Multi-tasking Mexican Mash

I have been known to say "cheap, healthy, convenient: pick any two." If you want to eat healthy and not put any effort into it, be prepared to spend some cash. If you want to save money and eat healthy, you will have to spend some effort. And if you are pressed for time and don't care what you're eating, you can eat very cheaply indeed.

Because my days during the school year can find me leaving the house at 6:30 a.m. and not getting home until 10 p.m., "convenient" ranks high on my list of priorities. However, we all know that I don't like to spend any more than necessary on anything and, while I'm no nutritionist, I am trying to feed my family (all one of him) higher quality fare than McDonald's and frozen pizza.

So what's a girl to do? Make her own healthy convenience food.

This is one of my favorite go-to recipes. I call it Multi-tasking Mexican Mash.

Actually, no, I don't. I just needed a name. I call it "that beans and rice thing we have in the freezer" if I refer to it at all.

When your family consists of you and one other person, and he is just happy to be getting fed at all, you don't spend a lot of time naming what you make.

It's cheap. It's moderately healthy. And it will be convenient in the future. But getting ready for the future convenience will take a little bit of effort. It's totally worth it.

You'll be making a rice version and a non-rice version. Once you have your individual servings, you can use it in any number of quick & easy recipes.

RICE VERSION
Burrito - fill a tortilla, wrap, bake
Enchiladas - add enchilada sauce, wrap, place in casserole dish, sprinkle with cheese and more sauce, bake
Plain - just eat as is

NON-RICE VERSION
Quesadilla - spread on a tortilla, fold, fry
Potato - top a baked potato or mix with skillet fried potatoes
Nachos - add to tortilla chips for hearty nachos
Taco - fill a taco shell and add taco toppings
Pasta - add more canned tomatoes to the filling and reheat to make a thick sauce, pour over pasta


INGREDIENTS:

1 - 2 pounds of meat - buy whatever is on sale and tastes good to you. I personally don't spend any more than $1.75/lb. Chicken thighs are frequently less than $1/lb, and every so often beef will hit $1.50/lb. Boneless skinless breasts hit $1.77/lb about once every 8-10 weeks. Pork loin is fine. Ground turkey. Leftovers from dinner yesterday. Anything you like. You won't be using a lot of it overall, so if you wanted to buy organic, free-range chicken at $4.99/lb on sale, even the stingiest of budgets could probably stretch that far. You could even skip the meat if you wanted to.

1 lb of dried beans - I use pinto. Pinto beans in bulk from Costco are about $.60/lb. Organic pinto beans in bulk from the local co-op are about $1.50/lb. Either option is cheap.

Taco seasoning or your own blend - I bought my taco seasoning from Costco six years ago. I still have almost one cup of it left. I'm guessing it's pennies per batch, though I do have to use more of it per recipe as it gets older. Individual packets can be had for $1.50/not on sale and for less than that with a coupon.

5 cups of shredded cheese - this is the budget and diet buster, but it just makes the whole thing so much yummier. I get the 5lb bag of Kirkland brand shredded for $10.89. If you wanted to shred your own, you could save $.20/lb. I've heard stories about crazy rock bottom prices on cheese, but Kirkland's the cheapest I've ever seen, coupon or not.

1-2 cans of tomatoes or salsa - canned Muir Glen Organic are $2.29/can and you can find coupons for them regularly to make them $1.29 a can. Del Monte start out at $1.29/can and with sales and coupons can frequently be picked up for 50 cents or less. Santa Barbara Salsa (my favorite) is $1.79/container on sale.

2 cups of rice - again it depends on whether you're going cheap, cheap, cheap or trying to use organic or wanting to support sustainable, fair trade farmers, but whatever your choice, rice is so cheap almost any budget will support any type.

1 lb of corn - I use frozen corn. Two pounds of the store brand is $1.88 on sale. Organic brand name was $3.79 the last time I checked. I've got a whole philosophy about how I choose when to go cheap and when to go organic. I'll have to write about it sometime.

PROCEDURE

Step 1. Day 1.
Crockpot the meat. (Unless you're using ground meat. I've never crockpotted ground meat, but I don't know that it works that well.) Place meat in crockpot and add a cup of salsa, water, or broth. Turn on low for 6 - 8 hours. I like to do this two nights before I plan to make my big batch of filling to avoid having to do too much work at once. Shred the meat in the morning and store in the refrigerator.

Step 2. Day 2.
Crockpot the beans. I do this the night of day 2, but if you're ambitious, you could scrub your crockpot immediately after shredding the meat and crock all day. Rinse 1 lb of beans and place in a pot. Cover with water and boil over high heat for 10 minutes. Pour the hot liquid and beans into your crockpot, add water to cover if necessary, and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Make sure there's enough water to keep the beans covered all night, or you'll have to spend time picking out burned beans.

Step 3. Day 3.
Cook the rice in your rice cooker if you have one. Use 1 cup of rice for every 2 cups of water or broth. My cooker is small, and I can only do 1 cup at a time. No worries. Just put aside what you've already cooked and start again.

While rice is cooking, take your beans and meat and mix them together with the taco seasoning, cheese, and tomatoes/salsa. If using frozen corn, cook it according to the directions and add to the beans and meat mixture.

Separate the mixture into two batches. One will have rice added to it. The other will remain rice-less.

Mix rice into one of the batches.

This is where I will tell you that if you don't have one already, consider buying a FoodSaver. Yes, you could wrap thoroughly in plastic wrap and then in foil, but it won't work as well. Not when you're batch cooking for weeks and not for days. A FoodSaver will save your food for months. I ate Thanksgiving turkey in July, and it was just as good as it was in November. If you buy the rolls with sales and coupons or at Costco, they aren't that big an investment and are well worth the convenience of freezer food.

If you don't have a FoodSaver, use your freezer storage method of choice. Freezer baggies with most of the air sucked or squished out and foil would work.

Measure out mealtime portions. In our house, that's 3-8 ounces per person depending on what we're doing with it. Remember beans are filling and, in many cases, you'll be adding other ingredients to it for mealtime.

Depending on whether you chose the "cheap cheap cheap" route or the blend of "cheap and organic," this recipe costs between $7 and $18 a batch and will yield more than 20 servings. In any case, it's less than $1 per person.

I'd say that qualifies for cheap, healthy, and convenient.