
cinnamon to taste (my addition)
1 tsp brown sugar
salt

Method:

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Slice the squash in half lengthwise and put cut side down in an oven-proof dish. Add about a half inch of water. Bake for about 20 minutes until just tender.

Meanwhile, chop the apple into itty bitty pieces and toss with the lemon juice, pecans, and cinnamon.

Pour the water from the squash dish and turn the squash over. Rub the flesh with salt and then fill with the apple mixture. Sprinkle brown sugar over top.

Bake another 10-15 minutes until the sugar starts to caramelize and the apples are soft.

One portion is a whole squash. Serve with a salad.

Next time I make this, I will rub the flesh with salted butter and some nutmeg. Otherwise, this is really, really yummy! I'm a sucker for apples cooked up with brown sugar, cinnamon, and pecans!

The Perils of Bilingualism

At the grocery store this evening, I looked for an acorn squash for a recipe I'll be making later this week. I found three kinds of squash: butternut, spaghetti, and peppery. I came home squash-less and prepared to return to the store after doing some internet research... which made me go DOH!

This is what the pepper squash looks like:



Yup, that's an acorn squash en anglais. But, en français, it's a courge poivrée. As in peppery squash.

Silly me. I was looking for a courge with the word 'gland', or something related to the word gland, in the name.

I think I'll stop trying to expand my culinary horizons with English recipes... or at least ask the Office de la langue française to translate new ingredients. Or else, go shop in an English province (a hop, skip, and a jump across the river, conveniently enough).

One of the little 'annoyances' I will miss when I move to Manitoba....

Making Quiche

(Ooh, I do so love productive days like this!)

This evening, I am attending a pot-luck dinner for Passover for which I was asked to bring a main dish that could feed six. I immediately thought 'quiche.'

I absolutely cannot stomach the taste of eggs, so quiche is a hit-or-miss type of dish for me and not something I'll order in a restaurant. But my quiche? Ooh, now that's good eatin'! I only use two eggs and rely on super savoury cheese and mountains of sautéd onions to mask any potential egginess. The result is rich, but oh-so-satisying.

Raven's Onion Quiche

Ingredients:

-one prepared pie crust (I favour the 'No Name' kind as it is made of 100% vegetable oil and comes out a lot flakier and less greasy than the lard-based 'Tenderflake' brand);

-2 eggs;

-about a half cup of milk, cream, or soy milk;

-one cup of grated cheese (the stinkier, the better, but I usually go with the oldest cheddar I can find);

-about four onions (depending on the size), quartered and sliced;

-basil (fresh or dried) to taste;

-salt;

-pepper

Method:

-Sauté the onions in vegetable oil until soft and translucent, about 20 minutes. I know they're ready when the ones at the bottom of the pot start to brown. The onions need to release their sugar, so a longer cooking time is much better than a shorter one.

-Meanwhile, beat the eggs with the liquid and add salt, pepper, and basil to taste. Mix in the cheese.

-Add in the hot onions and stir to coat them well with the egg and cheese mixture.

-Pour into the pie crust.



-Bake about 35 minutes, until the crust is brown and crispy, the eggs are set, and the top is golden brown.



This dish is wonderful at any temperature; hot, cold, and warm (making it particularly useful for a potluck if you don't know if you'll have access to a fridge or an oven). It freezes well, but is a bit soggy upon thawing, so I recommend heating it in the oven.

Since the pie crust comes two to a package, I tend to make two quiches at once by doubling the ingredients. Cooking time will be a bit longer, then.

In my family, this dish is traditionally served with a green vegetable (usually green beans, my favourites) and potatoes.

Cake Verdict

The cake is ludicrously delicious. The icing, not so much. Together, they're decadent.

Maybe I'm getting the hang of baker's chemistry?!

The cake looks shiny in this picture because the icing is melting. I wanted to try the cake both hot and cold. Cold is better!

