Cowboy Stew

Happy Quacking fellow ducks!!!
Man oh man is everyone else sorta sick of this rain?!
I mean I know we really need it but heck did we have to get it all in two days?
On the bright side I get to wear my rainboots out today!!!

Today we are going to make an easy budget friendly little dish called Cowboy Stew.

I don't why it's called that, I guess it just is.

Anywho when the boy and I lived in Florida money was shall we say a little  lotta tight.  A little lesson for you young whipper snappers, if you move to a town where tourism is the main industry, don't expect to make a TON of money.  Ok, back to the food.  The Abogg had a great friend named Hayden and his mom was a single mom too and we completely understood the need to fill growing boys bellies with good food as inexpensively as we could.  This is her base recipe and we loved it then when it fed the two of us very well for a few days but we still love it. It's easy and fairly inexpensive and contains things usually found in your pantry

Here's the printable for the basic recipe and you can see how much you can take the basic and deviate to suit your family's taste and what you have in the pantry.

First up we have the obligatory dog photo.

He's getting to be such a big boy and as long as it isn't raining he's pretty good about going out to potty.

Moving on to the food I promise!

First thing I did was chop up an onion and a green pepper.

Toss those into a big ole' pot with a teensy bit of olive oil and sauté them right up.

Just until they get soft.

Add the pound of ground beef and brown that right up.

(sorry for the blurry photo-it's possible the dog ran under me)

Once that is nice and brown let's add the rest

As you can see I had a few cherry tomatoes that were approaching the end of their life so I threw those in the pot as well.

This time this is what we used:

Quart jar of home canned tomatoes instead of the stewed

2 cans sweet corn

1 can dark red kidney beans

1 can black eye peas

1 can great northern (white) beans

1 can black beans

Just dump those into the pot and I used a can of beef broth instead of water. If you have everything else and don't have the broth just use water but the broth does give it a richer flavor.

Now add a nice heaping 1/2 teaspoon of oregano and 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

We like things a bit spicier so we had a heaping 1/2 teaspoon of the cayenne.

Mix all that together and bring it to a boil, then cover and turn down to a slow simmer and let it go.

I think mine cooked pretty much all afternoon long. 

When it's time for dinner around here there is a high demand from the Hubster for some cornbread so I whipped up a big pan of the good old buttermilk skillet cornbread and we chowed down.

I don't make this as often as I used to and I'm not even sure why.  It's great and the whole family loves it.  You can even pop it in the crock pot and let it cook all day long while you are at work.   Just brown the ground beef and onions before adding it to the crock pot please.  When we have a ton leftover we just put it into a freezer container and pop it in the freezer for another day.  Sometimes we even send some back to college with the Abogg, if he's good.   :-) 

                                                                        `Cowboy Stew

That's the link to the printable again just in case you decided you wanted to print it out after all and are too lazy to scroll all the way back to the top of the post.  It's ok, I'm not judging. As a matter of fact I probably only did that because I'm lazy that way.  

So what kind of really good inexpensive meals are your family favorites?

All you peeps stay dry and warm and I'll see you tomorrow!!

Peace, Love & Warm Yummies!