Cook with less meat - Seriously... make your meat stretch out. The best way to do this is casseroles! I buy the split chicken breasts (with bones and skin) and you will be surprised how far you can make three chicken breasts go when put into a casserole! I made a burrito casserole today to feed my family of four and hubs' mom and dad along with the sides and toppings and this is the break down of how much it cost...
- package of split chicken breasts - $2.50
- homemade flour tortillas - @ .50
- taco seasoning - free (from coupon shopping)
- can of Rotel - .79
- package of shredded cheese - $.99
- Mahatma yellow rice - free (from coupon shopping)
- tomatoes - free (from our garden)
- onion - .25
- lettuce - .50
- Total cost for feeding six people - $5.53
That comes out to about .92 per person. Not to mention that I am going to have leftovers even after feeding everyone! That to me is a great cost for feeding someone an entire meal. You can't even do that from a "value menu" at any restaurant that I know of.
Casseroles are a GREAT way to make your meat go further, especially chicken because split chicken breast goes on sale all the time for .99/lb normally, but I have gotten it for less and always have my eye out. There are tons of recipes out there for chicken casseroles. I will try and put up some of my favorites.
You can also replace one meal each week with one that is meatless. You can always cook some beans in a huge pot with some onion and cornbread. This is always a great thing to do during the winter. You can make a mexican dish with refried beans instead of ground meat. That is a huge cost savings. You can even make your own refried beans out of black beans, especially if you find them on sale!
Make breakfast for dinner one night a week. This can also go along with a meatless night as well. Who doesn't like homemade waffles or pancakes with some butter and syrup? You can find sausage or bacon on sale for less than $2 a lot of times and that's your meat cost for the entire meal to feed the whole family. Put this with some eggs and some pillsbury biscuits (almost free if you coupon shop and get them on sale too) and you can have another meal for your family that costs under $5.00!
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS save your leftovers! If you are like me you can pack them for lunch which is a great way to cut costs because you don't have to buy lunch nor do you have to buy extra to make your lunch because it's always there. I always think ahead when I'm cooking. Or after a few nights when you have plenty of leftovers make your own buffet for dinner and you can either skip cooking that night or you can cook less. Either way, that saves money and time which is pricesless.
Utilize your freezer! If you have leftover meat, like BBQ chicken, london broil, etc and you don't get around to eating it freeze it! You can always use this meat for soup, stir fry, omelettes, fajitas, casseroles, pizza, etc. I have done this a lot because sometimes we just don't want to eat it, so might as well freeze and use later than throw away and waste. If you have onions, green peppers or some other veggie (not lettuce) about to go bad cut it up, put in a freezer bag and throw in the freezer. You can always take these out to make soups, sauces and things of that sort. Example... I had both onions and green peppers that were about to "expire" so I cut them all up and put in separate freezer bags and put in the freezer for future use. I took them out about two weeks ago and made spaghetti sauce with them. Sure when you cook with the frozen veggies like that they don't retain their firmness so not a great idea to use for stir fry when you want crisp veggies, but they are GREAT for soups and sauces where it's OK if they are mushy.
If you like tomatoes take the time to plant two plants outside. We planted two small plants which cost less than $10 and we have yet to even get close to running out of tomatoes this summer. That alone has saved a ton of money and keeping up with two plants has not been time consuming. Just water and weed occasionally (if you feel like it). I'm sure they have paid us back more than 20 times what we paid for the small plants. I have eaten tons of tomato sandwiches, made spaghetti sauce (which I have extra in the freezer), made salsa which I canned and have just eaten tomatoes with everything this summer. It's been great!
There are other ways to save, but these are the ones that I try and utilize every day.
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