Making a small pot roast stretch!

I'm pretty sure that most everyone I know is in the same economic boat these days. That is, we all have to be careful when it comes to what we buy and consume in terms of food! A thinly stretched budget demands a careful shopper who is getting the most for his or her buck.

This slow cooker menu item contains the following:

• 1 3/4 pound chuck roast
  
• 
  salt and pepper to taste
  
• 1 packet of Marcum seasoning mix
  
• 1 cup of water
  

• 4 carrots, chopped
  
• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 4 potatoes, peeled and cubed
  
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped
  

Making this meal is about as easy as tying ones shoes. You just brown the meat (that was taken out of
the fridge and allowed to come to room temperature) in a small amount of oil, mix up the packet of seasonings in a cup of water, peel and cut up the potatoes and carrots into equal sized pieces and then dump everything into a slow cooker that has been set to low. Cook for about eight hours!

The end result is pure heaven! The meal serves 5. Oh, and don't forget the horseradish!

Notes: The cost of this meal came in at about $8.00 or $1.60 per serving. The potatoes and carrots are still relatively inexpensive, and so held down the cost. (The meat cost me $6.69 for a 1.7 pound hunk which was all I could afford and so inspired me to add more potatoes and carrots to bring up the total volume. Nutritionally, each serving came to just over 500 calories and the power required to cook it came to ~$0.07. So, all in all, a very affordable meal in 2013 terms. Finally, that packet of seasonings is available locally at the Save A Lot store in Forsyth, MO. It cost about .59 cents! After 8 hours on low - everything was cooked close to perfection with the exception of the carrots that were still a little underdone - my thinking would be to go for a longer time or to pre-boil the carrots for about five minutes before adding them in.

Update: Jan 2015 and the cost of this same cut of meat had risen from $3.89 per pound to $5.08! That's about a 23% increase. Par for the course in an Obama run country. I plan to redo this recipe am am hoping for similar results. I'll post when that happens in a day or so.