Sunday, January 30, 2011

Today's Frugal Dinner, 1/30

This meal can be a long time in the making. In fact, from start to finish for us, it was almost 24 hours! It is really very NON-labor intensive, though, doesn't have a lot of ingredients, and doesn't HAVE to sit in the crockpot as long as I did.

I forgot to take pictures of it as we got started, though, because I was so excited about the meal.

Go here to get the recipe I used for beef and bean burrito mix. I followed the recipe to a large extent, but I did change some things.

1. Instead of using chopped onion, I used onion powder. I just don't like eating chunks of onion.
2. I used 2 cans of Bush's Grillin' Beans instead of 2 cans of refried beans.

I served the beef and bean mixture with a boxed taco dinner meal kit, which contained flour tortillas, crunchy corn taco shells, taco seasoning (plus an extra packet of taco seasoning mix, as called for in the recipe), and salsa. I added cheese and boil-in-bag rice.

Here goes the cost breakdown:

4+ lb. chuck roast -- $8.70
2 small cans Muir Glen tomato sauce -- FREE! (actually $.72 overage! See the post about the purchase here.)
Onion powder -- $.03 -- seriously, this might be an over-estimate. I bought the giant container at Sam's Club for $4 or so and used less than half a teaspoon.
1 packet Taco Bell taco seasoning -- $.66
1 box Taco Bell taco diner -- $.66
2 packets boil-in-bag Uncle Ben's rice -- $.15
shredded cheddar cheese -- $.40
2 cans Bush's grillin' beans -- $1.35 (I don't really remember what I paid for these, and I can't find the blog post where I might have revealed it.)

Total: $11.95

AAANNNDDD . . . there is enough meat for 2 more meals! If we do the other two meals like this one, we'll need to use 2 more of the taco dinner boxes, more rice, and more cheese. After adding all that to the total and dividing by 3, I get a total per meal of $4.79. Today's meal served 2 adults and 3 kids.

Don't forget to check out afewshortcuts and her other freezer meals. (We've had the mini meatloaves, too, and loved them!)

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