Friday night supper -- using up everything before grocery shopping tomorrow

I can't believe we made it to payday and still had food in the house.  But there at the back of the freezer was a bag of frozen chicken tenders, some rice, and some green beans.  Well, to me, chicken and rice just scream "Chinese" again, so that's what we did.

Tonight's Menu:
Black Bean Veggie Burgers for the Vegetarians
Chicken Teriyaki
White Rice
Green Bean Casserole
Fruit Cobbler

I'm going to give you the total first because it's Friday and why not?

The black bean veggie burgers were for the vegetarians, I was able to make about 16 and there were 12 leftovers.  But to make the entire batch ran $1/can for two cans of black beans, $2; 3 eggs, a little bisquick and spices -- about 50¢.  So, the 16 veggie burgers ran a total of 16 "burgers" for about $2.50.

The Chicken Teriyaki, etc., ran like this:

• 2.5 lb frozen chicken tenders, WD had them on sale B1G1, so this package was $5.50.
• Homemade Teriyaki sauce used a cup of sugar, a cup of soy sauce and various spices, so I'd say it ran about $2 at the most to make.  I'm not going to figure the price in for any other spices because I know this is way over estimated.
• White Rice, $1 
• Green Bean Casserole, $3
• Fruit Cobbler, $4

That means for the dinner, the total was about $15.50, and a grand total with the Black Bean Veggie Burgers, about $18.00.  That's really high for us, but, I figure we got about five meals of the chicken and will get a lot more meals out of the veggie burgers.  So, feeding seven on $18.00 (about $2.60 per person) and having leftovers -- not too bad.

For the black bean veggie burgers, I loosely used this recipe:  Black Bean Veggie Burgers.  I basically tripled this recipe with two 26 oz cans of black beans instead of their 15.25 oz can.  I also had no bread and couldn't make bread crumbs, so I used about a half-cup of Bisquick for my thickener.  These taste excellent with sauce, like the teriyaki below or barbecue.  They'd really taste good done up like a burger, but, like I said, we don't have any bread.

Chicken Teriyaki
I used this recipe for a dry rub for the chicken, but wow, with the salt in the soy sauce later, it made the chicken REALLY salty.  They all said they really loved it like that, but next time I'll use little or no salt in the rub.

I baked the chicken for 30 minutes along with the pear cobbler.  I used this recipe for the pear cobbler.

While they were cooking, I made the Green Beans.  No french onions (I know, best part) but made do with just 2 cans of beans, 2 cans of mushroom soup, milk, pepper and onion powder.  Without the onions, it just needs to heat up, so that went into the microwave for 5 minutes.

I used this FANTASTIC recipe for the Teriyaki Sauce.  It was super easy and absolutely fantastic.  I doubled it, but could have easily tripled it.  I didn't have cider vinegar, so used balsamic and white vinegars to make 1/2 cup.  Again, a cup of soy sauce meant that with the chicken already seasoned with salt--well, we definitely needed beverages close by.  Also, it says low heat, but I found I needed medium heat to get it hot enough to activate the corn starch and thicken it up.  In the end it was just perfect.