Feeding your family a good meal is easy. Just go to the grocery store and empty out your pocketbook.
But what if you aren't so flush? What if your wallet is looking a little lean? What if times are hard and money is short?
Everybody has to eat, right? And it is better to eat good food than bad.
So I decided to cook some delicious and even elegant meals to feed a family of four for less than $7. It is not difficult to do; all it takes is a bit of imagination.
Imagination, and an inexpensive protein — no steak or lobster for these meals. Even ground beef and chicken have become so expensive that they can no longer be relied upon for a cheap meal. If you are looking to stretch your budget, you'll need to stick with the essentials: beans, eggs and pasta.
First, the ground rules. I bought my food at a discount store. In determining the price of each meal, I took into account only the cost of the amount of the food that I used and put the rest aside for future use.
My 25.4-ounce bottle of olive oil cost $5.99, so two tablespoons of oil was about 23 cents. One tablespoon of butter, at $3.50 a pound, cost 11 cents. A dozen large eggs cost me $2.09, so six of them were $1.05.
In addition, I also kept to items that most or many people would ordinarily have in their pantry. No weird spices, no truffle-infused honey. I did buy some items on sale, but only if I needed them for my recipes — I did not alter the recipes to use sale items.