sloppy joes and seasoned potato wedges

 

So one of the recipes I've been keeping to myself is my mother's recipe for sloppy joes.  These things are so, so tasty they may just change your mind about sloppy joes for the rest of your life.  In my daughter's words, "These are much better than the school sloppy joes, Mom."  So, Friday night, I assembled my ingredients and got started, dessert first.  As usual.

 

This recipe for peanut butter no bake cookies is the best I've ever found, and I can't even give proper credit to my source because I copied it down in my recipe file over a year ago and no longer remember my source.  But here it is:  First, I assemble all six ingredients.  Then, because speed is the key to nobakes (you don't want them solidifying in the pot or over or under cooking) I measure out in the following manner:  In the pan itself, I put 1/4 cup (which is also 1/2 a stick) of margarine and 1/2 cup of milk, which I put on medium heat until the butter is melted.  

 

While that's happening, I measure out my 3 cups of oats and put them aside in a large tumbler, and stir two cups of sugar into the milk/butter combo, dissolving it completely.  I then turn up the heat on the pan to a medium-high and set the timer for four minutes.  In that four minutes, I measure out 1 full cup of peanut butter and 1 tsp vanilla.  I also set aside a cookie sheet with waxed paper on it, keeping the waxed paper handy (you'll need about 3 sheets).  Also, I stir it a couple of times so that the sugar/milk/margarine doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.  When your timer goes, your sugar/milk/margarine should be at a rolling boil.  If not, keep it on until it is, then let it boil about a minute more. 
 

 

Remove the pot from the heat and stir in quickly your peanut butter until smooth (beat it like fudge) and your 3 cups oats, then spoon quickly onto the waxed paper, putting paper between each layer of cookies.  Then put another sheet of paper (or another cookie sheet, or both) on top of the whole shebang, and put it in the fridge to cool.  The top layer helps prevent any potential in-fridge spills, of which there are surprisingly many in my household. 

 

These cookies are large (you can make them as large or small as you like) about twice the size of an oreo.  And there were 22.  But before they were even cool I ate one.  So we'll say this recipe made 21.

 

 

Then, I started dinner: I pulled out a 1-lb bag of burger (I had bought a 2.8-lb family pack and split it into 3 baggies for freezing) but realized that it looked small in my pan, so I added another (and was rewarded for my efforts with plenty of leftovers).  While the burger was browning I diced an onion (recipe calls for one small but I only had "medium-sized" ones so at first I only diced half, but with the extra burger added the other half) and pre-heated the oven to 375 for the potato wedges.  A good rule-of-thumb is one large or 1.5 medium potatoes for an adult serving.  I used one large and three medium.

The wedges were easy: slice the potatoes "long ways" into halves, then slant your knife and cut each half into "wedge" shapes.  The "medium" potatoes I cut the halves into four wedges each; the larger potoato I cut each half into six wedges.  That gave me 36 potato wedges.  I put them on a cookie sheet, sprayed that sucker with butter flavor cooking spray (generic Pam) and seasoned them; half the tray with "cajun" and half the tray with "italian".  I did it this way because (1) my oldest doesn't like the "cajun" and (2) after half the tray, my "cajun" was gone.

Then, into the oven. 

By now, the burger was done and so were the onions.  I didn't have a lot of grease because this was "quality" burger, but if you do have a lot of grease, this is where you drain it off.  Now, I add the rest of the sauce to the burger, in the same pan: 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup catsup, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup vinegar, 1/8 cup (or 2 Tbsp) mustard, and 1/8 cup worcestire sauce.  Stir it all together, put a lid on it, and turn the heat down to simmer.  Set your timer for 10 minutes and check on the potatoes.  If they need stirred, make sure you re-spray and re-spice them.  If they're done, they're done.  The sloppy joes should simmer for a minimum of 10 minutes to really soak up the flavor.  If they start to dry out, add more water and stir.  (I would also add that 25 minutes is kind of a "maximum" time, too.  If you cook them any longer, you're not going to get any more flavor, and you're just prolonging the deliciousness for no good reason.)

My oldest was really

tentative at first...

