Earlier in the day, I had taken out a small package of hamburger from the freezer. At the beginning of the month, I stocked up on several types of allowable meats--salmon, shrimp, pork chops, roasts (beef and pork), steaks, chicken breasts, ground beef, hot & mild Italian sausages, one ham (which took the most time as so many are injected with all sorts of unrecognizable things), and a small amount of Basque chorizo sausage. (Obviously, this would not be possible if we didn't have a chest freezer in the garage.) It looked a bit like we had joined the Adkins diet craze, and it did really skew the grocery tally for this month, but if one isn't going to eat processed foods, one is going to have to cook, and one can't cook without ingredients on hand.
So, I had purchased a 5.76 pound package of ground beef for $17.24 ($2.99/pound) at Costco. I divided it up into 8-0z. packages, which we are treating as 2-4 servings (no sense getting fat or blowing up our cholesterol levels this year). I cooked the meat with half of an onion and a few cloves of garlic, then cooked 1/2 a cup of barley in some salt water, added a little flour and nutmeg to the meat, then added a little water to make a sauce of sorts, then stirred in the barley to cook until most of the liquid had evaporated (and by the way, when it says on the barley package to mix 6 parts water to one part barley, they are out of their minds. Maybe try 4 to 1). I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and a little more nutmeg, and voila!
OK, it tasted better than it looks here. So, budget-wise:ground beef - $1.50
half an onion - 75 cents?
barley - 50 cents (might be on the high side, but I did buy it at Albertsons, which is about double anywhere else)
flour, spices, salt, pepper - $1
That gives us 4 servings at 94 cents a serving. Hey, we have a "dollar menu!"
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