starting with meats

Meat was only bought if it was on sale and I could make at least two meals out of it. I always tried to squeeze a third if not four meals out of the meat.When you are feeding a large family of seven plus friends that are meat and potato folks that are big eaters ( I have a friend that calls me a truck driver because I eat like one). Squeezing an extra meal out of meat is a miracle to being with.

I tried to get a roast of some sort every week. Preferrable chicken or beef. It took four chickens or one good size turkey, (I have a daughter that still cringes when she sees turkey on the table besides at the holidays) to feed us one meal.I would then simmer the carcuss in the stock pot and pick the rest of the meat off the bones. This would be split between broth and meat for homemade noodles(flour,salt,eggs),chicken (or turkey) dumplings and if I was lucky a pot of soup with what ever veggies was in the crisper along with either some rice(not instant) or pasta.If there was enough meat to make a stir fry I would go that way.

A beef roast started with root veggies.Second time was either with noodles(the kids preference) or beef vegetable soup.Sometimes there was enough for stew instead of soup. I would add dumplings to make the stew stretch or put the "stew" in a pie shell and make pot pie instead.

Pork roast was with root veggies, then shredded and tossed with BBQ sauce.Now days I would save some back to make Brunswick stew.

If we got a ham, I roasted it and we had that the first round, then sliced and diced it up for ham steaks, ham sandwiches, ham salad, diced ham for eggs, salads and the bone for bean soups. I can make a lot of meals out of ham.

Hamburger went to meatloaves that followed was sliced cold for sandwiches later and what ever was left went into red sauce for pasta.

I tried to cook ten pounds of hamburger for sloppy joes made from scratch and taco meat made from scratch. It let me keep the sodium and sugar levels down.Sloppy joes also made sheppards pie while taco meat ranged from tacos to enchilidas, burritos,taco casserole and added to cheese to make dips.

I made chili from hamburger(hubby does from sausage), it would make chili soup, then walking tacos, the Cinncy chili over pasta, then taco salad, or even nachos or a casserole with chili with corn bread baked on top, kind of like a tamale pie?

Pork chops,pork steaks, beef steaks etc wasn't on the table much. Couldn't afford the price with how much we needed to put on the table.