Old Faithful With “Sausage”-Cheese Bread.

Today, friends, was One of Those Days, straight on the heels of another One of Those Days. Nothing awful, nothing tragic – I’ve got health, family, a good job, and a purring kitty … life in general is pretty darn good – but today was just one of those days where things seemed to go awry at every turn.

So I wasn’t all that surprised when, as soon as I stepped off the bus near my home this evening after work, I realized I’d left most of tonight’s dinner ingredients in the fridge at work.

But these are the days when Old Faithful – remember Old Faithful? Good old black beans and rice? – really shines. I didn’t have rice at hand, but I knew the Safeway could help me out with that (I couldn’t bring myself to re-purchase all the ingredients for the other meal I’d planned … we’ll give it another try tomorrow!). When I got to the grocery store, I decided that LeeLee and I needed a little treat to go with Old Faithful, so I went ahead and picked up some Morningstar Farms sausage links and some cheese to make sausage-cheese muffins. I paid, got halfway home, and realized that I had no muffin tins with which to make said muffins!

Who cares? I thought to myself as I continued heading home, not even breaking stride in an effort to head back to Safeway. I’ll just turn the muffins into bread instead.

And so, 40 minutes or so later, dinner came to fruition with nary a glitch. The rice and beans were as easy to cook as ever, and the bread only took an extra 10 minutes (muffins take 20; this took 30). And there’s not a grain of rice nor single legume left! (Also, I am a little embarrassed to say, there’s not much bread left, either. It doesn’t seem to last long around here.)

So today may have been One of Those Days. But sometimes there are benefits to everything going awry – tonight’s meal was a hit in spite of itself!

The stats:

Black beans: $1.09 ($0.55/person)
Rice: $1.19 ($0.60/person)
Cherry tomatoes: $3.49 ($1.75/person)
Onion: $1.00 ($0.50/person)
“Sausage” links: $4.49 ($1.50/person)
Cheese: $3.49 ($1.16/person)

GRAND TOTAL: $14.75 … or $6.06 per person.

:)