tater tot casserole

After someone brought over a super spicy tater tot casserole for us when our 4th child was born, I decided to seek out something a little more bland.  I found this recipe online http://life-as-a-lofthouse.blogspot.com/2010/10/tater-tot-casserole.html    It's actually michelle duggar's recipe, and if anyone needs something that will feed a lot of people for a minimum amout of money, it's her.  I love it because the ingredients are simple, but it is so creamy and good and not overly onion-y.  Don't forget to stock up on your cream of mushroom and cream of chicken during the holidays (christmas, easter, and thanksgiving).

Tator Tot Casserole

Recipe by: Michelle Duggar

1 lb Ground Turkey (we just use whatever ground meat is on manager's special.  I got some ground chicken (cage free no less) for $1.87 a pound the other day!  It was kind of a strange color for ground meat (more white than brown) but my kids actually preferred it over beef)

1 (2 lb) bag frozen Tater Tots

1 can Evaporated Milk

1 can Cream of Mushroom soup

1 can Cream of Chicken soup

2 cups shredded Cheddar Cheese (optional...but not really.  It's OOOH so good)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and then spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray, set aside.

In a large skillet over medium high heat, brown your ground turkey until thoroughly cooked. Drain the grease, and then pour the turkey into the baking dish. Then pour your bag of tater tots on top of the turkey, spreading them out evenly.

In a medium bowl, mix your soups and evaporated milk all together. After well mixed, pour the mixture evenly over the tater tots. Pop it in the oven, uncovered, and bake for 55 minutes! If using cheese, sprinkle on cheese after 45 minutes of baking, and then put back in oven for another 10-15 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

Frozen bread dough

I don't typically like prepackaged food.  It seems so silly to pay more for something that you can just make yourself (and doesn't have as many preservatives).  BUT, considering that I'm nine months pregnant, I make some exceptions.  You can buy frozen bread dough in the freezer section (obviously).  They are whole loaves of bread dough.  I bought some for about $4.50 and it came with 5 loaves of bread.  You just lay it out for a couple of hours and let it rise, and then you have "fresh" dough to work with.  Here are two ideas about what to do with it:

1.  SCONES:  break off chunks of dough, flatten it with your hands, and fry it in hot oil.
            Once you have your scones made, you can do a couple of things with them.  My mom used to make Navajo tacos, which is just taco toppings on top of a scone.  You could also just slather them with honey butter and forget about the lack of real nutrients and the majorly high caloric and fat content.

2.  PIZZA ROLL:  Once the dough has risen, flatten out the entire roll, fill with pizza sauce and toppings, roll it up jelly roll style, brush it with water and sprinkle with salt, then bake at 350 for 25 minutes.  Yummy, fast and easy!

grilled peanut butter

Some days, you just want an easy meal that will please the masses.  We all know about grilled cheese, but have you ever tried grilled peanut butter?  Same concept, just spread your bread with peanut butter instead of cheese. The peanut butter melts and makes for a delicious ooey-gooey sandwich.  You could also just toast the bread and the spread the peanut butter on while it's still warm.  Same effect, fewer calories!

Parmesan potatoes

Back when we had more money, we used to frequent fast food restaurants a little more often than I'd like to admit.  When we moved into our new home, we did some miscalculations and ended up having to cut $800 out of our spending.   We paid off our car so we didn't have two car payments...that took up $200, but we still had to cut out $600.  We had never really paid attention to what we were spending.  We just tried to not spend too much, but it was always everything we had.   So, the first step was to obviously keep track of what we were spending.  It was really eye opening.  We were spending a ridiculous amount of money on food.   I was working and my husband was going through graduate school, so we did go out to eat much more frequently than we should have.  We purchased a lot of convenience foods at the store because we didn't have a lot of time to prepare meals.  Now that I'm not working anymore, I have more time to think through my meals and spend more time planning my shopping trips.

First issue with my children was to wean them from french fries.  Seeing as potatoes are just $3.50 for a ten pound bag, it seemed to just make sense to make my own.  While I was thinking it through, I decided to look for a more healthy version and find something baked instead of fried.  This is a recipe that my mom gave us:

Parmesan potatoes:

5-6 potatoes
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt

Peel potatoes and cut them into french fries.  I usually do this by cutting the potatoes in thirds length-wise and then cutting each third into strips.  You could actually even leave the skins on to add more nutritional value.  Rinse the potatoes and pat dry with a paper towel. 

