Cheap-O Meal

Many of you already know that I am a coupon person, while I haven’t mastered it yet, I do the best I can right now.  So with that, I tend to laugh at commercials and advertisements that talk about meals at ONLY $2.00 a serving.  I started thinking about how much does it really cost to make meals from our normal rotation.  Since there are so many people hurting right now, I thought it might be fun to break down some of these meals to their true (or almost true) costs and give the recipe.
We will start with what we had last night, very simple and very cheap
Chicken and Rice
1.5 cups of rice (3/4 of a one pound bag at 1.29)  .96
2 Chicken Thighs (cooked and shredded) (1/2 of 1 package on clearance at 1.78)  .89
3 Cups Chicken Broth (3/4 of a 32 ounce container 2.09)  1.56
2 Tbsp Margarine (32 Tbsp in box at .69)  .04
1.2 an onion (diced) (I have no idea how much I paid for a bag or how many were in the bag so I’m just assigning a value until I have to buy onions again)  .25
Salt and Pepper (any rounding that was done above would cover the cost of this)
Melt butter, then sauté onion and rice in large pan (with lid) until rice has browned, pour in chicken stock, bring to a boil, cook for 15 – 20 mins (until done).  Mix in shredded chicken, salt and pepper. 
I served this with 1/2 a bag of corn  which I got free this past weekend..Kroger had it on sale for 1.00 and combined with a .50/1 coupon that doubled..free and 1 Tbsp of margarine for .02
Entire meal  3.72 which counting it as 4 servings (there are 3 of us but dh eats a ton so the rice was really more than 4..we did toss some as I undercooked ours so it was kind of yucky) 
A total of .93 per serving
I hope that helps some people.  If you would like to continue to see article like this, please let a comment below, so I know people are interested.

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Recipe Tuesday, Parmesan Noodles, with Chicken and Mushrooms

Okay, so I am trying to do some fun daily features to at least cover some of the days.  Goodness, I know my life is not something to try inspiration from to write daily or at least more often.  So, I have decided to do a recipe Tuesday and pull recipes from my files or things that I just make up as I go along and were a success.

Today’s recipe is something that I just randomly through together last night and it turned our really good. It’s a very basic pantry style meal using items most of us having already. This super simple meal comes in well under $5.00

1. 1 Chicken Breast
2. 1/4 cup Italian style dressing (I used Kraft Parmesan Romano)
3. 1 cup sliced Mushrooms
4. Pasta-Roni Parmesan Noodle
5. 1 1/3 cup water
6. 2/3 cu milk
7. 2 TBSP butter/marg
8. 1 TBSP butter/marg
9. 1 TBSP oil
10. 1 clove garlic

First I poured the dressing over the chicken breast and baked about 30mins (it was still frozen) or until almost done.

When Chicken is done and cooling, prepare noodles following the instructions on the box.

Meanwhile, heat up 1 TBSP butter and 1 TBSP oil in a separate pan, smash garlic to peal and release then put in pan.  Sautee mushrooms and chicken.  Remove garlic when done.

When the Noodles are done, dump them in the post with chicken and mushroom.  Toss to mix and serve. 

This is great with a salad, your choice of veggie (we did corn), and maybe some garlic bread. 

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