Healthy Loaded Nachos

Nachos by their very name sound like fat laden horrible diet busters, but here’s our healthy, budget friendly version.

• 1 lb ground turkey (or beef)
• 1 pkg taco seasoning
• 1 can Diced Tomatoes
• Lettuce
• Tomato
• Black Olives
• Green Pepper
• Tortilla Chips
• Onions
• Jalapenos
• Shredded Cheddar Cheese
• Sour Cream

Brown the ground turkey in a large frying pan, add 1 can of diced tomatoes (undrained) and 1 package of taco seasoning mix. Reduce heat to low, simmer. In the meantime, wash and chop lettuce, dice a fresh tomato, and halve the black olives.

In each bowl place a small handful of tortilla chips, add a layer of shredded lettuce, a small scoop of seasoned taco meat, diced tomatoes, diced onions, diced green pepper, jalapeno slices, a dab of shredded cheddar cheese and a dollop of sour cream.

The trick to keeping these healthy is to load them with fresh chopped veggies and to use lean meat. If you have company or really hearty eaters in your family, you can stretch this by adding refried beans as one of the “layers”.

Now for the Grocery Budget 101 Breakdown:

• 1lb Ground Turkey $1.20 (Aldi’s)
• 1 can Tomatoes .88
• 1 pkg Taco Seasoning .33 (or .11 if you MYO)
• 1/4 bag of Tortilla Chips .50
• Shredded Cheese $1.
• Black Olives .50 (recipe uses 1/2 can)
• onion .22
• lettuce .30
• Tomato .40
• green pepper .25

Total equals $5.58 for the entire dish = .93 per person

:thumbsup: GroceryBudget101.com Pointers: It’s hard to actually provide a breakdown of the costs because vegetable prices vary so much by region. In this case the canned tomatoes were home-canned, the fresh tomato was grown in my kitchen. The green pepper was one of 3 that I bought for $1 at the local market and we only use 1/2 a green pepper. As for the tortilla chips, we bought them at Walmart for $2 per bag and used 1/4 of the bag, hence the .50 price.
What I’m trying to say is that your costs are going to vary depending on your family, which ingredients you eat more or less of. This isn’t meant to be a definite price, it’s meant to be a guideline to help you.