$1.01 per meal ground turkey, beans and rice!

I love beans and rice, but hubby wants more protein so I added ground turkey to this classic.

I started by heating a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan on medium heat. I then added minced garlic (to taste) and then a healthy tsp of cumin and chili powder. Let that sizzle for about 30 seconds then add in 1.5 lbs of ground turkey. (Here is where I confess I bought 80/20 ground turkey instead of the usual 93/7 and I hang my head in shame at the amount of fat in it...) I cooked that until it was done, in the meantime preparing some veggies.

Turkey and spices!

I diced up one medium sized (what does medium sized mean? I say slightly larger than a baseball, because I've seen some huge onions in my day) onion, then one stalk of celery. Make sure you wash your veggies. The bottom of the celery stalk had a bit of dirt on it. I only used about half the onion, but I diced the whole thing to prevent myself from having to dice it later on this week (suspense! what will I use it for?!?!?!?!). I sauteed the celery and onion in 1 tbsp olive oil + chili powder + cumin until the onions were starting to brown over medium heat. Then I added a can of black beans and let those heat up. I then added a can of diced tomatoes. This was my "sauce". Then I cooked 2 servings of rice (1/4 cup dry).

Onion, celery and beans!

Sauce!

During the 15 minute wait period, I decided to count my calories (and this is where I noticed my error with the turkey). I found splitting the recipe into 6 servings would equate to 370 cal per serving. Rice is 160 extra, so it's your call how you'd like to proportion it. I split my turkey into 3 equal portions, and put two of them in separate plastic baggies, with equivalent portions of sauce. There's 2 meals for Dan AND me (so 4 total), already set to go.

The remaining turkey and sauce I combined, and spooned over my rice (which was..... spiced with cumin and chili powder!). I served with a bit of shredded cheddar cheese (optional) and homemade tortilla chips as a garnish. Fresh cilantro would also be great in this dish, but I did not have any on hand.

This is really a lot of food for the calories!

Calories: 530 cal (with rice) + garnishes (~100)
Costs:
Turkey $3.50
Beans: $0.75
Rice: $0.90 (I think)
Tomatoes: $0.43
Celery: $0.20 (rough estimate)
Onion: $0.30 (rough estimate)
Total: $6.08, or ~ $1.01 per meal

Garnishes are optional, and I excluded those from calculations.