Bread crumbs can be really expensive, at least two dollars a pound. When you figure that you can get chicken breasts and pork loins for two dollars a pound or less. it’s not too big of a stretch to discover making your own from the bread ends is a good idea. Switching from bread crumbs alone to bread meat or make chicken nuggets from scratch to a mixture of equal parts of nuts, parm, and breadcrumbs is a way to reduce carbs and make the dish more healthy. Winco has real parm cheese and broken nuts cheaper. Nuts are in the bulk isle so you can I just what you need.
- Cream soup base is another way to control what ingredients you use and makes a casserole much cheaper. There are a couple of recipes, you choose the ingredients you want to use.
- Making your own seasoned rice instead of a box is another way to spend a few minutes and save a lot. It takes a lot of preservatives out of your diet to make your own mixes. Measuring things is good math skills for children.
- Making some if the things that are easy and not too time consuming frees up money for the things that are more expensive. We would much rather have a pound of chicken breast than someone else’s dry bread.
- Baby carrots are someone’s ugly carrots put through a machine. They are more than a dollar a pound. Five pounds of carrots are 2.28 . And you get the peelings for stock.
- Stock can be almost three dollars a quart. It can cost almost zero. Again, it is ten minutes of time. Dump it on an insta pot or a slow cooker and walk away. Vegetable or,chicken stock.
- There are crusty bread rolls and peasant bread recipes that take minutes and cost fractions of what a loaf of bread costs. Crusty rolls .21. No, the decimal is not off. And peasant bread is a quarter. Salt, water, yeast and flour.
- Buying dry bean instead of canned beans saves a ton, I didn’t do that before I got an insta pot. Beans don’t freeze well. They have a very short refrigerator life along with rice. If you have a small family, scratch beans on the stove isn’t practical. In the insta pot, or takes no more time than opening the can. We just got beans for .50. That’s a great price that doesn’t always happen. They can cost upwards of a dollar. Scratch costs a nickel for the equivalent of a can.
- Pinto beans are .67 a pound at the dollar tree. Non gmo, and grown in the USA.
- Rice when purchased at Costco in a bag costs .02 a serving. A bag of premade seasoned rice can be well over two dollars. Again, less than five minutes in the insta pot.
- Meal plans and carving out an hour a week to clean out the refrigerator and dump anything dead saves a lot of time during the dinner hour. Prep ingredients once for the week and make note of things you need to use up. Make a plan, or plan to fail. It is just less stressful.
- Beans are a good way to stretch meat for tacos or even spaghetti . If you are short on money, adding beans to enchiladas or rice to chicken enchiladas stretches your meat.
- Stair stepping saves time and money. That is the term I coined years ago. It is making more of something to be used later on the week. Cook once, eat twice. That chili you had Monday can become a baked potato bar topping on Wednesday. Or a burrito bowl with rice and peppers and lettuce and tomato. Or, the rice you cooked on Tuesday can be under meat and veggies Tuesday and in a casserole another day.
- Soup is always a good idea. Warm, comforting with a piece of hard crusty bread 🥖 and cheap. Potato soup cost less than a dollar for four servings. Chicken noodle less than two. Chili 2.32.
- Revisit chili or taco meat and beans with cheese, tomato, black olives and peppers on top of tortilla chips. Mild chilies are .69 a can at Winco. Double that for the name brand. So,e product, different label.
- Best time saver is to cook a batch of ground beef when you get it home. De fat it, and portion control in bags for the freezer. It saves countless hours at dinner time. Tacos on ten minutes. Take it out of the freezer, bang it on the counter or give it ten seconds o the microwave, and place room a small pan with taco seasoning and water. While it is heating, chop the toppings, and heat the shells in the microwave.
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