1-11-2011 Tuesday

Is it just me or is it chilly outside? It must be chilly. It started to snow at our house this evening. I knew that I'd picked the right kind of dish to have for dinner. Tonight I made taco soup. I didn't have a recipe to go off of. I just started tossing things together. I had a few bags of opened dry beans and decided that I wanted to do something with them for dinner. So, out came the crock pot. I used dry kidney beans, black beans, and navy beans. I rinsed the beans, then coated the inside of my crock pot with pam.
Here is a useful tip: you don't have to soak beans when you use a crock pot. After the beans are in the pan, add 6 cups of boiling water.
After the beans and boiling water were in the crock pot; I added 1/4 c. taco seasoning, 1 tsp. salt, and about 1 TBSP of pepper. I kept that cooking on high for 4 hours. Then I browned a pound of beef and drained the grease. When I tried the soup, it was good...but it needed something. I quick whipped up a batch of homemade enchilada sauce and added it in. Then I continued to cook everything in the crock pot on high for an additional 2 hours. We had some taco shells that I baked and crushed over the top of the soup. We also put sour cream on top.
My kids & my husband had thirds of taco soup. I was fine with 1 bowl...which is unusual for me to finish. Normally I hand it off to my hubby. But not tonight! I was thankful that we filled my husband's soup thermos before serving dinner. There would have been none left for him to take to work. My kids are requesting to have this for dinner tomorrow night. They want to know what it would taste like with chicken in it. Hmm...I'll think about it.

Breakdown on dinner for tonight:
1 lb of dried beans $0.67
sour cream $0.25 (we used 1/4 of the container)
homemade enchilada sauce $0.20
taco seasoning $0.15
taco shells $0.44

Totals for today:
Food purchases: $0.00
Coupon savings on food: $0.00
Dinner: $1.71

Tally for January Totals:
Food purchases: $43.43
Coupon savings on food: $34.61
Cost of dinner: $14.93