$2.00 Meals - Swiss Chard Chicken

I was in the backyard the other day as the snow was falling, thinking how pretty it looked and how sad that my swiss chard was really taking a beating. But swiss chard can take a beating. It's an amazing vegetable - stunningly beautiful if you grow the rainbow varieties, very nutritious, and Canadian-winter sturdy. So, to reward my hardy little troupers, I decided to massacre and eat them.

I cut off any of the frozen leaves and added those discards to the stock pot, and used the still firm and unblemished leaves (which was most of them) for the meal. Swiss Chard has to be one of the best small garden vegetables to grow and you can substitute it for spinach in most recipes.

Swiss Chard Rice with Chicken serves 2 (with sufficient leftovers for one lunch)

2 chicken drumsticks and thighs (quarter chickens)
1 bunch swiss chard (about two cups chopped)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, slice generously
2 cups cooked rice
2 tbsp soy sauce

The instructions for cooking the chicken varies - I drop them into the soup pot and cook until not quite cooked, then place in a skillet on med heat. Leave the skin on the chicken and enough of the fat from the chicken will be rendered to cook the rest of the ingredients in. Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside.
It's a good idea to cook more than you need for the meal, and then you can separate what you need for the meal out from what you can use for the next evening's meal.
Add onion to hot chicken fat and saute for four or five minutes. Then add the chopped swiss chard stems for two -three minutes, then the rest of the chopped leaves and the garlic for another 2 minutes or so.
You can do two things at this point depending on how much work you want to do.
You can take the chicken off the bones, chop it and add it to the pan now. Let it cook with the other ingredients for two minutes and then add the rice and the soy sauce.
Or you can leave the chicken on the bone, add the chicken pieces back into the pan with the soy sauce, and serve the meal over the rice instead.

Of course, you could make this with boneless chicken breasts, but it will cost much more, both because chicken breast is more expensive, and also because you'll likely serve one breast per person which is about three times the meat on a drumstick. Just tell yourself that we eat far too much protein in North America.

My cost breakdown:
one pack of 4 chicken quarters - 4.90 I use two chicken drumsticks for this meal for two people which is 25% of the cost = $1.25
swiss chard is free, as is the garlic from the garden (garlic is really easy to grow, and a much fresher taste)if you don't grow chard, it's still not expensive for 2 cups
2 lb of onions is $1.00 on sale, and there's about 8 onions per bag - I use one for this for $.13 (I often use the whites from my green onions so this could be free too)
about 1/2 cup of uncooked rice - I buy the big bag and this is about .10
soy sauce? .02? maybe?

I also served this with creamed beets (.30) and curried lentils (.30) and my prices are only for the portions which we ate. The whole thing comes to about $2.00. Then we have two beer which costs more than the meal! That's not frugal, but it's yummy, and I'm out of wine until I bottle another batch next week. :(