Feed a family of 4 with a hamburger patty

One chicken can go a long way.

Night #1- baked chicken and veggies
Night #2- pull left over chicken off the bone, rice with gravy and chicken
Night #3- boil carcass of chicken, strain, add left over veggies from night 1 and gravy, rice and chicken from night 2. Now you have soup

Of course you make just a little extra every day to have a little bit of left overs for your soup......this would cost you less than 1dollar a person per 3 days.............I know, I have done it

I did this with spaghetti sauce tonight.

I used the following:

1/4 pound ground beef
1 can pinto beans (mashed to hide)
1 can tomato sauce
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
1 small can mushrooms
1/4 C chopped olives
several squirts agave syrup
ground pepper
1.5 T Italian herbs

I served it over whole wheat spaghetti. We also had whole wheat (store-bought) French bread.

It went well with th kids. DW was not as thrilled since she really likes meat and could "feel" the bean skins.

We usually buy a Costco roasted chicken on shopping day. It makes a quick meal with instant potatoes and green beans.

We then remove any remaining meat and use the carcass to make stock. I use onion, carrots and celery, as well as garlic and numerous herbs and seasonings. We also add a splash of vinegar which draws the minerals from the bones.

I simmer it for up to 24 hours and then strain it carefully.

We use the stock for soup by adding the meat (or some cut up chicken breast), carrots, celery, garlic, parsley and noodles or rice.

We also use the stock to make a white gravy that we put in ground beef or cut up chicken and serve over a starch. The recipe for this is:

For two cups of gravy:

4 T butter
4 T flour (we use whole wheat)
1 C whole milk (we use fresh raw milk)
1 C stock

Make roux and add milk and stock. Stir and bring to light boil while stirring until thickened. Add any favorite herbs.

Cheap eats!

Unfortunately corporate America has managed to squeeze last nickel of profit out of much of our food, even traditional healthy staples. All at the expense of quality, taste, and I would assume nutrition.

Some neighbors years back hit every charity around for groceries. The old man gave me several bags of dried pinto beans that some charity had given their family. They didnt eat dried beans. Well I cooked some and these were nastiest beans I ever tasted. No idea how they were raised but cant imagine it was with idea of raising best beans they could.

Quality matters. Poor quality equals poor nutrition. Unless you raise your own or have an unspoiled by man wild environment to hunt/gather wild foods then good chance its poor quality. Commodity farmers unwilling to eat what they raise themselves should tell you something. Greed is very short term thinking and unfortunately America's greatest weakness is a penchant for short term thinking.

There is documentary out on dvd now called "Food, INC" that is well worth watching. Unfortunately it concentrates mostly on America's meat production, but its same mentality that produces all food in your local supermarket.

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

Please, let's try to stay on track and focus on contributing recipes that will make a POSITIVE difference in the way people eat. By the way, thanks for the comments about chicken bones. That's how I make a chicken last too. I'll use the bones to make stock, then use my fingers to gleen off the remaining tidbits of meat. This all goes into making the stock that can go into many recipes.

Here's one more filling, nutritious recipe using dried lentils and my home-canned broth.

Lentil Dahl
Soak 1 cup of lentils overnight. Discard soak water, add fresh, and bring lentils to a boil. Turn off heat and put in an insulated container to steep. Notice how besides saving money on food, you all save fuel at the same time. After steeping for a few hours, drain away the water and replace with chicken broth. Add a sprinkle of tumeric, cumin, and pepper, and simmer till the lentils start to disintegrate. Put the hot soup in a blender and puree for a few 10-20 seconds. Return to the pot and simmer a little longer. Just before serving add a handfull of whatever green vegie you have on hand such as bockchoy, spinach, or cilantro. Leave on the stove just long enough for the leaves to wilt, then serve. Good with toast along side. Perfect for a cold winter night with snow falling outside.

By the way, this is another example of using a small amount of animal protein to complement the deficient proteins from plants. This recipe is filling, nutritious, and gives biologically complete protein.

I think Michael was right on.

We can fill pages with recipies made with lots of cheap, starchy fillers, but if it doesn't have the nurients that our bodies need, what good is it? We'll spend the money saved today on illness and doctor bills later.

I think that we need to think about "nutrient dense" foods along with being less expensive.

__________________
Only she who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible

A large baked sweet potato topped with a bit of butter, honey, cinnamon, or what ever you have on hand, can make a meal.