Baking a Cake

To celebrate the fact that the streets are now walkable again with no risk to life, meaning that I can go home for lunch for the first time in months (WOOHOO), I decided to make myself a chocolate cake, with icing, for dessert this week.

For the cake, I threw together whatever baking supplies I had in what seemed like roughly the correct proportions and order. The batter tasted great (no eggs, so no salmonella risk *g*), so I'm optimistic.

For the icing, something I've never actually made (!), I figured that I'd need creamed butter, powdered sugar, and some sort of flavouring. I don't keep powdered sugar in the house. So, what did this inventive lass do? She dumped granulated sugar in the coffee grinder. The result was coffee-flavoured powdered sugar to which she added cocoa to make a decent-enough mocha icing (bit too buttery).

Can't wait to see how the cake turns out. :-)

First Dinner, Then a Rice Tip

I was in the mood for shrimp tonight and had fresh ginger on hand, so I googled 'shrimp soy sauce fresh ginger' (or something to that effect) and found a recipe called Spring Peas and Shrimp Stir-Fry with Ginger-Soy Glaze that sounded good.

I didn't have any rice vinegar or sesame oil on hand, so I knew that I wouldn't get the full effect of the glaze, but decided that the ginger alone would give me a bit of a tastebud shocker. Instead of peas, I used frozen veggies I had on hand. Frankly, I think my medley was more inspiring than just the peas. I like peas, but I also think that you can't have a soy sauce dish without red peppers!

Otherwise, I followed the recipe as written, which is rare for me. I had so many little bowls of sauces and ingredients on the counters it made me look like a food network chef! I should have taken a picture of that. I actually filled up the dishwasher with this meal alone!

The end result was very good! It was a tad salty (my fault: too much soy sauce and should have nixed the veggie broth), but since I served the shrimp and veggies over very bland rice, the flavour evened out. I'd make this again, but would make it a point to get the rice vinegar to add a bit more sweetness.

Of course, I have a picture. :-) My shrimp look darker than the ones in the picture on the recipe site because I only had regular soy sauce, not light.



And, now, for a rice tip. I got this tip from my grand-mother who also lives alone. I can't believe I never thought to do this and have been eating a lot more rice since I have. We make a big batch of rice (one cup uncooked), eat a portion with our meal for that evening, then freeze the rest in small bowls (I use glass ones and she uses ramekins):



Each one of my bowls has a plastic lid for an airtight seal.

When I want rice, I just dump it out onto my plate and nuke it for 2 minutes. It comes out fluffy and fresh.

Reading Labels

I've had a craving for grilled cheese sandwiches for days now. Must be the (insane) weather. Yeah, that's it.

Grilled cheese sandwiches are a treat since they're made with ingredients that have almost no redeeming nutritional value--real butter, commercial sliced white bread (CSWB) and fake cheese slices (FCS).

Tonight, I decided it was time to indulge, so I headed to GT. They had the CSWB I favour (Weston), but not the FCW. I usually buy Kraft 'real cheddar' slices. I don't care what anyone says, processed cheese is processed cheese, but these slices have a less 'plastic' feel to them. GT offered two options, both containing 24 slices. The first was by Black Diamond (maker of the some of the best sharp cheddar in the whole world) for 4.99$. The second was a brand I'd never heard of, for 88 cents.

I looked at the ingredient labels for each. Black Diamond's first ingredient was cheese. The other had oil and starch as its first ingredients and didn't even have the words 'cheese' or 'milk' anywhere in them. You can guess what I bought.

The resulting sandwiches were very, very good. :-) I've got lots of FCS and CSWB left, so I can have a few more sandwiches over the next week until I'm all grilled cheesed out, and then I'll be good for several months.

Little Things That Irk Me

(very little)

1) Unexplained Mini-Windfalls

There was a small deposit made into my chequing account two days ago. It's described as a 'branch deposit.' I wasn't expecting anything payments for anything, so I have no idea where this money comes from or even if the deposit was made in error. The bank was of no help ("According to our files, ma'am, that entry was a branch deposit." (Ma'am?!)) How long am I expected to leave that money in my account before I can do something with it, like move it to my high interest savings account? Money appearing from nowhere might sound great in theory, but it's annoying for someone who tracks such matters. I won't get into what happened the last time this happened, other than to say that the bank (not the bank I'm currently with) charged me interest for a five figure deposit they accidentally made into my account....

2) Changed Packaging

Like many eaters of tofu, I have a favourite brand because one curdled soy bean is not the same as another. I've been eating this brand for about fifteen years. I can't even tell you the name of it!!! I just grab the beige package for a full-sized brick, or the pink box for half a brick. Well, now they put their flavoured varieties (YUCK) in the same-colour packaging!!!!!!!!!! It wasn't until I'd ripped open the pink box today that I realised that I was holding herb-flavoured tofu that is normally sold in yellow packaging! Thankfully, this wasn't dramatic for the meal I was preparing and worked out fine, but what if I hadn't been planning to make something savoury with it (thyme tofu uncheese cake anyone)? Very, very annoying. If a gal can't count on her tofu, what, if anything, in the universe can she count on? There was also an announcement on the box for new 'feta-flavoured' tofu. Oh, brother. Let me guess, they're going to jack up the price, too?

*takes a deep breath*

I love my life!!! I mean, these (and having a hard time getting out of my parking spot because of the snow) are the most annoying things that happen in it!!!!

In Need of a Bigger Freezer

Whew, I sure did a lot of cooking in the past few days. There isn't a smidgen of space left in the freezer!

Thursday last, I made a bizarrely edible concoction vaguely reminiscent of shepherd's pie. I mixed Ethiopian spiced lentils with veggies and half a can of cream of celery soup. I topped that with rice mixed with the other half of the soup, and then sprinkled cheese over the top. I know it sounds revolting, but it was a culinary experiment that worked. It's not gourmet, but it's definitely good. I put two portions in the freezer.

On Saturday, I made a huge batch of baked farfelle with tomato sauce and cheese and froze one portion. I then made pancakes in the evening so I wouldn't have to in the morning.

Today, I made a big pot of caramelized leek and Yukon gold potato soup and froze three portions. I made a beer bread to go with it.

Add to the freezer a loaf of commercial bread, tons of trout (on sale this week for half price!), shrimp, frozen pizzas (3$ each), and several bags of fruits and veggies as well as more Ethiopian spiced lentils and I can barely close the freezer door!

A full larder is most definitely a Good Thing. :-)

Lunch!

I went out for lunch with my colleagues today. Now that I hardly eat out beyond getting something at the foodcourt, I find that I'm a lot pickier and that I come out much more satisfied. Today was no exception!

We went to an Italian restaurant I'd suggested called Pacini. I hadn't been there in years, but remembered that it was really good and reasonably priced. I'm pleased to say that my memory still held!

The 12.95$ lunch special got me:

-unlimited grilled bread at the bread bar;
-a fantastic cream of vegetable soup (I would have been thrilled with just the soup and bread for lunch, they were that good!);
-haddock en croute (coated with asiago cheese, sundried tomatoes, and basil then grilled) served over garlicky (and slightly too oily, but still delicious) linguini with napoletana (tomato) sauce;
-unlimited coffee (since I don't drink soft drinks).

The haddock was soooooo good; sweet, firm, and flaky. I'd wanted shrimp, but the shrimp offering for the lunch special didn't inspire me, so I made an excellent alternate choice. I loved the warmed, but not cooked, halved cherry tomatoes swimming around in that lovely garlicky goodness!

I added a 3.95$ 'mochaccino terrine' which was essentially mocha-flavoured mousse; very light and the perfect complement to my lunch.

Total cost, including tip: 21$

I know that for some frugal people, eating out means cutting corners on costs by not having desserts or drinks, etc., but I now eat out so little that when I do, I want the full out treat!