Easy Peasy Mac N' Cheesy.

So, it turns out your life can change rather quickly in this world. One day, you could be a happy roommate with your fiancé's family, and then the next you find yourself out of the house permanently due to extenuating circumstances (but it's okay, hubbers to be is with me. ^_^)

Due to these special circumstances, I'm generally cooking for two now, but fear not! This doesn't mean I'm going to deny my imaginary masses of readers from learning how to cook on a shoestring budget!

Today's lesson? Homemade Macaroni and Cheese.

Mmm... Cheesy.

So, I know you can get the supercheap box mac in the store, and it's.... okay. It's good enough to eat... but other than the classic orange color and throwback to your childhood, it's not nutritionally sound, nor is it really cost effective. And have you ever seen real pasta look like that?

Anyway, the recipe I use gives you a serving of vegetables, and is perfect for when you're craving something a little tex-mex (which my hubbers always seems to be!).

Macaroni-and-Cheese (Delicious variant one!)

1 1/2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni

1/4 cup milk

"thing" of margarine (a "thing" is a measurement I use that nobody else uses. Whatever you're stirring with, stick it in your tub of margarine and pull a hunk out. Nobody's really going to care about *how* much is in there but you. Use good judgement.)

Three 1/4" slices of velveeta, cubed

*Optional- Cheddar cheese, however much you want.

1 can tomatoes and green chiles, Ro-Tel is pretty good. 

-Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain. Stick it back in the pot while still hot, and add the margarine. Stir until all your partially hydrogenated vegetable oil goodness is melted. 

-Add your milk and turn the heat back on low. Start thowing little tiny chunks of velveeta in, until they're all melted and delicious and gooey. Same with the cheddar, if you've added it. 

-Open up your can of tomatoes, and drain. You don't need the excess liquid, or your mac n' cheese will be awful (trust me). Throw the tomatoes and chiles in, and stir it up. Add some chile powder if you like more mex than tex. 

So, there you go. Serves 2-3 depending on your serving size, and not too bad on the wallet. 

Bacon and Eggs for dinner? Whaaaaat?

Yep! Breakfast for dinner. 

'Kay. So I ended up with a $5 gift card for the faboo French store "Tar-Zhay". Well, hubby to be did, but that doesn't really matter. I took it and went to the store to get something for dinner. Yes, $5 can make dinner! 'Kay, maybe not this time, and maybe not at Target, but whatever.  Dad in law wanted some smoked sausage, but guess what! Our rinky dink store doesn't have any? We still have the gift card in hand, so we call him up and go "Pick another meat or meat-byproduct item"

So we got BACON

                                         Do you hear the angels singing? I do. Because it's BACON.

So after retrieving to holiest and most delicious of all meat and meat-byproducts, we go home, hopefully to some sort of food on a plate. Well, food was not cooked, and though it was disappointing, I marched dutifully into the kitchen to bother my soon-to-be father in law.

Apparently, we were having bacon and eggs, and toast. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Okay, let me back up. The main reason we're having bacon and eggs is because the other day I ran out to the store and bought a TON of food on sale. Like, 3 loaves of bread and 3 dozen eggs because they were on sale type ton here. I stocked up on everything we use on a regular basis because my normal grocery store was having a kickass sale. A dozen large eggs for $0.88 is pretty epic.

So with a pound of bacon, and a dozen eggs, we cooked dinner. For 4 people. With 4 eggs and no bacon left over. On about $1 a plate.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah!

Sale shopping rocks.

First post on a new blog, take one

Hi! I'm Kam. 

Nice to meet you.

I started this food blog for people like me; you need to feed the hungry people in your life, but you're on a shoestring budget. 

Let me put it this way; I live with my fiancé, his parents, and their two kids, one in their teens, another in grade school. My fiancé and I are currently the only ones working for reasons beyond my control (and believe me, if I could control them, I wouldn't have started this blog), so for right now we're stretching all our money about as far as it can go.  We do well, but honestly, I think we could do better. 

So this blog is here not only for your information, but mine. We'll all be learning at the same time. Pretty cool huh?

