This lazy mama's way to make food for the week....

Did you notice our food this week is kinda......well......meh? It is actually better than it sounds.

How to cheat at dinner when you don't have time and your child is driving you crazy and all you really want is about 2 hours of quiet so you can finish working at your job so you can start working at your "Mom" job. (what? too long?)

In a pan, throw in..

• 1.5 rainbow bell peppers. I buy like 100 of these every summer and freeze them in 1/2 pepper quantities
• 2 onions
• 5 little parts of a big thing of garlic
• 1 pound of chicken breast
• 1 pound of turkey sausage
• tomatoes, can be canned tomatoes, frozen tomatoes, whatever. I personally used a pound of frozen little pear tomatoes that I paid a whole 25 cents for during the summer

Then....

• Cook all that.
• Then whirl it around in the food processor. If you don't have a food processor, you should get one, they are a lot of fun. Like $40 at walmart for a black and decker one.
• Start your rice cooker. Don't have a rice cooker? Get one, they are like $15 at ross and they rock.
• In the pan you just emptied, pour in a jar of ragu alfredo. Add a little bit of water to the jar to get that last little bit out.
• Add in half of the pureed meat veggies thing you just made. Let it cook together for a little bit.
  
• Add 1-4 tablespoons of chili powder, just depends on how you want it to taste.
• Nuke some steamer peas for your side dish (remember you have veggies in the sauce too)
  
• Pour alfredo stuff on rice - eat - yum!

The next day (or the next)...
Take the rest of the meat veggie stuff and dump it into a jar of ragu spaghetti sauce (I use ragu a lot because it goes on sale for $1).
Cook pasta, add extra Italian seasoning yada, yada..you get the idea.

It took me 7 minutes to cut up the meat and veggies. While they cooked I did other stuff (like 15-20 minutes). The whirling of the mixture, like 3 minutes. The cooking of the alfredo sauce & rice? Like 2 minutes. Peas? zero effort.

We are eating out tomorrow, eating alfredo leftovers on Wed and doing the spaghetti red sauce on Thursday (I froze the other half of the mixture.) I look forward to cooking, without really cooking, on Thursday.

Costs (your mileage may vary)
$2 - 1 pound of chicken breast
$.95 turkey sausage (I know this is cheap, but I get it all the time for the price in the mark down section)
.50 2 small onions
.75 - 1.5 bell peppers
.10 - part of a garlic bulb
.25 pear tomatoes
.46 - 1/3 bag of rice X 2
.50 - 1/2 box of linguine noodles X 2
$1 of alfredo Ragu
$1 of Ragu red sauce
$1.50 - two pound of frozen veggies, your choice
----------------------------------------
$9.01 plus tax for

4 dinners
1 lunch
2 freezer meals minimum

Or 2 dinners and 2 leftover lunches for a family of 4.