Lima beans and other things

As we are continuing to work on getting the grocery budget down without resorting to mac and cheese and ramen every night, I'm still working on creating food that is cheap and nutritious. I made chicken and stuffing casserole out of leftover chicken, some whole wheat cornbread, and a package of cornbread stuffing, with vegetable broth thrown in for moistness and a can of cream of mushroom soup poured over the top.

The children said it looked like something they would eat for school lunch... at Thanksgiving, and that it "blopped" on the plate. They also complained about the "canned"cranberry sauce. I mean, really I cook dinner and make use of the leftovers and they complain that the cranberry sauce has "can marks". Are they kidding? Obviously, my kids are watching too much Food Network, with their disdain of canned cranberry sauce and naming the cats after chefs. Next they'll be expecting imported cheese in their mac and cheese and grain fed, free range sausage on their pizza. Good Lord, my children are...French!

As that was an obvious fail, I served lima beans for dinner and the next night put them in the crock pot with two sausages, some baby carrots & celery. I sent it to work with my husband, who said "the broth... overwhelms" the beans. This from a man who fed his child nothing but pizza and mac and cheese to the point I feared that the son would suffer from beri beri or rickets, or some other vitamin deficient disease normally only seen in Third World Countries and among cast members of Jersey Shore who's diets consist mostly of vodka and Red Bull. Christ, even Snooki eats pickles and perhaps the pistachios she pimps. And apparently lots of beta carotene, as she has such an odd orange cast to her skin.

So, tonights offering is white bean chicken chili and a cauliflower curry. I had a cauliflower in the crisper that was in danger of growing legs and walking around, so I decided a mixed veg curry of limpy veg sounded like a good idea. Well, maybe not a GOOD idea, really, but a practical one. Yeah, we'll go with that.

I have some chicken that I pulled out of the freezer. Well, it turned out to be chicken. I couldn't really tell, since I didn't mark the packages before tossing them in the freezer. Note to self, mark the packages before freezing to cut down on leftover Russian roulette. It landed in the crock pot with a can of tomato sauce, some canned tomatoes, a packet of red mole sauce, a cup and a half of white beans and the chicken. Hopefully this will be a bigger success than the chicken and stuffing casserole. I haven't given up on the sausage & lima beans, I may drain the broth and figure out something to do with them. Wonder if you could mash them and fry them like a bean based veggie burger?

Tomorrow I'll figure out what to do with the lima beans. If it doesn't work, I'm sure they dog will eat it. At least he never complains. Or he does so quietly.