Quick Meal – Spanish Rice and Franks
Tips:
Often, even I forget about all of great tips and ideas in the Dining on a Dime Cookbook. Here are just a few of the many hundreds of tips in it:
- Save your leftover rice to add to soups, casseroles, fried rice or have rice and beans on a tortilla.
- When cooking pasta, add a teaspoon of garlic powder to the water before you cook it for a nice flavor.
- When serving sour cream, use a knife (the way you would with mayo). You don’t use as much and don’t waste as much because you can easily scrape the knife along the container.
- For those of you who have Dining on a Dime, check out page 154 to find out how to make flavored cooking oils.
Menu:
Spanish Rice and Franks*
Green Beans*
Sliced Tomatoes, Carrots and Celery Sticks
Dessert Kabobs*
Recipes:
Spanish Rice and Franks – (Quick meal recipe)
6 Hot dogs, cut into 1 inch pieces
1/2 cup sliced onion
1/2 cup green pepper
1/4 cup salad oil
2 cup Minute rice
2 cup hot water
2 (8 oz.) cans tomato sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Brown hot dogs in skillet with onions and peppers in the oil. Add rice; stir over medium heat to brown lightly. Stir in remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Simmer 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Green Beans
Stir about 1 tsp. bacon grease into your green beans while you are heating them. Add a small amount of onion salt and you have green beans that are big on flavor with very little work.
Dessert Kabobs Recipe
Mix and match any of the following and place on a toothpick or skewer. These would be fun to serve when you are having someone over to watch a game or for any upcoming holiday parties. With some of the items, you can match the color to the occasion.
Mix fruits or cakes or have all fruits or all cakes. The sky is the limit. Cut things like the cakes, cookies or brownies into smaller bite size pieces.
- Chocolate covered marshmallows
- Brownies
- Cakes – angel food, pound, chocolate, spice
- Mini cupcakes
- Rice krispy treats
- Soft candies
- Quick breads
- Doughnuts
- Strawberries
- Kiwi
- Banana
- Apples
- Pears
- Cherries
- Grapes
Note: You can use canned fruit and store bought baked goods if you want.
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I just made spanish rice for supper last night! Mine is a little different than your though so I thought I would share my version.
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 medium green pepper (chopped)
1/2 can diced tomatoes
1 1/2 cups juice from diced tomatoes
1 1/2 cups minute rice
shredded cheddar cheese or cheese slices
Fry ground beef, onion and green pepper together in a skillet. In a pot, boil tomato juice from can of diced tomatoes (add water to fill to 1 1/2 cups if there is not enough juice in the can – I always have enough though). Add minute rice and let sit for 5 minutes. Add in ground beef mixture and diced tomatoes and salt and pepper to taste. Put some shredded cheese or cheese slices on top (I usually use slices because it’s quicker and less messy!) Cover and put in the oven at 350 F for about a half hour (Just so it’s heated through and cheese is melted).
This is a quick meal that I use on busy evenings where we have hockey or dancing or swimming and the kids love it!
Thank you so much for your dedication to this site. I have learned so much and appreciate and love all of your newsletters and articles.
Blessings,
Amy (single mom of 2 beautiful blessings from God – Evan is 5yrs. and Sara is 4 yrs. old) WE LOVE YOU!
this recipe came about on one of our hunting trips but it works just as well at home.
we had got our limit of partridge the day before and if we wanted to hunt that day we had to use the partridge already caught or be charged with too many.
So for breakfast I fried up bacon, and the partridge added onion salt, celery salt and pepper. When it was almost cooked I added leftover rice from the day before. I added some soy sauce at the end.
We had toasted french bread slices and I put those into the bottom of the bowl to absorb the juices and piled on the rest of the meal.
We finished it all and went on with our hunting and got the limit that day and went home.
I do this at home using chicken or steak instead of partridge and it is always a hit. The bacon can be used alone but the other meats make it a very satisfying meal. It takes about 10 min from start to the plates.
Also instead of rice you could use noodles or fry potatoe slices when you cook the meat.
Nice interchangeable meal and very filling and warming at the end of the day.