But then
he devoured his food




I've already said that
my daughter enjoyed the meal

And once he pulled out all of his onions,
my youngest enjoyed his meal, too.




Surprisingly, we each only ate one cookie. 
They were quite large, but that doesn't usually stop us.




Now, for the totals: 
The burger was $1.98/lb and I used 2/3 of a 2.8-lb family pack, which makes the cost of tonight's burger meat $3.70.  A single onion (1/7 of a 98-cent 3-lb bag) was 14 cents, and 4 potatoes (out of 15 in a $1.98 5-lb bag) was 53 cents.  Let's assume 25 cents for an ounce or two of generic Pam and some seasonings.  Let's also assume 50 cents for the combined cost of catsup, sugar, worcester and vinegar in the sloppy joes. That makes the "dinner" part of tonight $5.12.

The no-bakes are tricky to calculate, but I'll do my best: 1/2 stick of margarine (depends how much it is when on sale - can range from 59 cents on a dollar saver at Costas to 99 cents to $2.50 if you buy a brand name, I'm gonna go "middle of the road" and assume $1.29/pk, or 1/2 stick = 16 cents.  If milk is $3.60/gallon, then 1/2 cup = 11 cents.  If peanut butter is $2.50 a jar than 1 cup = (roughly half) $1.25.  If oats is $1.85 at DG for a "small" container (which, according to the label, contains 13 servings of 1/2 cup each, then 3 cups cost 86 cents.  The cost of a teaspoon of vanilla is negligible; let's assume 10 cents.  The cost of 2 cups of sugar when a $2 (4-lb) bag contains (according to the product label) 454 teaspoons.  Seriously?  Well, I wasn't a math major for nothin'...  Ok, so there are 3.5 teaspoons in 1 Tbsp, and 16 Tbsp in a cup, which tells me that 4-lb bag contains about 8.11 cups.  So each cup cost 24.67 cents and 2 cups cost 49 cents.  Which is about what I would've guessed anyway... But now I know.

So this batch of 22 (ahem) or 21 very large no-bakes cost 16 cents margarine, 11 cents milk, $1.25 peanut butter, 86 cents oats, 10 cents vanilla, and 49 cents sugar, which makes them 14.14 cents per cookie.  Like I said, we only ate four with dinner last night.  In fact, we still have some, which in this house is nothing short of miraculous.

So $5.12 dinner + 4 times 14.14 cents cookies = $5.69

 

And did I mention there were left-overs? 

There were left-overs, so I'm billing this dinner as "under $5"

 

Chicken drumsticks and potato chips

The theme for tonight is "finger foods"



These "chicken wings" are not actually wings; they're drumsticks from the Crazy Cheap Chicken purchased for $1.18/lb.  And they're huge.  This pack of 12 drumsticks was purchased for $4.24.  If you can't tell the size from this photo, 2 drumsticks would be an adult serving.

 

Before I even began to cook the wings, I made dessert: I've been saying that I couldn't find any more 99 cent brownie mixes; they're all $1.50 now.  But THIS was $1 a few weeks ago (I bought several). 

 

Unfortunately, this is a "snack size" mix, so even though the package says "makes 12" the batter was spread really thin.  Even after baking, it was only about 1/4 inch thick. To thicken it up, I had a little fun...

I made a peanut butter layer by mixing 1/4 cup peanut butter, 1/4 cup sugar, and one egg, and spreading it over the cooked brownies.  Then I put it back in the oven for about 5 minutes more.  (When the peanut butter layer cooked, its color lightened a little).  Then, I sprinkled most (probably 80%) of a bag of chocolate chips on top, and put it back in the oven to melt.

 

 

 

While the brownies were cooking the first time, I sliced three potatoes (out of 14 in a $1.99 bag) into thin strips and set them in a glass bowl to soak up some vinegar and salt (to make salt & vinegar chips, of course).  It didn't work -- they should be marinated in the fridge overnight for that -- they just came out tasting like regular homemade chips.

 

 

I turned on my deep fryer and put in the drumsticks, setting the timer for 15 minutes.  Drumsticks should be fried a minimum of 12 to make sure they are completely cooked.  Even when the timer went off, I thought they looked a little pale, so I did them for an extra 5 minutes to be safe.

