One thing to keep in mind is the cost that people report to attend college isn't really accurate. When I went to school, the reported cost to attend my university was about twice what I actually paid. Why? It assumed a lot of things, like cost of books (you can buy used, especially with the internet) and living expenses. By being careful with what I did in my free time, where I lived (always had lots of roommates), and searching out ways to share books with classmates or buying used, I was able to take out only $14,000 in loans, plus had some grant money and a few merit scholarships that eventually covered the entire cost of my last year. This covered five years in a state school (two years out of state tuition) about six years ago. My parents didn't help at all, and if anything, their income hurt me with aid. All of my loans are now paid off, thanks to living small and making debt reduction a priority.
For my own kids, we aren't funding a 529, which seems risky considering where the money is going. We are funding our retirement. When our boys are filling out the financial aid forms, our money counts much less than theirs when it comes to formulating aid. We intend to help some with living expenses and anything that overwhelms them, but they will be expected to walk the maze of aid (with our help), and save on their own to be able to afford college.
After having known one too many party animals in college who were blowing through their parents' money, I know their experience in college with matter much more if they work hard for it themselves.
Mix 16 oz. ground beef with 1 cup of feta cheese, 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1 teaspoon dried basil, 1 teaspoon onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, and ground black pepper to taste and you have Greek burgers. Yummy. :)
I usually make these with ground turkey, but beef would probably work too.
Very similar to what one of my roommates used to make. She would brown the ground beef, add refried beans, add grated cheese and then season with lots of pepper. Very tasty.
We make Norwegian tacos. They are really good and different. Not Mexican at all, so we call them norcos.
Make ground beef with taco seasoning of your choice.
Serve with grated white cheese, not cheddar. Swiss is good.
Serve with chopped cucumber. The english ones in plastic. Don't peel them.
Serve with chopped apple or pineapple. Don't peel the apple.
Serve with a can of corn, put into a bowl. No need to heat.
Serve with either soft shells or hard shells or lettuce if you want taco salad.
The above are required.
You should also have:
Sour cream
Salsa
Everybody makes their own. Each taco should use at least a quarter cup of cucumber and a quarter cup of apple.
These are so good we have them much more than American tacos now. We still eat Mexican tacos at the taco stands, which are a completely different thing.
I am going to try to keep this to a minimum, but I could go on for days. I love these cheap and quick meals.
My all time favorite:
Mexican Meatloaf
mix up a pound or two of ground beef (or turkey, whichever is cheaper) with an egg, crush some tortilla chips (or to save money, cut corn tortillas into triangles and bake them for a few minutes), mix in some salsa, and add some onions and garlic to taste. I am a HUGE fan of cumin, so I add that, too. AMAZING! You can vary this to your liking, but the goal is to replace traditional meatloaf ingredients with "mexican" ingredients.
My husband's favorite:
Mexican Lasagna or Cheesy 'Chilada
brown some beef with onion and green pepper, then add a can of drained kidney beans, an 8 oz can of tomato sauce, about 1 cup of salsa and heat through. Put a layer of the mixture in a 9X13 casserole dish then add some cheese on top. Cover the cheese with a layer of flour tortillas. Repeat until you have two or three of these meat-cheese-tortilla combos (it depends on how much I put in each layer, but you want to end with the tortilla on top) Cover it with aluminum foil and bake at 325 for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the aluminum foil off and add some cheese. Return it to the oven until the cheese it melted-about 5 minutes. After the cheese is melted, top this with some lettuce, dice up a tomato, and add some sour cream. YUM!
Somebody else already mentioned lettuce wraps - and they are a yummy option - if you use iceburg lettuce, it is incredibly inexpensive, too.
