Salsa Chicken in the Crock Pot

I've been cooking a lot more lately, trying to slow down spending on meals out. I still shop at Dollar Tree, but I've also broadened my horizons where I can. (I'll need to do a separate post on Aldi soon!) Reddit has some great discussion boards (subreddits) on both budgeting and cooking: /r/frugal/, /r/budgetfood, and /r/slowcooking.

The Slow Cooking subreddit turned me on to Salsa Chicken. This was super easy to cook in the crock pot, and I'd highly recommend it.

All you need is:

• A couple of chicken breasts. (I defrosted a couple of huge ones we bought at Jewel when chicken was on sale for $1.99/pound.)
• A jar of salsa. (That would be Dollar Tree's finest $1 medium chunky salsa, thank you very much.)
• A packet of taco seasoning. (How much? Don't remember. Probably $.79 from Family Dollar.) 
• Peppers. (I bought a bag of little sweet peppers at Aldi for $1.49. They aren't always very good; I should have just bought a couple of big red peppers. A few of these little ones were crappy and I threw them out. The others worked out okay, though.)
• Geen onion. (I only had dehydrated onion bits handy, so a neighbor came up with some green onions for me to chop up and add to the mix.)
• Can of black beans. (I was worried that a whole can would be too much, but it worked out fine. I strained the beans before adding them. $1 at Dollar Tree.)
• Can of sweet corn. (I was also worried that a whole can would be too much, but it was fine. I strained these as well. Nobody wants to drink corn juice. $.79 from Dollar Tree or Family Dollar, I forget which.)
• Whole large tomato, diced. (I had a tomato left over from checking out the new Trader Joe's by our house. It was $.79. I actually felt TJ's produce was kind of beat up. I'm glad I checked it out, but I probably won't be buying produce there again.)

I sliced the chicken into 1/2 inch or one inch slices or so. Then I just mixed everything up in the crock pot, and made sure the chicken was mostly covered. I cooked it in the crock pot, on low, for about nine and a half hours. This came out fantastically well. You didn't even need a knife to cut the chicken. We ate this with tortilla chips.

Not counting the chips or green onions, this cost under $8 to make a huge dinner for two, with leftovers. We could have comfortably fed one or two more people. And you don't have to add peppers or seasoning. If you only have corn or beans (and not both), you could have just added one. I also didn't need to add the extra tomato, was just using up what I had around.

Frozen Food from Dollar Tree

Wow, I used to blog a lot more than I do nowadays. I guess Facebook has mostly replaced stuff like personal blogs. Anyway...

My adventures of late have mostly involved trying various things from Family Dollar and Dollar Tree, trying to figure out which things are acceptable to buy from the dollar store, and which ones are not. I'm a huge fan of both Dollar Tree and Family Dollar. Most things are of good quality, but there are always a few things here and there where I end up regretting buying the cheap knock-off dollar store brand. Q-Tips, for example. The cheap ones are pretty awful. Paper towel, kleenex and soap, though -- they're great things to buy at the dollar store. The quality seems very comparable to what you'd buy elsewhere.

And then there's food. Did you know that Dollar Tree has a frozen food section? Like with everything else at Dollar Tree, each frozen item is $1. That includes little pizzas, TV dinners, frozen vegetables, Jamaican patties (which are pretty good), and other random stuff. They've even got frozen salmon filets and tiny little steaks. The salmon appears to be from China -- not doing that -- and the steaks scare me. So while I'm not buying either of those, I did end up buying quite a bit of other stuff, walking out with two bags of frozen foods for under $20.

Yesterday, I tried this Piñata Beef Enchilda TV dinner for lunch, and it was actually quite good. I'll be sure to pick up a couple more of them the next time I stop in the store.

When it comes to blogging about food from Dollar Tree, I'm apparently late to the game. Here's a review of that TV dinner from "The 99 Cent Chef," a blog I'm now going to be following.

There's also a few different websites out there talking about the $1 frozen steaks. Here's one of my favorites. I think I'll be picking up one of those steaks for Murray for his birthday come this July.

What's Cheaper at Family Dollar

I'm a big fan of Family Dollar -- I'm not ashamed to admit that I shop there three or four times a month. But, after reading this article, I'm wondering if I need to check out an actual 99 cent store instead, if I want to save the most money possible.

This doesn't mean I'm done with Family Dollar, for sure. In the article, the author highlights the comparison items that turned out to be cheapest there, including Ocean Spray juices, Palmolive Dish Soap, Cascade Dish-washing Powder, Hefty trash bags, and Reynolds Wrap.

At Family Dollar, I personally tend to buy a lot of stuff like bags of little candy bars, toilet paper, facial tissue, and basic foodstuffs like mac and cheese, just about all of these seem to be cheaper than you could get from any other store. Some things, like gourmet mac and cheese and little candy bars, I've observed that Family Dollar charges less than half what a Target or a CVS charges.