So I promised in an earlier post that I would share some of the things I've learned about how to get by on next to nothing with you, Constant Reader ($1 Stephen King), since it seems that a lot more of you are in need of this information than used to be.

In my first installment of this little public service, I'm going to tell you how to make a nice dish that will cost you maybe five, six bucks, and will feed you for several days.

You'll find that most of my recipes and tips along this line involve rice.  I've never been a big rice eater until recently, and I've realized that rice is probably the cheapest and most versatile food available on the market today.  It will go with anything, almost - sweet, sour, spicy, meat, poultry, veggies.  Whether you're an unabashed carnivore like me, or a hardcore Vegan, rice is a magic food that can easily cut your eating expenses by half or more.

Unlike a normal 'recipe' site, I'm not going to sit here and give you micro-managed instructions.  I'll leave a lot of room for you to do things your own way and experiment.  The point here isn't to show you what a great cook I am, but to give you just enough of a starting point that you can run with it.

I'd LOVE to hear if anyone actually uses this information, so if you do PLEASE leave a comment and let me know!  If you want to share the article, I'd find it very nice if you would point people here, rather than just pasting it into an e-mail; that way I know if it's worth anyone's time for me to write more articles like this.

On with the show!  Today:  Cheap Burritos!

My original ingredients for this:

1.5lb ground pork (purchased from the discount 'about to expire' section for .99/lb and frozen until ready for use - you can substitute any kind of meat here - ground beef, ground turkey, boil some chicken leg quarters up and pull the meat off the bones - whatever.  If you're a no-poultry vegetarian, you might replace the meat with ground veggieburger or refried beans.  If you use beef, I would recommend trying to find the leanest ground beef possible - 93% if you can swing it.)
About four cups (cooked volume) white rice*
1 can of store-brand sliced stewed tomatoes
About a half-pound of medium cheddar cheese (generic)
1 medium yellow onion
about a half-jar of dollar store salsa
various common spices (chili powder, a pinch of garlic, a little dash of oregano)
a package of tortillas (You can buy huge packages of small (8-inch) flour tortillas cheap, but you could go nuts and get the hard Taco Bell corn shells if you wanted, or whatever.  Just keep in mind that those TB shells are going to cost you a LOT more per shell.)

(* White rice is the most versatile, but also the least nutritious.  Minute Rice is the easiest to cook, but more expensive than regular white rice by as much as 400%, depending on where and how you shop, and has the least nutritional value.  Brown rice would likely work for this recipe, but it has a grainy undertaste that makes it much less versatile - it doesn't work well with sweet dishes at all, for instance.)

Total price to cook this meal: roughly five dollars. 

Brown and crumble your ground pork, with onions and spices, in a suitable frying pan.  The pan should be deep enough to contain the rest of the ingredients.  When the meat is cooked, add in the tomatoes, salsa, and rice.  If you're using minute rice, you can use the box instructions to cook it in the same pan; if you're using regular rice, cook it separately at about the same time you start your meat & onions, and add it in when it and the meat are cooked.

Combine all the ingredients except the cheese in the frying pan on medium-low heat until the whole thing is nice and hot.  Place into a bowl, and stir the cheese in until the whole thing gains a fairly 'thick' or 'pasty' consistency.  Serve the filling in a normal-sized soup/cereal bowl, with a plate of tortillas.  

Use a fork or spoon to stick the filling on the tortillas, wrap, and nomnomnom.

With the numbers and amounts used above, I ended up with enough filling for just under 30 burritos, filled pretty nicely.  An average meal is about three burritos - once when I was really hungry I managed five in one meal.  Assuming you get 25 burritos out of a batch of filling, the total price works out to about 60 cents for a three-burrito meal.  Stick what you don't use into a Tupperware or other sealable/covered bowl that can be refrigerated, and when you want more just fill another normal bowl, nuke it for a couple of minutes, and go to town.  Microwaving, refrigeration, and age (within reason!) didn't have any effect on the taste; certain meats and non-meat fillers like ground turkey may tend to develop a distinct but subtle smell - not bad - after refrigeration, but this doesn't seem to have an effect on the taste.

I got nine meals out of this batch - sometimes having it twice a day, others having something else for breakfast and this for dinner.  The batch itself lasted a week from start to finish, and there was no taste difference in the last batch from the first - it doesn't get 'stale' tasting with time.  Even if you have a family of three, that's five bucks for three days' worth of dinners.

What's great about this recipe is that if you use the basic amounts above, you can add things and stretch it even further.  Toss in a green pepper, a handful of sliced mushrooms, some refried beans, or whatever you enjoy while you're making the filling originally, and while it will increase the cost, it will also stretch the batch farther.  You might want to add some shredded lettuce and sour cream, or whatever turns you on, when you actually assemble the food at eating-time.  To get even more bang for your buck, you can always increase the amount of rice involved

Be aware that certain ingredients might also decrease shelf life.

The key secrets here:  rice and tortillas are both very filling, and it doesn't take much to make a very tasty meal from them.

Now there are a couple of tricks that I used here to lower the cost, like buying discount meat.  I'll get in to some of these tricks in future posts, but the bottom line is this:  If you are in a really tight financial space, it is entirely possible to feed a human being with nutritious and tasty chow on less than a dollar a day - in the US, at retail prices.  Granted, you're not going to stuff yourself, but you won't go hungry either.  I can't vouch clinically for any claims to weight loss, but I can say that I personally have dropped about 15 pounds over the last couple of weeks by making rice a staple of my diet, and I think this recipe is a great place to start.

I hope this has been helpful to you!  Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas!