It's back to school time! Until the end of May, I'll be looking to make cheap and easy meals for supper. Cheap, because I'd rather save my money for vacation instead of paying top dollar for dinner out. Easy, because I have WAY too much to do during the school year to spend my evenings in the kitchen.
Well, school won't officially start for a couple of weeks yet -- we're just doing the regular teacher-prep thing. I still came home tired (I think I might be coming down with something. Sore throat for 2 days, coughing a bit. Shouldn't this wait until the school year starts and I spend my entire day talking to my class?) Anyhoo, I did an easy-way-out tonight: Hamburger Helper. We had the Crunchy Taco flavor. I used 2 boxes of HH with just 1 pound of ground beef. (Just helping to be frugal with meat, like I mentioned in this post.) I added in about 2/3 cup more rice and about 3/4 cup more water. The flavor was really great. I put the cheese sauce in the fridge as soon as I mixed it up, and it thickened considerably while the dish cooked. I was able to thin it out a bit by adding more milk. I probably should have thinned it more, but I was happy enough with the results. The kids enjoyed it and the grown-ups, too. Still no veggies in the house. We did have fresh pineapple to go along with our dinner, though, and the kiddos drank orange juice.
Here's the price run-down:Ground beef: $2.00
2 Crunchy Taco HH: $1.34
Chips: $.50
Pineapple: $1
Rice: $.17
Milk: $.75
(The milk, chips, and pineapple came actually came to us free, but I'm trying to take into account what we would have paid for these.)
Total for 3 kids and 3 adults: $5.76
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