The other was one of those “there is absolutely nothing in this house” kind of dinners. At least that’s what everybody kept saying. Then David created I wanted to share 💵 The $10 Stretch Meal That Saved My Whole Week.
When Gerlad and I actually started digging through the fridge and pantry, I found enough to make something work for dinner when David got home that evening. Becaused we alll know David is the cook in the family.
We used a half a box of rotini pasta, one pound of ground beef I had thawed earlier in the week, a jar with just enough prego pasta sauce left in the bottom pf the jar, half an onion, for mine and Gerald’s dish and no, onion for David with shredded cheese, Great Value garlic bread from the freezer, and two cans of green beans.
And yes… the green beans mattered. Because it is a vegetable everyone in the house will eat including David and Charlie. Because if they are going to willingly eat vegetables, there’s about a 90% chance they need to be green beans. So, since this was a pick your battle moments and not much food I embraced the moment and made green beans so the meal would stretch..
David browned the ground beef with onions for Charlie and I and Kinder’s The Blend which is seasoning salt, pepper and garlic seasoning. Then David added the leftover sauce, boiled the pasta, mixed it all together, topped it with cheese, and served the green beans with butter and seasoning salt on the side.
Not complicated.
Not fancy.
But it fed everybody for around $10 total.
Honestly, those are the meals that save our grocery budget more than anything else. The biggest thing I’m learning lately is that I don’t actually need a fully stocked Pinterest kitchen to feed my family. I just need enough basics to throw together something filling. And sometimes those random leftover meals end up tasting better than the expensive ones.
The funniest part tonight?
Nobody even complained.
David ate his green beans.
Everybody cleaned their plates.
And cleanup was easy because we mostly used one skillet, one pasta pot, and a pizza sheet for the garlic bread because it was in the stove and David didn’t want to spend time looking for a baking sheet. Men what can I say. LOL
After dinner, I helped clear the table while Gerald loaded the dishwasher, and David handled the leftover containers because he knows if food gets forgotten in the fridge, I’ll discover it three weeks later as a science experiment.
Real life. Real budgets. Real dinners. And honestly, these stretch meals are probably more helpful to families right now than perfectly styled recipe posts anyway.
Easy $10 Stretch Pasta Skillet
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground beef
- 1/2 onion, diced which you do not have to use
- 1/2 box rotini pasta
- Leftover pasta sauce (about 1 to 1½ cups)
- 1 cup shredded cheese
- 2 cans green beans
- Garlic bread from freezer
Directions
- Brown the ground beef and onion together in a skillet.
- Boil pasta until tender and drain.
- Stir pasta sauce into the meat mixture.
- Mix in cooked pasta.
- Top with shredded cheese and let melt.
- Heat green beans with butter and seasoning.
- Bake garlic bread and serve everything together.
Simple. Filling. Cheap. And enough to get us through another day without an emergency grocery run. Real family meals are messy sometimes.
They’re leftovers mixed together.
They’re small portions stretched farther.
They’re using the last few ingredients before payday.
They’re figuring it out as you go.
And in this economy, I know a lot of families are doing the exact same thing right now. You don’t always need more food. Sometimes you just need a better way to combine what you already have.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
