Broke and Hungry

It is the first of the month and all your money has gone to pay bills. You only have a few pennies and your hungry. Ahh all too familiar....

No Worries! There are a few ways to get fed. However, in this entry I will only discuss one way. Here is one journey I will take for food when I'm broke...

I have a little recycling center in my laundry room and the aluminum cans have their own bend for one reason...you can get money for recycling them!

This is about 2-3 months worth of cans...



Before you can take the cans to the recycling in exchange for money, they have to be crushed. It would be much easier to crush them as they are disposed of with a can crusher (and eventually I want one beside the aluminum can bend) but for now good ol' foot power will work.




I am lucky that the recycling place is within walking distance so I carried the cans over. You place them on a conveyor belt, they get weighed, and you get money!




I got $3.20! Is is possible to feed 4+ people dinner on $3.20???? ABSOLUTELY! (If you already have a few things in your pantry).

With my $3.20 and what I already have on hand (eggs, butter, onions, spices, french onion dip, and salted pork) I decided to make pinto beans and cornbread corn casserole.

I used my Betty Crocker Easy Everyday Vegetarian Cookbook. It has a yummy pinto bean recipe that I used as a reference for making the beans, although, I added a few more ingredients. I would love to share the exact Betty Crocker recipe with you, but I do not have permission, so I will share my modified version.

1 lb pinto beans
salted pork
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
6 1/2 cups of water
1 tbs chili powder*
1/2 ts salt*
1/2 ts pepper*
1/2 ts cayenne pepper*

*These are guesstimates, use as much/little spice to your preference.


I quick soaked the beans by bringing them to a boil, then covering them for an hour before I put everything in the slow cooker.

Once the beans are finished soaking, put everything in the slow cooker and cook on high for 7-9 hours.


About 30 minutes before the beans were finished I started the cornbread corn casserole. I stumbled upon this recipe a few months ago because I had made french onion dip from scratch (it did not turn out well) and I had about 6 cups of french onion dip that I didn't want to go to waste. So I started looking online for recipes that called for french onion dip (I had quite a lot of dip to use!) and compiled a few recipes to make my Cornbread Corn Casserole. Here is what you need:

1 Can Creamed Corn
1 Can Whole Corn
1/2 cup French Onion Dip*
4 0z Green Chilis or Green Salsa
Box of Corn Muffin Mix (or Cornbread from scratch)
1 Egg (omit if making cornbread from scratch)
2 TBS butter


*If you do not have french onion dip you can omit.



Preheat the oven to 375. Mix all the ingredients together.




Then pour into a greased pan or lined muffin pan.


Cover and cook 35-45 minutes or until the center is firm. Then uncover and cook until brown on top.

While cooking the Cornbread Corn Casserole take about 1/2 -3/4 cup of the beans and mash.



The return the mashed beans back into the slow cooker until the Cornbread Corn Casserole is finished (this will help thicken the beans).


Once everything is finished, invite the neighbors over and enjoy! This fed 5 people with plenty of leftovers! This is a very easy dinner to make, very filling, and great if your broke!