I enjoy reading the newsletter and all the helpful tips. The recipes concern me a bit, because there seems to be a lot of focus on processed and unhealthy foods (just my opinion). Like many, I strive to save money and spend wisely, but I also struggle to balance that with healthy, fresh foods for my family. I would LOVE more recipe ideas that try to find a balance between money and health. Hot dogs are never in our house, though if we are at a BBQ and they are served, I have no problem enjoying one as an occassional treat. :) But it’s not something I would serve to my preschooler regularly. Same goes for mac & cheese and such. I’d love more features on fruits, veggies, and healthy proteins, though maybe this just isn’t the forum for it.
Just my two-cents. I do love all the cleaning tips and such, so either way will continue reading!
Just like everything else we talk about we try to have a lot of balance to our web site and you will find a little bit of everything on here. This way we can be of service or help to many different people and not just a handful in a certain area or with specific needs.
So many say they have problem with spending more when it comes to buying healthy and over non healthy which I don’t understand at all. Buying fruits and veggies in season is not any more expensive then anything else beside I always thought a bag of potato chips was much more expensive then a some cucumbers. Water is much better for most then organic juice. To me it is much less expensive to buy a box of oatmeal over a box of cereal or is oatmeal no longer healthy. I don’t know any more these foods you can and cannot eat are changed on a daily basis and are so hard to keep up with. Last night my grandson called to tell me that coffee is no longer bad for you but now they think it can actually help you.
Part of the problem is what people think healthy foods are. I saw a woman at the store last week. She bought 3 small (8oz) containers of organic juice, 6 organic protein bars, a container of strawberries, blueberries, 4 single serving size of organic chips and 3-4 other small items. Her total was $65 and she fit it all into one small tote.
Yes all she bought was healthy but she could have bought so many other items to substitute what she bought. Plus all her kids were grabbing for all the things as she was leaving and I thought for all the healthy things she was giving her kids she had totally forgot portion and calorie control. They were consuming no less then 500-700 calories on the spot just for a snack.
I am not sure where this thinking of it is expensive to buy healthy foods but I do know it is the latest in buzz words. We really need to define what we think healthy eating is because people seem to be very confused about it.
health nut, actually mac and cheese is a great and healthy meal.
use whole wheat noodles. cook them to almost cooked place in a casserole dish add cheese any type will do and add some mozzarella for the fun of the strings. Add some ground up meat chicken turkey hamburger and a can of tomatoes. Top with some buttered or oiled bread crumbs and put in the oven until the top is browned. You could also add vegetables to it.
you have cheese milk vegetables and a grain all in one pot. Add a salad and there you go.
You can make almost any meal healthy or not healthy with a bit of imagination and thinking outside the box.
To right grandma. Take this menu. First you could just use turkey franks if you wanted to or use chicken instead. I consider everything else in the recipe pretty healthy. As for the rest of the menu I didn’t know green beans, sliced tomatoes, carrots and celery sticks were unhealthy. I actually thought today’s menu was a healthier one. Even with the dessert I said you could use fresh fruit.
Sincerely and Totally confused,
From Kansas (Jill) : )
I think your recipes ARE healthy Jill. I’ve been eating better since I’ve been using a lot of your recipes. Also, God has a time assigned for each of our lives. Nobody will live longer than He wants us to. That’s the bottom line. You can’t worry yourself about every little thing you eat. Just do the best you can. I don’t see any of your recipes that I would call unhealthy. They contain many fruits and vegetables.
Salad on a stick might be fun or a Veggie kabob. Sure! Why not? I like to keep thing healthy, simple, and less messy.
A healthier alternative to Minute rice, which is almost as quick (10-20 minutes), how about quinoa, basmati brown rice or bulgur wheat. Minute rice is high glycemic and not very good for diabetics. I think these grains cost about the same as Minute rice too.
And about organic… I have a friend that buys organic junk food for her husband, so at least when he eats what he likes, it’s “healthy.” Sometimes at my market, the organic produce costs less. If the organic is less or very close, I can buy the organic, but I can’t afford to be a purist. I have found some hot dogs that are healthier than others at the same price. I just have to wait for it to appear at my Grocery Outlet.
Oh, along with coffee as a health food, a couple of years back, dark chocolate was exposed as an antioxidant, making that a health food. As much as I eat of it, I should be very healthy!!! ; ] No really…. everything in moderation and some things, not at all. As a diabetic, I have said, I can eat anything I want, just not as much as I used to.
