Poor Man's Dinner

That's what the recipe was called.  It looked better in the magazine, but it still tasted pretty good.  It's a layered dish of ground beef, potatoes, and onions topped with mushroom soup.  I found it in one of my Taste of Home cookbooks.

Living from paycheck to paycheck is not fun.  It sucks to check your balance and discover you have $20 to last until you get paid again in 4 days.  My New Year's resolution is to save up several month's rent (at least) in readily available cash so I don't have to stress over that particular situation any more.  I'm not going to buy any more furniture or take any more non-camping trips until I've succeeded.  I'm also going to be eating at home.

I'm not talented enough to come up with my own recipes, but I can take a look in the pantry and then dig through my books to find something utilizing ingredients I already have.  The trick is to hunt for menu ideas while you're hungry and everything looks good, but go shopping when you're not hungry and nothing does.  It's much easier to stick to a list when it's not dinnertime.

I'm off to a decent start.  I already had pepper, garlic powder, and onions.  I bought ground beef ($2.98), potatoes ($3.72), 2 cans cream of mushroom soup (56 cents each), milk (98 cents), and parsley (50 cents).  I forgot to use the parsley.  Ooops.  It came to $1.55 per serving.  Yes, I can eat all six servings because I freeze the leftovers for later.  They are tastier, healthier, and far less expensive than the frozen dinners you buy at the grocery store.

What do you cut back on when you're tightening your budget?  Got any ideas for me?


     

Herbed Chicken

It never looks as pretty as the photo in the book. Why does one leg look sunburned and one look raw? I cooked it to the required temperature, but it turns out I like my birds cooked well past that point. Next time I’m roasting it until the entire thing looks sunburned. Also, I need to buy some of that string to tie the legs together. I’ve been told the purpose of doing that, but I forgot what it is. I know it’s not just for looks.

I’ve started checking the sales flyers and buying meats that are on sale and then finding recipes for them. Whole fryers/roasters were 77 cents per pound, so I had chicken this week. I’m not excited about cutting it up. If I buy a whole bird, I’m cooking the whole bird and then carving it like a turkey.

The instructions were to mix up some herbs with bouillon granules and water then pour it over the chicken.  The recipe is here if anyone is interested.  It’s baked covered for almost an hour, then uncovered to brown. It turned out very moist, but I think the herbs were wasted on the skin because I didn’t eat it. When I cook chicken pieces, I remove the skin before I cook them. Can you do that when you cook it this way?

Creole Green Beans

Image from flickr.  Mine didn't look this pretty, but they tasted good.



I have some salsa left over from when I made chili and need to find a way to use it up.  Yes, I know salsa goes great with tortilla chips, but I'm trying to eat healthy foods.  I need to find something else.  Here's a recipe for Creole Green Beans that calls for half a cup of salsa.  OK, let's try it.  15-minute prep...that means it will take me at least 30. 

First, I need 2 small onions, chopped.  Is it weird that chopping onions only bothers one of my eyes?  A few years ago, I had an intraocular lens implanted in my right eye and it's the only one that's stinging.  The food processor in the corner mocks me as I dab at my eye with a cool cloth.  "You could have used me to chop those onions.  La idiota."  Did it not see me tossing clutter?  (I did my 15 minutes today.)  It could be next...  

I have to saute the onions in 1/4 cup butter.  How long?  Until they are golden brown?  Until I'm tired of cooking them, which is now.  I picked two of the smallest I could find, but this seems like an awful lot of onions to go with 4 cups of green beans. Wait a minute.  This recipe is for a 2-quart slow cooker.  I need to double the recipe anyway because mine is much larger.  Let's make that 8 cups of green beans. 

Next, I have to combine the onions with the remaining ingredients in the slow cooker.  I need a full cup of salsa instead of half, which is almost exactly how much I have left.  2 to 3 Tbsp. of brown sugar doubled is 4 to 6.  I choose 4.  One half teaspoon of garlic salt is optional.  I'll add it, but not doubled.  Finally, I have to cook them on low for 3 to 4 hours.  After they've been cooking for a couple of hours I'll put some chicken, skin removed, in the oven with some Zatarain's Creole Seasoning.   

Dinner was yummy.  I'm learning. 




          





  

Learning to Cook

I'm trying to save money and eat healthier by cooking more often.  In the past we would go to the grocery store and load up on everything that looked good to eat.  The result was that we would eat about half of what we bought and the rest would go bad and have to be thrown out or sit in the pantry for years.  That approach is not much cheaper than eating out.

I drive by at least three grocery stores on my way home from school every day, so I am trying a different approach.  I'm actually planning menus and only shopping for one or two meals at a time.  It's easy enough to stop and buy the ingredients after school and eat leftovers or sandwiches on the days I don't want to cook.

We've been trying out different recipes from the books and magazines I've collected but rarely used.  I made Turkey Minestrone from Taste of Home's Pasta Cookbook.  I thought it was pretty good and my daughter ate it without complaining.  I like making big pots of soup like this and freezing the leftovers.

http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Turkey-Minestrone

We had a half pound of ground turkey and three-fourths pound of turkey sausage left over and I told my daughter we need to find something to do with them before they spoil.  I don't want to keep throwing food away.  She decided she wanted to make turkey burgers with the leftover ground turkey.  I stopped by the grocery store on the way home and found buns on sale for a dollar.  Cheese slices were 3 packages for a dollar.  Dinner only cost me $2.70 and I didn't even have to cook!

I found a recipe for chili to utilize the leftover turkey sausage.  All I had to do was cook the sausage then open three cans and a bottle of salsa.  It doesn't get much easier.  It won't win any chili cook-off's, but it's not bad.  My daughter said it was awesome.  I froze a bag of these leftovers as well.

Now I've got leftover hamburger buns I need to use.  I found a recipe for pulled pork sandwiches in my Rival Crock Pot cookbook.  I stopped again on my way home to buy the shoulder roast and the other ingredients that I didn't already have.  I can smell it cooking now and it's making me very hungry.