Quick and Easy Budget Cooking Tips

I typed up some tips for a friend today, and figured I should share them with you all as well! Here they are:

I don’t always keep fresh veggies and a couple of other odd ingredients on-hand (because they go bad so quickly), but I still use several recipes that call for them; I just have to make a quick trip to the store first.

I always use the cheap version of everything. If a recipe calls for chicken wings, I use thighs, etc.

Also, I never use a whole pound of meat. I will buy a 3-lb. frozen roll of hamburger, cook it all, drain the fat, and divide it into 5 baggies. I refreeze those, and use one portion when it calls for a pound of beef. With chicken, I always just buy a big bag of thighs. When the recipe calls for a pound of chicken, I just take one piece out of the bag and boil it. (I do everything the easy way, lol.) Then I tear it in pieces and toss it in with the rest of the recipe.

Also, a lot of times, I’ll just use whatever type of cheese, veggie, meat, or filler (beans, rice, pasta, potatoes) that I have on-hand or that I need to use up. I don’t always follow the recipe. (Except for spices – I am terrible at guessing at those! Lol.) I also like to stretch recipes by adding extra filler.

I always use lemon juice instead of lime because it’s cheaper, and it keeps for a long time in the fridge.

You can get enchilada sauce in the Mexican aisle at Wal-Mart. I think it’s cheaper than making it at home or from the mix that ALDI carries sometimes.

You can substitute refried beans for hummus. It’s good both ways.

FreeImages.com/Gabriel Bulla

When you make homemade pizza, you can cook Italian bread slices for 10 minutes or so, then add the toppings (tomato sauce, pizza spices, and any combination of veggies and meat). You can add the toppings before baking, but the bread might be a little moist when it is finished. I like it either way. Also, I always just allow my family to pick and choose from the veggies I have on-hand, and each family member makes their own unique mini-pizzas. This idea also works with tortillas, if you don’t have any bread on-hand.

I hope you find a few of these ideas helpful! Let me know if you have any more to share!

Meal Planning Miracle

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Meal planning has always been difficult for me. Perhaps it’s because I don’t usually enjoy cooking, but every time I plan meals in advance, I’m never in the mood to cook that evening’s specific meal. So I try to make things simpler on myself. I have tried all of the following:

• Crockpot meals
• Muffin cup meals
• Once a month cooking
• Running out and buying things on the day I need them

All of these things failed me for some reason or another, and I was once again finding myself surrounded by empty cupboards and empty stomachs to match. However, I finally figured out an answer to my problem. I am posting this in an effort to help all of you who might be struggling with the same thing. Here’s what I did:

I took out all of my favorite go-to recipes, and supplemented them with a few other simple meals. I also asked my Facebook friends for their favorites. Then I went through all of them and made a list of the ingredients. I put dry goods in one category, frozen in another, and refrigerated in another, but I only added ingredients that I wanted to keep on hand all the time. For instance, I can keep any amount of dry goods in stock and almost every frozen item, as long as I don’t have pizzas or other space-consuming things in my freezer. Some of the dairy products, such as milk and eggs, I added to the master list, because I figured it would be good to always have those on hand. However, half-and-half didn’t make the cut because I don’t use it often enough, and I didn’t want it going bad in the fridge if I failed to use it quickly.

Most of the meals consisted solely of ingredients that I decided I could always keep stocked. As this was my goal, I didn’t pick out any complicated or obscure recipes for this project. I wrote the names of these meals down in a separate column of my grocery list, along with the designation that I could cook any of them at any given time, provided I always kept every ingredient from my master list on hand. These meals serve as my go-to menu, and it’s working out very well, even when we have company. (My husband likes it too, because he has more and better choices.)

The favorite recipes containing ingredients that were not on that list were written down in a separate place, along with the one or two extra ingredients I would need to make them. I ended up with about 40 meals I could make at the drop of a hat, and 10 or 15 more that required one or two extra ingredients. Now this is the hard part: initially purchasing everything on the master list and then remembering to write things down as soon as I use them so I can buy them again. Because I chose simple meals, and because I already had many of the dry goods on hand, I was able to make my initial purchase for about $100.

Good luck with your meal planning, and I hope this idea helps some of you!

Easiest Lasagna Ever

And quickest, and cheapest…it’s the best of every world! Ian had a friend over from church Sunday. At first his friend didn’t really want to come because he was looking forward to a lasagna dinner that afternoon. However, he did want to hang out with my son, so I just decided to make lasagna too!

While at ALDI, I was picking up my usual 4 ingredients: lasagna noodles, marinara, Velveeta (or something similar), and ground beef. However, they didn’t have any lasagna noodles for some reason, so I picked up a box of farfalle instead.

At home, I cooked up the noodles, and dumped them in a Pyrex baking dish, along with about 6 half-inch slices of Velveeta (that’s only half as much as I generally use), most of a jar of marinara, and about 3/4 lb. cooked ground beef. Then I baked it at 350 for 15 minutes, and it was probably the tastiest lasagna I have ever made!

I was super easy because I didn’t have to mess with layering the lasagna noodles. (And I didn’t get burned like I usually do!)

Ok, so here’s the recipe, if you want to call it that:

1 box farfalle

a 3-inch block of Velveeta, sliced into 6 pieces

1 jar of marinara

1 pound of ground beef, or thereabouts

Boil the noodles to al dente and brown the beef. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350. When the noodles and beef are done, mix everything in an oven-safe dish and cook for 15 minutes. Enjoy!

Lazy Vegan Chili Recipe

A couple years ago, I posted a chili recipe that Jesse invented. Well, with much use (and laziness on my part), it has evolved over the years to become simpler and faster than ever, and here is the updated version:

3 cans of beans (for example, chili beans, red kidney beans, black beans)

2 tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon parsley

1 teaspoon basil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

Do not drain the beans, but dump everything into a pot and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn’t burn. And that’s it! If you want more heat, you can add a jalapeño or some hot sauce to the mix. But, hey, that’s an extra step…