Stretching your meat

One of the most expensive grocery items is meat. Although, cheese is quickly rising to the top if you ask me. Yikes! Anyway, we've found some ways to make our meat last longer and not using as much of it per serving.

Here are some of the things that have worked for us:

- Using 1/2 lb of ground beef in main dishes. This works well in meals that have pasta or other starches that make the meal more filling.

-Cutting your chicken breasts in half, widthwise. It still looks like and 'feels' like you're eating a whole chicken breast.

-Substitute for other meats you have on hand like sausage or ham.

-Chop up one or two chicken breasts (obviously, don't use 2 if you only have two people eating, it defeats the purpose! ;)) and add it to the dish instead of serving a whole chicken breast to each person. Sometimes I'll use one chicken breast and then a little bit of sausage or ham to add more meat, but it doesn't use up a lot of either that way.

-Load the dish up with vegetables that are on sale and filling (squashes, spinach, beans)

-Add beans. One thing I do to add to meat for things like tacos/burritos is to add a can of black or pinto beans to the 1/2 lb of meat. You still get the protein and it's filling and it'll make more then a pound of hamburger would. For a big group this is a great way to use less meat and still have a lot of food.