Low Cost Great Depression Style Dinner

I had to wonderful dinners this weekend off of one piece of meat and want to share how to do this. My granny (yes granny) grew up in the great depression and came from a large family so a little bit of food had to go a really long way to feed everyone. These are two of my favorite meals she made.

On Sunday my granny would boil a piece of pork, beef, of whole chicken. In the water she would add salt, pepper, and hot sauce. I don't care for hot sauce so I use bay leaves instead. That night we would eat the meat along with veggies and cornbread and then the next night we would have hungry man stew.

Hungry man stew is very filling and cheap to make. You will need the broth from the meat you made the day before and any left over meat deboned. This will work with most types of lower fat meat. If you do use venison I recommend adding some beef bouillon.

Hungry Man Stew

Ingredients:

Left over meat from the dinner the day before

Left over broth from cooking the meat the day before

Bay leaves (2 or 3 depending on size)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Potatoes (As many as you like depending on your amount of broth)

Rice (also depends on your taste for a standard cooking pot I add 1.25 cups)

Large can of Diced Tomatoes

Large Can of Tomato Sauce

-First thing to do is skim the fat off the both from the night before (I hope you stored it in the fridge)

-Then take your left over meat (my favorite to use if left over pork roast) and chop into bite size piece. It might cook apart that just makes it even better.

-Next peel and dice your tomatoes to bite size and add them to the broth. Larger is fine also but takes longer to cook.

-When the potatoes are about 3/4th of the way cooked (they look a little clear around the edges) then you need to add your rice

-Let your broth continue to cook another 10 minutes stirring everyone once in awhile so your rice doesn't stick and scorch at the bottom of the pot.

-After 10 minutes add your tomatoes and taste. You can add more tomatoes to taste and if the soup is to tart for your taste you can add a can of condensed tomato soup to add a little sweet or if you like really sweet add tomato paste.

-At this point keep an eye on the soup and stir more often because as the soup thickens it scorches really bad if not stirred often enough.

-You will know when it's ready because the rice will begin to butterfly.

We always served this with leftover cornbread but there are enough carbs in here already that you really don't need much more.

Other great 2 day meals include using left over chicken broth and chicken for chicken and dumplings or all meat broths also do wonderful for non vegetarian vegetable soup.