We are 9 days in now.

Figured we would have jumped ship by now huh?  Thanks.  Thanks for believing in us.  We will remember that.

This meal is probably one of the easiest we make.  The funny thing is, we like it a lot – and its sooooo simple.  Really.  If you can open a few cans… brown some meat… press some buttons… you got this one.  Not only easy – quick & cheap too.  Quite the combo.

Your thinking… DUDE… spill the beans already, what is it?  Green chili casserole.  Here is the whole menu…

Green Chili Casserole

Corn Chips

Guacamole

2 Beers (total… not each)

Simple eh?  And good.  We will go ahead and give you the recipe for the green chili casserole while we are at it.

Green Chili Casserole

1lb Ground Beef

1 can of cream of mushroom

1 can of cream of chicken

corn tortillas

1 small can of diced green chilis

Instructions: Brown ground beef in a pan.  After ground beef is done, add all your cans (cream of mushroom, cream of chicken & diced green chilis).  Stir all ingredients until mixed up well.  Grab a 9×9 oven-safe casserole dish and grease it (pam, whatever).  Make a layer of the beef mixture on the bottom and cover it with corn tortillas (might take 4).  They can overlap… no problem.  Make another layer the beef mixture, then another layer of tortillas.  After that – one more layer on top of the beef (use the rest).  Your oven should be preheated to 350, and place your casserole in for 20 minutes.  Top with grated cheese and let bake for 5 more minutes – then pull from the oven.

 

Sweet huh?  And the left-overs are killer.  We cut up the remainder of the corn torts into triangles and fried them up for chips.  Oh yeah, guacamole too.  Made from scratch.  2 alvacados, some cilantro, some green onion… diced tomatoes, diced jalapeno & lime juice from half a lime.  Salt, pepper & garlic to your own taste.  We like cilantro so much – we always put a lil extra in.  Save the alvacado seeds and throw them in the bowl of guac – it will help keep it fresh.  Then tear that stuff up!

Figure we paid about 5-6 bucks total for this meal.  Not bad considering we could likely eat it 2 more times this week with the left-overs.  So if you break it down even into just 2 meals – thats 2-3 bucks per meal.  Cha-ching!

How is your personal quest for fast food independence?  We were talking tonight and said we should have called this Fast Food Rehab.  Hindsight right?  Oh well.  What did you eat last night?  Did you fall victim to the monster?  Hop back on the wagon, we have room.

Tags: A Boy And His Beer, Big Beers, Cooking, Eating At Home, Food, Make A Difference, Money, Personal, Pictures, Recipes by James
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Our goal this year was to have raised beds.  I swear we said that last year… on those long nights where we lay up in bed thinking about how much we hated our soil. 

Little did we know, we would be moving into a different house and building these beds there.

We probably would have put it off anyhow if we hadn’t moved… that is the sad part.  We would have sat around and bitched about the soil for another year or two and then finally broke down and built them.  This new house didn’t have a logical place for a garden, nor an established spot.  Which is a good thing.  Remember, it forced us to put in these awesome beds.

The onions we started a while back have been sitting around screaming to get planted… but we didn’t have a spot for them.  So I had this idea to use this scrap wood that used to be some shelves in the garage.  Didn’t take much to figure it out, a few cuts and they were together practically.  Filled it with some soil…. and here ya go…

Pretty sweet huh?  You are probably thinking… why just one row, and why like it is.. and blah blah blah.  I promise it makes sense.  Let us zoom out a little and you can see where it is in relation to the rest.

Now it makes a little more sense eh?  We plan for at least 1 more past the two on the left.  Your eyes are not screwy either… the first one is not as wide as the back one, and the back one is shorter than the first one.  And if you were not confused before, you should be nice and confused by now.  That’s how we like to keep our readers.  Niiiiiiice and confused.

As you can tell, we already planted our onions out there (the middle is white onions, the two on the outside are yellow), they are doing good – still nothing in those two on the left.  Hopefully soon, the weather is getting awesome.  I promise we still plan to give you the plans and walk-throughs for raised beds… but we are just so busy gardening!  haha  Catch-22 I suppose.

Tags: Crafty Crap, DIY, Design, Gardening, Growing Onions, Living Green, Nerdy Stuff, Pictures, raised beds by James
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You read that right… one week in the books, and we are going strong.  Seems like it has been 2 years or something, but nevertheless – a week is a good start.

So as you can tell, we aren’t really blogging about our meals every single day… just the big “new” meals.  Last night, we had leftover ribs/potatoes/beans… but since we had shown you the original meal – we figured we would spare (is that rib joke?) you the boredom that is leftovers.  This weekend we had frito pie one meal (with Shala’s Grandma’s homemade chili), a big breakfast… hot pockets… you name it.  Yet we spared everyone the pictures and boring reading of “we had hot pockets last night”.

There were mentions of the “rules” over at Anita’s blog - but honestly, this is a self-paced exam… not a timed test.  We aren’t going to hold you over the fire and demanding you to cook something from scatch every meal.  Hell, not even 1 meal.  The point is not going to Sonic… or not going to Olive Garden to eat something you could make at the house for a fraction of the cost.  Frozen dinners one meal… big deal.  Sandwiches the next… fair enough.  Just don’t break down and go out and eat (or fast food).  Simple enough.

It might seem like we are cooking extravagant meals every time we post – but that isn’t true.  We have a core set of meals we like to cook that we have learned are easy and awesome.  They might look over the top… but that is called staging people.  Yes, we stage the meals for you.  Are you happy?  Just kidding.  But seriously, Chicken Fried Steak isn’t hard… nor extravagant.

On a similar note… if you are running low on recipes – hit us up and we will email you some of ours.  We have a nice set of easy, affordable recipes, and we don’t mind sharing.

Tonight we are having Shala’s parents over, we are having Ribeyes, baked potatoes & Salad (and probably some kind of canned veggie).  So we will definitely stage some pics for your enjoyment. 

How is your quest going?  Still sticking with it?  Fell off the wagon?  Let us know.  It helps to have others doing it with us… so we love to hear what you had – it gives us ideas.

Tags: Cooking, Eating At Home, Food, Make A Difference, Money, Personal, Recipes by James
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