Cheap dinners

So my meal planning usually goes like this:

Sunday night I sit down and pick 4 dinners I'm going to cook the next week. I usually try to pick 2 that I know I can make quickly (like 20 minutes or less), one a little more complicated, and one that I make ahead of time (like in the crock pot). That way I can still make the longer cook time recipes that I love, but I can do it on a night when we're not very busy or when I know Scott will be home with plenty of time to watch Luke while I cook. Having two quick-cook recipes takes a lot of stress off of me at the "magic hour" (5 pm at our house)--you know, the time of day when you've run out of steam and the baby is getting cranky and dad is getting home and everyone's hungry and it seems like there's too much to do.

Maybe 4 dinners a week isn't much to cook, but I always make 6-8 servings (Scott and I are kind of pigs, I guess...we each eat more than one "serving" at dinner, and Luke eats almost a small adult serving if it's something he likes) so we have leftovers. Lunches during the week are leftovers or sandwiches. So 4 nights a week (usually Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday) I cook a meal, 1 night is "gecheroni" (get-your-own-ey, meaning clean out the leftovers in the fridge...usually Thursdays because it seems like I get more tired as the week goes on), and 2 nights we plan to eat out (almost always Friday & Saturday, but if, say, Tuesday one of us has just had a crappy day or we've got too many errands to run, then we might eat out then & stay home Saturday night).

I have a Pinterest board of new recipes that I really should try, but it seems like we get into kind of a routine of eating the same comfortable things all the time and I don't really mind. I think these are all dishes that I can make for pretty darn cheap, and most of them take about 20 minutes to half an hour to cook. We usually have the main course plus a veggie (frozen, canned, fresh, whatever) on the side, and a grain on the side if it's not already in the recipe (say, something like rolls).

(Well, drat. I thought I had brought my list out to Utah, but I guess I left it at home. We'll see how much I remember.)

• Tacos
• Quesadillas
• Rice & beans & grilled chicken
• Pasta al forno
• Carbonara
• Spaghetti bolognese
• Stir fry
• Curry
• Tikka masala (I've only ever made it with chicken, but I want to try paneer sometime)
• "Oriental" chicken salad
• BBQ pork sandwiches
• Bratwurst roll-ups
• Hamburgers (well, turkey burgers, since I'm too cheap to buy beef for anything anymore)
• Oven roasted chicken (bone-in) & potatoes
• Chili cheese dogs
• Cabbage patch soup
• Crock pot "roast" (I usually use boneless pork ribs since I can get them cheap & they're mighty tasty)
• Egg & sausage hash (meaning I try to make omelets and they end up scrambled eggs)
• French toast
• BLTs

I think I've left off a few that we do all the time, but that's a good enough list for me for now. Basically my grocery lists look like this:

Meat 

• Ground turkey--1.49 lb (I use half a pound for a meal)
• Ground pork (sausage)--2.29 lb (same story, half a pound at a time)
• Boneless pork ribs--2.49 lb (I usually use about a 3-lb package)
• Bratwurst--2.69 for 5
• Bone-in chicken--0.99 lb (don't use this very often...basically only for roasting)
• Boneless skinless chicken breasts--I can get these on sale for 1.69 lb about 6 times a year; otherwise I use the flash-frozen ones in the big bags that are 2.00 lb. 
• Bacon--2.69 for 12 oz (I use half a package at a time)
• Eggs--man, I don't know...how much are eggs? Not very expensive.

Can you tell our grocery store is awesome?? Most of those prices are pretty killer, although I know you can find similar to that in Utah if you watch sales. I only bothered to list the prices because meat is almost always the most expensive food you buy. Basically I can keep our grocery costs low by refusing to buy meat for more than about $2.75 a lb., which does mean no beef--but I love pork so much that I don't care. Scott misses it a little, but he just orders beefy stuff when we eat out. :-)

Dairy

• Milk
• Butter
• Cheddar cheese (block)
• String cheese
• Cottage cheese
• Yogurt (I usually buy 1 pint a week, alternating plain & vanilla--I use the plain for cooking whenever you'd use sour cream, and it's yummy to eat on its own if you stir in honey)
• Parmesan in a can (once in a while we'll splurge and get the real stuff)

Grains

• Bread (I get 2 loaves a week since Luke & I eat so many sandwiches & toast)
• Penne pasta (our grocery store doesn't carry the whole grain kind, so I try to get that if we're ever in Walmart or whatever)
• Spaghetti (whole grain...it gets kind of gummy if you get the thick noodles, so I buy the angel hair)
• Breakfast cereal (raisin bran, mini wheats, granola, cheerios, and Scott's pick of the week, usually the generic Honey Bunches of Oats)
• Tortillas
• Tortilla chips
• Oatmeal (when we run out, which is like 4 times a year)
• Rice (I like to buy the 25 lb bags at the international foods store--something like $17 for my favorite brand of brown rice, which is a steal)
• Sometimes a box of hamburger helper for crazy/lazy nights
• Frozen crescent rolls
• Triscuits

