{"id":463,"date":"2009-05-20T17:07:13","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T01:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/?p=463"},"modified":"2009-05-21T15:49:36","modified_gmt":"2009-05-21T23:49:36","slug":"tonights-frugal-menu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/?p=463","title":{"rendered":"Tonight&#8217;s Frugal Menu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in cooking mode lately. Chicken is under 70 cents a pound, and I&#8217;m finding use for ten pound bags!<\/p>\n<p>Tonight&#8217;s menu: chicken enchilada casserole, Spanish rice, and homemade salsa.\u00c2\u00a0 The enchilada casserole is always a family favorite, and I made the salsa a couple of days ago and was quite pleased with how it came out. I haven&#8217;t tried the Spanish rice before,\u00c2\u00a0 but I followed the directions of a dear lady who knows her way around the kitchen&#8230; the same lady who told me the basics of easy salsa making. So&#8230; if you want the &#8220;recipes&#8221; here goes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chicken Enchilada Casserole<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>chicken<\/li>\n<li>corn tortillas<\/li>\n<li>1 can cream of chicken soup<\/li>\n<li>1 container sour cream<\/li>\n<li>1 can nacho cheese sauce or green chili enchilada sauce<\/li>\n<li>cheese<\/li>\n<li>1 onion<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Boil the chicken. (Amount is flexible.) Save the broth for tomorrow&#8217;s chicken and dumplings.<\/p>\n<p>Preheat oven to 350 degrees.<\/p>\n<p>Mix sour cream, cream of chicken soup, sauce, cheese, and diced onion in a bowl. (What size containers you use is really a matter of taste. We used reduced fat sour cream.)<\/p>\n<p>Layer sauce mixture, torn pieces of tortilla, and chicken. Top and bottom layers should be sauce mixture. Cook until cheese is melted and casserole is hot, anywhere from 10-45 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>As you see, the recipe is <em>very <\/em>forgiving.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Spanish Rice<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The key, I&#8217;m told, is to brown the rice in oil before adding water and tomato sauce. The lady who gave the directions didn&#8217;t give amounts, so I used 3 cups rice, 6 cups water, and one small can of tomato paste. I added a diced onion and some onion salt and cumin. I&#8217;ll let you know how it turns out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Salsa<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is the easy way. My favorite is a fresh pico de gallo, but I rarely have time to make that. This is a delicious second choice, and it&#8217;s so easy and affordable that I can keep it in the house constantly.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1 large can diced tomatoes<\/li>\n<li>1 small can whole jalapeno without liquid, stems removed. If you prefer a milder salsa, you can remove the seeds.<\/li>\n<li>1 onion, in quarters<\/li>\n<li>garlic (optional)<\/li>\n<li>cilantro (optional but strongly recommended)<\/li>\n<li>salt to taste<\/li>\n<li>1-2 Tbsp lemon juice<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Put all ingredients in blender, and pulse until onion is thoroughly mixed in.<\/p>\n<p>The cost of all this? Including leftovers, about $7 to feed our big clan. Maybe $8 if I get all responsible and serve veggies.<\/p>\n<p>Update: The casserole and salsa are family favorites, but the rice needs some work. It definitely requires more water than I used initially; I think next time I will find a different recipe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m in cooking mode lately. Chicken is under 70 cents a pound, and I&#8217;m finding use for ten pound bags! Tonight&#8217;s menu: chicken enchilada casserole, Spanish rice, and homemade salsa.\u00c2\u00a0 The enchilada casserole is always a family favorite, and I made the salsa a couple of days ago and was quite pleased with how it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=463"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463\/revisions\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelsundae.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}