What are your go to dinners?

[Avahra]

I moved into a new apt last week, and the rent is higher than what I was paying. So, sadly I must start cooking dinner every night rather than my once or twice a week I had going on.

 

What are some of your go to recipe dinners?

 

 

[ThermoNukePanda]

Ava,

I'm on a tight budget myself, plus I have two kinda stepkids that moved into my house and have been living there, and I do all the cooking.  I can offer a few pieces of advice.

1)  Download the AllRecipies app for your phone.  I think it's called like DinnerSpinner or something, but it's a great place to get ideas.  You can say you want to find a "main dish", that uses "chicken", and ready in "30 mins or less", etc, etc.  You can adjust the settings and whatnot and find different things.

2)  Try to do all your shopping for the week in ONE TRIP.  I stopped going to our local big chain grocery store (Price Chopper) like every other day or every day after work because I found I was spending a ton more money than I needed to and wasting food.  I've been going lately on like a Saturday or a sunday to this store called Aldi's which is kind of like a discount grocery store.  They don't have nearly the selection of stuff the big chain does, but I've been being creative with my selections. 

3)  Plan ahead.  Do things like buy marinade for chicken or pork and stuff and packaging it up ahead of time.  That way you can just pull  out portions out of the freezer or fridge to use day to day.

 

Some things I make on the regular that are pretty cheap:

-Pasta with meat sauce.  Easy, obviously.  But you can change things up with the type of sauce or meat.  Sometimes it's a chicken and alfredo.  Sometimes ground beef.  Sometimes sliced sausage.  Also you can be flexible with vegetables to make some sort of primavera sauce with things like yellow or green squashes, peppers, onions, garlics, etc.

-Soup.  Yup, just soup.  You can make a big batch of soup and keep it in the fridge for the week and eat it for lunches as leftovers and stuff.  Chicken thighs (cheap) work great for homemade chicken soups, and vegetable soup is pretty inexpensive either when you look at how much you can keep eating it through the week with sandwiches and whatnot.

-Tacos.  Yup,  Taco Tuesday is a thing.  ground beef is pretty cheap at Aldi's, and I can get a big 5+ lb package of 73/27 meat for less than $10 and it'll last a while.  Plus I can use the beef for other things (see pasta above).

-Doctor up cheaper meals like macaroni and cheese or hamburger helper with vegetables and whatnot.

 

Good luck!

[DUBL DUECE]

Spicy Sausage Pasta

1 Hillshire smoked Sausage

2-3 Scallions/green onions diced

1 tablespoon minced garlic or 1/2 garlic clove cut up

2-3 tablespoons Olive oil

1 package sliced mushrooms

3-4 cups baby spinach leafs

2 cups shredded cheese

1 8-10 ounce can Rotel (found in the Mexican Food section)

4 cups chicken broth or 4 cubes dissolved chicken broth

1 cup heavy cream/ half and half

1 pound package Penne pasta or bow tie or whatever you feel like

 

Cut up the sausage, green onions, garlic and mushrooms (if needed), only add the white part of the onion save the green part for later, sautee in a large skillet in med high for 5 mins or until sausage has browned slightly add in spinach and let cook for about 2 min or until spinach leaves have reduced. Add in the  chicken broth, Rotel and cream, stir, add in pasta, bring to a boil, and add in 1 cup of shredded cheese, let boil until pasta is cooked about 10-15 min once cooked remove from heat and turn your oven to broil or you can bake it at 400 but broil works best you may need to adjust the oven rack to fit the skillet in. Take the remaining cup of cheese and some of the cut up green onions and sprinkle over the top of the pasta put it in the oven until the cheese starts bubbling/browning. Remove and let stand 5 min and then eat.

The longer you let it sit the thicker the sauce gets, the spinach and mushrooms are ingredients we added from the original recipe so if you dont like that or want to try different vegetables just cut them up and add when cooking the Sausage, We usually make this once a week and it looks good and tastes great the Rotel adds some heat/spice but my kids go through most of it and eat the leftovers, the above recipe makes enough for 6+ people, if you only want it for 2 half all the ingredients and it can all be cooked in one pan, if you have a large skillet. 

[Dateranoth]

We don't cook a lot, but one of my favorite meals is a vegetable with beef soup. It's quick, easy and tasty. 

 

4 - 8oz Cans Tomato sauce

1 - 29oz Can Veg-All. You can do Large cut or regular. I prefer the smaller pieces

1/2 - 1 lb Ground Beef depending how meaty you want it. 

1 - Onion

 

Open all the cans and pour them in a pot. Don't drain the Veg-All.  Hears it up and let it get good and hot while you brown the beef. 

 

I usually cut cut the onion in half for a pound of meat and fry it with the ground beef. 