Make a pan of biscuits. Dice a homegrown tomato onto your plate. Salt & pepper the tomato. Add a splash of hot fatback grease. Stir to mix well, slighly mash the tomatoes with a fork. Use the biscuits to sop up the tomatoes. It'll make a meal. I ate it many times growning up for breakfast. I'm sure that the total cost per person is less than a dollar when feeding a family.

Or... make the biscuits, heat a can of stewed tomatoes. Add a splash of olive oil, fatback grease, bacon grease to the tomatoes. Slice open the hot biscuts. Spoon the stewed tomatoes over the biscuits. Buy the tomatoes on sale. For a family, again, I'm sure this is less than a buck a person.

Make biscuits, add butter to the hot biscuits. Top the butter with a slice of homegrown tomato. Salt & pepper. Also ate these many times for breakfast when I was growing up.

Make sausage gravy biscuits for breakfast, using the equivalent of 1 hamburger pattie for the amount of sausage used. Crumble the cooked sausage into the gravy. Use leftover chicken to make a chicken gravy biscuit variation.

STIR-FRY - many healthy economcial meals can be cooked in a wok. Requires very little meat or oil for cooking. A huge variety of vegetables purchased when most economical or in themselves economical can be used. A box of cornstarch and a bottle of soy can help create the sauce for many meals. One of the secrets is to prep the veggies yourself. Buy big bags of carrots when they are on sale. Cut your own cabbage shreds. Buy loose whole heads of celery, instead of those bags of neatly trimmed ones.

Tip: Use a charcoal starter chimney instead of the stove to stir fry. Cooks faster with a much higher heat than most kitchen stoves.

Cornmeal - there are a number of ways this can cut meal expense. Cornbread (southern/northern styles), baked, fried. Mush. Polenta, hoe cakes. Etc. Slice open a hot corn pone. Add butter. Serve along side a mess of collards or other greens for a meal.

While some of this isn't "recipes", IMHO, it's just as important to know different ways to use simple ingredients for meals. Stir fry, above is the example. Once a person knows how to stir fry, there's no telling how many "recipes" exist for that cooking concept. In fact, recipes aren't needed, once the concept is mastered.

Just some thoughts, this morning.

Lee

1 lb of black eyed peas and 1 lb of browned sausage can feed alot of people. I toss in a can of diced chilis. to stretch even more, up the peas to feed more people or cut the sausage. i use jc potter breakfast sausage. (no msg..directly added at least)

lentil soup is nutritious and filling. onions carrots and lentils with seasoning of your choice.

of course chicken soup. chicken quarters are .54 a lb around here. they make great soup along with homemade noodles or dumplings.

cabbage and potato soup.

learning to add ingredients that will up the nutritional value of things that have lesser value alone such as white rice and pasta is imperative. canned mushrooms, pimentos and chilis are great. frozen chopped spinach or a bag of frozen peas are some of my favorite things to add. all are relatively inexpensive.

people are accustomed to getting meals that look like the magazine covers they see at the checkout. and are accustomed to the fake taste of processed foods. making those are expensive healthwise and pocketbook wise. if you insist on having pretty grilled portabellos instead of canned mushrooms or a salmon plank instead of a can of tuna or a can of campbells soup instead of taking the time to make stock and noodles. expect it to be expensive, though not neccesarily more nutritionally dense.

__________________
A mystery is not an explanation..... on the contrary....no sooner is a myth forged than, in order to stand it needs another myth to support it.

$1 per person can be done relatively easily I think - $1 for a family of 4 is a bit more of a challenge! I agree with Micheal and wolf mom - cheap meals are only cheap if they are also healthy when you consider the long term effects of poor nutrition. A pack of ramen noodles costs about $.25 and can make a meal but nutritionally is it worth it? With a bit of planning and some ingenuity cheap AND healthy meals can be made ... here's what we had for supper last night -

Cooked up a roasting chicken I got on sale for $6.55. I cut the breastmeat off before putting the rest into a large stock pot with about 4 liters of water, some celery (from our garden) an onion and some seasonings (also from the garden.) The breast I saved for tonights meal. The chicken simmers for a couple of hours. When the meat came easily off the bones I removed the chicken and picked the meat of the bones. In total I got 34 cups of meat and stock - for an average of just over $.19/cup. I used 1 cup of meat and 10 cups of stock, some chopped carrots and celery(from garden) and a handfull of brocken up spagetti noodles to make soup. With the soup we had biscuits made from whole wheat flour, milk, butter, baking powder and about 1/4 cup of "vegetable powder" that I made from some of the dehydrated squash, broccoli leaves, tomatoes and celery from the garden this year. Total cost/biscuit - about $.04. The soup made 2 meals for a family of four so . . . $.26 per serving avg plus 2 biscuits each, total per person for this meal - $.34 each. Little bit more than four for under a buck but not by much!