Put the Parmesan cheese, flour and salt in a brown lunch bag and give it a shake or two.  Add the potatoes a handful or two at a time and shake until they are coated with the Parmesan mixture.

Arrange the potatoes on a baking sheet in a single layer and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.  We serve this with ketchup.  We never intended these to be a full meal, but my kids devour them  and are often too full for anything else.  My husband and I don't eat as many, so we add a frozen vegetable with it or sometimes make smoothies to make it more filling. 

This recipe takes so few potatoes that in a couple of days, you can use the rest of the ones in the bag for potato soup and then in a few more days have baked potatoes.

My five year old's favorite meal

Several people have suggested that I put pictures up. I've hesitated because I don't have a fancy camera and I'm not a great photographer and I don't have fancy dishes. I don't think I have a full set of matching dishes. BUT...this blog is called dinners for poor people, right? So here goes...

While most 5-year olds are obsessed with mac 'n cheese and hot dogs, mine is obsessed with what she calls "corn, rice, and beans."  We call it tostadas.  There are so many different ways to serve this, that we have it a lot.  Yesterday we had tacos.  I don't know about you, but we always have left over lettuce, tomatoes and shells after we have tacos and we never really end up using them unless we plan for it.  I HATE throwing food away, so I always try to think of at least 3 meals that use these ingredients so we don't end up letting it spoil in the fridge. 

Here's the basic recipe:

1 cup uncooked rice
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, rinsed.

Cook the rice according to package directions.  Stir in corn and beans. 
That's it.  What I love even more about the meal is that it provides you with all of the nutrients necessary to sustain life.  If this were the only thing you could afford to feed your family every day, you could rest assured that their health wasn't being damaged. 

There are a couple of things you can add to this to make it a little more tasty.  You can add sour cream and or salsa or BBQ sauce.  Just whatever you have on hand.  We always top it with shredded cheddar, though.  We like cheese.  And today, because we had leftover perishables from the night before, we added tomatoes and lettuce and taco shells.  My five year old broke the shells into chips and used them as spoons.  Kind of like nachos.  Sometimes we make homemade tortillas, spray them with cooking spray on both sides, and then toast them in the oven.  Or we just wrap all of the ingredients into a tortilla shell. 

mini meatloaves

I mentioned in my last post that I got a new recipe in the mail from my Kroger store.  They attached a bunch of coupons to purchase the ingredients.  So nice.  I showed the picture on the recipe card to my kids and then asked if it was something they might be interested in.  They both agreed to try it...until it was on the table, of course.  They have a really difficult time trying something new for the first time and tonight was no exception.  When we introduce something new to our children, we usually have a couple of sides that we know they have eaten before, but don't necessarily like, and then let them choose to either eat all of one thing and one bite of the other, or half of both things.  This makes them more willing to try and eventually the newest recipe becomes a side to another new dish.  They feel a lot better about eating when they feel like they have a choice, even if that choice is corn or green beans or rice or broccoli.  If they choose to not eat dinner, then they choose to not eat until breakfast.  We don't offer them anything else if they don't at least TRY dinner.  Tonight was the mini meatloaves and corn.  My two daughters choose to eat about half a plate of corn and one bite of meat.  My son ate one meatloaf and one bite of corn.  He claimed that he was still hungry about half an hour later, so we let him make a peanut butter sandwich. 

Here's the recipe, we followed it exactly.  We had all of the ingredients on hand except the meat, so this ended up being really cheap for us :

1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup quick-cooking oatmeal
1 lb. lean ground beef
12 3/4 inch cubes of cheese
2/3 cup ketchup
1/4 brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350.  Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray.  Combine the egg, milk and oatmeal.  Add the meat and mix it really well.  Separate the meat mixture into 12 pieces.  Take each piece, add a cube of cheese and then use your hands to form a ball around the meat.  Put each meat "ball" into the muffin tin.  In a small bowl, combine ketchup and brown sugar.  Top the meat with the ketchup mixture and bake for 30 minutes.  I'm not a big fan of meat, but these were actually pretty good.