Have you seen Struggle Meals on Facebook? That guy is a nut, and I can’t 100% recommend his channel, but he has some great ideas, and I find him inspiring. Tonight, I gotta say, I kinda felt like a struggle meals champ. Used only stuff on hand? check. Used stuff that was about to go? check. All cheap ingredients? check. Here’s what we had…
Sausage & White Sauce Cajun Pasta
1 ring smoked sausage, sliced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 C frozen seasoning mix (onions, green peppers, celery)
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 TBS butter
1/4 C flour
2 C milk
8 servings pasta (we used farfalle, or, as Evelyn likes to call them, “hair bow pasta”)Cook pasta, reserving a cup or two of the pasta water. Brown the sausage with pepper, seasoning mix, garlic. Remove sausage mix to plate, keep warm. Next we’re going to make a basic white sauce. White sauce can be used for all kinds of things, and it’s worth mastering. Here we go… Add butter to drippings in the pan, melt. Add flour, and mix into a paste. Work quickly so it doesn’t clump up. When the paste is smooth (or mostly, anyhow), slowly pour in milk while whisking. Add the sausage mixture back in, and add pasta water until the sauce is the consistency you like. Stir in the pasta, and voila! I sprinkled mine with some Tony Chachere’s (yeah, yeah… creole, not cajun… whatever).
Gotta have a side dish, right? We had some yellow squash headed for yucky, so I was glad to use it up. This was so simple that I feel a little silly posting it, but here it is…
Sauteed Yellow Squash
4 yellow squash, sliced
1 TBS olive oil
seasoned saltheat the oil, add the squash. Sprinkle with seasoned salt.
I wanted the kids to have a bit of a treat tonight. It makes the meal feel more complete, and it’s nice besides. It feels less like you’re struggling when you have a treat. I had most of a container of orange juice concentrate, so here’s what I made…
Orange Julius
2/3 container orange juice concentrate
2/3 C Sugar
1 C water
1 C milk
ice
vanillaPut it all in a blender. Add ice till it’s the consistency you like. We had it pretty runny, and it took a couple of cereal bowls full. I topped each cup with a little bit of Reddi Whip.
It was a nice meal! So nice, I wanted to remember it, so I posted it here. Maybe someone else will enjoy it too. :)
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