Dutch oven meal prep

Today was a busy day.  It started with leg day in the gym and then moved in to cleaning a garage.  Hot and dirty all day but after coming home I still had chores to do here and needed to make time to prep some kind of meal for the week as well as eat supper. With so much going on I opted for an easy dutch oven hamburger soup that could cook while I was working on tonight's supper and mowed the yard. It was also a good way to use the left-over ingredients from last week's beef burgundy.  When you are eating on budget, you can't let things go to waste :)

To start with I washed and quartered the left over potatoes. These were a combination of yellow, red, and purple spuds that I picked up on sale last week.  To this I added roughly 1/3 of a chopped red onion, 2 tablespoons of garlic, 1 can diced tomatoes, some frozen cauliflower, 1 sliced frozen jalapeno, the remaining ground beef from that was not used to make my Jacked up burger, some beef stock and the left over burgundy.  This was seasoned with salt and plain ground black pepper.  I let everything marinate while the oven was warming up then cooked at 350 until the potatoes were done, approximately 2 hours.  Cooking in the dutch oven adds its own flavor to the food as well and I prefer that to simply cooking this on the stove. 

It turned out to be a tasty meal that will last me most of the week. Cooking like this is a good way to make sure you have nutritious food to eat throughout the week.  It is easy to get caught up in our busy lives and either not eat or eat meals that are quick but not necessarily good for us.  I fall in to that trap often but this way I am guaranteed at least one good meal every day.

This is a food that could easily be used to make other meals as well. Remove the ingredients, chop the potatoes smaller, re-heat and place on a soft tortilla for an easy burrito or remove some liquid, top with shredded cheese and chopped green onions then bake uncovered until the cheese is crispy for an easy casserole. However you do it, just have fun and eat well!!

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