Category Archives: $5 Meals

This is a running list of $5 meals that feed at least 7 for one meal.

Friday Food Five

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  1. We have tried 3 new recipes this week. One of the reasons is that I realized that we have been able to have a different meal every night for the entire month of February. This is quite an accomplishment and a way for us to use up items in our freezer that we would not normally do.
  2. Rotel Chicken Spaghetti I really had high hopes for this dish. I thought that Zach would love it. But it turned out ok. It was the favorite one of mine of the week, but I honestly don’t think we will repeat it again because no one was thrilled with it. And we have so many awesome Mexican recipes that we really enjoy!
  3. Tater Tot Breakfast Casserole- This is a recipe that I found on Facebook. The difference is that it uses sausage links and bacon. This actually turned out to be very good and filing. However, it was very time consuming. Matt made it for dinner, and it took almost an hour to prepare so even though it was good. I don’t think it will be a repeat especially with our very busy schedule.
  4. Chicken casserole- layer in order 4 cups shredded chicken, can of cream of chicken soup, can of cream of celery soup, packet of onion soup mix, frozen vegetables and a box of already prepared stuffing.   Matt made the stuffing at lunch. Kendall ended up assembling this while we did some quick planting outside.  She did forget the onion soup mix, so I simply threw it on top.  This took almost an hour to cook but was good. We probably will not repeat it again either, but it may be one of those meal we make just to eat and run.
  5. I have already made a list of 42 meals that we are going to plan to use during the month of March. The best news is that we already have all the ingredients needed so I am not planning on spending much for groceries in March!

Monday Menu Plan

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This is going to be a different sort of week. One of the reasons is that I found several new recipes to use with all the items we have on hand.  I will probably most likely do a post on Friday about all three of the recipes. Otherwise we have things picking up with Zach starting to manage the middle school baseball team and Lily has practice at LYT every day this week. Sticking to the plan will be nice and make things run much smoother this week. I also made several salads on Sunday to use for lunch this week to make my mornings go much easier.

Breakfast– Saturday- French Toast- made some for the freezer as well.    Sunday-Bagels   Monday-Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday -choice of breakfast muffins, eggs, sausage, oatmeal, cereal, pancakes, French toast or grits or breakfast burritos. We are back up to a full stocked freezer for breakfast.
Lunch- – Saturday- snacks and left-overs Sunday – Lunch at East Coast Wings   Monday- Thursday Salad for 2 days and left-overs for a third so that covers most of the week.
Dinner- – Saturday- The Cheesecake Factory with a gift card. Sunday- Snacks and left-overs again.  Monday-Rotel Chicken Spaghetti. Tuesday-New breakfast meal.  Wednesday- Soup Thursday- Hamburger Helper   Friday-New chicken casserole.

Saving on Saturday including More Recipes!

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I have spent the entire day inside… yeap that makes it a good day!  We have spent a lot of extra time today working on food prep and on making some new and different things to try out!

We started this morning or actually last night working on “burrito bowls” that Matt and Zach could eat for an easy lunch. We actually used a bag of black beans from the pantry to make the re-fried beans, rice from the pantry and made taco meat from already cooked ground beef. Zach had one for lunch that he actually shared with Matt. Both agree that it is a definite repeat.  We made 8 original bowls, but Zach thinks he would be fine with just half of one!

We tried “Keto Pickles”

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These did not turn out what they looked like here and actually Matt thought they were also too salty.  We will not be repeating this.

I saw these cucumbers on Facebook today

They were an all-around hit!  Cucumbers with cream cheese, bacon and Everything bagel seasoning!

And finally, the crockpot in the back is full of this deliciousness which we all enjoyed for dinner!

bowl of cheesy sausage potato soupCheesy Sausage Potatoes   

A couple of changes or things we did differently- I used breakfast sausage, frozen hashbrowns (small strips) canned corn, diced tomatoes, beef broth and left off the cilantro. I am so thankful that we were able to freeze a container of this to use for a future meal. The thing that made this soup even better was the homemade bread that looks perfect

The plan is to end the night by backing some 3 ingredient bagels for tomorrow morning.  No spending at all because everything was from the pantry or freezer!

 

Saving on Saturday- written on Sunday

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This has been a crazy long and fun filled week.  After spending Friday night partying for Lily’s birthday. Saturday was spending cleaning up from said party and finding ways to  save and use as much of the food in my refrigerator as possible.  Food waste is one of the biggest areas that I can save money.  Lily’s birthday party was not on the frugal side so anything we can save and use.

