Great Article - Save $$ on Meat! #lowcarb

I have been getting Mary Hunt's newsletter, Debt-Proof Living, for years, and have an enormous amount of respect for her, what she's accomplished, and how she is helping others to get out of debt quickly, and fairly. She has some great money-saving ideas in her daily newsletter, and if you click on the title above it should take you to her article on saving money on meats. It makes such perfect sense! This is how I shop (am I paying for bone? added water weight? fat?), doing the math as to whether the edible portions of a $1.29/lb roast make it a real bargain over the $3.59 leaner boneless cut...but having the chart that she links to will really be a great help and probably more accurate. I hope you benefit as much from this article as I plan to do!

Tonight's Low Carb Dinner

Tonight's experimental dinner was fantastic!

I made a meatloaf using 1 lb of ground beef, half a bag of porkies crushed, about a Tbsp of worchestershire sauce, a quarter of an onion chopped finely and an egg.

In another baking dish I poured enough oil to cover the bottom, then mixed in some dry basil and garlic powder. Into that I tossed a bag of frozen cauli, and tossed to coat. S&P lightly.

Both of the above went into a 350 oven.

On the stovetop I put 2 drained cans of sliced shitake mushrooms into a pan with 2T butter (not fake oleo stuff), covered it, and set it on the oven-vent burner. (I don't keep fresh mushrooms because they spoil so quickly; I buy them specially if I have an immediate use for them, but keep canned and dried 'shrooms on hand.)

After 30 minutes I tossed the cauli and returned it to the oven. Then to the mushrooms (with now-melted butter) I added 8 oz of sour cream - full fat of course - a tsp of chili powder, and tsp of beef base, and a generous shake of dry basil. I stirred it all together, re-covered it, and put it on the burner set to its lowest setting.

10 minutes later I removed the meat loaf and roasted cauli from the oven, turned the burner off, and stirred the sour cream/mushroom sauce. I served it over the meatloaf. The cauli was plenty flavorful to stand on its own. The mushroom sauce had a good strong flavor - if I wanted it milder (I didn't) I would have added some cream and used just a half-tsp of the chili powder.

A green salad would have rounded the meal out nicely but we were out of greens. Maybe next time...and I'll make some of Jamie VanEaton's oopsie rolls with it too!

(Note: I don't cook with salt when I'm using foods that have already been salted - such as the beef base.)

Definitely a meal I will make again.