Also, another great one is a beef and cornbread skillet (sometimes called tamale pie)
In an ovenproof skillet (I love my cast iron), brown beef and onion (garlic, spices as you like- I love cumin!) and add a can of diced tomatoes (not drained) and a can of corn. In a bowl mix up a cornbread muffin mix as the directions say or mix a cornbread recipe from scratch and pour that over the top of the beef mixture. Bake it at 400 degrees F for 15-30 minutes, depending on your mixture. You can put some cheese - and experiment with the way you like it - you can put it on top of the meat mixture before you pour the cornbread batter, you can mix it in with the cornbread batter, or you can add it after the cornbread batter has baked and just throw it back in the oven to let it melt on top.
MMM, I just had dinner, but I am already hungry again!
Ooh I did this the other day and it came out great!
Make small kebabs by mixing in spices and herbs like garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne and parsley and rolling into small balls, about falafel size. Fry on a lightly greased pan till cooked, or bake. Then serve on warmed pita bread with hummus spread generously and if you can find it cheap ( I have a henry's nearby that sells it), add a good heaping tablespoon or two of tabbouleh.
I make a traditional Chinese dish called Mapo Tofu - ground beef stirred with tofu with a special sauce (available in Asian markets for less than $2). It's much better than it sounds!
Or my own concoction - stir fry ground beef with diced celery, then at the last minute, layer some shredded cheese on it and serve it with rice or macaroni. Yum!
Empanadas. Cook up the beef, add onion, seasonings, maybe a potatoe. Wrap in a dough (biscuit dough, bread dough, pie crust). Bake up and then freeze individually.
Soup with ground beef or meatballs. Soup is very forgiving and easy to make.
One of the issues with dishes involving hamburger meat is that so often it is a hot dish. We love the following for a delicious summertime meal:
** 1 box "Suddenly Pasta Salad" Chipotle Ranch flavored, prepared according to directions **
1 lb of ground beef cooked with taco seasoning, chilled.
12 oz of "fresh" tomato salsa (Some areas sell it as "pico de gallo")
Just mix all the items together after they are at refrigerator temperature. Amazing, zesty, and wonderful as a one-dish-meal for the summertime. Works great for make-ahead, too.
**: A note on the boxed pasta salad - I know that's not the most economical, but I buy my kits from Amazon in big packs so they're not all that expensive. Still, I have been trying to duplicate the pasta salad portion of the recipe with a home-made version to get the cost down, but am thus far unsuccessful. For anyone who does make this boxed pasta salad, the pasta needs to boil for only half the time the package indicates and should be immediately chilled, unless you like pulverized, mushy pasta.
Given the needs-based nature of College aid, I'd like to see the effective tax on our own savings for our daughter.
We planned 'very well.' Enough saved now (she's only 11) to pay in full. And we'll likely work till she graduates. Good incomes so we expect no aid at all.
Now, if we sacked the money into retirement savings instead, and retired a year before college starts, how much aid would she see? Makes us wonder if we did the right thing.
Joe
Consider finding some friends to split a side or quarter of pastured beef, if you live anywhere near a farming area. Then it's all the same (relatively) low price per pound for steaks *and* ground, and E.coli, the plague of cheap feedlot beef, is much less likely. It also tastes better and is healthier.
If you do get your beef this way, consider tartare: slice an inch from each side of a roast for stew meat, and mince the interior.
Try chopped raw onions and parsley, olive oil, and s/p mixed just before serving with ground meat sauteed in small pieces.
Curry it, grill it spiced, on a stick, fry with almonds and Middle Eastern spices to go over hummus or rice or in a pita, make tiny meatballs for Pho or Italian Wedding Soup. Stuff onions, peppers, tomatoes; mix with pork to stuff squash and sautee in larger pieces for potato or squash soup. Make nontraditional meatloaf of chopped vegetables with just enough ground meat and egg to hold it all together.
Buy a $3 package of sausage casings and stuff your own, heavy on the garlic or juniper and orange peel...
Take the ground beef, add sauteed onions, celery, garlic and bread crumbs. Season it with Italian Seasoning, chili powder, salt and pepper. Add a beaten egg to the mixture and combine thoroughly. Cut the top off of large peppers, whatever kind of pepper you like, could be Red, Green, Yellow or any large pepper variety. Clean the seed out of the pepper and stuff pepper with beef mixture. Bake in 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes. Top Peppers with your favorite cheese, I like to use a pepperjack cheese for the spicy flavor and return peppers bake to the oven for 20 to 30 more minutes. These are a deliciously different way to serve ground beef.
