Meal: taco soup
Cost for the batch of soup: $6.50, and we got over 5 servings out of it. 30 cents for the tortillas, and about 60 cents worth of cheese.
Time: 10 minutes for the soup, plus 5 hours in the crockpot; 20 minutes for the tortillas
Leftovers: a ton of soup. I had soup for lunch yesterday, Jeff had soup for a late afternoon snack, and there’s still some left.
Local ingredients: beef, cheese
Organic ingredients: tomato puree, flour, corn

Everyone has a version of this, don’t they? Ours this time around was a pound of beef, a can of corn (undrained), a cup of tomato puree, and 3 cups of vegetarian “chicken” broth, along with a bunch of garlic powder, salt, pepper, and chili powder, in the crockpot on high for 3 hours and on low for a couple more, served up with homemade tortillas and a bunch of cheddar cheese. This batch turned out on just this side of bland; I should have cooked up the beef with some taco spices before it went into the pot, but I was going for expediency this time. Other good additions to taco soup are green chilis, whole or chopped tomatoes, and beans. This works well with just about any protein source, including veggie crumbles or TVP. Serve up with a bag of tortilla chips if you don’t want to make tortillas. It freezes well, the leftovers are stellar, and it carries well in a thermos for lunch (I like taco soup, if you can’t tell. :) )