Friday recipe -

Groceries on the cheap takes a different approach to grocery shopping.   Instead of going to the store and buying a weeks worth of  groceries and repeating the process the next week when the cupboards are bare, you shop to replentish your basic stash.   Simplify, lower your costs, always have food in the house.   

The cooking part is made simpler by scratch cooking efficiently.   Finding recipes that take 5 or less ingredients is a good way to start. 

Buying your diced tomatoes with seasoning is a good way to simplify things.  Most brands have Mexican and Italian seasonings.  

Adding diced seasoned tomatoes and cheese to a cooked meat and pasta makes a quick dinner.   You can use diced chicken, sausage , or ground meat.   

Summer is coming.   A dinner salad is a good way to eat .   Add a nice crusty piece of bread or a muffin.  

Soup is a good go to when you dont want to cook in a hot kitchen.   Dump ingredients in a slow cooker and get out of the kitchen in a hurry.  

Pasta cooks in 2 minutes in the insta pot.  There is a pressure up time and you need to de pressure manually soon after the cycle is done.   Drain as usual.   If the pasta sits in the pot and depressurizes automatically, the pasta will be over done.   The time it takes is just enough to gather ingredients or 

heat sauce. 

One of our go to meals in a hurry is chicken parm.   The chicken is patties from Foster Farms.   They heat in the microwave in minutes.   Put over cooked spaghetti and add sauce and parmesean cheese.   

It takes minutes.   

Last night we had chicken chimichangas.    They took a matter of minutes because I had cooked the chicken in the insta pot earlier in the day.   I added a green salad.   

Spaghetti and meatballs is also easy.   I buy meatballs, but I have also make meatballs in a bulk meat cooking time.   I make them with a portion scoop and put them on a rack over a sheetpan.   That way, the fat drips onto the sheet pan as they bake in the oven.  They are not stewing in their own fat.  

 Garnish spaghetti and meatballs with Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes.   

Anything that you can put together in minutes and hand off to a instapot, slowcooker, or oven is a 

good pick.   I make stove top stuffing, add craisens an apple pieces and put it in the oven with pork chops I have browned on the stove.  Cover and cook until the meat is done.   I make scratch stuffing when I happen to have enough dry bread. 

Sausage or meatball subs work well too.   You can sometimes get sub rolls at the DT that are orowheat brands they carry.   I have a scratch recipe, but it takes a lot of fussing.  You can make it in the kitchenaid, but it still has shaping and rising times.   

Spinach, tomato, and feta sandwiches???????    Obviously, the spinach is raw.