Cheap and quick meal!

One of my family's favorite quick meals involves three things. Canned meat (we prefer chicken or tuna), a box of mac-n-cheese, and vegetables. Our girls like it because they can help with a lot of it. Make up your mac-n-cheese just like the box calls for. We add frozed vegetables to the water at the same time the noodles go in to cut down on time. Drain your tuna or chicken well. I use a fine strainer and spoon to make sure I get all the extra water out of the tuna. The chicken I use a fork on to break up the pieces smaller. Once all of your vegetable and mac-n-cheese are together you can add your meat in and dinner is ready. Now if you use canned vegetables make sure to heat them up and strain them well before adding them to the mac-n-cheese. There have been a couple of nights when the tuna didn't get drained well that it was a little watery. I simply put it on the stove and warmed it on low for a bit until the water evaporated, or because absorbed to the consistancy we like.

Something else you can do with the same ingrediants and some butter crackers is follow the same procedure as above. Throw it all into a casserole dish and top with crushed butter crackers. Bake on the top rack at 350 for about 10 to 15 minutes or until the crackers are nice and golden. We'll be trying that with SPAM this weekend. Our oldest's idea. I'll probably be having PB&J since I'm not a fan of the SPAM. I think I ate way to much of it as a kid. Those and orange circus peanuts. >.<

Even the smallest kid can help try turning the can opener, picking the vegetable, or crush crackers in a zip lock bag. Yes, you can do it faster and probably make sure that all the chicken makes it in the pan. But just as I've learned, sometimes it just won't do to be done the way you thought it should have been done. The little smile is better!