We had purchased 3 veggie trays for the party at Lily’s request.  We came home with extra carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and rainbow peppers. The peppers were placed in the fridge because I am positive that the girls will use these for lunches and snacks over this week.  Matt was in charge of cutting up the baby carrots for freezing we were able to package a total of 9 cups of baby carrots in the freezer.  The packages of frozen carrots to purchase are $1.25 each.  The veggie trays are $14.99. By saving these we were able to re-coup the cost of one of the trays. I was able to steam and puree 5 cups of broccoli which was labelled for use in one of our favorite soups. another $2.25 found.  The cauliflower is not a preferred food for any of us however, I plan to take it with hummus and some ham salad to use as a meal this week as well.  We had purchased 3 bags of potatoes for baking. We ended up with approximately 25 potatoes that had been fully cooked. I made a baked potato salad to go with the pulled pork, Lily received for her birthday.  We also used this as a lunch meal.  We will use some of the potatoes for a baked potato soup this week. By adding some butter, cream cheese and sour cream we have 10 additional dishes of mashed potatoes to use for future meals.   Finally we took the left-over turkey combined with celery, carrots and onion made a casserole for dinner on Tuesday of this week.

The other area that we are focusing on is electricity use. Our electric company has joined the modern age and I am able to monitor our use daily. We have currently increased our usage by 7.77% over last year. I want to figure out what is different and how we can decrease this use as rates are also increasing.

Any suggestions or ideas are appreciated!

$5 Meals

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I have added a new category $5 meals.  I want to first explain my rationale for adding this so late in the game. I enjoy reading lots of blogs. It often helps me with saving money and it also gives me so great ideas.  One of the consistent themes that I have been reading for several month is that the cost of food is rising.  I have read on some sites that the expectations is that all food prices would increase by 10% plus percent by the end of the year.    I am definitely starting to see this in my area. For example, a 10 pack of water flavors has been priced at $1.00 for at least 2 years.  This is my buy price and I can always find at Walmart.  Yesterday, the price had increased to $1.23 for the box.  Fortunately, I have worked really hard to stock both the freezer and pantries with enough supplies to last at least until December if not longer.   I decided that I also wanted to start a list of these $5 meals so that in the future, I can come back and rotate through them again!

Spaghetti sauce- this is definitely a family favorite. In fact, most everyone prefers this over jarred sauce.  I did not know if we would have enough tomatoes to restock this summer but it appears we do. I did not try and make any salsa or diced tomatoes but hopefully in the future we will be able to stock both the spaghettis sauce and other items.    The tomatoes are from the garden, I purchased around 40 plants for $36 this spring so I am averaging $1 per crockpot as my cost.  $1 green pepper, $0.50 onion (from freezer), basil and oregano were from the freezer from past years.  Garlic =$0.50 and 1 tablespoon of sugar.  $3 for the sauce and $1.00 for the pasta makes a hearty meal for all  of us less than $5.

Pasta Salad for lunch-  We all are taking lunch most days. The kids really don’t like sandwiches and I try to avoid bread whenever convent so that leaves a lot of decisions and lunch making.  We have found an easy solution- dressing up pasta salad.

Suddenly Pasta Salad™ Creamy Parmesan - Front

I always purchase when I find for $1 a box.  We actually used 2 boxes to make 7 lunches.  I added Deli Ham that was purchased on clearance for $1.84, a half a block of colby jack cheese, purchased for something else, 2 boiled eggs, (ten cent each) and of course tomatoes from the garden.   Less than $5 for lunch for everyone that is filling and good!

 

Do you have $5 meal ideas to share?

Meal for under $5

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I wanted to share a meal that cost us a total of $4.75 plus tax and made 7 meals. All five of us ate dinner. Kendall does not like meat so we placed her brat and some left-over corn in a lunch container. I added some pepperoni from the fridge and a tomato to the remaining pasta salad for my lunch tomorrow.

Brats, these were found on sale for $2.75 for a pack of 5. Each time I stop at the grocery store to grab milk or veggies, I always walk down the meat section just to see if I can find anything reduced.  I think these were purchased last April or May. They were in the freezer until yesterday.

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Suddenly Salad- I usually stock up on these when I find them priced at $1 each.  We often make 2 boxes for a meal or use for our lunches.  I still have around 8 boxes in my pantry for future use. Kendall  made this while I went to the store for produce.

 

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Corn on the cob!  I have been watching prices this summer in hopes of stocking up on these but since this is the cheapest I have found all year and the freezer is full. Guess we can enjoy now! We placed these in the shucks on the grill and man did everyone enjoy!

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