 

Now, I had looked up a recipe for "asian hot wings" (kind of like a general tso's flavor, with honey, ginger, hot sauce, and a bunch of other stuff).  I didn't have 3 of the more exotic ingredients so I made several substitutions.  They didn't come out bad, but my storebought BBQ sauce was better and less time consuming, so I'm not going to repeat the recipe here.  Trust me, it wasn't worth the effort. 

 

I made 12 drumsticks in 3 flavors tonight: 4 in my homemade asian sauce, 4 in storebought BBQ, and 4 in a "spicy ranch" (3 parts ranch dressing to 1 part hot sauce).  Out of the 12 (very large) drumsticks, we ate 5: 2 for me, 1 for each kid.

 

The wings were a hit!

 

 

 

My daughter and I had the chips.  My boys didn't like them so much...

 

The face he made after tasting a chip.  Seriously.

 

Tonight's total: $1.77 worth of wings (5/12 of the pack which cost $4.24) + $1.50 worth of sauce (no real way of judging the cost of the homemade sauce but the more expensive between the ranch and the BBQ was the BBQ, and that was $2.  I only used 1/4 of the bottle on the 4 drumsticks, so if you figure I would have used 3/4 of a bottle on all 12, and that the BBQ was the most expensive, then I spent about $1.50 on sauce) The potatoes used to make the chips were 3/14 of a $1.99 bag, or 43 cents, and the vinegar and salt were probably another 10 or 20 cents.  Heck, let's call it a quarter.  The brownie mix was $1, the peanut butter, egg, and sugar probably 50 cents, and the chocolate chips were $2 a bag, and I used an estimated 80%, or $1.60's worth.  There were 12 brownies, of which we ate 6 when all was said and done, so that's half of $3.10, or $1.55, making tonight's total: $1.77 wings + $1.50 sauce + 68 cents chips + $1.55 brownies = $5.50

Crazy cheap AND delicious!  This calls for another brownie!

 

 

 

 

Yankee Pot Roast

 

I've been wanting to give y'all a pot roast recipe for a while.  In fact, I have three good ones.  Rarely, though, do I find a roast cheap enough to make a whole meal for under ten dollars. 

 

 

 

Last week, however, I lucked out - this little beauty (little, because it's only 22.4 oz, giving each of us only 5.6 oz of meat) was only $6.01

 

I started on Sunday evening, putting everything (including the frozen roast) in my crockpot liner to marinate overnight in the fridge.

An entire bag of carrots (12 big, 2 little) was only 98 cents last week, and an entire bag of potatoes was only $1.99.  Since each large carrot, diced, made roughly a serving size, I diced 4 for this roast.

I also scrubbed and diced 5 "medium-sized" potatoes, leaving the skins on. A good rule of thumb is 1 and a half potatoes for each adult serving.  5 potatoes was waaaay too many.



The marinade was as follows: 3/4 cup vinegar, 2 tsp minced garlic, 2 Tbsp salt, 1 large, diced onion, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 1 tsp mustard, 1 dried bay leaf.  Bay is a strong spice and you only need 1 whole leaf in the marinade.  Add enough water to cover everything, put a lid on it, and refrigerate overnight.  If you are going to use a fresh pot roast (rather than a frozen one) you should brown it in a frying pan before slow-cooking it.

The next day I put the roast on low while I went to work, turned it up to high when I got home, and it was ready and delicious Monday night without having to cook after a long day at work.

I served it up all "fancy",

scooping out the roast first and then the carrots and potatoes with a slotted spoon. 

 

Dessert was yet another faux pumpkin cheesecake (since cream cheese was back down to 99 cents a brick and I got 2 of these... um... pumpkin-y things for $1.50.  Only used 1 to make the cheesecake.) I made a sugar-cookie crust this time, crazy-easy: 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/3 cup vegetable oil, 2 Tbsp water.  Mix everything in a large bowl, press into the pan like a graham cracker crust.  (Actual recipe calls for no cinnamon, but 1/4 tsp vanilla. I thought the substitution would taste better with the pumpkin.  Consider it a "snickerdoodle crust" if you will...)

