Frugal Meals

A caveat: We don’t eat meat from factory farms. Your actual value may differ.

We have found that the cheapest way to purchase chicken is whole. (Sometime chicken quarters are similarly priced)

As we’ve tightened our budget we’ve opened up to new ideas. So, instead of buying just breasts or thighs we got a whole chicken and to our delight it’s been super easy.

I’ve added a link as an example but basically layer some veg (or not) at the bottom of a slow cooker. Place your whole chicken inside and cook on high for about 4 hours. I’m telling you that’s it’s. If you want some crisp you can broil for 5 minutes at the end.

We usually have this with rice and veg the first night. Then, after the meal we pick off the extra chicken to us for a casserole or burritos. Then you can even boil up what remains to make a broth or chicken soup base. That’s 3 meals!

This tip is for Kroger stores, specifically Dillons, but I’m sure other stores do something similar and I’d love to know.

At Dillons, nearly all I’ve been too, somewhere near the “back” of the produce section around the bananas there is a wooden rack with net-type bags filled with discount produce. In my experience it’s just slightly misshapen or off-color produce marked down to $0.99.

6 large Servings

Total $5.16/meal or $0.86/serving

This is one of those “end of the week, what do we have left in the fridge” type meals. This is a basic version of a recipe you can do just about anything with.

Basic Expenses:

Crust:

• Flour $0.26
• Butter $1.40
• Water ??

Filling:

• Eggs $0.80
• Spinach $1.59
• Cheese $1.00
• Milk $0.11
• Salt/Pepper ??

At the end of the week we ended up with some extra eggs, some garden spinach and a bag of frozen chopped spinach. Throw in some cheese, make a crust. Voila! Frugal Meal!

Basic Directions—

Make (any old) crust: Combine 2 cups flour, 10 tbsp butter. Then add 5 tbsp water one at a time. Spread into pie plate.

Make filling: Combine 7 eggs, bag of chopped frozen spinach (or your choice of others filling), 1/2 cup of cheese, dash of milk, salt and pepper. You can adjust the ratio of fillings/egg as needed to accommodate more or less extras. We went heavy on spinach and light on egg. Add mushroom, left over cooked meats…you name it!

Pour filling mixture into crust and bake for around 45min to 60min at 375°. It’s ready when it’s not runny.

As the picture shows, most (all??) grocery stores will show the price per ounce on the item’s price tag.

It’s usually on sales tags too.

I was FAR too old before I realized this and it’s made price comparisons in-store much easier.

Note: Not my photo. Just generic photo from google.

TLDR: A 5lb bag of white rice comes out to $0.10/cup cooked.

Doing the cost breakdown for the last post left me a bit shocked at the price of rice per cup. Especially when you think of the $4.00 or more companies charge for premade rice cups.

The breakdown— Kroger sells a 5lb bag of white rice for $3.69. You can get it for $2.99 on sale but for the sake of argument let’s use retail pricing.

5lb of rice = 12.5 cups dry rice ≈ 36 cups cooked rice. Based on this, each cup of cooked rice costs about $0.10/cup cooked.

4 servings (2 adults, 1 teen, 1 preteen)

Total $19.93/meal or 4.98/person

The protein (and feeding two teens) is this meals biggest expense. As a base without the protein the cost for the ENTIRE meal is $5.95 or $1.49/person. Substituting in a cheaper protein like tofu or increasing the portion of spicy beans would keep this meal well under $8.00 while keeping stomachs full.

Basic Expenses:

• White Rice-2 cups dry: $0.48
• 2lb Shrimp: $13.98
• Frozen Okra Bag: $1.50
• Spice Black Beans: $1.98
• Avacado x 4: $1.99

Breakdown of the Numbers:

5lb bag of rice = 12.5 cups dry = 36 cups cooked This equates to $0.24-$0.30 cents/cup dry or $0.08-$0.10 cents/cup cooked.

2lb Sand Bar Shrimp @ $13.98 = approximately 80 shrimp or $0.17/shrimp.

Frozen Okra $1.50/bag (We’re also growing this in the garden and hope to cut this cost soon!)

Spicy Black Beans: 1 x Black beans $0.79/can 1 x Tomato Paste $0.99/can 1/2 Onion $0.20* Salt/Pepper/Chipotle Powder ??

4 x Avacado $1.99

*Kroger sells a 2lb bag of onions that has 7 medium sized onions in it. Prices @ $2.79/bag or $0.40/onion.