Reducing grocery bills

One way people have reduced their grocery bill for the last several decades is to eat SPAM. My mom would occasionally cook SPAM and eggs when I was a kid. I haven't had it in years, but apparently it's boomtimes for the manufacturer thereof.

I've never been a big meat eater so eating less meat isn't much of a consideration; I sometimes go without so business as usual. People seem to be focusing more on classics like Hotdish (for those of you who aren't from the Midwest, you may know this under the more pretentious name of Casserole). The beauty of Hotdish is that the basic recipe can be adapted to use what you have.

While Tatortot Hotdish and Green Bean Hotdish are both classics, the main ingredients are: starch, meat and cream of something soup. Preferably Campbell's cream of something; chicken, celery, mushroom, whatever. Most of the time you use ground beef which is first browned and drained, then added to the rice, noodles or potato product and topped with cream of whatever soup.

One summer when I was in college, my roommate and I made hotdish every week and kept eating it until it was gone. We used some pretty wild ingredients too; water chestnuts aren't part of the traditional hotdish options but we liked them as an ingredient.

Hotdish is good winter food as it's filling but is also economical as the ingredients aren't terribly costly in comparison to other things.