20 Meals for 2 for $100

You might find this post, photo and list interesting:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2007/07/09/a-week-of-food/

We eat healthily on very little money. If you include everything (garden seed, fencing, etc) we spend about $1.43/meal/person. Good food.

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

Grow kale! We eat kale at least 4 times a week. I put it in my scrambled eggs, sauté it with sausage, put it in soup! It grows quickly and you harvest leaves and the plant keeps growing. I always have about 8 plants going at a time. Grow things that will allow for multiple harvest (kale, tomatoes, potatoes, chard, spinach, strawberries) - they give you bang for your buck. I've also started making crust less quiche - I miss the crust a bit but it's better for you in the long run. Good luck!

It's just me and DH and the food budget cruncher for us is portion control. We can make 4 meals from a single steak. The cut back doesn't hurt as much when it's eaten with larger portions of the cheaper side dishes.

We've been eating fried eggs in place of hamburger on a bun with toppings. In cooler weather a big pot of pinto bean soup provides good nutrition, but you said your husband doesn't like beans. Maybe he would like a homemade vegetable beef soup. With cornbread and butter on the side what's not to like?

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There are endless combinations of truth.

BelfryBat-Now this doesn't sound that appetizing but it is delicious. I've used hot dogs, polish sausages, grillers, kielbasa, whatever you have. And I usually use a couple more than it calls for .
Pensey Supper
4 lg. potatoes
Cook and dice into small squares. Then add:
6 hot dogs (slice) (I cut up) 1 small onion (chop)
1/4 cup butter 1 pt. canned or frozen peas (I use 2 cans)
1 can mushroom soup 1 TBS mustard
salt/pepper (to taste)
Toss gently. Pour into a casserole dish and bake at 350 for 1 hour.

Meat is expensive! Cutting that back to the minimum will help. Add more rice, potatoes, pasta. Experiment with other grains- quinoa is very filling, faster to cook than rice and good in pretty much all of the same dishes. Substituting vegetarian meals can cut your budget in half- chili, stew, stir fry or casserole can be filling without the cost of meat.

Whole chickens or pot roasts are great cheap meal-makers- eat it with potatoes on night one, chop up meat for tacos/sandwiches/burritos/omelets on night two, make soup or stew or chili for nights 3 & 4, then add the last of the soup to a noodle or rice & veggie casserole on night 5. Voila, 5 nights for $8 worth of meat.

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They shall all sit under their own vines and their own fig trees, and they shall live in peace and unafraid. Mica 4:4

If you have a lot of eggs, do breakfast for supper- omelets, scrambled eggs, French toast, boiled eggs on toast, etc... all cheap and quick.

I have them both, and yes, they are invaluable. There are so many things I make "from scratch" using recipes for mixes in those books.

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Kris
http://thislittleplacehere.blogspot.com/

As a single I've looked for easy and cheap ways to eat. One of my stand bys is the crock pot stew I make. A can of this and a can of that with a couple chicken leg quarters. A full crock pot makes bout 120 oz. I will put in some rice to soak up all the liquid. For flavor I use barbeque sauce and bullion cubes. Mushroom soup to thicken some.

I've finally given in to the fact I'd be throwing lots out or having left overs. My key is a small fridge.

Also I only eat what is on sale. This week I got 6 oz yogurt for 33 cents. I get canned vegies for 50 cents on sale. Well used to as everything is going up.

The price point is pretty close to what the meals here cost.

I cook large amounts of certain things then freeze for use later.

Last trip to the store I got 2 young chickens for 12 bucks (3lb birds)

I cut them up into leg quarters,wing sections,breast,and backs.

The leg quarters and wings will get a marinade and cooked on the grill. (2 meals)

The breasts (both halves) one already was sliced and cooked for tacos, and the other can still be cooked any number of ways. (at least 2 meals)

The taco meat provided two meals worth of meat. dinner and lunch next day. (1 more meal)

The backs with skin and fat will get boiled up bones and skin removed and made into soup. (thats like at least 4 more meals with addition of a few veggies and noodles.)

That is at least 9 meals from 2- 3lb chickens. I think the second breast may give one additional meal depending on how I cook it.

Over all cost for meat per meal though $1.33 (possibly 1.20)

Now though that's not full meals, but the other stuff adds very little to the over all cost.

Those tacos used about 8 onz of cheese for the two meals, $1.99 ( 1.83) tomato and lettuce maybe a quarter ( 2.08) the tortillas , I could make and do, but been buying them lately figure they work out to about .16 cents each (vs may 2-3 cents for home made)
now we're at 2.72.

I like sour cream and taco sauce on them two so maybe another .50 cents.

Grand total 3.22 for the meal and the 2.5 meals provided comes to 8.05.
Mind you that's two fully loaded tacos per person, and I consider tacos a complete meal.

You have 4.00 left from the meal allotment.

