Terrific Thursday.

Past mid week.   Whoo hoo!  

I cooked two chicken breasts that had deboned and froze.   This time I cooked them in the baby pressure cooker and added two cups of water.   The water had not evaporated, but the chicken was done from frozen in 18 minutes.    I'm going to try a Tex-mex recipe.   Next is making refried beans, not fried.  It's a Betty Crocker recipe that layers taco tyoe ingredients in a round pan.  

I could be a super fast dish if I didn't make things from scratch.   I like refried beans from scratch because they are a lot cheaper and have no fat.   I got the chicken breast for .87 a pound.   The difference between sox dollars a pound and less than a dollar a pound made it more than worth my while to debone it and make stock from the bones.  

Speaking of worth while, there are some things that it doesn't pay to buy organic if you buy organic.  
Mushrooms, bananas, watermelon for a few.   They either aren't grown in such a manner to have pesticides in the first place. Or have such thick skins that the pesticides don't get onto the flesh anyway,    Organic bananas are 1/2 again as much as regular ones.   And speaking of bananas, if you our some bananas in a dark cool place, they won't ripen as fast. I have a,so heard that wrapping the stems with foil will make them last longer.   If you want to make banana bread and you don't have ripe bananas, you can  microwave the bananas and make them mushy.  

Groceries on the cheap is looking at the "put the meal on the table train" from  a different perspective. 
The emphasis is on purchasing good shelf stable or frozen food  for a RBP in quantity - enough to last you until ot goes on sale again or to keep a controlled non-perishable stock of the things you  use  on a weekly basis. 

This means that instead of shopping daily or weekly for just the things you need to cook your meals for the week. You go to two stores and buy :
1) a protein that is a RBP - enough to make that meal for x number of days. (I.e.: if you eat it once a week, buy enough for 4 meals.)
2) produce and dairy you will need to fill in the meals for the week. 
3) a stock item, if you need to and it is on a RBP - enough to fill in to your self imposed stock level. 

You often are paying 1/2 price for your food.   This allows you to put well-balanced meals on the table consistently on a four dollar a day per person budget.   You spend more time on the locomotive ( planning and shopping ) end of the train, and less time in the caboose ( kitchen j) by cooking more efficiently. 

 Four dollars a day is the target amount for people on snap.   My premise is that of you can do it on 4 dollars a day, spending more is not difficult and you still get more nutrition for your buck.