Recipe: Southwestern Hummus with Baked Tortilla Chips

My husband and I made this today. I bought a 1 lb. bag of Garbanzos for under 2 dollars and cooked them all in the crockpot overnight. Then, he mashed them (our blender is on the fritz) and I added olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, cajun seasoning, salt, cayenne pepper, and a bit of liquid smoke. We baked flour tortillas cut into chip sizes for 10 minutes at 350. It was great! Yes, we realize we're missing Tahini, but Tahini is expensive and I don't care for the taste of sesame seeds, anyway. This made a very inexpensive lunch, especially when a tiny container of hummus can run over 3 bucks. Try and enjoy!

Recipe: Chicken Stroganoff

This recipe is my own creation

Ingredients:

1 lb. Chicken tenderloins

1 lb. button mushrooms, sliced

1 white onion, chopped

1 cup lite sour cream

2 Tbl. Dijon mustard

1 cup milk

3-4 cups broth

1/2 stick margarine or butter

drizzle olive oil

1/3 cup flour

2 tsp. poultry seasoning

1 tsp. sage

2 Tbl. garlic powder

salt and pepper to taste

1 lb. Egg Noodles, cooked per directions on package

Directions:

Cook tenderloins in a large skillet over med-hi heat. When cooked mostly through, remove and let cool. Drizzle olive oil in same skillet and melt 1/2 stick of margarine. Saute' mushrooms and onions in the oil. When onions are clear, add flour. Stir the flour around, absorbing all of the oil and margarine. Add broth and milk. Bring everything to a boil and the flour will thicken the sauce. Add poultry seasoning, garlic powder, sage, and salt and pepper. Simmer the sauce for ten minutes. Add in sour cream and mustard. Stir well and serve over egg noodles. Enjoy!

Tip: I don't usually measure ingredients, so if the thickness of the sauce is not to your liking, you can either dilute it with more milk and broth, or thicken it up with a mixture of equal parts flour and water (stirred very well).

Cheap Tips for Grocery Shopping

1.) Plan out a menu first, with what meals you'll make on which days. Make a LOT of the meal the night you cook so you can eat on leftovers. I make a big pot of soup when I have the day off and we use the leftovers for lunches throughout the week.

2.) Weigh all the veggies you buy and keep tabs of exactly what you're spending, minus the tax. Sometimes they'll advertise grapes as beeing 2 dollars a lb., but package them in 2 lb. bags. Stores are sneaky like that. My husband carries around a notebook, pen, and calculator and writes everything down. This way, if you overspend, you can put some items back if you need to BEFORE you get to the cashier. I always feel silly asking them to take items off. This takes a lot of time, and I'm sure people think we're crazy, but we enjoy it. It kind of makes a game of everything: How cheaply can we buy groceries THIS week?

3.) Buy dry bulk items: a 1lb. bag of dried beans stretches a lot more than a few cans of beans. Beans get a lot bigger when you cook them. Yes, they can take a while to cook, but that's why there are crockpots! I love making my own refried beans and they taste SO much better than stuff from a can. I also buy a big bag of brown rice every few weeks. I used to use Boil in the Bag stuff, but you only get 4 bags of that per box, and I was spending so much money! (We got a rice cooker as a wedding gift last year, and it has saved our lives!)

4.) Things that are easy to make, make. For example, a small 6 oz. container of hummus costs over 3 dollars at Walmart. We make around 2 lbs. of hummus from a 2 dollar bag of garbanzo beans, and we already had the garlic and olive oil on hand. We don't use tahnini, but a big jar of it is only 6 dollars, and you only use a tiny amount per batch. We'll have a hummus and veggie night some weeks, and I bring some to work to give to a hummus-loving friend. We also make our own polenta instead of buying a lb. of it for 3 dollars. Corn meal is cheap!

5.) We don't ever use coupons because they're always for brand names, whereas I find it's easier to just buy store brands instead.

6.) Every once in a while, I'll slpurge on a whole chicken and make roast chicken, chicken soup, and chicken stock all in one week. I also freeze vegetable clippings per week ( there are a ton!) and make vegetable broth on Sundays.

Who Am I?

Hello! Welcome to Budget Bites: a food blog where I share with you what I do to save money while still eating tasty, somewhat healthy, home-cooked food. I'll begin by introducing myself.
My name is "Tee". I'm 29 years old, and married to a great guy I'll call "Jay".

I'm a music teacher. My other great passion is food. If I could eat out every night of the week, I would, but that is not a reasonable goal, so I learned to cook and found I really enjoy it.

Money is really tight right now, so, for the last year Jay and I have perfected the art of eating on the cheap. Now it doesn't seem as if we can eat out at all, so I cook all of our meals at home.


What do I cook? A little of this, a little of that. Lately, I've been making lots of "Southern" and Vegetarian dishes because I can make them inexpensively.

Where do I get my recipes? I usually create my own, but if I can't figure out how to make something the way I want it, I get some extra help from http://www.chowhound.com/ or http://www.allrecipes.com/. Both sites are great.


Something interesting about me: I'm experimenting with the idea of vegetarianism. It started as a budget idea, but now it has evolved a bit. I even ordered a magazine from PETA. I've given up cooking red meat and am down to chicken, pork, and fish. That's not to say that I won't order a steak if someone takes me out to dinner... I haven't crossed that bridge just yet.


A frustration about this blogging site so far: Why won't it save my posts properly indented as I typed them? Oh well, I guess it's spaces in between paragraphs.