Dinner at my house

Holly has been sharing her menus and what it costs to feed her family. Let me say I am SO impressed by her frugality and resourcefulness! She aims to feed her family for 35 cents per person per meal. Yes, you read that right. Thirty. Five. Cents. Egads! That's awesome!

Now I have to tell you right up front - I don't come anywhere near that. I have a little different method of food budgeting. I try to come in under $20 per day for food costs for the six of us. With four ferociously hungry teenagers, it can be a challenge. Not so much the meals, which I have control over (except of course, when they show up unannounced with their friends *smile*), but snacks cost me A LOT. They like stuff that they can grab and eat fast - fruit, yogurt, and cookies are popular. Also cheese and crackers, boiled eggs and pepperoni sticks. But I am getting a head of myself.

Here's how it works for us: First of all, I plan all our meals a week or more in advance, planning around what I have on hand and then shopping once a week for the rest.

Breakfasts - everybody fixes their own. We get up and leave the house at different times, so I simply make sure I have breakfast foods on hand and everybody gets their own. Typical breakfast meals are a bowl of cereal or oatmeal (I make my own "packets" that they can microwave), toast and peanut butter, scrambled eggs and toast etc. but not always. I've seen my kids eat leftover hot dogs, spaghetti, whatever.

Lunch - everybody packs their own, but it is a little more structured than breakfast. I make and keep lunch options available and everybody grabs what they want for their bag lunch. I posted about how I do that a while back.

Snacks - I do the same thing with snacks as I do with lunches. I keep snack options available that I try to vary every week. I used to do a lot of baking when I was at home - cookies, muffins, quickbreads, etc. - but I don't do nearly as much as I used to. We have a bakery thrift store close by though, which is where I buy cookies, crackers and bread. My kids are like most kids - they will eat chips and junk food if it's around, and I do buy "treats" each week - but not a lot - too expensive! The "treats" are always the first to go and then they can choose from the list.

Dinner - I try to keep dinner to $6 per meal - so $1 per person. Here are some recent dinners:
Last night we had farmers sausage (on sale $1.99 for a package of 6), hash browns (3 lbs of potatoes @ 30 cents a pound, peeled and shredded and cooked in a little vegetable oil with salt and pepper, so say $1 for the whole thing) and braised cabbage (half a head of cabbage @ 99 cents a head, cooked with a little oil and seasonings, so say another dollar) so that works out to 67 cents a person. I was actually very surprised when I calculated out the cost. I really thought it would be more.

Tonight we are having beef stew. 2 lbs of stew beef was $7.98; 3 lbs of potatoes - .90; 3 lbs of carrots - $1.05; half a rutabaga - .35 , plus say 50 cents for seasonings. This made a giant pot - I estimate there will be 20 big servings - so that works out to .54 a serving. I will serve this with my free bagels.

I am fortunate in that even though I work outside the home during the day, I am home in plenty of time to make dinner. I usually have about 2 hours before my husband gets home, so I have enough time to cook "scratch" meals. Even so, I do keep a supply of "quick to fix" products in the house. Canned soup, dried pasta, etc. When the kids show up with an extra friend or two, a meal can usually be stretched by adding another side dish - I keep a container of biscuit mix at the ready (recipe here) for just such occasions! I also bring out leftovers. *grin*