I really enjoy your site and newsletter! Your recipes give me ideas to start with and I go on my way. I hardly every follow a recipe as written. If I did, my family would faint! No really?! Did really follow the recipe without changes? The same thing with my sewing. A pattern is just a place to start. I have a friend that really likes my out-of-the-box thinking. I’m sure I just live in a different box than everyone else. That’s all…
Thank you for what you do!
Jill, I made the hot dogs and eggs for breakfast this morning. Very good.
I surely hope that people using these menus and recipes don’t think they are written in stone.
Some of them I like and have done for years before seeing them here but most of mine are changed by some ingredient or way of cooking.
So use your imagination and innovation.
A well known chef in his cookbooks writes
A recipe is just words on a page.
Make it your own.
He is so right in that.
I find you use a lot more sugar than I would but that is just my taste. My husband would love each and every one of them. So I don’t let him see them.
Due to an allergy or intolerance to pork I can’t use pork so when I see a recipe for pork that I would like I switch meats. Even to beef with a change in the spices.
Due to an allergy to citrus all citrus recipes get changed to pineapple.
My children used to love tacos when I made them so one day when out with friends they ordered tacos and hated them. I had to modify the ingredients to suit our diets. so now they cook them at home for their own children. Wonder what their children will think the first time they get tacos at a taco bell?
HealthNut – are you referring to the amount of nitrates and sodium found in some hotdogs? I check for sodium and other additives before buying. Have used turkey and chicken franks too and my family will eat these. Teen daughter loves Mac&Cheese (from the box) but I can see where the homemade version is healthier.
It’s a real tossup sometimes – wanting to eat healthy vs. time involved to make a snack or meal.
BTW – Jill and Tawra: Dining On A Dime cookbook arrived last week. Teen daughter saw it on the counter and said “Mom – I’m making Cheese Enchiladas tonight – ok with you?” I said “Great! What ingredients do you need? Do you have a recipe? She then showed me the new cookbook with an easy quick receipe and took it from there. All I did was chop onions :) Family + boyfriend enjoyed a delicious low-cost meal. Thank you!
When my husband was in the Navy in l967 and we were stationed in San Diego I came up with this same recipe to stretch a few hot dogs into a meal. As our family expanded to five children I could feed the seven of us with 1# of hot dogs. Now, the grown children think of this recipe as comfort food.
‘God has a time assigned for each of our lives. Nobody will live longer than He wants us to. That’s the bottom line. You can’t worry yourself about every little thing you eat. Just do the best you can’.
Great sentiment, Bea! Funnily enough, I was thinking to myself earlier today, I’ve spent about 40 years on one diet or another – I LOVE cooking and trying out new recipes – so why should I beat myself up about enjoying my food? (I don’t!) I don’t eat rubbish, I cook everything from scratch, and at the moment I’m in a veggie phase, so everything is (or should be!) healthy and fresh. We’re only here for as long as God wants us to be, so I decided today that I am going to carry on enjoying my cooking and give over worrying about every little morsel that goes in my mouth!!! ;)
Mari, I like your sense of humor. I went through an organic food only stage, a raw vegetable stage with fruit too, and a no sugar stage, but then I got tired of worrying every time I went to someone’s home or party, or when there was free food at work for luncheons etc, so I decided to simply do the best I can food wise and stop worrying. Worry is a sin anyway.
Have to say Amen to both what you said and what Mari said.
Bea and Mari…I’ll second Jill’s AMEN! I was discussing this with a friend just today, that reading about and trying so hard to be healthy can turn into a life-consuming obsession. I’ve fallen prey to that, and I have promised myself today to just let it go. Food is nourishment for the body to achieve what God means for us to do, and it is to enjoy. It was not meant to be the focus of our every waking moment.
Like you mentioned in another post, Jill, I, too, eat little. I need little, and I am actually glad for that. Saves money and is a healthy way to live. But within what I eat, I will let go of the micromanagement. Also, all the reading on that that I used to do…it is all so confusing! Everyone’s ideas contradicted someone else’s, yet they both claim to “cure” or “fix” the same things, like obesity, diabetes, heart disease. That is impossible, yet we keep trying their programs and the cycle continues.
Common sense and faith in the Creator’s design of our bodies is all we need.
Thanks to you all for a sanity check! Have a wonderful Christmas!
K