Winter Meals?

When winter comes around, we love taco soup. My version is one pound browned ground beef, one packet of mild taco seasoning, two cans each of ranch style, chili, or other beans, whole kernel corn, and tomatoes. Heat to boiling. Serve over crushed tortilla or corn chips and top with cheese. This makes 4-6 servings, so adjust accordingly.

This can also be done with cooked chicken. I haven’t tried it vegetarian, but you could probably use soy meat or leave the meat out altogether.

Have you tried making your own refried beans? We make these once a week and eat them with tortillas, chips or tostado shells (corn tortillas baked in the oven are cheaper than pre-made ones). For our beans, we just cook up pinto beans, blend and add salt, chili powder, garlic powder, cayenne and cumin to taste.

Soup, soup, soup!! Always cheap if you use what you have on hand. Some sort of protein (meat or beans), some grain (rice, noodles, potatoes), veggies of choice, broth and spices of choice.

Baked potato bar. Top with butter, cheese, sour cream, salsa, chili if you have some leftover from a soup meal : ).

Casseroles: 1C meat (chicken, turkey, beef, ham, tuna), 1 C veg of choice, 2C grain (rice, noodles, potatoes), 1C white sauce with spices (see any regular cook book-we make with broth instead of milk to cut cost and due to allergies)-you will probably need to double or even triple this as we do. Some of our favorites: ham/noodle/broccoli with dill seasoning, ham/potatoes (like scalloped), roast/potato/onion. For yours, just leave out some of the grain/veg mix, top with a little of the white sauce and cook in a separate casserole dish next to theirs.

Homemade bread/rice/noodles with gravy (meat or vegetarian). Can add a bit of meat chunks if wanted.

Some websites I’ve used for cheap meals: hillybillyhousewife.com (just checked hers today and can’t find what I was looking for so you may have to search the site a bit but she does have a list of meals for under $40 a week),  under1000permonth.blogspot.com (click on $3 meals in the side bar).

Snacks: popcorn, homemade pretzels, piece of fruit, veggie sticks, bread/butter, popsicles made with juice or fruit about to go bad, homemade crackers, homemade pudding, homemade muffins (leftover from breakfast : ), pb&j tortilla rollup.
Can you cut your snacks down to once a day? We do breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner-all about 3-4 hours apart.

If I think of more, I’ll let you know.

-Rebecca

A simple thing that we’ve done is buy more expensive bread that is healthier and heavier, or make my own.  It seems counterintuitive to buy more expensive bread, but in the end my children are satisfied with one sandwich instead of two. Making my own bread is much cheaper and healthier, and when I’m doing this I can usually get by with a soup for lunch since I have “stick to your ribs” bread on hand to help fill their tummies.  This being said, I also have one on a special diet that does better without gluten, so making different breads could almost be a full time job for me.   

Another thing we’ve done is follow recipes for make your own: tortillas, gourmet coffee, laundry soap, dishwasher detergent, etc.  We’ve found some pretty incredible things on the internet on how to save money.

Potatoes are another meal stretcher for us.  Fried, baked, mashed, boiled with butter and herbs, hashbrowns, steak fries, etc.  You can hardly beat them at 39 cents per pound, and you can always add squash or carrots to them to make them healthier.

Good luck on your winter meals.  Let us know any ideas you come up with, we’d love to hear!