Cornbread and Chili beans

This post topic inspired me to share a great tune by the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I recommend listening while reading. You’ll be glad you did. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xOxHyTP91c

My roommate and I have really gotten into meal planning and couponing recently (sort of embarrassing). We’re both really into lists, too. So, at the beginning of each week, we create one of those cool sharable Google docs, and then g-chat our way to a menu for the week. We include lunches and dinners (breakfast is a no-brainer because I eat Cinnamon Chex like a fiend) on our menu, and we also make our grocery list on there as well. We scour weekly grocery store ads to find out what’s on sale. We eat what’s on sale pretty exclusively. If it’s not on sale, we have a coupon (unless, of course, we have to get a specialty GF item, which is not very often). If we don’t have a coupon or it’s not on sale, we don’t get it. Boom. We’re serious about eating on a budget. Oh, and I should mention that my sweet roommate, Chris, is not gluten-free, but she might as well be. What a great sport, right?!

Chris got a Crock-Pot for Christmas, and it’s been our THING ever since. We try to have at least one Crock-Pot meal a week, so this week (as you can see), we decided to have Chili. Chili is great because: 1. It’s warm, 2. It’s cheap, 3. It’s so so so easy. And it turned out pretty darn tasty for a couple of non-cooks. Here’s how we make the magic happen:

Ingredients:  

• Small size of ground beef (pound – pound and a half)
• One onion (white)
• Two cans of hot chili beans
• One can of black beans
• Two cans of diced tomatoes (the Organic ones were on sale and were SO GOOD)
• Two small cans of tomato paste (hunts is the best)
• One LARGE can of tomato sauce
• One cup of water
• One tablespoon of chili powder
• One tsp. of salt
• One tsp. of pepper  

Directions:

• Brown the ground beef in onion. We usually do it in EVOO.
• Once it is brown put all the ingredients in the Crock Pot and cook on low for 3-4 hrs.

That is all. So we have dinner for a few nights, not to mention leftovers for lunch the next day, which we LOVE. We like to eat off of Chris’s Wedgewood China when we want to feel super classy, so we did, and it was fabulous. We paired this meal with some SUPER easy GF Corn Bread from Bob’s Red Mill (all you do is add 2 eggs, oil, and milk to the mix). Oh and 2 Buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s. 

Do your thing.