What's better than a cup cake? A filled cup cake!
Here is my technique for filling cupcakes.
How I fill cup cakes | in baking, cupcakes 
I love bananas and I love, love, love Nutella.
And I'm not alone.
I also love smoothies because you can drink them with one hand while doing 100 other things like the loading the dishwasher, feeding a baby of sending an email. And since those things occupy a fair amount of my time, they're perfect!
And since I love bananas and nutella I decided to combine them into a beverage.
What you'll need:
1 frozen banana
two heaping spoonfuls of Greek yogurt (I like plain Chobani)
and two heaping spoonfuls of Nutella.
Throw them in the blender and blend, blend, blend away!
What's your favorite smoothe blend?
Let's face it meat is expensive. Remember when you could get ground beef for $.99 a pound? Yeah, neither do I. What's a good price for ground beef? Who knows anymore?
Personally I could go months without meat, but my husband I think would wander into the woods to find a wild animal to kill with his bare hands after about three days.
SO many recipes call for a pound of ground beef. Ummm…. Not so fast. Let’s say we go halvsies on this one.
Yes, I am talking about stretching that beef as far as it will go and not noticing the difference.
“But I will notice.”
No you won’t. My husband doesn’t and I have been pulling this fast one over on him for years now.
And no, there won’t be a big hole in your dish where the meat used to be because we are substituting for vegetables and other things that will make the meal tasty.
So let’s say you luck out and get a sale on ground beef, it can happen. Or let’s say you don’t and you pay full price. You still want to maximize those dollars, right?
If I come home from the store with 2.5 pounds of ground chuck, or turkey or even venison I want to make it last. Here is a menu and all of these meals can easily be frozen.
Monday: Cook Once, Eat Twice Lasagna Casserole (I use 1 lb ground beef for two lasagnas.)
Tuesday: Cheesy Corn Bread
Wednesday: Mushroom Baked Ziti
Thursday: Meatball Sliders with Pineapple Sauce
Friday: Pizza Pot Pie
How do you stretch ground beef?
Just the other day I was flipping through the sales pages I got in the mail. Our local paper is kind enough to produce a free section on Wednesday that includes a local article or two, some sales flyers and a few coupons.
I always thumb through the grocery sales fliers and see who has what on sale. I am a loyal customer to my favorite store, but if a competitor down the road has better meat prices on week, I am there.
One day I saw Boston Butt for $1.29 a pound. So one eight pound Boston Butt (pork shoulder) cost me $10.32. Perfect. All I had to do was look at my pantry and the rest of the sales planner and plan an entire week’s worth of meals around one pork shoulder. This easier than you think.
Pork, the other white meat. I just thought, “what would I do with a chicken?” Then I did it with the pork.
So I broke it down like this:
Monday: Pineapple Pulled Pork Sliders, with Asian coleslaw
Tuesday: Pork tacos with homemade salsa and homemade tortillas
Wednesday: BBQ Pulled Pork Pizza
Thursday: Pork “fried” rice
Friday: BBQ Pork Pies (This recipe uses chicken but sub for pork)
The total for all of these recipes was around $40 (that includes the roast) and each recipe included lunch leftovers for the next day.
That breaks down to six servings per meal at around $1.33 per serving.
How do you like to use leftovers?
Five Dinners, One Pork Roast | in $1 serving, Pork, leftovers 
You know I am the biggest cheerleader for home cooked meals. But I am also a big fan of saving time. We're all busy, we are all pulled in a million different directions and no one has time to stand in their kitchen for an hour preparing dinner.
That's why I have befome a HUGE fan of this ready in a flash stromboli. From prep to complete it took me less than 20 minutes!
Since I am a big fan of cooking ground beef ahead of time and freezing it in smaller portions and I like to stretch meat as FAR as it will go, this recipe is perfect for me.
What you'll need:
Pizza crust dough. You can go homemade or store bought. I went the store bought route this time.
1 cup pasta sauce
1 cup shredded cheese
your favorite pizza toppings. I used some leftover ground meat from another dinner.
Italian seasoning, garlic salt, parmesean cheese, etc. for topping
Roll out your dough on a sprated cookie sheet or baking mat.
Place your favorite pizza toppings in the center of the crust in a line.
Then I cut the the outside of the dough into strips with my kitchen sheers.
Fold the strips over the toppings.
Pop in the oven to bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.
