Cooking on the Cheap

I love to cook. It's easy for meals to become more expensive than eating out if you are buying premium ingredients, good meat, and fresh produce. As much as I enjoy cooking, I love a challenge and I love to challenge myself. This works in all areas except for exercise! When the triplets were new babies, and then when we had a fourth baby two years later, I found myself throwing away food that had rotted before I prepared it. I had grand intentions, but you know what they say about good intentions! I would plan meals for our family, buy the ingredients, and then not have the time or energy to prepare the food. When you are overwhelmed, something has to give. Now I am taking over that area of my life and cooking dinner almost every night. I have been doing this for at least 9 months and it feels good. I cooked more than many of my friends in the past, but now I am cooking a lot more. Lately I have been challenging myself to make our food stretch. It's okay to eat leftovers.

On Sunday night, I cooked spaghetti. The meat was on sale for $1.99 a pound, so I bought more than one package and freezed some. When I make spaghetti, I cook the ground beef and an onion. Then I add a store bought sauce like Ragu traditional or whatever I found on sale. I also add parsley flakes, basil, Italian seasoning, and any other spice that strikes my fancy. I let it simmer and then serve it over angel hair pasta. This is one of the meals almost all of the children enjoy. Sunday night I added 2 bottles of sauce. Sometimes I just use plain tomato sauce and spice it up with spices. Alas, the more sauce you add, the more your spaghetti sauce will stretch. We had a lot leftover, so I put it in a container in the refrigerator. I took our leftover noodles and placed them in a ziploc bag. The next night we had a fabulous dinner at a friend's house. So, last night I made baked spaghetti. It was the easiest dinner ever! I took the noodles and mixed them with one egg to coat the noodles. This way they don't stick together and make a nice bottom to your casserole. I covered the noodles with the sauce. The sauce was even better after sitting in the refrigerator for 2 days. I topped the sauce with shredded cheddar cheese. Then, I baked the casserole at 350*F for about 20-30 minutes until the cheese melted and it was warm. We had a delicious, economical dinner for a second night on less than $3 of meat, $2 of sauce (it had been buy 1, get one free), and $1 of noodles! I was so proud of our bargain dinner. How do you make meals stretch?