Chase - The $5 Dinner Mom One-Dish Dinners Cookbook

Again, I could not have done this without the support of my family and friends. Thank you for helping me keep my priorities straight, and for lending a listening ear and for putting me in my place when I need it. The team at St. Martins Press continues to amaze and astonish me. Im indebted to Michael Flamini for polishing the rough edges in the pages that come. And to Sarah and Nadea for all their help and hard work that it takes to get the $5 Dinners concept out to the masses.

Thanks to my high school English teacher, Dr. Moss, for teaching me the basics of writing well. Writing has never been my forte. I much prefer the mathematical aspects of these $5 Dinners, quickly adding costs of ingredients as I go through the grocery store and figuring out how to tweak recipes so they can be made for less than $5. If you look closely enough, you will see her influence throughout these pages and you will thank her too. She taught me how to structure paragraphs and papers with introductions and transitions.

Her guidance is the reason that these cookbooks of mine flow and read as they do. Lastly, I want to thank all the men in my life big and little. I thank Steve for managing the dishes (although there werent so many with the recipes in this book) with such a positive attitude, and for being an honest critic of dish after dish and meal after meal. And I thank Ryan, Charlie, and Tyler for being the best little taste test team in America. You all are my joy and my life and I couldnt imagine cooking and serving dinner every night for anyone else. I love you all.

INTRODUCTION There was a time in my life when I could come home from work, sit down on the couch for a few minutes, check my personal e-mail, and then start to think about cooking dinner. I might not have had a plan, but I was just cooking for myself, or for my roommates, and soon after that for my husband and myself. We didnt spend a lot of money at the grocery store, we werent pressed for time, and we didnt really have a need for meal planning at the time. We made what we felt like making with the simple ingredients that we had on hand. Then we had kids. Forever. Forever.

Life started costing more. And it started moving faster and faster and faster. Exponentially so with each new addition to our family. In an effort to combat the rising cost of everything from food to diapers to school snacks and lunches, I began a blogging Web site (www.5dollardinners.com) to share about the journey of making $5 Dinners for our family and spending less at the grocery store without sacrificing the quality of our meals. I wrote The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook to get all the concepts, strategies, and recipes in one place so it would be an invaluable tool and resource that would help you reduce your grocery spending. In an effort to help you streamline the rest of the days meals and keep up with the ever-growing nutritional needs of your family, I wrote The $5 Dinner Mom Breakfast and Lunch Cookbook .

It is filled with delicious and nutritious recipes and time-saving strategies for keeping the bottomless pits satisfied without spending all day, every day in the kitchen. And now, in an effort to keep the dirty dishes in your sink to an all-time minimum and to help you keep up with lifes time warp, Im offering you The $5 Dinner Mom One-Dish Dinners Cookbook . Before we get to the strategies and the recipes, let me present a quick history of the one-dish dinner, along with how I define it. History of One-Dish Dinners Do you know when and where the one-dish dinner concept originated? The concept started hundreds of years ago by people living out in the country who were poor and worked very hard day in and day out. Work was a matter of survival, not climbing career ladders or figuring out how much you need to save to retire. They worked hard to survive and to get food into their mouths.

There was nothing convenient about living during these times. People needed to make simple meals that could be cooked in one pot using the few simple ingredients they raised in their fields, grew in their garden, or caught from the wild. These pioneers had few options for cookware, possibly even limited to just one pot and one handmade knife, and maybe a wooden carving board. They may or may not have had an oven. And if they did, it wasnt the kind of oven where you could control or monitor the temperature. Baking bread one day might take an hour, and another day it might take two hours.

Temperature control was a thing of the future. For these brothers and sisters of yester-centuries, skillet biscuits and cornbread made over the fire would have to do. The One-Dish Dinner concept was born out of necessity. People needed to make simple meals with simple ingredients, using simple cookware. They needed to be able to eat dinner right out of the pot, while staying warm close to the fire. Today, much of the world still cooks in these primitive-type settings.

While living in the Dominican Republic, I saw lots of fire pits and makeshift outdoor stoves. Dominicans cook using their large Dutch ovenlike pots, over a fire, and in large quantities to feed their family, their neighbors, and their neighbors neighbors. Pigs are roasted on spits, and chickens are fried in the pots over a fire just outside the back door of the humble homes. The kitchens are not large with cabinet upon cabinet filled with stockpiles of food and an assortment of small kitchen appliances and cookware. Its an uncomplicated way of cooking. Skillet dinners, casseroles and rice bakes, slow cooker meals, and grill dinners are newer additions to the One-Dish Dinners style of cooking, created to fit the lifestyle of the later 1900s and present day.

And these kinds of modern-day dishes bring more options for minimalism into the kitchen and to the dinner table. I have come to love One-Dish Dinners so dearly because of their ease and simplicity. Frankly, I still think I was born in the wrong era. I long for the days of old, and a one-dish dinner makes me feel like a pioneer. When I make one for my family, I can pretend that Im cooking a simple dinner, over a small fire, on a plot of wide open land, filled with opportunity. I can satisfy my desire for simplicity in the kitchen, and bring the days of yesteryear back to the present by making healthy dinners for my family all in one dish.

Now, to define a One-Dish Dinner Definition of One-Dish Dinners There are many people out there who are one-pot purists, if you will. They believe that a one-dish dinner, or a one-pot meal, can only be cooked in a Dutch oven and thats it. Thats just a little too restrictive for this busy mom who would like a few more options and ways to get dinner on the table. There are others who believe that the entire meal should be cooked in the same dish. The type of dish that the food is cooked in doesnt matter to this group, just as long as everything is in the dish. This concept is also still a little too restrictive for this mom who is trying to keep meals perfectly balanced for her family.