Tonights dinner - chicken and vegetable stir fry. Probably won't be under $.25 each but considering the chicken I will use is "free" (I factored the cost of the whole chicken into the soup and stock from last night.) and most of the vegetables will be from the garden produce we have in cold storage. Now that I think about it - I can probably keep it around $.25 if I serve it with rice . . .

As I did with the chicken, I will do with pinto or black beans.

Night #1 - Pinto beans, greens and cornbread
Night #2 - Tostados or Burritos - Set aside 4 or more cups of pinto beans(to be used in another meal) re-fry pinto beans in olive oil.
Night # 3 - Chili - Use beans you set aside the night before and add 1 lb. ground meat and tomato products you like, add corn if you want. Now is the time to use any left over corn bread( didn't think so ). If not then use crackers, cheese and maybe some sourcream or plain yogurt.
If there is any left over chili, we have chili dogs for lunch the next day.

The trick here is to make sure that you cook up enough beans! We have a large family and I usually cook 5 to 10lbs. of dried beans.............so it's a big pot!!! Beans are cheap and are nutrition/fiber dense food. You can even add rice to any of the above meals to make a complete protein.

I should add that we usually have some type of bean once a week, so we don't get bored!

That leftover chili over a baked potato would be great, too! Top it with some sour cream and shredded cheese.

Does anyone know if beans with corn, whole wheat, or potato makes a complete protein?

One dish meal:

1/2 lb of ground beef, browned-75 cents on sale
can of mixed veggies-50 cents
can of whole kernal corn-50 cents
can of tomatoes-50 cents
box of elbow macarroni-50 cents
optional: chopped onion, can of sweet peas

mix all together in a pot. cook on medium heat till pasta is done. season with salt and pepper to taste. Feeds 6 easily.

Note- Extra cans of veggies or quarts of home-canned veggies can be substituted to stretch meal for more people or for multiple meals.

ANY bean/legume and ANY grain makes a complete protein. It doesn't even need to be consumed in the same meal, just within the same day.

There are a gazillion healthy vegetarians in the world who get adequate protein in their diet. Think about it.....

Nevermind, Michael is trying to keep this on topic, and I respect that. There's a ton of research to support this.

__________________
I cried because I had no shoes, until I saw a man who had no feet.

If God hadn't meant animals to be eaten they wouldn't have made so tasty. However, some animals are more tasty than others.

Back to original thread, many low-cost meals can be made using only a bit of hamburger as a garnish rather than as the main dish.

What I call Chili Beans

Brown hamburger, add to pinto beans, season with chili powder. Serve with rice.

I had that one time for Christmas dinner.

That's absolutely correct. Every indigenous people of the world came up with those combinations of basic foods that kept them alive. Native American's combined corn and beans. In the middle east they paired lentils and wheat. In China it was Dofu and rice. In every case, pairing a grain with a legume.

Virtually all plants are lacking in an essential amino acid that humans need. Most grains don't have much lycine, while most beans don't have methionine. Combine the two and you get everything you need.

My view though is if two sources of nutrients are good, than three will be better. I'm not a dedicated herbivore though and I'd like to add at least a little meat to my dishes, even if it is mostly just for flavor. That's the central theme behind a lot of asian cooking anyway, making the most of what you've got. I threw in the hamburger patty theme as much for the attention as the practicality. In general, I like recipes that combine small amounts of animal protein into whatever I cook, whether it be beef, chicken, or seafood. Thanks for all the good imput. I'm sure that there are some people out there that are inspired to eat better.

The old saying, you cant make a silk purse out of a sows ear comes to mind. Unfortunately most supermarket food is quite questionable as far as nutrition and health. These items cant have a truly positive difference no matter how they are prepared. They certainly have taken the taste out of the few so called unprocessed products they still sell while upping the price significantly.

You can stuff grass clippings and tree leaves into your stomach to get rid of the hunger pangs if it gets to that point, but that doesnt mean your body gets any nutrition from them. Thats all I am pointing out. If limited to supermarket, probably dry beans and brown rice about only affordable things still halfway nutritious and they doubled in price with the speculator price spikes couple years ago and didnt come back down in price significantly. Anything affordable has been adulterated or grown in such conditions as to make it nutritionally the equivalent of stuffing grass clippings down your gullet.

__________________
"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman