Cheap Eats

Cooking for One: Spaghetti Carbonara

April 29, 2012 in Cheap Eats,Cooking for One

Spaghetti Carbonara is one of my favorite meals. It’s easy to make and it has bacon in it…what more can a girl ask for? I also love Spaghetti Carbonara because the recipe can be adapted for one person or a crowd without a lot of fuss. You can use whatever type of pasta you have on hand (I used whole wheat spaghetti for the dish pictured) and I like to use pancetta instead of bacon when it’s on sale.

Ingredients
2 oz. Dry Spaghetti (or other pasta)
2 strips of bacon
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 egg
2 teaspoons, parmesan cheese
¼ teaspoon, pepper
Parsley (preferably fresh) to garnish

Instructions

Cook pasta to al dente according to package instructions.
While pasta is cooking, add bacon to a skillet and cook for about two minutes. Then crumble bacon and return it to the pan along with chopped garlic. Cook for two more minutes.
In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg with parmesan cheese and pepper.
Drain pasta and add it directly to the skillet with the bacon and garlic. Remove the pan from heat.
Pour the egg mixture over the pasta and continuously toss the pasta in the egg mixture as it thickens. Be sure to toss the pasta quickly to be sure that the egg doesn’t scramble.
Garnish with parsley and additional cheese.

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{Closed}Trying New Offerings at Burger King: $25 Gift Card Giveaway

April 25, 2012 in Cheap Eats,Giveaway

I’m always on the lookout for cheap eats, so I was excited to try a few of the new items from Burger King’s expanded menu. Burger King’s new offerings include Garden Fresh Salads, Snack Wraps, Real Fruit Smoothies, Frappés and Crispy Chicken Strips.

I headed to Burger King last night for dinner and I tried three of the new offerings:

The new Chicken, Apple and Cranberry Garden Fresh Salad ~ made with crisp apples, dried cranberries, bleu cheese and Ken’s Apple Cider Vinaigrette. All of the new Garden Fresh Salads at Burger King are made fresh daily with premium ingredients that can be topped with your choice of Tendercrisp or juicy Tendergrill chicken.

The Honey Mustard Crispy Chicken Snack Wrap ~ A flour tortilla filled with crispy, marinated white meat chicken, a three-cheese blend, and a combination of spring mix, romaine and iceberg lettuce, all topped with Ken’s® Honey Mustard Dressing for less than 400 calories.

The Tropical Mango Fruit Smoothie ~ made fresh to order with real fruit, low-fat yogurt and juices blended together. Each new smoothie also provides a full serving of fruit.

My verdict on these new BK options? They were all really good! The salad was fresh and filling. I was a little bummed that they forgot the bleu cheese on my salad at the location I visited, but the apples, cranberries and dressing tasted great with the warm Tendergrill chicken. I’ll visit Burger King again for the Chicken Snack Wrap and Fruit Smoothie when I’m looking for a quick, tasty lunch.

Now you have a chance to try Burger King’s expanded menu because I’m giving away a $25 Burger King Crown Card! Enter below for a chance to try some of BK’s tasty new offerings. This giveaway will close at 12:01 am EST on Thursday, May 3, 2012.

Disclosure: The coupons, product information, and additional gift pack have been provided courtesy of Burger King Corporation through MyBlogSpark.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Make It or Buy It: Cake Pops

March 20, 2012

I’m a big fan of Jennifer Reese’s cookbook, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter. She does a great job of letting the reader know if an item is better to buy in a store or worth the time it takes to prepare it at home. It turns out that making things from scratch is often [...]

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Cooking for One: Taco Soup

March 5, 2012

I’ve had a crazy schedule over the last few weeks (and I’m sorry that I couldn’t fit blogging into it). Easy meals have become a lifesaver and one of my favorites is Taco Soup. If you know how to open a can, you can make this soup. The great thing about this recipe is that [...]

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Cooking for One: Sweet Potato Fries

January 22, 2012

I always buy in-season vegetables because they’re a cheap way to incorporate more vegetables into my diet. However, it can be slim pickings for good seasonal produce during the winter. My favorite farmers market won’t be open until the spring and all of my favorite veggies are more expensive than I’m willing to pay for [...]

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Dating for Free Meals

January 8, 2012

Last month there was a story in Business Insider about a woman who used Match.com for the sole purpose of getting free meals. There were a lot of daytime talk shows discussing how much of a gold digger the woman was because she estimated that she got $1,200 in free dinners. My first reaction was [...]

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Cooking for One: Zucchini Onion Pizza

October 30, 2011

Sometimes it’s hard to get excited about cooking when you live alone. It’s easy to fall back on eating a bowl of cereal for dinner instead of putting the time into cooking a meal for yourself, but I think cooking for one is worth the effort. It’s less expensive than eating out and usually healthier [...]

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Free Tea at Chick-Fil-A

July 25, 2011

I think I may have developed a mild addiction to Chick-Fil-A sweet tea while I was camping out for First 100. It’s my drink of choice at Chick-Fil-A and I was really excited to hear about their Great Tea Giveaway. From August 1 through 13, participating locations in the Greater Atlanta Area and Athens [...]