Day 11: 12 Days of Frugal Stockpile Meals

I tried a new recipe tonight, Easy Crock Pot Lasagna, and served it with a side of corn:

Yes, it looks kind of gross.  To be honest, it didn't taste as bad as it looked but it wasn't spectacular, either.  Here is the cost breakdown for the ingredients:

• Dreamfields lasagna noodles - $0.86 (I used 2/3 of a $1.29 box)
• Ground beef - $1.99 (1 pound portion from a Wegmans $1.99/lb.Club Pack)
• Muir Glen tomato sauce - free (I could've used a jar of cheap pasta sauce, but I have tons of small cans of free Muir Glen sauce so I opted to use several of those instead)
• Bison cottage cheese - free (thanks to a free product snail mail coupon from Bison!)
• Weight Watchers shredded mozzarella - $0.87 (half of a $1.75 package)
• A few seasonings from my pantry - negligible, I'm sure
• Green Giant corn - $0.67

Total cost of a meal for a family of 5: $4.39 ($0.88 per person).

As I mentioned, this was a new recipe for me.  I used the recipe found here as a starting point but made some changes to it (I used about 12 noodles, increased the amount of sauce to 40 ounces, doubled the water, left out the mushrooms, and unexpectedly decreased the amount of mozzarella since I thought I had more than a half-package on hand).  The noodles were pretty mushy and although it smelled wonderful, the taste was pretty bland.  If I make it again (and I'm not sure that I will) I'll definitely season it more and cook it less (and make sure I have plenty of cheese before I start layering it in the crock pot LOL).

Stay tuned for tomorrow's frugal meal idea.  I can't believe tomorrow will be Day 12 already!