Ingredients:
One single serving size package of Lean Cuisine Lasagna with meat sauce- 310 calories - about 2.50
One 14.5 oz can of [Hunt's Fire Roasted diced tomatoes](http://www.target.com/p/hunt-s-100-natural-diced-fire-roasted-tomatoes-14-5-oz/-/A-13373913)- about 1.00
Olive oil
Cracked black pepper
Kraft Parmesan Cheese
Get Pyrex style dish with lid (or use small plate)
Put can of tomatoes in bowl
Add 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and some cracked pepper mix with tomatoes
Microwave lasagna for one minute then dump it out of the plastic container into the middle of the tomatoes in the Pyrex disk. Cover dish and microwave for 10 minutes.
With knife and fork slice up lasagna and mix with tomatoes. Sprinkle parmesan cheese on top to taste. Deliciousness!
11 minutes cooking time - About 520 calories total. Serves 2 or one very hungry man or women.
Some pasta (I love rotini.)
Some rice.
A can of chili.
Fifty shakes from a pepper shaker.
Five shakes from a garlic powder shaker.
A little salt and a little olive oil.
Microwave half an hour. Let cool.
Haute cuisine? This is naught cuisine! But it’s yummy!
One package/scoop of instant couscous.
One diced Roma tomato.
Handful of torn-up/cut baby spinach.
One small can of diced black olives.
A few squirts of lemon juice.
Sprinkling of ground black pepper.
Sprinkling of grated Parmesan cheese (not the shelf-stable stuff) or crumbled feta.
Cook couscous according to directions. While it’s steeping, dice tomato and shred the cabbage. Add to cooked couscous, along with lemon juice, olives, and pepper. Toss, sprinkle with cheese. Eat as-is, warm or chilled, or wrap in pitas, naan, or tortillas for a portable meal.
1 white potato, about the size of your fist, cut into pieces >1/4" thick
1/2 an onion, diced
Leftover meat, any kind, chopped into small bits
optional: 1 egg
optional: frozen green beans
oil in pan, Fry potatoes over medium heat. Stir periodically.
When the potatoes are cooked (taste a chunk), shove the potatoes to one side of the pan and fry onions.
When onions are done to you liking, add chopped-up meat. stir up everything together until its all hot.
Season with salt and black pepper and rosemary
-If you only have a little meat, you can fry an egg and put that on top of the hash.
-If you want to add a veggie, frozen green beans work. Add them with the meat, they just need to heat up as they’re already cooked.
Fried rice is good for using up ands & ends. Leftover chinese-food rice is ideal. I’ve even been known to stop in to a takeout on the way home and get a tub of cooked rice for $1 if I was feeling lazy.
1-2 cups Cooked Rice
frozen mixed veggies or frozen peas
1-2 eggs
garlic or garlic powder; ginger or ginger powder
soy sauce
optional: leftover meat
Cook the garlic if using fresh. Put rice in pan with some butter or oil. Add soy sauce by pouring a little at a time and stirring, until the taste is as strong as you like and the color is uniform. Dump in frozen veggies and stir up. Add a little more soy sauce. Push the rice aside and break egg into space created. Use spoon to coarsely scramble in place (some will ooze into the rice, that’s fine). when cooked up, stir back together with the rice. Add ginger powder and garlic powder to taste. Add meat if desired and stir until heated through.
I heated a stainless steel frying pan until drops of water skittered on top, and then added about a tablespoon of olive oil. Slice the sausages into discs and add to the oil. Put in about half a bag of the pepper strips. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until heated. Add ½ small jar of spaghetti sauce. (I used Prego mushroom sauce.) Simmer until hot. Open two hoagie rolls (that’s what they had at the corner market) and spread with a bit of margarine and sprinkle with garlic powder. Put in the oven with the broiler element on high to toast. Spoon the sausage/pepper/sauce mixture onto the rolls. Top with shredded mozzarella if you want.