 

So our total Monday night was... roast (6.01) 4 carrots (slightly less than 1/3 of a 98 cent bag, or 32 cents worth) 5 potatoes (about 1/3 of my $1.99 bag, or 67 cents), and the marinade (not more than $1).  Cheesecake was 99 cent brick cream cheese, 75 cent pumpkin thing (honestly don't know what kind of squash it really is) and various ingredients in the crust and pie probably totaling 50 cents to a dollar, making the pie $2.74.  We ate 3 slices out of 8 (since Luke was full and didn't want any) making the cost of Monday's dessert $1.03.  Total is $6.01 + $0.32 + $0.67 + $1 + $1.03 = $9.03

 

And the Snickerdoodle Pie crust was DELICIOUS.

 

 

Corn Chowder and Chicken Caesar Salad

 

So tonight I'm trying two foods I've never made before.  I have made Caesar salad from a bagged mix before, but in my opinion, that just doesn't count.  I have to say, they both came out splendidly, but the corn chowder was a bit thin for my taste, so I would only add 1 cup of milk, not two, the next time I make it.  But this recipe made enough for my family of four, plus seconds for Emily, with enough left over to feed all four of us another night.  So I would say this makes probably 8-10 adult servings.

So the first thing I did was look up a recipe.  I checked Betty Crocker first, but it called for two ingredients I didn't have in the house, so then I went to the internet.  This recipe came from allrecipies.com but they had so many variants on "corn chowder" that I went with this one:

 

Pan fry 6 slices of bacon on low-medium heat, crumble, and set aside, reserving the grease.  In the grease, saute one small, chopped onion.  Add 2 large, cubed potatoes and 1/2 cup water, cover and simmer 15 minutes, until potatoes are tender.

 

Stir in 2 cans creamed corn, 1 can of "regular" corn, salt and pepper to taste (I didn't use any cause it smelled soooo good as is) and 2 cups of milk.  Heat through, garnish with the bacon, and serve. 

 

I would recommend 1 cup since this soup was kind of runny, even after I boiled it for an extra 10 minutes, trying to boil it down, and ended up boiling it over... 

 

 

This photo was taken after I ladeled out the finished soup into the large glass serving bowl.  Ordinarily I would just serve in the pan, because (1) it means fewer dishes to wash, and (2) I'm only serving my family, so I don't care about "fancy".  Tonight, I served in separate dishes because (1) we were being fancy (we like to do that once in a while) and (2) the pan was so full and overflowing there's no way I could've carried it to the table without spilling half of it on the floor. You know, I would also recommend either using a larger pan or pouring it into a pot before adding the corn and the milk.

 

While the potatoes were cooking for 15 minutes, I was busy preparing the Chicken Caesar Salad.  I started by boiling a single chicken breast in a pot of water.  It was bought on sale in a family pack of 8 boneless skinless breasts for $9.48, so each one was $1.18, assuming they're all the same size.  This one was actually on the small side, and I didn't even use it all on the salad. 

 

I got out another serving bowl and tore some lettuce by hand, then diced four slices of bread to make some homemade croutons in my toaster oven.  To make croutons, dice bread 4 x 4 slices, spray with cooking spray, and sprinkle with seasonings.  I just used generic "Italian seasoning", which I tend to use a lot.  I put them in the toaster oven and set it to "medium" toast.  They were too soft, so I did them again on "light" toast, and a few in the middle got burned.  But that's ok, because we didn't even use all the croutons. 

 

 To just feed my small family, I only tore a few leaves of lettuce, used about 1/3 of the croutons, 1/3 of the 8 oz pack of "fancy shredded mozzarella" (which means finely shredded), about 3 Tbsp of imitation bacon bits, and about 1/2 of the chicken breast I cooked.  The other half was put in the leftover soup.  The chicken breast took longer to cook than I thought, but again, that's ok, because I was trying to boil down the soup anyway.  Since we were going for "fancy" anyway, I pulled out the good china, which, thankfully, my children did not chip, crack, or destroy while we ate tonight. 

 

Luke loved the salad, but didn't like the chowder very much.  Andrew loved the chowder, but not the salad.  Still, I insisted that all the kids try each dish, but then I let my boys trade. 