Fruit & veggies

• Apples
• Bananas
• Blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, some kind of little berry (whatever is cheaper, frozen or fresh)--these are Luke's favorite food in the universe and they go on sale often enough that I try to keep some on hand.
• Oranges--well, whatever citrus is cheapest that week (tangerines, clementines, whatever)
• Strawberries*
• Pears*
• Avocados*
• Kiwi*
• Mangoes*
• Grapes*
• Baking potatoes (yukon golds)
• Roasting potatoes (reds)
• Sweet potatoes
• Onions
• Carrots
• Spinach (bagged)
• Romaine lettuce
• Broccoli (frozen)
• Cauliflower (fresh or frozen)
• Asparagus (frozen)--only because our grocery store carries an awesome generic kind
• Green beans (canned)
• Other canned veg as the mood strikes (beets, corn, whatever)
• Raisins (for Luke)

You know, listed out like that it sure looks like a lot. It doesn't seem like it when we're shopping. And the * ones I pick one or two of only if they're on sale.

Baking goods
Okay, so I am trying very, very hard to be good and quit making dessert so often. I used to just keep a constant stock of things like brown sugar, chocolate chips, powdered sugar, etc., but now I'm trying to get to where I need to make a trip to the grocery store if I'm going to make dessert. Wish me luck!! I do keep flour, white sugar, and canola oil on hand, but I buy those in bulk when they go on sale.

Other stuff
And then misc pantry items like peanut butter, honey, jam, olive oil, ketchup, salsa, soy sauce, etc. as we run out. The ones in that category that we go through the fastest are peanut butter, honey, and olive oil; I love love love love love Costco's olive oil and peanut butter (I'm going to have to figure something else out when our membership expires next month...), and the honey at our grocery store is usually not too expensive.

Snacks
Scott and I each have our weaknesses for snacks that we want but don't need...he always likes to get a bag of chips, and I have to keep otter pops on hand (even in the winter...I stock up in the fall, haha). We try to limit ourselves to only one snacky thing per grocery trip (so per week), though. Most of the time at home we'll snack on stuff like popcorn, tortilla chips with salsa or cottage cheese, fresh fruit, and whatever dessert I've made lately because I have no willpower. I did try making kale chips the other day, and I thought they were awesome. Salty and crispy and yummy. They have a weird aftertaste, though. My family didn't like them. What kinds of snacks do you guys eat?

So that's basically my "pantry" list--stuff that I buy if I've run out, no matter what I'm making that week. And actually, there are a few exceptions (like I get the tikka masala mix at the oriental store, and I get cabbage if I'm going to make soup), but basically all of those dinners only need the pantry list stuff. I don't buy anything else unless I've got a pretty darn good reason to (like I've been asked to make a specific dish for a party or something). I guess all the produce can get expensive, but we don't buy very many things that are pre-processed anymore (the ones I can think of are all of our breakfast cereals, the crescent rolls, and the chips), so I know we save loads of money that way.

I don't really use coupons at all. I tried to use a coupon on the kind of sunscreen I like the other day, but I think I left it at home. The foods I buy (fresh meat, fresh dairy, produce) never really have coupons. Things that aren't food (like cleaning supplies and diapers), I can beat the coupon prices by ordering in bulk on Amazon like Melissa said. I think couponing works really well if you have a lot of pre-packaged foods that you buy, or if you don't care what brand of health/beauty supply things (like shampoo) you buy.

Well, what do you guys do for dinner? What are your stand-by meals that you make all the time? Any grocery store tricks I can steal from you? :-)

What we've been trying

Feeding my family healthy AND staying on a budget is one of the constant battles in my life as a mother/stay-at-home wife (if I wasn't stay-at-home, I don't think I would feel as responsible).

It seems like the price of groceries has tripled, maybe quadrupled, since we were freshmen (which is when I started noticing prices of food).

I'm open to all and any good ideas people have.  These are some of the things I've been trying to help my budget, my food storage, and the health of my family:

