Saving on Alfredo Sauce

I know this is NOT healthy, and I know that real cream and real butter taste better... believe me I know. Y'all will never know how much I miss working on the dairy farm and all the benefits that brought to me and my family that couldn't be measured in dollar signs and zeros. But I'm getting sidetracked (again) and today I just don't have time for that.

Anyway, as I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself. I love to be able to save a little here and a little there on our grocery bill and I totally can't stand the thought of eating boring food so I conjure up as many ways as I can to make foods that I love and my family will eat on as little cash as possible. We LOVE alfredo sauce, on noodles, chicken, on potatoes, to dip fingers garlic bread in and on broccoli (I know I'm strange... surprise surprise right). With our mad love for that creamy goodness on our food we could stand for hours and scowl with bitter hatred at the price signs on the cream and butter ...... or we could just improvise.

Take 1 stick of margarine... (or bought on sale with tripled coupons and therefore free blue bonnet or country crock or whatever... I love triples!!) and melt that in your saucepan. While that melts mix up a double strength 2 cup batch of powdered milk (or regular milk or bought on sale with triple coupons and therefore dirt cheap canned milk... gotta love triples!!). When your NOT butter melts add your NOT milk in slowly and stir the whole time and turn your heat down to low/medium so you don't scorch it. Let the NOT milk and NOT butter cook together for awhile, stir it up often so you don't get a gross skin on the pan that makes it taste bad. Let it cook until the NOT butter doesn't float on the top anymore, then add 1 cup of the cheapo grated parmesan I used the kind in a plastic jar with the shaker top that you get at ALDI and whisk it altogether. I tossed in a sprinkle of garlic powder and a sprinkle of cayenne a little salt and pepper and cooked it long enough for the NOT cheese to be blended in with the rest of it and called it done!

We had a bag of salad shrimp in the freezer that I got for a buck and a bag of broccoli Steamers that I got for free with a coupon so I threw that in with some rotini pasta that I got for 16 cents a box on a triple coupon sale and we had Shrimp Alfredo with broccoli for supper last night. My kids made all kinds of interesting sounds to express their tremendous approval ratings, and my Hunk O Honey called from lunch today after he ate his serving and pronounced it to be tastier than Olive Garden leftovers! Let me know how yours turns out!