 

Once the beef is done I drain it depending on the amount of fat. 

 

Mix the beef and onion with the soup and let it come to a good boil while stirring. Usually ready to go a few minutes after boiling, but you can let it go longer if you like it thicker. 

 

I usually like to eat it with some of some of the easy mix sweet cornbread.  

 

Another easy favorite of mine is beanie weenies. 

 

1 - Pack Hot Dogs

1 - Large can of baked Beans. Usually around 30oz for a full pack of hot dogs. Just about any type will do.

Brown Sugar  

 

I cut the entire pack of hot dogs into bite size pieces, add a bit of brown sugar to taste and fry them until they are brown. Just don't let it get too hot and burn the sugar.  Add the baked beans and stir until you have your desired thickness. 

 

 

My wife also cooks an amazing tater tot casserole, but I don't have he recipe on me. I can post it later if you want. 

[Avahra]

Hell yeah that sounds awesome.

 

 

I don't have a smart phone Chris =P  My biggest problem is a work in a restaurant right now so after 10-12 hours of cooking the last thing I want to do is come home and fucking cook!

[PeeKnuckle]

I cook a turkey breast with sides and salad. Next day, I use the leftover turkey and cut it into cubes. Then I boil some penne or bowtie pasta, drain, toss in the turkey and stir in a container of pesto. Two really good meals from one turkey breast.

 

[Dateranoth]

This Tater Tot Casserole is more of a Breakfast but I love it all the time.



Here's another good one while I have the recipes out. It's a crock pot meal so it's ready when you come home.



And one more since I like crock pot meals.






Finally, if you're looking to save time I recommend a pressure cooker. Takes some getting use to, but you can take meals directly from frozen to ready to eat.

[PeeKnuckle]

I love crock pots!

[Dateranoth]

Me too. Nothing better than coming home to the smell of ready to eat food. 

 

Which reminds me of another good crock pot meal. BBQ. Just let a pork roast go on low all day. Come home, tear it up and add sauce. 

 

Ok. I think I've told you all our staples. lol. Probably didn't mean that many. 

[Avahra]

I love crock pot beef stew.

I'm not a huge fan of crock pot chicken, it just tastes chewy to me

[Dateranoth]

Have to let it cook for most of the day. I usually like crock pot chicken. Super juicy. 

[DUBL DUECE]

Another one we do that's super easy is Walking tacos, just cook up some hamburger or ground turkey with a taco seasoning pack and cut up lettuce, avocados, tomatoes, olives, onions. Have some shredded cheese and salsa or ranch, get the lunch size bags of Doritos in any flavor or corn chips crush up the chips inside open the bag and put in the ingredients you like shake it up and eat, minimal clean up and you can have it for lunch or dinner for a couple of days with different flavors/style of chips. 

[Dateranoth]

That sounds pretty good. What taco seasoning do you prefer?

[PeeKnuckle]

I don't use taco seasoning anymore. When I go to brown the beef, I toss in around a cup of hot salsa and let it all stew for 10-15 minutes. It mostly cooks off, but leaves the onions etc behind. Then, I add more on top of the finished taco.

I love salsa. lol

[Dateranoth]

That's not a bad idea. Think it would still be tasty with milder salsa? Jenna isn't too keen on the hot stuff.

[PeeKnuckle]

Definitely.

[spawn622]

Best recipe I ever got was my wife.  Haven't cooked anything that wasn't just meat on the grill in 15 years.  I would suggest getting one of those.  Be warned, those things can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but it's worth it most of the time.

[Dateranoth]

I must be doing something wrong.

[DUBL DUECE]

On 9/27/2016 at 4:47 PM, Dateranoth said:

That sounds pretty good. What taco seasoning do you prefer?

Just whatever the store has Lawrys is preferred but doesn't taste that much better that the store brand we just buy the packets in the spice aisle honestly it's taco meat I would spend more time making good guacamole or a quality Salsa, I usually just use ranch dressing in mine makes for a tasty taco salad, thats whats nice about this recipe is you can get alot of mileage just by changing up chips, or the other ingredients if you want to add some kick to it find a Spice called Slap your Mama, its a Cajun seasoning but goes well with a lot of foods. 

[Avahra]

SLAP YO MAMA

 

lol

[DUBL DUECE]

20 hours ago, Avahra said:

SLAP YO MAMA

 

lol

Its great I just looked at the label its Slap Ya Mama

[Avahra]

I've seen it around the grocery stores here

[Dateranoth]

I'll give Lawrys a try next time. I don't remember what we had last time, but I wasn't a fan. 

[Avahra]

I made this tonight, was pretty good. If you can't do spicy I would cut down the red pepper

[PeeKnuckle]

I made chicken fajitas tonight. All in all, it took less than 20 minutes from dicing peppers and onion to finish.