ham and potato casserole

This dinner is both crazy cheap AND crazy easy.  I made a box of scalloped potatoes according to the directions on the box.  I bought a pre-cooked pound of ham (turns out I only needed half, so I froze the rest in a zippered bag for next time) and added about 6 ounces of shredded cheddar cheese.  It was an 8-oz bag once upon a time, that I had used a little of before, then frozen the remainder.  I also added some diced onion, but that was it.  So, to the potato mix (before baking) I added the diced ham, cheese, and onion, then baked according to the box.

With this casserole I served broccholi, steamed in a glass bowl in my microwave.  I only added a little bit of garlic salt this time, and a bit of butter.  The broccholi complemented the casserole very well.

Dessert was ice cream cones.  Again.  But it's warmer now, the kids are wearing tee shirts, and they want to go swimming and eat ice cream and do all those summer-y things that kids do.

The entire dinner took less than half an hour from start to finish, even measuring out ingredients for the scalloped potatoes.  By the way, these were the Dollar General brand, clover valley, and absolutely delicious.  The vote of confidence from my six year old: "Mom, these are WAY better than the ones the school makes.  But you should put bacon in it."

So, calculating the cost of this meal, we have: Half a ham steak, $2.44, box of DG potatoes, $1, half-pound bag of cheddar cheese: $2.50, half frozen bag of broccholi: 90 cents, and 4 ice cream cones at 38 cents each: $1.52.  All of this gives us a grand total of: $8.36