Recipes

Time for cheap dinner! Making dinner yourself is always a good way to ensure that your family has a cheap -er, nutritious meal. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way and you find yourself going through the drive through. This week we're doing a cheap dinner from Wendy's!

I am assuming that your family of four consists of two adults and two kids. My family of four happens to have 4 adults (1 elderly). We will be shopping from the dollar menu at (drumroll please) Wendy's!

Wendys
4 baked potatoes (sour cream & chives) - $4
3 chilis - $3
2 side salads - $2
Total: $9 plus tax

Pour chili cover potato and top with sour cream & chives. Toss salad with dressing and divide amongst 4 diners. Viola! Want to be more healthy? Buy only two potatoes and 4 salads. I'm sure that you can think of a decent meal that doesn't just consist of hamburgers from your local fast food restaurant. Good luck!

It's that time again! We all still have to eat so let's do it as frugally as possible. Let's do a sandwich.

Egg Salad Sandwich
1 pound supermarket egg salad $3.99/lb
8 slices of bread $1.00
1 clamshell alfalfa sprouts $1.00
1 tomato $0.99/lb - $0.30

Salad
1 bag Dole complete Southwestern Salad Mix $3.50

Total - $9.80.

Toast bread and compile ingredients for sandwich. Toss salad ingredients together with dressing. Serve! I love those salad kits. They come with cheese, dried fruit etc., and the dressing is also included. It's fast and easy. To save even more money make the egg salad yourself for under $1.50 using roughly 6 eggs, mayo, paprika, salt, pepper and a tiny bit of vinegar.


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This is another installation of the feed family of four for under $10. This week we're doing stuffed peppers. Everyone in the world has a recipe and you can do all these things a million different ways so feel free to do it your own way.

Stuffed Peppers
Brown Rice $1.50
6 Red Peppers @0.99/lb $3.25
1/2 pound ground Sirloin $1.75
Half Can of Chunky Veg Tomato Sauce $0.50
Italian Seasoning Mix $0.20
Small Onion $0.25
Garlic Clove $0.10
Grated Cheese $1.00
Optional:
Lettuce chopped $1.00
Oil & Vinegar Dressing: $.35
Total: $9.90

I browned the ground beef along with the onion. Tossed in the garlic, seasoning, sauce and cooked brown rice. Makes a soggy price and beef mix. Stuffed them into peppers that had been cored and duked into boiling hot water for 3-5 minutes. Added a small sprinkle of cheese to the top. Put the tops back on and placed them in a glass baking dish. Added a small amount of water to the pan to keep from scorching and put foil over the top. Baked the peppers at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes and viola! Stuffed peppers! I added the chopped lettuce with oil & vinegar to the side and that was dinner. Healthy, fast and cheap. One of us had 2 peppers but that can be forgiven.

I couldn't resist making this post. I know that we're all pinching pennies and one of the ways that I found to save money is on food. So I have to feed a family of four every day and I've gotten pretty decent on figuring out how to do that on less than $10 (and I'm talking dinner). I've brought my lunch down to about $2 but that's another post. So my general idea of dinner is a starch, a meat product and a vegetable. Hey, that covers the food groups. Anything more than that and they are on their own. I'll give you one example today along with prices. So let's get to it!

Chili
Ingredients:
Kidney or black beans in a bag $0.89
Small can of tomato sauce $1.39
Ground beef or chicken or turkey $4.50
Onions $0.25
Garlic $0.10
Chili powder and spices $0.50
Rice $2.00
Total: $9.63

Cheese optional
Sour cream optional