Homemade: Southwestern Macaroni Casserole

One of the things I’ve been trying to do recently is eat out less. I’ve started packing my lunch most days, and attempting to make large dishes at the beginning of the week in order to have dinner already made for the next couple of nights. It’s worked out alright so far, and it’s nice to know that for each meal I eat, I’m saving anywhere from $5-$10 – especially since I use a lot of ingredients I already own, and I’ll spend less than $10 on ingredients that will feed me for a whole week. My most recent endeavor was a macaroni casserole.

Close-up of theingredients, which included seasoned bread crumbs, salt, chili powder, onion powder, a box of the Publix version of Easy mac, black beans, tomato sauce, ground beef, corn, black pepper and shredded cheese.

I made a huge mess (as usual) stirring together the black beans, corn and ground beef seasoned with onion, chili and garlic powder:

My favorite part: the macaroni and cheese:

All assembled before putting into the oven:

And the final product:

I think it might have been a little overcooked because it was slightly crispier than I would have like. It was still tasty, though, and it lasted me (and my roommates!) three nights.