Breakfast Burritos

My husband has been asking me for a week now to make breakfast burritos. So being the wonderful wife that I am, I went to Safeway and filled my basket with the ingredients needed for his favorite Mexican breakfast.

Breakfast Burritos:

1 tube of sausage
4 medium sized potatoes
1/2 cup salsa (recipe on previous post)
1/4 cup onion
1 tbs cilantro
8 eggs
1 tbs garlic
salt/pepper to taste
1 dozen tortillas
shredded cheese

I cook my potatoes in the microwave for baked potatoes just to speed it up. Otherwise fry your potatoes and put them aside.

Brown sausage, onions, salsa, garlic and salt & pepper in large frying pan (I use my GE electric skillet.) Add eggs & pre-cooked potatoes.

Roll ingredients in a warmed tortilla with a little shredded cheese.

Turkey Chimichangas

I made turkey chimichanga's from the left over turkey from Thanksgiving. It is WONDERFUL!!

Okay my husbands comment when he ate his turkey chimichanga was "too bad I can't fix cars as well as you can cook!" Gotta love that! (He has been working on our car for two days, hoping to save money rather than taking it in for repair.)

STEP 1:
I took all of the meat off of our turkey and put the carcass in my GE roaster filled abut half way with water. I cooked this on 325 over night.

STEP 2:
When I got up this morning, I turned the cooker off and once it was cool enough to work with, I got the colander out and put it over a large pot. I poured a little at a time into the colander. I then took out the bones and shredded the meat. I repeated this until I was done. I ended up with about 4 pounds of meat that most people just throw away!

STEP 3:
I added green chili, chili powder, garlic, salt and pepper to the turkey and cooked it for about 20 minutes. I then rolled the mixture with cheddar cheese into a tortilla and fried it for about 4 minutes on each side. I only used 1/2 of the shredded turkey and put the rest away for later. This netted me 12 chimi's. NOT BAD: 24 CHIMI'S WITH MEAT THAT MOST PEOPLE THROW AWAY!

While the chimi's were frying I made my salsa (recipe on previous post), guacamole and sauce.

SAUCE:
1 can of tomato sauce
1/2 cup sour cream
1 can green chili
1/4 cup salsa
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

mix together and bring to a boil.

GUACAMOLE:
2 avocado's
salt & pepper to taste
1/4 cup salsa
1 tsp lime salt (or squeeze a fresh lime/lemon if you have it)

place in food processor for 1 minute on high.

The end result: delicious!!

Pizza Bake

I was trying to come up with something quick and easy tonight...so I made this concoction. It tasted so good!

Pizza Bake
1 bag of small shells (FREE from Basha's)
2 jars of Ragu chunky sauce (FREE from Safeway)
3 cups of Mozzarella Cheese
1 pound hamburger/ground beef
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 TBS Garlic

Boil noodles as per directions.
Brown ground beef with seasonings in large skillet.
Heat sauce in sauce pan.

Mix together in a casserole dish with 2/3rds of the cheese. Layer the top with the remaining cheese. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes.

The kids named it for me....Margaret said "mommy it tastes just like pizza." So there you have it! I think that it cost about $3.00 for the hamburger, cheese and our salad.

Birthday Dinner for Michael Jr.

Well Michael is 17 officially today.  I always make the same thing for him. His favorites:  hamburgers, mashed potatoes & shrimp.  Doesn't sound like it goes well together, but he sure likes it.

When I barbeque hamburgers, I mix spices into the hamburger before creating the patties.  I use garlic powder and montreal seasoning and simply mix it in.  You can't imagine the difference by mixing it in!

Shrimp is one of my favorite dishes, but it is usually expensive!  So I buy it when it is on sale.  I happened to purchase this shrimp for $5 at WalMart, which is pretty darn cheap for shrimp.  I hate how restaurants saturate shrimp with butter.  I cook mine a little different.  I simply put olive oil and garlic salt in a skillet, then put in the shrimp.  I cook it on medium, covered for about 5 minutes.  You can't imagine how amazing it tastes.  And it doesn't feel like I'm eating a stick of butter!

A hint on making mashed pototoes:  I use my kitchenaid.  It is so easy!  Put in the potatoes, stick of butter, a little salt and milk.  Turn on the mixer and all done!  Can't beat that and it is easier than hand mashing them any day!

Top it all off with a chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting and this has been Michael's birthday dinner for years. 

I'll be honest, Michael is not a big fan of my cooking.  He is a meat and potatoes type of guy and he doesn't like his food touching.  So anything that I make mixing any ingredients he is stand offish about.  Thankfully there is something that I can make that he likes!

Chilly Chili

It was a chilly day in Payson, and I was on the go all day. It is Veteran's Day and it seems like everyone has somewhere to be and guess who is the taxi?? I knew this when the day started, so I decided to make Chili with my left over beans from yesterday. This meal was VERY reasonable. Here's the recipe:

o 3 cups pinto beans
o 2 cans stewed tomatoes
o 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
o 1/4 cup chopped red onion (double the flavor, 1/2 the onion)
o 1 tsp salt
o 1/2 tsp pepper
o 2 tbs minced garlic
o 2 tbs cilantro (I used dried)
o 2 tsp ground cumin

Brown ground beef with seasonings and onions. Once browned, put into crockpot along with beans & tomatoes. Cook on high for 2-3 hours, low for 4-6 hours. And you are done. Garnish with shredded chedder cheese if desired. Simple and best of all delicious!

Price:
Beans: FREE from leftovers from last night
Tomatoes: .29 a can at Fry's. TOTAL: .58
GroundBeef: $1.25 a pound at WalMart this week. TOTAL: $1.75
Onion: .25
Seasonings: less than .25


TOTAL DINNER: Less than $3.00 for a family of 6 and leftovers!!

A Winter Night Dinner for less than $2.00

I thought I would be working late tonight, but my plans changed. So dinner was so easy! I had put on a crock-pot of beans before I left for school and when I got home, I baked up some corn bread. On a cool night after standing in line for Santa with the children it warmed the soul!

The beans were less than a $1 and the cornbread was FREE about a month ago at Safeway, I just added an egg and 1/3 cup milk. Gotta love that!

Oh So Good Salsa!!

My husband was craving salsa this afternoon, so being the wonderful wife that I am, I made him salsa that was cheap!

I used my cans of tomatoes that I bought at Frys last week for 29 cents a can.

Recipe:

4 cans of tomatoes
1/4 red onion (love red onion--double the flavor means I use half the amount of onion, if you use a yellow or white onion, I would use 1/2 of an onion.)
1/2 bunch of fresh cilantro
4 oz green chile
2 tbs minced garlic
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp red chile paper

I put the onion & cilantro in the food processor with the seasonings, once it is chopped, I put the green chile & tomatoes in on pulse twice, just to mix everything up.

I made a slew of salsa for less than $4...compared to a jar of salsa-->quite a bit less than what I made is $4 a jar.

Oh I hate to say it again but I have to: yum yum!

Pizza for less than $5

Who needs Delivery? Why pay the prices that Pizza Hut & Dominos demand? I made two extra large pizzas today for less than $5 and it was better than delivery and it wasn't even DiGiorno's!

I used the following EASY no rise dough from allrecipes.com (my favorite place for recipes on the net!) http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pizza-Dough-I/Detail.aspx



I made one cheese & another veggie...I was trying to duplicate Dominos American Legends Pacific Veggie and I think I did a pretty good job of it. I used my FREE Ragu sauce, my 99 cent cheese and I just grabbed veggies that I had in the fridge and used my handy dandy canned tomatoes. FANTASTIC doesn't describe it enough!

Let me know what you think~