One of my first ideas has been for when we're short on bread in the house, which happens a lot when you have a picky grade schooler, and a picky fiancé in the house (he won't eat anything but white bread sometimes. I could get the super-awesome whole-grain bread and serve him is favorite sandwich, and he'll look at me and go "this isn't wonderbread". Sigh)

   I make tortillas. Mmyep. Big, thick, chewy tortillas. The great thing about the tortilla recipe I use is it's easily doubled, tripled, quadrupled. You can make one tortilla (if you're the type who has the patience to make just one), or 50.

This recipe makes 4, since I usually don't need more than that (I typically use them for our work lunchboxes, and sometimes end up using the cough as a white bread/pie crust substitute. I throw in the fillings, use my got-them-for-a-dollar dumpling presses to seal them, and throw them in some oil to fry, or in a dry pan to cook the outside 'til crispy.

                                         This is about what they end up looking like. Except not Pirogies.

This is a one bowl/ dump everything in recipe , but unlike many recipes out there for quick tortillas, I treat this like a pie crust. Dry ingredients first, then fat, then liquid. You need...

-1 cup flour, (cheap all-purpose flour does just fine.)
-1/4 cup shortening, cold bacon drippings, or margarine (Shortening is most common, bacon drippings I have used with wonderful results. Plus, when you make bacon, you now have a use for all those drippings instead of going in the garbage or down the drain! Margarine is a last resort, but it gives the tortillas a mild buttery flavor which goes well with anything non-mexican.)
-1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp water.
-1/2 tsp seasoning salt (really! You can use regular salt, but seasoning salt makes the tortilla dough 'pop'.)

-Stick your cup of flour into the bowl, and add a shake of seasoning salt into it. Mix well with a fork. You don't want salty pockets, do you?

- Add in your fat. Cut it in with two knives, or if you're more privileged than me, a pastry blender. Keep goin' at it until you have pea sized bits in there. Maybe a bit smaller. I don't care. You just want it mixed.  

-Throw in your water and take a spoon or a spatula, or your hands and mix until you get a wad of dough similar to play-doh. It'll probably be kind of sticky, do you yourself a favor and flour your hands. You're gonna need to add more flour anyway, might as well get dirty early, right?

- Dust your kneading surface with some flour and start molesting that dough. Poke it, knead it, roll it, make sure the entire dough ball, inside and out, ends up slightly less sticky than a 5 year old. Y'know, you feel the stick, but it's not enough to adhere to your hands or bother you THAT much? You don't want to overwork it or overflour it, you'll end up with impossible to work with dough that will flake apart while you work on it. Think refrigerator pie dough once you let it set on the counter. Anyway, long explanation. Next step, please.

- Divide the tortilla dough into four equal balls, if you're making regulation tortillas. If not, and you're making dumpings, pocket sandwiches, or anything else that needs a cookie-cutter style take on this recipe- Skip this step.

-Let your dough rest for a few minutes. Get your other cooking going, have a glass of tea, go bother your fiancé. Maybe wash that bowl you were using earlier. Save yourself from toiling over dried dough in a bowl later.

-Roll our your dough. I usually roll mine out to about 1/4", but if you're wanting store-tortilla thin dough... well, good luck. I couldn't ever get mine that thin, but then again I don't have the patience for it.  Get it flat and to a thickness of your liking. If you didn't let it rest, it'll shrink back and be a big'ol pain in your rear. 

-Cut out your shapes, if you are taking the 'pocket sandwich' route. You'll fill them, and then seal them before you cook 'em. Make sure there aren't any holes in them, or you'll have filling leakage in your chosen cooking device. If you have dough where you can't fit your cutter, re-roll it and make more until you have a blob of dough it just doesn't fit on. Remainders can be cut into little squares, deep fried, and given a sprinkling of cinnamon-sugar for a ridiculously unhealthy snack!

- Cook your tortilla or tortilla-ish food item! Some pan fry in a dry pan, which is a classic way to cook your tortillas. If they're thin, cooking one side will do nicely, if they're not thin, you'll need to flip them. Little brown pockets or dots are a good thing, just like the ones in the package.  If you fry them, panfrying in oil should be done in a lighter oil, because these suckers pick up a LOT of oil. These keep well in the refrigerator, or eaten fresh out of the pan. Let them cool a bit first, or you'll end up with a burnt mouth. 

Quick, easy, to the point. And you can boast you made them yourself!