Growing up we used to hang all our clothes out to dry on the tree in our backyard. Using the dryer ran up the gas bill I guess. I still use a clothesline to this day... even though I could afford to use my dryer, I can't see spending the money on it.
And now that I'm a grown up, I make my own "candy" by blending sugar and butter. Brown sugar almost makes butterscotch. Yummy and cheap!
Nick's Completely Inauthentic, Totally Delicious Picadillo (aka "That Olive Thing," as my mom calls it)
1lb (or less, depending on your level of frugality) hamburger
1 onion
1 green pepper
2 cloves garlic
1 small can tomato sauce, or equivalent of other tomatoey product
1 can beef bouillon
cumin to taste (read: lots)
chili powder to taste
oregano
1 small bottle chopped or whole green olives
1-2 kid-size box(es) raisins
Saute the aromatics, which you've chopped and/or minced according to your preference. Add ground beef and brown. Drain this whole mess, then throw it back in the pan with the bouillon, tomato product, and spices. Cook until the sauce is reduced somewhat and everything is tender and cooked and delicious-smelling. Add the olives and the raisins; heat through.
Serve over brown rice if you want to feel virtuous; white if you're feeling indulgent.
Cheap, healthy(ish), a great way to stretch the meat, and tastes even better leftover. And it's got that whole sweet/salty thang goin' on. What's not to love?
Back when cars still had carburetors, and before cars became equipped with computerized gizmos, using premium gasoline in an older carburetor-equipped car did help mileage and performance...usually older cars would "diesel" or run-on after the key is shut off, if low-octane fuel is used, the engine is out of tune, and the engine itself is carboned up. Tune ups on older cars consisted of replacing spark plugs, points, condenser, adjusting the ignition timing, etc...now a tune-up on a modern car pretty much consists of replacing the spark plugs after so many miles. Cars were simpler back then, but they needed much more maintenance and repairs as well. And back then, oil companies were heavily promoting premium fuels, mainly because cars back then needed more octane as they got older. (Remember, gasoline was a lot cheaper back then as well...regular would be around 30 cents per gallon while premium was 32 cents.) Today, unless your car really needs it, buying premium is a waste of money.
greek seasoned ground beef (oregano is a dominant flavor) with feta cheese, kalamata olive, red onion in a soft warm pita bread. we also do a little shredded lettuce.
Recently with all the recalls I say just don't buy the stuff. And I haven't been for over a year probably except for farm raised--in NJ I can find it marked down to about the same price as "regular" beef. If you look where your beef is coming from its usually Canada and Mexico anyway....why is that? The quality of ground beef also just isn't what it used to be and has a odd odor to me so I just dont cook much of it any more. I love steak though and roasts.
But for the stew. Its's easy:
Brown a pound or so of ground beef. Add about half a onion diced or some dehydrated ones (about a tablespoon). Add a pound can of chopped tomatoes and a small can of tomatoe paste. Add a can of diced pototatoes and 1/2 bag of frozen mixed veggies. Season as you like. We're originally from SoCa so I tend to like Smoked Paprika, Chili Powder, Garlic, Paprika and Tobasco. Others might like to add Just Oregano and Garlic for a more Italian flair. Simmer for about 39 minutes. Fast and easy. Not much thinking required.
One thing to keep in mind is the cost that people report to attend college isn't really accurate. When I went to school, the reported cost to attend my university was about twice what I actually paid. Why? It assumed a lot of things, like cost of books (you can buy used, especially with the internet) and living expenses. By being careful with what I did in my free time, where I lived (always had lots of roommates), and searching out ways to share books with classmates or buying used, I was able to take out only $14,000 in loans, plus had some grant money and a few merit scholarships that eventually covered the entire cost of my last year. This covered five years in a state school (two years out of state tuition) about six years ago. My parents didn't help at all, and if anything, their income hurt me with aid. All of my loans are now paid off, thanks to living small and making debt reduction a priority.