Emily liked everything, too, and had seconds of soup and her salad.  Andrew had been playing with the neighbor's boys when I called him in for dinner, so he didn't stick around for dessert, which wasn't anything fancy anyway.  I bought these popsicles from Dollar General for $2.25 a box, so each popcicle was 22 1/2 cents.  As a family, we had 3.

 

 

Our total tonight will be skirting the ten-dollar mark, I think, because I didn't have any bacon or creamed corn, so I had to go out and buy some.  Normally, I only buy bacon when it's on sale for $2.50 a box, and I buy a ton of it.  This was the cheapest bacon they had and it was $3.19 a pound.  I only cooked half the box, but that's still $1.60 worth of bacon, and the bacon was just a garnish. 

 

 

The creamed corn was on sale for 79 cents a can, and the regular canned corn was already in my cupboard, but I did a price check while I was at the store and it's normally 85 cents a can.  The head of lettuce was 1.69 but I only used a small fraction of that head (as you can see from the photo) so I'm going to estimate it at 40 cents worth, a little less than 1/4 of the head.  The bottle of dressing was not on sale, $2.39, and I used about 2/3 of it, or $1.59 worth.  The cheese was on sale (and still is, until tomorrow, folks), at the price of two bags for $3.19, and I used about 1/3 of one bag, or 53 cents worth.  I have never seen it this cheap, not even in bulk, and bought 8 bags.  Potatoes are on sale right now for $1 a bag, but the potatoes seen here were bought a week or two ago at $1.99 a 5-pound bag.  I only used 2, but one was rotten (as you can see in the photo) and I had to throw it out.  So I've got to make sure I use the rest of my potatoes soon.  But I digress.  These three potatoes were about 1/5 of the bag, or 40 cents.  Onions were (and currently are by the way) only 98 cents a bag.  My bag contained about 8 onions, so each one is roughly 12 cents.  Two cups of milk out of a gallon at $3.49 is 44 cents.  The homemade croutons used 4 slices of bread, previously calculated at 6 cents a slice, so 24 cents worth of croutons (although we only ate half).  All prices listed are at Costas Shur Fine in Coudersport, PA.

 

And so we have....79 cents + 79 cents + 85 cents (corn) + 40 cents (lettuce) + $1.60 (half a pack of bacon) + $1.59 (dressing) + 53 cents (fancy cheese) + 40 cents (potatoes) + 12 cents (onion) + 44 cents (milk) + 24 cents (croutons) + $1.18 (chicken) + 68 cents (3 popsicles) = $9.61

 

 

 

And I am AWESOME.

 

 

 

Beef brisket and potatoes

So I don't actually know what part of the cow a "brisket" is from, but I did this in my crockpot with my mom's roast beef recipe, minus the tomatoes, because my kids don't like stewed tomatoes.  In fact, the only reason I feel confident calling this "beef brisket" is because of this:

To the beef, in the crockpot, I added: 6 potatoes, skinned and diced, 1 large onion, diced, 3/4 cup vinegar, 2 tsp garlic powder, 2 Tbsp salt, 2 Tbsp brown sugar, 1 Tbsp Worcestire sauce, 1 tsp mustard, and 1 bay leaf. My mother also used to add a 1-lb can of diced tomatoes, but, as I said, my kids don't like stewed tomatoes. It was cooked 2 and a half hours on high heat. You can also do it 8 hours on low, prepared in the morning and ready when you come home. I did not do it this way, because I work 6-2 and didn't want to eat my dinner at 2 in the afternoon.

The kids really liked dinner, which honestly surprised me because all the vinegar and salt in with the meat and potatoes made the potatoes taste like salt and vinegar chips. 

My daughter even asked for seconds.

Dessert was Reese's cups, one each, because they were on sale last week.  I just put them in the freezer right before serving dinner.

So the total for tonight is... $5.60 Beef, $1.50 potatoes (no, six potatoes weren't that much, but a great portion of the bag had rotted and I had to throw out the rest) and $1 worth of Reese's = $8.10.

I would've even had about $1 worth of roast beef left to make a sandwich out of, if the dog hadn't snatched it right off the table when I left to use the restroom.