• Limits.  There are some foods we eat that are just expensive.  Cereal for example.  So what we do is at the beginning of each month we'll buy 1 or 2 of the bulk bags of cereal.  When it's gone, it's gone.
• Freezer.  When things that can freeze (such as cheese) are on a good sale, I buy up to $20 worth and put it all in the freezer.
• Cans.  Same as freezer things.  The things we use in cans (tuna, cream of whatever, corn, etc.) I buy a case of when they are an extraordinarily cheap sale.  I don't know what the prices are around you, but if I can find cans for less than 40 cents, it's a good price.
• LDS Cannery Items.  This is one I've been working with a lot and for several reasons.  These items can be so useful and the number 10 cans store for 30 years!  I try to purchase all of our oatmeal from here.  I also have some cans of dry milk.  I use it in recipes that require milk, but not real milk.  If you get it from the cannery it makes things cheaper, if you buy it from the store, it may not be.  Dry milk is super expensive in stores.  I use other cannery stuff too, this is just an example.
• Amazon.  I order some things off of amazon.  Not everything can be shipped, but I've found some items (such as peanut butter) are cheaper when bought online.  If you have a prime membership (free from buying baby things...formula, diapers from them), sign up for subscribe and save, and collect amazon gift cards from websites like swagbucks, you can get some seriously cheap, possibly free (depending on how much searching you do and how often you buy things from amazon) peanut butter.  I buy dishsoap this way too.  (It's not necessarily cheaper than buying the cheapest dish soap, but normal dish soap makes my hands bleed and I use a more expensive kind that does not.  Totally worth it to me to be hand pain free.)
• Make your own stuff.  This won't always save you money, so I think you have to be really realistic about how much something costs you to make it vs. how much it costs you to buy it.  My mother gave me her grain grinder, so I buy wheat from the cannery and grind it (actual whole wheat flower).  I use it to do, well, everything.  I haven't noticed a huge flavor difference.  I actually like it better.  The cannery sells wheat you don't have to grind too.  I usually spend about $20/month on cannery items.  We don't use all those items in a month, so it builds our food storage and it's stuff we use in our regular diet, so if there were a disaster, we wouldn't suddenly switch to a weird diet, ours would stay the same.  (I make bread [still searching for a recipe I'm in love with], tortillas, biscuits, pierogies, and pretty much anything else I feel like.)
• I try to make sure to always have at least one fresh vegetable and/or fruit in the fridge.  I would like it if I always had a few choices, but the end of the month it tends to dwindle.  This one saves zero money, but I've felt like it's a huge benefit to have these things available.  I clean them and put them in bowls so that if we feel like a snack an already prepared something healthy is available upon inspection of the fridge.
• Rice.  We eat a lot of rice.  We eat brown rice.  Is it better for you for real?  I don't know.
• We rarely make a dessert.  There's only three of us here.  When we make a dessert it lasts forever and we all get way to much sugar, so it really has to be a special occasion or we have to have company and even then sometimes we don't have dessert.
• Snacks.  I've come to be really realistic about snacks.  We snack when we feel like it, so I've started making sure something is available to snack on so that we don't eat the food that was intended to be our meals.  If you don't buy super expensive snacks, I think it can save money.  And when you have set things that are snacks already, you have a lot of control over how healthy too.
• Vegetables.  I've been trying really hard to make sure a vegetable accompanies every meal.  Sometimes salad, sometimes a can of corn, sometimes something frozen from a bag, sometimes just potatoes, but anything I consider a vegetable.  I don't know if it's actually helping us be healthier, but it makes me feel better about our eating habits.
• Left-overs.  When we have left-over breakfast, it is our snacks until lunch.  When we have left-over lunch, its our snacks until dinner.  When we have left-over dinner it becomes part of another meal.  This just seems like a good idea to me.  It's what Ryan's cousin does and she knows more about healthy everything than any person I know, so I always assume that the things she does are a good idea.  If you're curious about her this is her blog about being healthy.
• I've been working on figuring out an exact system for grocery shopping so that I'm always getting the same amount of the same things for the same price from the same stores with a dollar amount of flexibility for trying things.  It's a huge work in progress.  Sorry for the long list.  I've been working on this topic for quite a while now.

There are so many DIY things available online for other things to like shampoo or cooking oil or laundry soap, or a rinse aid...blah blah blah.  I've tried the baking powder as shampoo thing.  I hated it.  I love my shampoo and conditioner and will not try it again.  I don't buy cooking oil.  I have a misto can that I exchanged at a fancy department store from our wedding.  I just put some oil in it.  I've also heard of putting some olive oil and water in a bottle and spraying it on things.  Try it if you feel so inclined.  I've never used a rinse aid before, but I've been putting vinegar in my dishwasher (we have extremely hard water here) and it's been helping my dishes.  I'm going to start trying a 1 to 1 vinegar water mixture as an all purpose cleaner and disinfectant (when my stuff runs out).  I'll let you know how that goes, but vinegar really is amazing.  I'm also thinking of starting to make my own laundry soap.  I know of two ladies in my ward that make their own (both of their clothes look nice and they've been doing it for 5 years minimum).  It ends up costing you about $4 to make, what was it, I think 10 gallons of laundry soap.  The price has me sold on trying it.  I've been trying to research it for the sake of my clothe diapers especially.  So far my research is inconclusive, but there are lots of people who use it and write about it online.  All about the same recipe.  I have yet to hear someone who doesn't like it.  I get skeptical of these things, but with the purchase of our van, I'm looking for as many ways as possible to cut money that we can use to pay it off so that we can have a savings again.

That was long.  Sorry.  Ryan was nice not to complain that I was using the computer while he cleaned up dinner though.  :)

Congratulations if you read to here.  I consider it a feat.