Grocery savings: Beans

In my research I also found that a huge savings can be found in just the food that you buy. I love to cook, but while pregnant, and busy, sometime I find myself staring at the frozen food section, some of the meals calling out to me, and they finally make themselves into the cart. So reevaluating just what we buy at the store seems like a good thing to do. Usually one of those quick meals, already put together in the box, ranges from 5 to 8.00 for a family. So if I buy 5 of those every week, just that is 25 to 40.00.

I've been thinking about how much people used to get by in life and so much less. What did they do? It seems like the cheapest meals can be found in beans, cabbage, potatoes, meat, vegetables... exc. I think they must have had some pretty good recipe's for these things back then. When I researched this online I found a wealth of information. Wonderful looking recipe's, good ideas (buying beans in bulk and savings tons), and other things. So I bought a package of each kind of dried bean in WalMart last time I was there. And I plan on trying some recipe's in the next few weeks. If I find some things we like I'll know what to buy in bulk. I'm recording everything I do with these beans, so I can remember my successes and failures.

Last night I made 15 bean soup. It was very good. I made a few mistakes, but Ryan and Olivia loved it. So it was, in all, a success. I will just do a few things differently next time. The recipe is below.

15 BEAN SOUP

1 bag, 20 oz, dried 15 bean mix

1 lb ham, pork, or italian sausage

1 C onion

1 can, 15oz, stewed or diced tomatoes

1 tsp chili powder

juice of 1 lemon

2 cloves garlic, minced

Soak beans overnight, or at least 8 hours, in 2 qts of water. Drain, add 2 qts water again, and raw meat. Let come to a boil, turn down and simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Add onion, tomato, chili powder, garlic, and lemon, cook another 1/2 hour. Right before serving, season with salt and pepper to taste. Some 15 bean soup bags have ham seasoning in them, this is when you would add that as well.

I served with fresh bread that I found online as well. There's a great website with some really good ideas. I will list it below. I made the french bread on the website. I tasted the beans after cooking with meat for 2 hours, but before adding other ingr. They were so good, I almost would have rather left everything else out. Maybe I'll try that sometime also.

www.frugalvillage.com