2 pounds of pinto and/or black eyed peas for around $4
A hunk of salt pork (or bacon ends) for around $3
Rice, 5 pound bag for around $3
Tortillas for around $2
A bag of precooked sausage patties for around $4
A chub or roll of sausage for around $2
Shredded cheese, 2 cups for around $2
Sour cream for around $2

I’m estimating prices, and I am estimating high. Like, Rachel Ray, spices are freebies, but you’ll need salt, pepper, garlic powder, basil, and thyme. So, we are coming in under $25 and I can feed my family of 9 at least three times, and there will be some sausage patties and rice left, along with sour cream.

So, the first day, around noon, wash your beans and put them in a pot with the salt pork. Cover them in fresh cool water and bring them to a hard boil. Let them boil maybe five minutes and then turn them down to medium. Let them simmer for several hours. Check the water now and again so they don’t cook dry. When it is time to eat, cook enough rice to serve with the beans, and also one sausage patty per person. Just before you serve, season the beans to taste with the spices listed above. You can discard the salt pork as well, unless you can afford the fat and calories. This is meal one.

For the second meal, fry up the chub sausage, and make sure it’s in small pieces. Heat up the beans and mix them together. Heat your tortillas and spoon the mixture into them, about 1/3 cup for the small tortillas and top with a little sour cream and a bit more of the bean and sausage mixture. That is meal two.

Meal three (and possibly four) are repeats of those two meals. We love the Mexican food around here, so we chose the tortilla option for lunch on the third day. Yum, yum!

To get the absolute most use out of the $25 you spent, add some eggs and a loaf of bread to your shopping list. Then you can serve scrambled eggs and toast along with the remaining sausage patties for breakfast one day.

I think that would bring us up to 4 meals for 9 people for $30 or less.

And do you understand that I am not talking about luxury food items like ice cream and chocolate chips????? Those prices are about the same, but the flour and sugar and meats and dairy are insanely high.

And have I mentioned that my husband drives for a living? I knew that we weren’t quite keeping up with the Joneses and all, but I’m finding it hard to understand how meeting our basic food, clothing, shelter and transportation needs has put us in a financial crisis. How do you get Debt relief for basic recurring life expenses?

Well, I don’t know what to do about clothing, shelter and transportation, right off hand, but I know what we are going to do about food. I had been making a clear separation between lunch foods (usually cheaper dishes with less meat) and dinner meals (more meat, spendier ingredients), and in order to make that food I bought last night last $400 worth, that has to change. We’ll be eating lunch and dinner meals for dinner, and lunch will be leftovers or a sandwich. And we will be eating the leftovers. All of them. Because we can’t afford not to!

It’s just smart financially to not be wasteful! The first step to financial prudence is to be wise in how you utilize your resources. After all, it’s hard to invest if you spend all you have on necessities. And how do you plan for the future if every bit of your energy is spent trying to make it through the today?

But enough gloom and doom! This means that I get a chance to share some pretty frugal cooking ideas with you. Let’s start next time when I tell you just how far 2 pounds of dry beans can go. You’ll need one pound of chub sausage, and 2 pounds of either pintos or blackeyed peas (or a combination), and a hunk of salt pork. You should be able to purchase that for less that $10, but you’ll also need rice and tortillas. And sausage patties or links. If you can afford them. They aren’t necessary as rice and beans together form a complete protein. However, adding sausage patties, rice and tortillas will only cost you another $10, for a total of $20, and you’ll get several meals from it. If you are feeling really extravagant, or already have rice and tortillas on hand, pick up some cheese and sour cream.

ETA for you yankees:

A “chub” is a roll of sausage. And a good substitute for salt pork is bacon ends.

Thanks, Ang. for pointing out the geo-differences.

I made my menu and shopping list yesterday, and the dinner menu includes:

sloppy joes
BBQ sandwiches
manicotti
stuffed peppers
tacos
hunters chicken
meatloaf
chicken parmigiana
pork chops
enchiladas
chicken and rice casserole
spaghetti
salmon
steak

Sound good to you? I’ll be talking about some of it over the next couple of weeks. Provided I can chisel out time to get to the grocery store. Otherwise, it’s going to be PBJ until we’re ready to gnaw off our own arms!

I called this paprika eureka is that the first spice I re-discovered was paprika, and I was reminded of that when I wrote my review of The Spice Merchant’s Daughter today.

Consider this post the cyber equivalent of me passing around the bottle and saying taste this! Try it in dry beans, on chicken and fish, and also on popcorn!

One of the great side benefits of using the griddle is that it makes short work of what would otherwise be a Herculean task. Making pancakes for nine people 2 or 3 at a time takes an hour. With this thing, I can do it in 15 minutes, just three griddles-full.

The other benefit is that it seems to keep the kitchen cooler. I know that seems incongruous, since it is an overall bigger heat source, but it’s true, none the less.

In the meantime, since studying wine is not on my official agenda, I can cheat. I read Rachel Ray’s mag, and in the back of every issue, she suggests wines to go with the recipes. That works for me, for now. Only most of them aren’t available at Wal-Mart, nor are they under ten bucks. Also, Boone’s Farm still burns my tongue. Just sayin’

Anyway, that’s the story, Morning Glory. Retta blogs over at Just Not Martha. Go read her. She’s a keeper.

These are snap peas, and you can relax, because that white stuff is just congealed bacon grease. That’s a food group, you know, bacon grease. I brought these to a boil, added a generous dollop of the grease and salted them. Then I let them simmer about 30-40 minutes, and they were just about the best thing I’d ever eaten. It had been a very long time since I had had field peas. Worth the aggravation, for sure!