I tend to cook by eye and taste, so my recipes reflect a lot of "guesstimate" measurements.
Tonight I'm making chili for dinner and it'll be something like this:
* 1lb Ground Beef 93% Lean
* 1lb Ground turkey, 93% lean
* 1 large yellow onion, chopped
* 2 cloves garlic, chopped
* 2 6oz cans tomato paste
* 8 cups water
* 2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
* 2 tsp vinegar
* 2 tbsp chili powder
* 1 tsp ground Cumin
* 10 whole allspice
* 3-4 dried chilies
* 1 bay leaf
* 2-3 cans Bush's Pinto Beans (or an equivalent volume of home cooked beans)
Brown the meat. Push it off to the side of hte pan and add the onion and garlic and let that cook until onion is translucent. Add tomato paste and water. Mix well. Add the Worcestershire, vinegar, chili powder, cumin. Bring to a boil. Put the allspice, chilies and bay leaf into a spice ball and drop that in the mix. Lower to simmer and cook for about 1 hour - then remove the spice ball. Continue simmering for as long as you like (the longer you simmer, the better it'll be) - I usually let it simmer on low for 2 or so hours. When you're ready to serve, add the beans (drained and rinsed). This makes 8 HUGE portions at about 240 cals per bowl.
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My pinto bean soup is also sort of a catchall recipe:
1 small (I think it's a 15 oz bag but I'm not sure) bag pinto beans, rinsed and soaked for at least 4 hours
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 ham bone from Honeybaked Ham (they sell them for about $5 each)
8-10 cups of water
Simmer the hambone in the water for 2-ish hours. Strain the water and KEEP it. Set the bone and bits of meat aside. Saute the onion and garlic in the bottom of a large pot (I use a little bit of olive oil here - not even a full Tblspn). Add the beans and stir around. Pour in the broth from the ham bone. Bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer. While the beans are cooking, pick the rest of the meat off the ham bone and pick out the fat. Keep the meat set aside for now. Cook the beans until done (for me that's about 2ish hours - some people like their beans mushier or firmer, it's all up to you. Add the meat back into the soup and heat through. This also makes about 8 large portions for about 120 cals a bowl. It's VERY filling.
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Tuna or Chicken Noodle Casserole - again a lot depends on what you have in the fridge/pantry
1 large can chunk white tuna or white chicken breast, drained.
6 oz whole wheat rotini (cooked almost done)
2-3 stalks of celery, diced
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 T olive oil
1 can Healthy Choice cream of mushroom soup
1/2 to 1 cup shredded cheese (I hate low fat cheese, so I use the real stuff and deal with the calories, but you can use low fat - how much cheese you use depends on your taste as well)
Cook the rotini until almost but not quite done. Saute the onion, celery, and garlic in the olive oil until tender. (Here is where the catchall part comes in - sometimes I'll throw some spinach in there to saute as well, or shredded carrots, or broccoli, or whatever other veggies I happen to have on hand.) Mix all the ingredients together except the cheese. Put everything in a 9x9 square baking dish, top with the cheese and bake in a 400 oven until it's all bubbly and starting to brown. Makes 9 servings (cut into 3" squares) at about 200 calories per square. Also very filling - one of these and a salad is a yummy dinner.
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Really a lot of the time I just throw stuff together in a casserole dish and add different spices and see what turns up. I buy canned tuna and canned chicken in bulk from Sam's Club or Costco and it saves a huge amount of money. You can throw together chicken or tuna salad for sandwiches, casseroles, add them to soups, etc.
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