For my own kids, we aren't funding a 529, which seems risky considering where the money is going. We are funding our retirement. When our boys are filling out the financial aid forms, our money counts much less than theirs when it comes to formulating aid. We intend to help some with living expenses and anything that overwhelms them, but they will be expected to walk the maze of aid (with our help), and save on their own to be able to afford college.
After having known one too many party animals in college who were blowing through their parents' money, I know their experience in college with matter much more if they work hard for it themselves.
We like tacos that have a lot of beans and just a little hamburger
Thanks for this information, I have been thinking of this. I dont think I qualify but still very good information.
We mix it with taco seasoning and then use tostitos to dip it out. Sort of like tacos, but less mess.
Mix 16 oz. ground beef with 1 cup of feta cheese, 1 teaspoon dried oregano, 1 teaspoon dried basil, 1 teaspoon onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, and ground black pepper to taste and you have Greek burgers. Yummy. :)
I usually make these with ground turkey, but beef would probably work too.
My previous comment was supposed to be a reply to the dogfood post.
Very similar to what one of my roommates used to make. She would brown the ground beef, add refried beans, add grated cheese and then season with lots of pepper. Very tasty.
We make Norwegian tacos. They are really good and different. Not Mexican at all, so we call them norcos.
Make ground beef with taco seasoning of your choice.
Serve with grated white cheese, not cheddar. Swiss is good.
Serve with chopped cucumber. The english ones in plastic. Don't peel them.
Serve with chopped apple or pineapple. Don't peel the apple.
Serve with a can of corn, put into a bowl. No need to heat.
Serve with either soft shells or hard shells or lettuce if you want taco salad.
The above are required.
You should also have:
Sour cream
Salsa
Everybody makes their own. Each taco should use at least a quarter cup of cucumber and a quarter cup of apple.
These are so good we have them much more than American tacos now. We still eat Mexican tacos at the taco stands, which are a completely different thing.
I use it for the knock off red robin banzai burger recipe online. It's our favorite.
I am going to try to keep this to a minimum, but I could go on for days. I love these cheap and quick meals.
My all time favorite:
Mexican Meatloaf
mix up a pound or two of ground beef (or turkey, whichever is cheaper) with an egg, crush some tortilla chips (or to save money, cut corn tortillas into triangles and bake them for a few minutes), mix in some salsa, and add some onions and garlic to taste. I am a HUGE fan of cumin, so I add that, too. AMAZING! You can vary this to your liking, but the goal is to replace traditional meatloaf ingredients with "mexican" ingredients.
My husband's favorite:
Mexican Lasagna or Cheesy 'Chilada
brown some beef with onion and green pepper, then add a can of drained kidney beans, an 8 oz can of tomato sauce, about 1 cup of salsa and heat through. Put a layer of the mixture in a 9X13 casserole dish then add some cheese on top. Cover the cheese with a layer of flour tortillas. Repeat until you have two or three of these meat-cheese-tortilla combos (it depends on how much I put in each layer, but you want to end with the tortilla on top) Cover it with aluminum foil and bake at 325 for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take the aluminum foil off and add some cheese. Return it to the oven until the cheese it melted-about 5 minutes. After the cheese is melted, top this with some lettuce, dice up a tomato, and add some sour cream. YUM!
Somebody else already mentioned lettuce wraps - and they are a yummy option - if you use iceburg lettuce, it is incredibly inexpensive, too.
Also, another great one is a beef and cornbread skillet (sometimes called tamale pie)
In an ovenproof skillet (I love my cast iron), brown beef and onion (garlic, spices as you like- I love cumin!) and add a can of diced tomatoes (not drained) and a can of corn. In a bowl mix up a cornbread muffin mix as the directions say or mix a cornbread recipe from scratch and pour that over the top of the beef mixture. Bake it at 400 degrees F for 15-30 minutes, depending on your mixture. You can put some cheese - and experiment with the way you like it - you can put it on top of the meat mixture before you pour the cornbread batter, you can mix it in with the cornbread batter, or you can add it after the cornbread batter has baked and just throw it back in the oven to let it melt on top.
