$5 Dinner Menu Plan Day #4

What's for dinner tonight??

Tex Mex Chili

Ground Beef $1.78

Onion $.50

Garlic $ .05

Black Olives $ 1.25

Tomatoes $.77

Kidney Beans $.67

Chili Powder $.05

Cumin $. 10

Potatoes $ .30 (Erin used different sides in her book, but I wanted baked potatoes instead.)

Cheese $.24

Total : $5.71 (Erin did it for almost a $1 less in her book. If I would have used dry kidney beans I could have saved $.50 alone. I generally use canned beans, but maybe I should reconsider...)

** I should mention that we have enough chili left over for lunch tomorrow! Yea!!

Browning the beef, onion and garlic.
Beans, tomatoes and spices.
Black olives. So, here is my tip!! Years ago Aaron wanted to add black olives to something. We only had whole olives and he needed them sliced. Well, he doesn't like tedious prep work so he pulled out our hard boiled egg slicer and sliced it. It worked like a charm, so that is how I slice olives. :)

The finished product. Disclaimer : if you make it as directed in the book your Tex Mex chili it will not look like this. If you read my ingredient price breakdown, you will notice that I used canned kidney beans instead of dry beans. Well, what I didn't say mention that I forgot to take that in to account when I added the 3 cups of water. So, when the soup should have been done and ready to serve it was really watery. I didn't know how to fix it so I took a minute and thought about the ingredients and ran to my pantry in search of something thick and tomatoey. I grabbed 2 - 6oz - cans of tomato paste and threw them in. (This added about $.60) to the mix. IT WORKED!!

I decided to smother my baked potato with the chili. It was my favorite way to eat it!! SOOOO good!