The cover of the Wegmans 'magazine' (actually a glorified sales circular) touts six meals that can be made for six bucks per serving. While I love the experience of shopping their stores, it's not something I do regularly. For us, a six dollar serving is a splurge, not frugal!
I make my sauce from scratch -- always. Now that I've got my favorite formula, anything in a jar is never good enough. The only exception, is at camp. We need meal components that store well. The boxes of strained tomatoes and the jars of pesto were a buck a piece at Dollar Tree. These will be a meal in a crock-pot with chicken thighs. A large tray of thighs to serve six can be had at the local grocery store in Sodus for about four bucks. I buy good (Colavita) pasta for a buck a pound. That means a meal for six people for seven bucks total. That is how we price a meal!
I am obviously not above cheating. Especially at camp -- but it happens at home too. Save-a-Lot and Price Rite sell Jiffy corn muffin mix for about forty cents. I like to take a box of mix, then double it by adding the same quantity of whole wheat pastry or buckwheat flour. I double the egg, oil, and milk. This makes a healthier, and not too sweet muffin. Of course some of my $1.49 strawberries made it in for the muffins shown here. A couple of weeks ago, Tops discontinued Bob's Red Mill buckwheat flour. That means I had a cheap way to make this batter into pancakes -- I just increased the milk to a sufficient quantity to turn it into pancake batter. Yum!
We hosted a breakfast for four at camp -- corn & buckwheat blueberry pancakes and bacon. The bacon was on sale for four bucks and again, my other ingredients came to less than two bucks. We fed four people, plus I had enough pancakes left over to have two for breakfast for the rest of the week.
I also mentioned a few posts ago about a microwave brownie kit. These are made by Betty Crocker and were two bucks each on clearance. One tray uses about a half box of mix, and makes four large brownies. I will stock up on mix when it's on sale for a dollar a box. Rather than going to an ice cream stand for dessert, I get a pint of vanilla ice cream and whip up a batch of brownies in the RV microwave.
For us, six bucks per serving is preposterous. Six bucks per meal? Doable!
Yeah, six bucks per serving looks great if you are comparing it to restaurant meals but not anyone who creates home cooked meals regularly. My average is about $8 Canadian total for the two of us with occasional splurges and sometimes we are way under that (soup night).
ReplyDeleteYou are right about where we are when you take the currency conversion into account! Now that I am using the Sous Vide, the cheap red meat I buy is turning out better than what we get in a restaurant. I can make a meal with two NY Strip steaks, potato and salad for under six bucks. So, it's not just applicable to "bargain" meals like chicken or ground beef. Pancakes at home are a real bargain too!
DeleteI like to make a meal for $6 and serve it to the two of us with leftovers for another meal for two. When everything is bought on sale, it is doable.
ReplyDeleteThat's the way we live too! I read an article about a family that had a food rule that they had to pay just a dollar per pound for food. I don't know if I could work that out, but still feel we're doing good at our rate. You too!
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