Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Another Money and Meal Stretching Idea

A few weeks ago we were buying groceries at Aldi and I was comparing the prices of the different cuts of chicken. It was daunting. So all the way at the bottom of the freezer section were the whole chickens. Now, I had never purchased a whole chicken because I didn't really know how to cook them to get a good flavor and I had no idea how to cut them properly. But when I compared the prices, I figured I would figure it out!!!!

I have a perfect glass dish to put the chicken in for baking. I rinse my chicken, cut up potatoes, throw them in the dish and top with about half a bottle of lemon pepper marinade from Aldi ($.99). I bake at 325 for approximately 3 hours with the lid on. When done, there are about 2 cups of chicken stock in the bottom of the dish. I use the chicken stock to create a gravy to make home made chicken pot pie. I accidentally left out the chicken meat a few weeks ago for my "chicken" pot pie but I had used my left over chicken stock and you couldn't tell the chicken was missing!! Use the cut up potatoes for your pot pie, also. That is meal number one from my whole chicken. I then used half of the chicken meat to make chicken salad for the children and I for lunch the next day. For dinner that evening I used the remaining half of the chicken to make a rice, broccoli, and chicken cassarole. You could also use part of the meat for chicken noodle soup. I'm sure you have a gazillion uses for chicken meals!!!

So that is how I get at least 3 meals for my family of 5 (the twins don't eat real food yet) out of one chicken!! Talk about stretching your dollars!!!!

1 comment:

  1. Keep the ideas coming :) We could use our grocery budget to go DOWN!!!!

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