Concept Saturday

Yesterday. We talked about basics.  It’s a state of mind.   Our grandmothers or great grandmothers went through the Great Depression and the Workd Wars where food was either in short supply or rationed or money was more than tight.  There was no welfare back in the depression time.  Soup kitchens was it.   They learned to stretch what they had and morph a bit of a leftover into  something new.

Using what you have and using inexpensive  ingredients can stretch your food dollar a lot.  Carrots can be on a stew or they can be on a carrot bread or on carrot and raisin salad.

Rice can be a side dish, rice pudding, or rice and beans.  Spanish rice, or rice pilaf .

A pork loin can be a roast, sliders, stew, stir fry, or pork chops.  Pork chops with stuffing, pork chops with rice.  

Potato dumplings, mashed potatoes, potato fries, boiled potatoes or potatoes in stew, hash browns....

Sausage pizza, sausage omelette, sausage on soup.

Eggs, well, just about a zillion different ways.  Besides breakfast for dinner, they go in a host of baked goods and pasta. A good source of protein that can supplement a dinner that is short on protein.
Yogurt parfaits are another way to stretch the protein . Layer yogurt, fruit, yogurt, granola, etc until a small glass or dish is full. Top with granola and a berry of you have one.  Frozen blueberries work well.

Pizza is a good way to stretch bits of meat and cheese.  The cheapest pizza sauce is to either set aside a couple of tablespoons from pasta sauce or get it from the dollar store aka DT.   Freeze the pasta sauce in an ice cube tray and then when frozen, pop them into a zip lock bag and put them in the door of the freezer.  Two cubes dress a small pizza.  Also, whenever you are chopping anything that can go on a pizza, set aside a couple of tablespoons  and freeze.    Soon, you will have a stash in the freezer ready to make a pizza in a hurry.   Just be sure to keep it all in a section of the freezer,  we have a side by side refrigerator so one shelf works.  The bulk pizza dough fits on the shelf as well.   Making four pizza crusts in the kitchen aid takes nit much more time than making one pizza.  Now, putting a pizza together is done in a matter of minutes.  My granddaughter did it from the ball of dough to ready for the oven at four years old.

Of course, we had happy face pizzas, but she was happy, felt accomplished, and stayed out of trouble. LOL

Chicken pizza can use a little bit of cooked  chicken.  Buffalo chicken pizza is a good alternative and can be as hot or not as you like it.

Chicken is a versatile meat.  The internet and cookbooks are full of recipes.
A lot of southwest or Tex mex recipes as well as old family favorites.  Chicken can often be found for a dollar or less a pound.  Rotisserie chicken is never a bargain. That is on another blog.

Ground meat is another budget stretcher. Figure a quarter pound per person unless you are also using another source of protein in the meal.  Tacos have cheese, chili has beans.  Hamburger crumbles stretch further than patties.  Armor meatballs are cheaper than buying the meat AD making them yourself.  I have been finding coupons lately.  The cheapest I have seen are at Winco.  With coupon they netted 1.45 for the equivalent of making a pound hamburger into meatballs from scratch.

Simplifying your ingredients means you can buy your ingredients in bulk and buying in bulk means less time and money in the store .