MMM, I just had dinner, but I am already hungry again!
Ooh I did this the other day and it came out great!
Make small kebabs by mixing in spices and herbs like garlic, cinnamon, nutmeg, cayenne and parsley and rolling into small balls, about falafel size. Fry on a lightly greased pan till cooked, or bake. Then serve on warmed pita bread with hummus spread generously and if you can find it cheap ( I have a henry's nearby that sells it), add a good heaping tablespoon or two of tabbouleh.
Delicious, healthy and balanced!
Enjoy!
I make a traditional Chinese dish called Mapo Tofu - ground beef stirred with tofu with a special sauce (available in Asian markets for less than $2). It's much better than it sounds!
Or my own concoction - stir fry ground beef with diced celery, then at the last minute, layer some shredded cheese on it and serve it with rice or macaroni. Yum!
Empanadas. Cook up the beef, add onion, seasonings, maybe a potatoe. Wrap in a dough (biscuit dough, bread dough, pie crust). Bake up and then freeze individually.
Soup with ground beef or meatballs. Soup is very forgiving and easy to make.
Yea, beans work too.
Barb
One of the issues with dishes involving hamburger meat is that so often it is a hot dish. We love the following for a delicious summertime meal:
** 1 box "Suddenly Pasta Salad" Chipotle Ranch flavored, prepared according to directions **
1 lb of ground beef cooked with taco seasoning, chilled.
12 oz of "fresh" tomato salsa (Some areas sell it as "pico de gallo")
Just mix all the items together after they are at refrigerator temperature. Amazing, zesty, and wonderful as a one-dish-meal for the summertime. Works great for make-ahead, too.
**: A note on the boxed pasta salad - I know that's not the most economical, but I buy my kits from Amazon in big packs so they're not all that expensive. Still, I have been trying to duplicate the pasta salad portion of the recipe with a home-made version to get the cost down, but am thus far unsuccessful. For anyone who does make this boxed pasta salad, the pasta needs to boil for only half the time the package indicates and should be immediately chilled, unless you like pulverized, mushy pasta.
2 lbs of meatballs (recipe of your choice)
14 oz can jellied cranberry sauce
12 oz bottle Heinz Chilli sauce
Cook med-low in sauce pan until sauce is smooth.
Heaven!
Given the needs-based nature of College aid, I'd like to see the effective tax on our own savings for our daughter.
We planned 'very well.' Enough saved now (she's only 11) to pay in full. And we'll likely work till she graduates. Good incomes so we expect no aid at all.
Now, if we sacked the money into retirement savings instead, and retired a year before college starts, how much aid would she see? Makes us wonder if we did the right thing.
Joe
Consider finding some friends to split a side or quarter of pastured beef, if you live anywhere near a farming area. Then it's all the same (relatively) low price per pound for steaks *and* ground, and E.coli, the plague of cheap feedlot beef, is much less likely. It also tastes better and is healthier.
If you do get your beef this way, consider tartare: slice an inch from each side of a roast for stew meat, and mince the interior.
Try chopped raw onions and parsley, olive oil, and s/p mixed just before serving with ground meat sauteed in small pieces.
Curry it, grill it spiced, on a stick, fry with almonds and Middle Eastern spices to go over hummus or rice or in a pita, make tiny meatballs for Pho or Italian Wedding Soup. Stuff onions, peppers, tomatoes; mix with pork to stuff squash and sautee in larger pieces for potato or squash soup. Make nontraditional meatloaf of chopped vegetables with just enough ground meat and egg to hold it all together.
Buy a $3 package of sausage casings and stuff your own, heavy on the garlic or juniper and orange peel...