[ul][li]Quick? About ten minutes[/li][li]Easy? You bet.[/li][li]Satisfying? Yup. Sandwich and chips can fill you up.[/li][*]Inexpensive? Yes. Maybe $6 for the sausages, $3 for the sauce and I think $1.79 for the whole bag of peppers. Plus bread and stuff you already have on-hand. And that’s enough to make it twice. Heck, that’s enough for six sandwiches![/ul]
1 lb hot ground Italian sausage. Must be the hot for my wife and I. Grocery tube sausage works great for this.
2 jars of spaghetti sauce of choice.
Fry up the sausage. Crumble and smoosh while frying, Drain grease. Add sauce (you will need a pretty good sized fry pan for this) to frying pan. Keep it hot.
Cook spaghetti. Plate, cover with sausage sauce. Add parmesan if you have it.
Solid white tuna packed in water (low sodium).
Red onion, finely diced.
Celery heart (especially leafy middle), finely diced.
Half fresh jalapeno, seeded and very finely diced.
Mayo, to taste.
Dijon mustard, to taste.
Fresh ground pepper.
Combine and mix thoroughly in bowl. Add generous amount to bread of your choice. Cover with cheese (cheddar, or american, or provolone, or what have you). Bake in the oven at 400F until cheese is melted and starting to brown.
Let cool for a few minutes and top with arugula.
Enjoy with side of dill pickles or cherry tomatoes.
Can we count it if it’s quick prep time, even if it takes forever to cook? If so, here’s mine: bean burritos.
Add a 1 lb bag of black beans to a half-gallon of water, as well as 2-3 tsp salt (I just glug it in). Chop in an onion if you’re feeling fancy; dump in some cumin if you’re like Julia Child or something. Bring to a boil, then simmer partly covered on low for about 2-3 hours or more while you do other stuff. I think you can also do all this in a slow cooker.
Shred some cheese, heat a flour tortilla in a pan, sprinkle cheese on tortilla, put cooked beans on tortilla, and that’s dinner. Get fancy by adding salsa, avocado, or sour cream; the avocado is the most time-consuming prepwork for the meal.
It’s insanely cheap for the amount of food you get (a bag of beans makes at least a half-gallon of cooked beans, for about a buck twenty; tortillas are super-cheap; you don’t need much cheese; and avocados often go on sale). They’re very filling. We make a giant pot of black beans several times a month, and they all get eaten.
I didn’t feel like cooking last night. The SO didn’t want any leftover chili or leftover mini-meatballs-in-salsa or a ham sandwich. We had fried shrimps Friday. I didn’t even mention the leftover meatballs and sauce in the freezer, and neither one of us wanted a pizza (there’s still pepperoni left, and I have the meatballs-not-in-sauce in the freezer). So I punted.
I got one of those ‘rotisserie’ chickens from the market and heated it to a proper temperature in the oven, putting some BBQ sauce on it about 15 minutes before we decided to eat. We had some salad leftover from Friday. We ate almost half of the chicken, and the SO can use some of the leftovers for chicken sandwiches for work (which would be a change from ham).
Quick, because the chicken was already cooked. Easy, because I just put it in a baking dish and made it hotter and added some sauce, and how hard is it to put dressing on salad? Satisfying, because it filled us up and we have leftovers. Inexpensive? Seven bucks for the cluck, and a couple of dollars worth of salad greens and some dressing for two people.
Tonight’s dinner will be easy, highly satisfying, and inexpensive; but not quick. I have a rack of pork ribs ($14) that I will put rub on and cook slowly, and we’ll have some mashed potatoes ($cheap – How much is a large potato?) and maybe a can of corn ($1).
1 lb box uncooked spaghetti
2 large eggs
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup shredded parmesan
spices, salt, pepper, garlic powder etc…
whip together eggs, cheese, oil, spices,
cook noodles, drain noodles and dump in big bowl, pour egg mixture over noodles and stir together making a smooth sauce.
cheap vegetarian carbonara, might have to practice a bit to get it right and spiced to your taste. great leftover the next morning, too.
