Cheap Eats

With grocery money coming out of the savings account at this time, we have had to make our food stretch as much as possible.  Its back to coupons, sale flyers and making double sure we use up all those leftovers.

One cheap food that we all can find in our grocery stores is cabbage.

But its CABBAGE.  How boring.  And it has a tendency to make everything its paired with taste like cabbage also.  How boring.  And its a boring color.  And sometimes it smells depending on how you cook it.

I don't dislike cabbage luckily.  Its just not in my top ten veggies.  Or even top 20....

But its cheap.  And it is really really healthy.

While digging through my "to try" recipe binder, I ran across a recipe with cabbage that I have been holding on to for years. Because lets face it, its cabbage.  The recipe was rather inexpensive for us as we always have rice and we had some Rotel in the pantry already that needed to be used.

So we tried this recipe, which I had clipped out of a Taste Of Home magazine years upon years ago.

And when we sat down to eat we had a surprise.  We all liked it.  And Songbird isn't big on cabbage at all. But in this casserole the cabbage doesn't take over.  As a matter of fact, the cabbage didn't really taste at all.

It was actually a little funny how surprised we all were and looked.

So anyways, I'm going to share this recipe with you. It is directly from Taste Of Home magazine and the link to it on their site is HERE.

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 medium green pepper, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 can (10 ounces) diced tomatoes and green chilies
• 1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup uncooked long grain rice
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon each white, black and cayenne pepper
• 4 to 6 drops hot pepper sauce
• 1 small head cabbage, chopped
• 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded Colby cheese

Directions

• In a skillet, cook the beef, green pepper, onion and garlic over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. Stir in tomatoes, tomato sauce, rice and seasonings.
• Spread into an ungreased 13-in. x 9-in. baking dish. Top with the cabbage and cheese. Cover and bake at 350° for 65-75 minutes or until the rice is tender. Yield: 6-8 servings.

One recommendation - if you have kids or anyone that doesn't like spicy, make sure and taste your Rotel first. You might not need those extra drops of hot sauce if the tomatoes and chili's are hot enough for you.

So who has some other cheap meals they can share?