Oprah & Chef Cora’s 7-day Menu Challenge: Day 1

Last week I watched the Oprah episode with three chefs from TV showing American families how to cut down on food costs. Each chef boasted that his/her recipes were easy and could be done at home.  Each chef declared that following the recipes would save money.   Each chef posted the recipes on Oprah.com.

I was a bit skeptical.

OK, I was a LOT skeptical.

There is good reason for my skepticism – I am not a very good cook.

I decided that we were going to try and see if it worked.

I looked online and chose Chef Cat Cora’s recipe list. It has 21 meals which include breakfast, lunch and dinner for 7 days. She states that it will feed a family of 4 and that the whole week would cost less than $150. Her list of recipes also included a shopping list which I printed so I would be ready for the grocery store trip.

I enlisted the help of Bianca. Making one meal a day would be a shock to my system, let alone 21 in one week so I figured I could use the help. And since we decided this could not go undocumented…here is our story.

Chef Cat Cora’s 21 meal menu
Chef Cat Cora’s shopping list for 21 meal menu

We started by taking our printed shopping list to Wal-Mart. It was easy to use because it was organized by areas within the store. When a choice was needed we chose the store brand or the cheapest product that would work.

There were three things that Wal-Mart either didn’t carry or was out of stock: Butter leaf Lettuce, Orzo, and fresh mint.

We found the missing items at a different store substituting for the Butter leaf Lettuce which wasn’t at either grocery shop.

Being very eager cooks we chose a recipe that sounded good and prepared our first meal from the list for dinner:

Spicy Chicken and Mango Stir Fry

This was one of the recipes that Chef Cora demonstrated on the Oprah episode in a real family’s kitchen.  She suggested using it for a lunch but once we looked at all the recipes we realized we had another problem…

*insert haunting music here*

A problem that we will discuss tomorrow.

*insert foreshadowing music here*

Is it called foreshadowing if I just come out and announce that we will be discussing it tomorrow?

Anyway, that is what we chose and we started to chop an onion.

and  another onion.

How many onions?

The picture tells the story of a heaping pile o’ onions with a side of post-chopping weeping.

We thought that two onions seemed like a lot for this recipe, but since we don’t have our own TV show or even regularly cook we decided to follow the recipe EXACTLY.

Then there is the issue of the chicken.

Cluck.  Cluck.

The recipe calls for “3/4 pound boneless, skinless chicken , sliced into 1/2-inch thick strips”.

What?

We just bought three WHOLE chickens.

Cluck.  Cluck.

Let the skinning and de-boning begin.

We will be the first to admit that it wasn’t pretty…

*insert foreshadowing music here*

Finally we have chicken!

Whoo hoo!

Finally we have dinner!

Whoo hoo!

This is the entire dinner.

This is the final product that will be split into four portions.

For our purposes we are going to chart the results for 2 adults and 3 small children.  Especially since the small children are super picky and will probably not eat much of anything because they are my small children.

The verdict?

4/5 LOVED the recipe.

1/5 refused to try it.

Triumph at dinner…

The post cooking  reality check report:

I will make this recipe again.  Next time I will start with skinless, boneless chicken.  It would also be a huge help to have all the vegetables pre-chopped.  Because we are not super handy with a knife the chopping took a very long time.  I am pleased to announce that both Bianca and myself still are the proud owners of 10 fingers each.

I think it is a bit labor intensive for a lunch, but appropriate for dinner.  I would add a side of rice. With a side of rice I think that this could be stretched to feed four small adults. We didn’t have any left-overs and we only fed two adults and two willing children.

Tune in tomorrow when we tackle THREE WHOLE MEALS in one day and dance to the foreshadowing music.

Read about Day 2

To see how this whole idea of following advice to see if it really works – check out our new Burbmom topic – Advice Reality Check.