All 5:01 members of Italian decent (and formally trained chef types), brace yourself  for some shocking news.  I discovered something on Monday night that will save us a ton of money on an Italian classic…

YOU DO NOT NEED ARBORIO RICE TO MAKE REALLY GOOD RISOTTO!  (For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, risotto is a creamy, luxurious rice dish popular in Italy and, if I’m not mistaken, is often consumed as main course with seafood, vegetables, poultry… It usually runs about $6-8 for the containers I see on the rice isle of the store.)  And on Monday night, just for kicks, I made it with “store brand” long grain (not instant) rice.  The price per ounce for the fancy “Arborio” rice that risotto is usually made with is about $.20 and the price per ounce for the generic long grain rice is about  $.05 making the cost for this meal about $1.50/person.  We coated about 1 1b of (warehouse purchased) shrimp with pesto sauce and grilled it up lickety(sp?) split with ours and it was delicious.  You could serve it up with roasted chicken and asparagus (all together if you want to) and that would be great as well.  Bottom line is that this is a super easy, very  gourmet meal for next to nothing!