Everyone Love Hubby’s Meatballs

Every Tuesday, Fresh Market has great sales on meat. This past week they had Ground Chuck for $2.99 per pound. I love the quality of their beef, it has enough fat for cooking but you don’t get an entire pan full of grease while cooking. We got about 8 pounds because everyone loves hubby’s meatballs.

Spaghetti and Meatball Dinner

On Wednesday, hubby got busy making his meatballs with a secret recipe only he knows. After making about six pounds of meatballs, he lets them simmer in the sauce. Does our kitchen smell delicious for the next few days!

Friday we celebrated Stevie’s birthday with a spaghetti and meatball dinner. Alexandra and him both love them! But Alex went one step further and had a meatball sub also.

Leftovers

When Rich makes meatballs, he plans to have leftovers for a few more meals. Our neighbor’s had just returned from the hospital so I took a meal over to them. We had our main meal then I packed up a goodie box for Alex and Stevie where they had enough for two meals each. In the pot we still had leftovers, enough for 3 more meals for each of us. I like to use portion control boxes and put enough meatballs in them for a meal and then freeze them if I don’t plan to eat them right away. It’s a quick and easy dinner when we get busy or home late. On one of the left over meals, I made cheddar cheese biscuits and were they delicious, hot out of the oven!

Chili Dinner

We still two pounds of ground chuck left so I made a big pot of chili. There’s nothing better on a cold day than a bowl of chili! My chili recipe is very easy, I added 4 cans of chili beans (2 light and 2 dark), 2 cans of diced tomatoes, a chopped onion, and chili seasoning to the cooked ground chuck. I use the crock pot and let it simmer all day, another great smell in the kitchen!

The chili was delicious and like the meatballs, we had a lot left over. I do the same with the leftover chili, put in portion control containers so all I have to do is heat it up for the next meal. This pot of chili made 5 meals for each of us!

Recap

So to recap the meals, we had about 8.5 pounds of ground chuck for a total of $25.50. The ingredients for the sauce cost about $6.00 and the pasta was another $3.00. After our main meal feeding 4 people, we had enough leftovers for 5 more meals for 2 people each.

The chili ingredients cost about $6.00 and the pot of chili made 6 meals for 2 people. For a little over $40.00 including the ground chuck, spaghetti sauce and the fixins’ for the chili, we had enough for over 12 meals that each served 2 people. That’s a lot of delicious food for less than it costs for fast food!

This is just another way I stretch food!