Left Over Roast = Cottage Pie

O.K. so last night I was squirming trying to figure out what in the world I was going to do with the left over roast. Soooo, being the web surfing creature that I am, I simple asked the web for recipes for left over roast. Let me tell you, there really aren't that many. There was a ton for left over roast sandwiches, but to be honest with you, that sounded quite frankly....nasty for lack of a better word.

However, I did find a person who suggested making what she called Cottage Pie. Never heard of it. Even looked it up in my cookbooks and didn't find it in a single one, but hey we're being adventurous here, so let's give it a whirl. Right?

The dish was as simple as simple can be. Take the roast and grind it up in your food processor. Add a generous helping of Worcestershire (yes I had to look at the bottle to spell that) sauce and smush into the bottom of a pie plate. I can do that. I'm good at smushing....

Fix a package of mashed potatoes and spread on top of the chopped up roast. Put into the oven on 350 degrees until the potatoes get a little crusty. Sounds simple right? And yes it was. And believe it or not, it wasn't half bad.

Now to the cost....I have to admit that when I started working with the left over roast, about 1/3 of it was fat so of course I took that off. So I consider that to be $1.56 in the trash, but roast always tends to have a bit of fat on it so not much you can do about that i guess. So I ended up with half of the original roast ($3.12) and a pouch of Betty Crocker Buttery Mashed Potatoes ($.05 in January from Remkes with they were on sale. I bought about 50 pouches and still have about 12 left). I added a side salad consisting of 1/4 head of lettuce ($.79/4 = $.19) + part of a bell pepper from my garden ($.05) and part of a tomato from my garden ($.05) + Kraft Tangy Italian dressing (Free from Meijers over the summer). Now the pie cost $3.17 to make and I cut it into 8 sections so each section cost roughly $.40 + $.29 for the side salad. That makes the total cost of dinner for my husband and myself $1.38.

Now comes tonight.....dinner tonight was a bit different. My hubbie and I have one of those different sort of financial arrangements. We each work and we each have our own checking accounts. We sat down one night and listed out all of the bills and split them equally (within $4). I pay for the groceries because I do a better job of using coupons than he does. He bought Chinese food for dinner Saturday evening and I ate the rest of it tonight. Remember, I'm trying to get better on not wasting food. Sooo, I finished off the Chinese food and it's not going into the trash can this week. Yippee. Sooo, technically, because he paid for the Chinese food, my dinner costs me nothing tonight. Sweet. The hubby was feeling a bit under the weather and wanted Campbells Tomato soup and two grilled cheese sandwiches. O.K. the bread cost $1.89 for the loaf or $.08/slice (Roman Meal) at Wal-Mart, the cheese was $.40 for a package of 32 slices or $.0125/slice (I bought in March and froze) and the soup I got for $.09 from Krogers when they were having their Mega event last year. (Along with a friend, we each bought 48 cans of Chicken Noodle and Tomato Soup). Hubby's dinner cost a total of $.43. I'll take that any day of the week.

Three days down and four to go for the week. Now don't forget that I am keeping an itemized spreadsheet of everything that I purchase each week so that I can figure out the cost per meal on items. Pretty soon I will be adding in breakfast and lunches.