- Chicken parm : spaghetti, sauce, breaded chicken, parmesan cheese, green beans
- Pizza
- Taco soup, tortilla chips
- Fried rice, egg rolls
- Pork chops, seasoned rice, peas and carrots
- Salmon patties, oven fried potatoes, peas
- Breakfast for dinner : egg muffins, fruit parfaits, ( blueberries, yogurt, granola layered .
Notes :
- We use 1/2 a box of spaghetti and my big pricej for spaghetti is less than a dollar. omemcan still get Barilla for a dollar at the DT. Use real parm, not the stuff on the green box. You can eat on the cheap without eating cheap food. Its good food cheap, not cheap food. We use Foster Farms breaded chicken . Its always good to eat local chicken .
- Pizza is a good thing for a cheap meal, Scratch dough is fast and cost .19. The cost if dough in the grocery store is 1.50 to 2.00. You still have to roll it out and fill it. Pizza sauce is cheapest at the DT and it is a name brand. One jar will make 5 pizzas, Freeze it in an ice cube tray and pop the cubes out into a zip lock. You can take a couple of cubes out while you roll the dough and they will be ready. Or zap them in the microwave for about 10 seconds, Pepperoni is a dollar at the DT for 2 packages of 14. Pat it with a paper towel. This isn’t
- rocket science, my granddaughter has been assembling pizza since she was 4 yo. From dough to ready for the oven.
- Taco soup is easy in the slow cooker or insta pot. Precooking ground meat and portion controlling it in quart freezer bags is a real time saver. You are more likely to de fat a whole batch than you are to do it on the Herod the dinner hour,
- Fried rice is a good use of the chicken pieces you have in the freezer. Again, the insta pot is a good resource, bit s frying lean works well with leftover rice.
- Pork chops are from the middle of a pork loin, That makes them as low as a dollar a pound instead of 3.50. Seasoned rice is a homemade mix with chicken granules and herbs,
- Salmon patties use a can of salon from Costco. Oven fried potatoes are easy and veggies se less fat. Anytime you can use a little olive oil instead a lot of a hydroginated oils is good,
- Breakfast for dinner is a family affair here. Everyone participates. Sometimes it’s waffles, pancakes, occasionally bacon, a quiche, fruit , yogurt parfaits. We make our own granola. That way we can control the ingredients . Real honey, nuts, and oatmeal that we purchase in bulk.
Anything that you can efficiently scratch cook is always better than things out of a box with few exceptions, There are a few things that take too much time, or cost. It is cheaper to buy pasta sauce on sale with coupons than to make scratch. I recently got Classico pasta sauce in a wide mouth jar I can reuse for dried herbs for .50. That is cheaper than it cost for the jar.
Investing in good tools if yo7 have the money and space is a good things no, you are much more likely to scratch cook if you can efficiently scratch cook. The insta pot is a good start, it is a slow cooker, a rice cooker, and a pressure cooker, The larger one makes yogurt. I, personally am afraid of anything that I can mess up and potentially sicken my family with, so I will pass on the yogurt!. LOL that being said, the insta pot uses a smaller footprint than the three appliances it replaces. And, it does the three things well. The savings on rice and beans scratch cooked instead of ready cooked pays for the machine in no time. I never cooked scratch beans because beans and rice have a very short refrigerator life. They spoil quickly. It is too much bother to cook 2 cups of beans the old fashioned way,: wash, soak, cook until done. In the insta pot, you wash and check for any foreign things, ( like stones) , place on pot. Add water to cover up to your second knuckle, close the lid , lush a lever to seal position, and push the bean button, done. Rice is just as simple.
Simplify your ingredients , buy at RBP, always keep a 4-6 week stock.
Four plus one is five : Four people, one meal, five bucks.
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