Thrifty Meals to Get You Through Christmas

In the hustle and bustle that comes with Christmas, life still manages to happen.  Here are a few of my favorite thrifty recipes to keep you on budget during the holidays.  Some of these cheap family meal ideas come from friends or relatives, but when I say they are cheap, I mean CHEAP.  I hate when you watch the Today Show or something, and they’re all like, you can feed your family for just thrifty bucks with this meal.  30 BUCKS?  Try three.  So as you make through the unwrapping and piles of bills.  I hope these cheap recipes will keep you full and sane.

Sausage Gravy & Biscuits by My Momma

This one will fill you up without emptying your wallet.

Ingredients:

• Bob Evans Savory Sage sausage (1 tube)
• tube of refrigerated biscuits
• 2T butter
• 1/4c flour
• 1/2c milk

Directions:

Preheat oven according to directions on biscuit package.

Crumble up the sausage and brown it in a large skillet over medium heat.  I like to chop mine up really well with a spatula as it cooks.  Once brown, kind of push the sausage to one side of the skillet. Turn down the heat.  Do this all over low heat at this point. Drain the grease to the other side of the skillet and add the butter to the grease side.  Now stir the flour into the grease/butter side to make a thick mixture (not a solid mass though).   Add some of the milk to  that and gradually slide the meat over to the milk side adding more milk and flour alternately until desired gravy consistency is reached.  Bake your biscuits according to package directions.  Spilt biscuits in half and spoon some of the sausage gravy on top.

Hamburger Hash Ala my MIL Clara

Ingredients:

• 1 pound or so of Hamburger
•  1 or 2 large baking potatoes
• garlic salt (Lawry’s is good)
• Beef bullion, onion soup mix or whatever you have that is similar
• small onion

Directions:Brown the ground beef and cook the onion in a skillet.  At this time, season the ground beef too.  Like I said, I use Lawry’s garlic salt, but whatever you’ve got that works well with hamburger.  Meanwhile, chop up the potato(s) really small like hashbrown size.  Once the beef is browned add the potatoes and rest of ingredients, plus enough water to cover the potatoes.  Cook over med until potatoes are soft.  Really good and filling, and uncomplicated.

That’s two, I’ll add more cheap recipes to this, but I wanted to share some thrifty meal ideas I’ve found while perusing online.

Check these thrifty meal links out.

A healthy choice:

http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/cookbooks.asp?cookbook=58000

or

A Dollar Stretching Chicken Recipe  When you’re on this site, scroll down to Leanne Ely’s Rubber Chicken.

http://www.flylady.com/pages/kitchen2.asp

More coming soon, but this will keep you fed for now.

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