Kirkland Signature Chicken Alfredo With Caprese Salad On Romaine Lettuce

We felt compelled to buy the Chicken Alfredo since it is such a great deal on sale. However, we felt serving something on the side made some sense, so my lovely wife made a Caprese Salad on a bed of romaine lettuce.  Aside from being a tasty combination, it was also very pretty.

This meal came together pretty quickly and it had a variety of flavors and textures.  Having romaine lettuce and mozzarella cheese from Costco also made this very affordable.

If you are looking for a way to spruce up your alfredo, I highly recommend this combination.

Chicken Salad With Cannellini Beans, Sun Dried Tomatoes, Green Pepper and Sweet Onion

We had a rotisserie chicken from Costco recently and my wonderful wife decided to make chicken using salad using it.  Here is her list of ingredients

Rotisserie chicken-from Costco
Cannellini beans
Green bell Peppers
Sweet onion
Romaine lettuce-from Costco
Bella Sun Luci tomatoes-from Costco
Meyer lemon olive oil

The salad was colorful, easy to eat and refreshing-a perfect summer lunch or light dinner. I liked how she combined the crunchy with the chewy. Also, using mostly fresh ingredients gave this a nice, bright flavor profile.

While chicken and lettuce are the basis of this salad, it is the rest of the ingredients that sets this apart and makes it a home run.

Perdue Farms Bourbon Chicken Wrap With Peppers, Chives and Romaine Lettuce

With my lovely wife being off work for the summer, she has been doing the majority of lunch making. This lovely wrap consists of Perdue Farms Bourbon Chicken, fresh peppers, chives and romaine lettuce, all wrapped up in a flour tortilla. For dressing, she added just a little bit of lite salsa ranch dressing. As you can see, the dish is as attractive as it is tasty.

This was a wonderful idea and my wife executed it well. It was tasty, easy, quick and pretty to look at.  The tangy flavor and meaty texture of the chicken was well complimented by the crisp vegetables and the soft flour tortilla.

The bourbon chicken from Costco makes for great finger food, but with a little creativity, you can also use it to make a fun and easy lunch or dinner.  It works well in both sandwiches and salads and I am sure it will be it will be in our freezer on a regular basis.

Twist On A BLT: Bacon & Tomato Ravioli With A Salad Of Romaine, Almonds & Dried Cranberries

As we move thoroughly into fall, I decided to buy one last batch of fresh tomatoes from the farmer's market.  Given that we still have a good quantity of that wonderful Pasta Prima ravioli from Costco, I thought I would do something with that. Since we had lettuce and tomato already included in the menu, adding bacon jumped into my mind.

I cooked up some onion, garlic and crushed red pepper in EVOO.  I then added the chopped fresh tomatoes and let soften and blend in. Finally, I  added in those bacon pieces you get in the bag (real bacon, please, no substitutes) and warmed it through.  We garnished it with grated cheese and ground black pepper.

While not brilliant, we both agreed this was a very good dish and it took about as much time to make as it does for me to  do a posting on it.  The crushed red pepper gave some background heat and using the last of the farmer's market tomatoes gave it a fresh flavor.  We will definitely make this again: quick, easy, tasty and affordable is a hard combination to beat.

To go along with the theme of BLT, we had a romaine lettuce salad. The dried cranberries (craisins) are on sale this month at Costco with a coupon so three pounds of them cost 3.99, a real bargain.  We finished the salad with those crunch sliced almonds you get at Costco and it made for a wonderful salad that was pretty also.

I am sure we will find lots of good uses for those craisins. Aside from being affordable, they are colorful, tasty and good for you.  I highly recommend buying a bag before the sale is over.

For wine, we had the Ecco Domani Pinot Grigio 2008 that was given a solid rating Costco Wine Blog.  While not the best Pinot Grigio ever, at less than $8 a bottle it is a very good value. This someone sweet wine went well with the freshness of the tomato and my wife and I both agreed with the review that it was easy to drink and enjoy with this dinner.

To sum this up, the concept of Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato being used together has been around for a long time, but this shows there are still ways to innovate and put new spins on the idea.

Bacon Wrapped Sirloin Served with Grilled Romaine and Grilled Sweet Onions

We bought a six pack of those Quantum Steakhouse bacon wrapped sirloin steaks. They are were less than $13 for six of them, so they were a bit over $2/each.

My wonderful wife Marcelle started the grill while I sliced up the vegetables and seasoned them with salt and pepper. The romaine came from Costco and the sweet onions from the farmers market.  For the romaine I made a dressing of capers, apple cider vinegar and dijon mustard.

We got the idea for this dinner from watching "Secrets of a Restaurant Chef" on the Food Network.  We saw Anne Burrell make some steaks with some grilled sweet onions on the side and we thought that sounded good. Then to complete the meal we made Alton's grilled romaine from "I'm Just Here For The Food" cookbook. This is a simpler recipe than his one on the Food Network site.

We loved the dinner and we will certainly do something similar to this again, but we will probably vary the vegetables to give it some variety. The total cost for both of us was about $6.  Compare that to the price of a similar meal in a steakhouse and you can certainly see the value.

Below is a picture of the meal. I do apologize for the fact we started eating before we photographed it.

Then we had some Edy's fruit bars for desert. They had a coupon at Costco for them a while ago and we have been going through them.  They have an honest and fresh fruit flavor and are satisfying without any fat and very few calories.