One other thing I picked up was 10 lbs of ground chuck, 1.99 a pound.
that will provide a lot of meals also, I separate it into 1 1/2-1/3lb bags.
1 bag provided the last 2 nights dinners (plus lunch for the GF today), burgers (onions/mushrooms and condiments, with a loaded baked tater) and a breakfast style burrito (the taco meat,scrambled egg,diced browned taters,sour cream,cheese and matter.).
With out doing the break down, pretty close to 10 bucks for those 2 1/2 meals so works out to 4 a meal.

Another under the budget meal, your 2 more dollars ahead. overall budget surplus $6.00.
Five meals worth with some variety for $18.05 (averages to 3.61 a meal)

If you can mange that for the other 15 meals your way ahead of budget.

now you may notice a theme here, I buy in bulk, I buy things I know I can mix and match for some variety, I also shop the loss leaders and know which stores have the best prices.

It is very possible to do what your trying to do.

your local prices may very from what I posted just giving an example of how I do things.some things are approximate also and my math suffer time to time (but its close)

What should you do with the Budget surplus ? Dry goods, Flour (very very versatile and I use a lot) Rice (not so much as flour but rounds out certain meals)
Oat meal,corn meal, hot cereal and canned goods and spices!
Loss leader you can store (freeze or can).

Those things will round out or provide meals mostly on their own. You'll also notice that a surplus will develop in that department.

I figure we have enough food to carry us 3 months of no shopping.
We spend 200 a month on food and IMO eat very well.
that's all our meals for the month and a surplus in the freezer and pantry.
we also shop once a month which saves on the gas and normally its a multipurpose trip.

I cook lots of other things besides tacos and burgers and make many things from scratch. the list is too long to share in this already drawn out post.
Normally have a freezer full of venison too and buy little beef.
Eat a fair share of wild caught fish.
neither of which is truly free but inexpensive compared to the store bought stuff.
Also do a bit of foraging as well as a small garden.

Most main stays though are store bought (except for the venison)

learn how to use the lesser cuts of meat to your advantage, the rule for most is low and slow!

Another thing I do to keep prices low is buy the biggest cheapest per lb chunk of beef roast. I cut a small roast from it. I cut little bitty cubes of meat for soup. Larger cubes for stew and strips for stroganoff or pepper steak. so a 10.00 - 12 dollar roast will yield

roast 2 meals with roasted potatos and carrots,
1 meal of shredded roast over a starch
2 batches of soup that each yield 3 meals
2 batches of beef stew that yields 3 meals
1 meal each of stroganoff and pepper steak.

Depending on how hungry we are we may end up with extra leftover meals. Sometimes a small amount of leftover soup will have some extra broth added to it and I put dumplings in it. DH loves that.

I cook the roast the day I buy it. I brown the other meats at high heat to get a ice brown color on them. I then freeze them in zip bags to throw in the crockpot. Super fast and easy.

Now I can more of the meat we use.

Do you have a pressure canner? If so that can help.

One thing that you might do is make a ham and vetable soup. cook some navy beans. Puree them and add to the soup. It thickens up the soup and makes it more filling. Start out with a small amount and slowly increase over time.

We also love almost any meat in gravy over a starch.

we eat lots of eggs...its one protein we can produce ourselves...egg salad sandwiches, deviled eggs, quiches (zucchini quiche and zucchini pancakes are popular in our house this time of year). You can also add chopped eggs to chicken salad, potato and macaroni salad etc.
Also, chicken and pork are much much cheaper than beef. I can get boneless skinless chicken breast for 1.99 a lb, and the cheapest you can find the cheap hamburger for is around $3 lb.
Invest i a 50 lb bag of rice. it keeps, and can be used as the base for many many meals.
can or freeze anything extra that comes your way. On of my children's friends came to visit my son the other day bearing a huge bag of plump peaches from his grandparents city yard

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I'd rather have one Chewbacca than an entire clone army.

Thank you for these sites! I just requested to join the FB group.

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If you can dream it, you can do it. Time isn't an excuse; it's just part of the challenge. Pursue your dream whenever you can, however you can. The first step is belief.

You are welcome.

Cous cous is another tasty side dish. Will dh eat turkey? The meat-bone ratio is better on turkey than on chicken. When I was a welfare mom I cooked a small turkey every 3 months.
Consider skewered food. I ,ade chicken n mushroom swewers for us for less than $4 a few weeks ago. Cous cous and finger salad. And another thing we like esp when drumsticks are on sale is buffalo chicken drumsticks and celery. Used to have FF with that but anymore we don't have enough space for all that food.
When you go to make bread, pasta, or pizza crust- I always used the cornell triple rich flour formula from The Joy Of Cooking when I was a wlfare mom. I would start with a tbsp. soy flour, tbsp. wheat germ, and tbsp. dried milk solids in the bottom of my one cup measure, then fill the measure to the top with white flour. Over the last few years I dropped the dried milk and added ground flaxseed meal instead. Really punches up the nutrition to where homemade noodles in your chicken stew, and homemade bread, becomes a protein rich meal.