Take the ground beef, add sauteed onions, celery, garlic and bread crumbs. Season it with Italian Seasoning, chili powder, salt and pepper. Add a beaten egg to the mixture and combine thoroughly. Cut the top off of large peppers, whatever kind of pepper you like, could be Red, Green, Yellow or any large pepper variety. Clean the seed out of the pepper and stuff pepper with beef mixture. Bake in 375 degree oven for about 30 minutes. Top Peppers with your favorite cheese, I like to use a pepperjack cheese for the spicy flavor and return peppers bake to the oven for 20 to 30 more minutes. These are a deliciously different way to serve ground beef.
Make burritos with taco seasoning, cheese, spanish rice, & ground beef in a heated wrap.
Serve with some home-made guacamole, salsa and sprinkle in some jalapeno peppers.
YUM YUM
Growing up we used to hang all our clothes out to dry on the tree in our backyard. Using the dryer ran up the gas bill I guess. I still use a clothesline to this day... even though I could afford to use my dryer, I can't see spending the money on it.
And now that I'm a grown up, I make my own "candy" by blending sugar and butter. Brown sugar almost makes butterscotch. Yummy and cheap!
Tacos come to mind, or nachos. Yum!
Nick's Completely Inauthentic, Totally Delicious Picadillo (aka "That Olive Thing," as my mom calls it)
1lb (or less, depending on your level of frugality) hamburger
1 onion
1 green pepper
2 cloves garlic
1 small can tomato sauce, or equivalent of other tomatoey product
1 can beef bouillon
cumin to taste (read: lots)
chili powder to taste
oregano
1 small bottle chopped or whole green olives
1-2 kid-size box(es) raisins
Saute the aromatics, which you've chopped and/or minced according to your preference. Add ground beef and brown. Drain this whole mess, then throw it back in the pan with the bouillon, tomato product, and spices. Cook until the sauce is reduced somewhat and everything is tender and cooked and delicious-smelling. Add the olives and the raisins; heat through.
Serve over brown rice if you want to feel virtuous; white if you're feeling indulgent.
Cheap, healthy(ish), a great way to stretch the meat, and tastes even better leftover. And it's got that whole sweet/salty thang goin' on. What's not to love?
Back when cars still had carburetors, and before cars became equipped with computerized gizmos, using premium gasoline in an older carburetor-equipped car did help mileage and performance...usually older cars would "diesel" or run-on after the key is shut off, if low-octane fuel is used, the engine is out of tune, and the engine itself is carboned up. Tune ups on older cars consisted of replacing spark plugs, points, condenser, adjusting the ignition timing, etc...now a tune-up on a modern car pretty much consists of replacing the spark plugs after so many miles. Cars were simpler back then, but they needed much more maintenance and repairs as well. And back then, oil companies were heavily promoting premium fuels, mainly because cars back then needed more octane as they got older. (Remember, gasoline was a lot cheaper back then as well...regular would be around 30 cents per gallon while premium was 32 cents.) Today, unless your car really needs it, buying premium is a waste of money.
greek seasoned ground beef (oregano is a dominant flavor) with feta cheese, kalamata olive, red onion in a soft warm pita bread. we also do a little shredded lettuce.
Recently with all the recalls I say just don't buy the stuff. And I haven't been for over a year probably except for farm raised--in NJ I can find it marked down to about the same price as "regular" beef. If you look where your beef is coming from its usually Canada and Mexico anyway....why is that? The quality of ground beef also just isn't what it used to be and has a odd odor to me so I just dont cook much of it any more. I love steak though and roasts.
But for the stew. Its's easy:
Brown a pound or so of ground beef. Add about half a onion diced or some dehydrated ones (about a tablespoon). Add a pound can of chopped tomatoes and a small can of tomatoe paste. Add a can of diced pototatoes and 1/2 bag of frozen mixed veggies. Season as you like. We're originally from SoCa so I tend to like Smoked Paprika, Chili Powder, Garlic, Paprika and Tobasco. Others might like to add Just Oregano and Garlic for a more Italian flair. Simmer for about 39 minutes. Fast and easy. Not much thinking required.