We found that, over the course of about 30 days, we'd somehow managed to spend over $1,300 on eating out. This includes restaurants, grocery store meals (NOT our regular weekly groceries), and things like starbucks. We could just about take on another house payment for that! So, we'd decided to start cooking more at home, in order to help improve our monthly rationing of funds.
My first real experiment was a ~2lb beef roast. We've had this large crock pot for at least a year, maybe a couple of years now. I think this is the second time it's been used.
I spent some time shopping for that perfect cut of beef (or, picked out one that looked like it was about the right size and hoped for the best), snagged some veggies after reading a few different recipes on the internet, picked up a can of beef broth and some spices (rosemary and ground thyme), and headed home.
At around 2pm, I chucked the chuck in the crock pot, added my 12oz of beef broth, and started cleaning and cutting the veggies. We added about 6 carrots, peeled and sliced, a head of cauliflower, some zucchini, a yellow onion, 3 cloves of garlic (crushed), and about a teaspoon each of the spices. We let the roast roast for about 4 to 5 hours, and voila! Dinner.
It turned out pretty well. I'd never cooked anything like this before, so I was pretty impressed. Sure, it could have used a little more flavor, but for the most part, it was very good. I think we'll definitely do it again sometime. I'd say the total cost was somewhere around $20 still, after all of the beef, veggies, broth, and spices. My wife, my mother, and I all had a pretty big meal out of it. There's still probably a couple of servings left, too. That isn't too bad for 4 or 5 meals worth.
Now, I just need to find something else to do in the slow-cooker, because I was pretty impressed at how easy it was!
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