On the cheap - a return to my past

As you know, the Geek has been laid off since oooooh, December, and things are getting a LITTLE tight around here. But while I'm not going to turn this into a 'being cheap' blog ie...'the laid off geek and the starving artist', I wanted to share a coupla things we've been doing around here. Now, I grew up pretty broke. 9 people (7 kids) in a 700 square foot, three bedroom trailer, living on co-op 5 gallon buckets of peanut butter and my mama's ever imaginative ways of making 'poor as dirt' seem not so bad. In fact I didn't know we were poor until High School. Last night I made one of my mama's standby recipes which she called 'chili-mac' but is really macaroni noodles with meat sauce - no chili involved. I've never made it before, but I realized as I finished it, why she did. It makes a HECK of a lot of food! So here it is, the recipe.

1 1lb box of macaroni noodles (bought on supersale at Kroger)
1 lb ground beef
1 28 oz (giant!) can tomato sauce
Appropriate spices - basil and oregano (which Mama always grew fresh) garlic and onion (either fresh, chopped and cooked til tender or dried, which is what I happened to have on hand), salt and a little pepper

Cook noodles in a giant pot until tender. Drain and set aside.
While noodles are cooking, brown the ground beef, drain any fat off
Add tomato sauce, flavor to taste with oregano, basil, garlic, onion and salt
Bring to a rapid boil and then let simmer for 5 minutes

Pour sauce over noodles, stir and serve. Top with Parmesan if you can afford it! :) Eat leftovers for lunch for several days. (feeds 7 hungry children once or 1 hungry husband for several days) Serve with fresh veggies grown in your garden (which we don't have yet).

While ideally the Geek needs a job, we'd like to ask you to pray for God's will for us. Whatever that is. We don't presume to know what He has in store for us and our best laid plans are nothing to His.