Broccoli Bite Casserole

Hey look, two in a week. Maybe I'll actually get back to this all the time. Anyhow, My wife and I both loved Bennigan's Broccoli Bites when there was a Bennigan's near us. They closed a few months back and we were missing the broccoli bites. I developed a low cost recipe that makes something with a similar flavor but healthier, as opposed to deep fried it's baked.

Ingredients:
1 medium to large head of broccoli ($0.50-$0.75) I frequently find broccoli on sale for between $0.99 and $1.49 a pound.
4-5 piece of bacon, cooked then shredded (or an equivalent amount of bacon bits) ($0.50 if purchased on sale)
4 ounces bread crumbs (if purchased and not made about $0.75)
1/4 cup shredded cheese (or equivalent in thin sliced with each slice cut into 4) ($0.50 - $1.00)
black pepper (to taste)
onion salt (to taste) (or diced onion, about 1/8 cup) ($0.25 if using diced)

Cut broccoli into small slices (stems) and florets. Steam these pieces for 10 minutes. (Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F while you steam.) Arrange these pieces to cover as much of the bottom of a circular 9 inch pie pan as possible. Add cheese on top of the broccoli, toss in oven to melt cheese. while cheese melts mix your other ingredients together in a pan (bread crumbs, bacon, black pepper to taste and onion salt (or diced onion) to taste). Pull the pan back out and pour the bread crumb mixture in on top of the broccoli and melted cheese. Shake it around to even out the coverage of the bread crumb mixture. Cover with aluminum foil (reflective side down) and place in the 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. While the Broccoli Bite Casserole cooks you may want to toss together some honey-mustard sauce to pour over the servings, equal parts honey and table mustard, stir well.

Serves 3-4
Cost: $2.50 - $3.25 (or $0.63 to $1.09 per serving) not including honey mustard sauce

Enjoy...
Thralen

Spagheani

Been a long time but I just hadn't developed any new really inexpensive recipes the past year or so. I just made this one by puttering around in the kitchen this evening. Had a couple of small steaks to use up, my wife wanted kidney beans and I didn't have time to bake potatoes to go with them. I'm pretty sure this isn't an original recipe but I haven't seen it elsewhere before, so:
(all prices are estimates based on my most recent shopping trip)

Spagheani:
Ingredients:
1 can beans (kidney, black, pinto, or even pork and beans){about $0.70-$0.80 on sale}
1 heaping teaspoon garlic {$0.05, if that}
1/8 of a medium onion, diced {$0.12 if you pick up your onions on sale}
Black pepper (to taste) {$0.01}
1 handful thin spaghetti (enough to make 3-4 servings) {$0.17-$0.20}
1 half stick margarine (4 teaspoons) {$0.13}
1/4 pound beef (ground beef, low end steak, etc...) {$0.65 for ground beef}

Put beans (including juice) in pot, simmer on med-low heat on stove. Add heaping teaspoon garlic and diced onion, stir. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

While bean mix simmers, cook your beef. Set aside to cool slightly.

Start the water heating to boil your pasta.

Add butter and pepper to bean mixture. Slice the beef into small chunks (or crumble to small chunks for ground beef) and add into bean mixture, stir. Recover and simmer for 15 minutes.


While the bean and beef mixture simmers, add pasta to water (should be a medium boil or higher).

Drain water from pasta, place on plates, spoon beef-bean mixture over the pasta, garnish with Parmesan cheese if desired and serve.

Serves 3-4
Cost: $1.83 - $2.00 (or $0.46 - $0.67 per serving)

Very tasty dish, very filling and quite good for you.

Enjoy...
Thralen