cheap meal | 365daysofmarriage

I purchased almost all of these ingredients from Aldi’s and Big Lots. The frozen veggies were purchased from Mars during a sale.

One thing I love to do is make a big old pot of something and eat the left overs for the week. My most recent creation turned out REALLY well. I didn’t add spices, so Bret did add some spicy sauce and some spices. I sometimes use this big old pot of stuff as an excuse for junk food like Velveeta Shells and Cheese. Today I tried out corn pasta, which was actually pretty good!

Here’s my recipe and the nutritional info.

– Corn Pasta – $1.25 at Big Lots – whole bag
– Hunt’s Tomato Sauce – $1.00 at Big Lots – whole can
– Variety bag of frozen veggies – ~$2.00 at Mars Super Market (I think I got this and the follow frozen veggies for $1.00-$1.50, but for our purposes, since I can’t remember, I’m estimating high) – whole bag
– Frozen green beans – ~$2.00 at Mars Super Market – whole bag
– Frozen sweet peas – ~$2.00 at Mars Super Market – whole bag
– Hormel Chili – ~$2.00 at Big Lots – whole can
– 1lb Ground turkey – Aldi – ~$4.00 – whole pound

1. Brown Turkey
2. Prepare pasta per package
3. Heat all veggies
4. As things are finishing, pour in a giant mixing bowl – I put the chili and pasta sauce on the bottom so they would heat as hot ingredients were added.
5. Mix it all together

Notes:
– I’ve started to freeze about 65-75% of what I make so we don’t get bored and so it lasts a while.
– While totaling the nutritional facts, I was very disappointed in the sodium and carbs. I’ll more than likely nix the chili and tomato sauce next time for other ingredients
– I didn’t have the receipts for the frozen veggies, chili and turkey, so I just estimated.

Final cost overall – $15.11, $1.08 per serving

Nutritional facts:
Servings – ~14

Calories – 276.5
Fat – 4.6
Saturated Fat – 1.3
Cholesterol – 26.4
Sodium – 396.4
Potassium – 107.1
Carbs – 39.6
Fiber – 6.2
Sugars – 6.3
Protein – 16.3

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One thing that is important to us is eating healthy. Since moving, our expenses have increased across the board, so finding ways to save has been on the forefront of my mind. Last week, I made a fantastic meal for $0.67 a serving! It’s an incredibly flexible recipe too.

My ingredients – purchased at Wal-Mart:
Iberia Brown Rice (raw, 4 cups in the bag – used 1/4) – $3.48 (full bag), $0.98 used.
Great Value Pinto Beans (raw, 3 cups in the bag – used 1/3) – $3.92 (full bag), $1.16 used.
Campbell’s Organic Vegetable Broth (4 cup container, used all) – $2.88
Great Value Alaska Pink Salmon (1 can, 14.75 oz) – $2.42
Hanover Soup Vegetables (2 – 3 lb bags – sweet peas, sweet corn, potatoes, carrots, okra, rutabaga, green beans, lima beans, onions and cabbage) – $2.97 each bag – $5.94 total

Total cost of materials used – $13.38 – made 20 servings – $0.67 each serving. If you include Maryland sales tax (6%), you’re looking at $0.71 a serving.

Approximate nutritional facts:
Calories – 248
Fat – 1.65 g
Saturated fat – 0.175 g
Polyunsaturated fat – 0.35 g
Monounsaturated fat – 0.35 g
Cholesterol – 12.25 mg
Sodium – 192.25 mg
Potassium – 101.5 mg
Carbohydrates – 46.8 g
Fiber – 6.8 g
Sugars – 3.4 g
Protein – 13.8

How I did it:
Make the beans – The beans took the most amount of time with this recipe. I did the quick soak option on the bag, which probably took about 4-6 hours. So I started in the morning and just kept checking on it while I worked throughout the day.

Make the rice – I cooked the rice in a rice steamer.

Prep everything else – When the beans were almost done, I microwaved the vegetables and heated up the broth. Now, I was planning on using 3 cans of the salmon….but this particular brand/batch had scales, bones, the works. I tried to pick off the meat, but gave up after about 15 minutes. Bret tells me you can eat the bones but I’ll trust him and leave that to him. 🙂

Mix it all up! – Then I tossed the roughly one can’s worth of meat into the broth. I added some spices (Old Bay, garlic, salt and pepper) to the broth/meat mix. Once everything was heated up, I mixed everything in a huge bowl. I then spooned out 20 servings into microwavable dishes. Thankfully, I had the foresight to put most of them in the freezer. It has reheated really well. I’ve added butter and spices and a Wegmans sausage which significantly ups the cost per serving, but I wanted some more protein. The soup itself is very filling.

What I would do differently next time:
I would get a different meat.
I would add more vegetables to add more filling and less rice to decrease the carbs.
I would get a different variety of beans and rice. Knowing how far the dry goods go makes me want to get organic.

Did you try it? What did you think?