Ideas for Healthy Cheap Meals When Money is Tight

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Unemployed? Frustrated by rising food prices? Don’t worry! You and your family can still eat well. Here are some cheap meals menu ideas that will reduce the food budget. However, the most important thing isn’t the food you make, it’s the menu planning you do before you even spend a dime.

Please do not neglect menu planning if money is tight. Our Menu Planning 101 post is a good place to start.

1. Eggs are cheap and delicious.  About $2.50 for 18 eggs is not too bad. Add in a $2.50 bag of potatoes for hashbrowns, some cheese (save more money by shredding it yourself) and you have the fixings of a delicious, filling breakfast for the week. (Tip: Bake the potatoes, refrigerate, and then fry ‘em up as you need them all week long.)

When you’re sick of eggs, combine them with flour and sugar to make muffins.

2.Soup is also a good way to stretch the food budget. Buy a small whole chicken and boil in water with some onion and carrots to make the broth–this should all cost less than $7.  Remove the chicken, save the breasts for another meal, put the deboned dark meat in the pot and add some rice.

The chicken breasts can be shredded for chicken salad (just add mayo and serve on bread) or make great chicken enchiladas (tortillas, cheese, beans, can of enchilada sauce).

3.Super cheap dried beans with just 1lb of meat make for an excellent chili. The recipe on this site makes a lot so consider freezing half of it for another time.

Per #2, bean soup would be a yummy, filling lunch for just pennies per serving.

4. Use cheaper cuts of meat. Chicken thighs and drumsticks are pretty inexpensive, but make delicious meals.  We’re actually working on a few recipes using cheaper cuts that will be posted soon-ish.

5.Skip cereal and eat oatmeal instead. Not only is oatmeal better for you,it’s cheaper and comes in large containers. Big, off brand containers can sometimes be found for under $3 and would last more than a week.

6.Do it yourself. If money is tight, it’s time to grate your own cheese and to stop buying bagged lettuce–the fresh, unprocessed lettuce is about 50% cheaper. Start a small garden too. Stop paying someone else to do the work–do what you can at home and grow your own. Every little bit saves you money.

7.Switch to frozen fruits and veggies. They are usually quite a bit cheaper than fresh and much better than their canned counterparts.

Notice how these tips do not rely on highly processed foods full of refined sugars! This is healthy food on the cheap, the whole point of this blog; good food, cheap meals.

This post is part of Pennywise Platter Thursdays.

Tags: cheap meals, meal planning, menu planning, reduce the food budget
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