I've long made homemade chili, and for years now, Dad's favorite side dish when we have chili is Amy's organic cheese enchiladas. I'd prefer a nice salad or maybe a sandwich but Dad doesn't eat salad (unless he's somewhere and can't avoid it <g>), and he rarely eats a sandwich at dinner. Anyways...when we first began this "tradition", a 2-pack of Amy's organic cheese enchiladas was maybe $4. Now it's up to around $7, even at Walmart. Not cool.
So tonight, I thawed some chili I had in the freezer and made my own cheese enchiladas. I had some corn tortillas that I got at Aldi for $1.90..I used 7 of the 30 tortillas in the package, so that's roughly 44 cents for the tortillas. I recently got a BOGO deal on shredded cheese, so the cheese filling was free <g>. I chopped up one green onion...I got a package with 19 green onions in it for 95 cents so that's a whopping 5 cents there. I seasoned the cheese with a mix of various spices that I've had in the counter for a while...couldn't even begin to guess how much that cost <g>. And I smothered the entire thing in half a can of Pace red enchilada sauce; I got the can at the discount grocery store for 40 cents, so that's 20 cents tonight for the sauce. In total, I made 7 enchiladas for roughly 69 cents (plus a few pennies for the seasoning); Dad and I each ate two and there's three left over. So instead of cooking a box of Amy's Organic cheese enchiladas that cost $7, I made a VERY comparable (and possibly even slightly tastier) pan of enchiladas and spent 23 cents for two enchiladas 😁
In honor of today being the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps, I also made my former Marine a pan of brownies. I used a Duncan Hine's dark chocolate fudge mix that I got for $1...OK, I'll stop doing the math. I *will* say that a) I prefer Trader Joe's Brownie Truffle baking mix and b) the box said I could use a 13x9 pan, so I did, but it made SUPER thin brownies. I really should've used the 8x8 pan. But Dad's already cleared one row of brownies so he seems to be fine with them <g>.
