Cheesy Chicken Casserole *Budget Meal*

Serves 6

Ingredients

-1 pound of chicken
-10oz of No Yolk Egg Noodle
-corn
-green beans
-peas
-2 cans of cream of chicken
-8 oz sour cream
-Ritz crackers
-3 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
-1 medium onion

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1. Cut chicken into bite size chunks.  Cook in a pan with butter.  Salt and pepper chicken while it's cooking. Put chicken in a large mixing bowl.
2. Dice onion and cook in a pan with butter (you can use Pam if you'd like)
2. While the onion is cooking, pour 2 cans of cream of chicken, 8 oz of sour cream, veggies, 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese into the large mixing bowl.
3. Add onion and uncooked egg noodles and mix everything together.
4. Evenly spread mixture in a baking dish.
5. Bake for 20 minutes.
6. While the dish is baking, get 1 tube of Ritz crackers.  Put the crackers in a zip loc bag and crush the crackers.
7.  After 20 minutes, remove the dish, sprinkle Ritz crackers to make a crust on top of the casserole.  Then sprinkle 1 cup of cheese.
8. Bake for an additional 15 minutes.


ENJOY!!

How can I make this meal on a budget??

Watch the sales!

I always buy boneless chicken breasts in bulk.  The grocery stores will run $1.99lb sales on their chicken breasts.  This is a great deal, so often grocery stores will sell out of the chicken at this price.  No biggie, just pick up a rain check.  I love rain checks because I can go back to the store when the chicken is NOT on sale, and get it for that great price!

Veggies are fairly cheap whether you buy them in cans or in the frozen section.  Look out for Birds Eye coupons and pair them with store sales.  I can almost always count on getting their veggies for pennies or even FREE.   I've noticed Del Monte has been putting coupons for their canned veggies in the newspaper coupons lately.  So I was able to buy 3 cans of veggies for less than $1.  I took 1/3 of each can and put them in freezer bags and froze them so that I had ready made bags of mixed veggies for meals like this.

Pasta is something I NEVER pay full price for.  My pantry is always stocked with free pasta.  This is an item you can almost always get for free.  There are tons of pasta coupons floating around out there.  Muellers and No Yolk are a household favorite because I can almost always find a coupon for either.
Here is one for No Yolk:  $1.00 off 2 No Yolk
Here is one for Muellers: $0.75 off Mueller's Pot Sized Pasta

Ritz Crackers can sometimes be pricey and coupons for this can sometimes be rare.  I know this because we go through Ritz crackers like crazy in this house.  An alternative can be croutons or toast crunched up.

Cream of Chicken - Don't pay $1.00 for a can of Campbells cream of anything.  Campbells ALWAYS offers coupons and grocery stores have these on sale almost weekly.  Pair the coupons with the sales so that you are paying $0.50 or less for each can.

Sour cream is a fairly cheap item on its own, but believe it or not manufactures offer coupons even on this item!  There is a $1.00 off coupon for Breakstone Sour Cream right now on coupons.com which paired with a sale, makes this sour cream very cheap:  PRINTABLE