Under $5

This week I actually have been cooking what I've planned this week. I love when that happens because it is so rare!
I want to cook at home and save money and everything but it's hard for me because 1) I hate my kitchen. It's small and limited and I hate it and I hate being in there. So I don't like to cook in it. 2) I'm too lazy. Honestly, when I've worked a long day and I'm tried, its soooo much easier to go grab food than cook and than clean it all up. So I wuss out.
But Monday and Tuesday, I made dinner and it was what I planned. Yay me!
My goal when I do cook at home is to get the cost of the meal under $5.
Monday I made pasta with salad and zucchini and it came to $4.77!
Last night I made bbq pork sandwiches, corn on the cob, salad and snap peas. It came to right around $5. I can't remember quite what the meat cost, but it was right around $3.
Either way, I'm happy!

Dinner and frugality.

(So none of my pictures will upload. Don't know why. I'll probably try again later)
So I think I've stumbled on a plan. On Tuesday I took out my ground beef to defrost for dinner that night and I had the idea to take the steak out too, for Wednesday's dinner. So I made teriyaki burgers on Tuesday which cost me about oh... $2.50. And then with the juice I made a marinade for the steak and let that marinade overnight, so tonight they were ready to be grilled. And because I had already defrosted the meat and had already let it marinade, I just had to make dinner. I couldn't tell myself any excuses. I had to execute this plan. So I grilled my steaks kinda early, so they could rest and cool, then be sliced up and put in my salad.

And then Russ called. He wanted us to go hang out with a friend for a while tonight. K, perfect, we'll eat right after and the steaks will already by grilled so we'll have to eat them! So while I waited for the steaks to cook, I already chopped my veggies so when we do get home later tonight everything will be ready, well almost ready.

So in here, I've got sugar snap peas, mushrooms, radishes, carrots, and cucumbers.
I didn't chop up the tomatoes, because I didn't want them to get gross sitting in the fridge for a couple hours. And I chopped the onion, but didn't want to add them to the rest of the veggies because I didn't want all the other veggies to smell and taste like onion.
And I didn't slice the steak because I didn't want it to lose all it's yummy juices. But those are quick fixes and then dinner will be quick and easy tonight. And it should cost about... maybe $6. The steak was more expensive than I'd like but I bought it a while ago, when I'm still (and I'm constantly) learning.

Oh, and another frugal thought. I used 2 pineapple rings on the burgers last night, used the juices in the marinde and ate the remaining 6ish rings today for lunch. I've never eaten rings alone like that, but why not? It's still pineapple and it didn't get wasted. yay.

PS. So we're back and we ate. Here's the finished product.

It's kinda pretty. I cooked the steaks too long tho. Too bad. I'm still kinda proud.

Dinner tonight

I made dinner tonight and while I didn't love it, Russ sure liked it which is nice. I just made a Jennie-O turkey loaf because I got a mail in rebate so it was free! -sales tax and the stamp it took to mail in the rebate haha.
I served it with corn and a salad.
The corn was .60
The salad was um.... 0.50 maybe. the lettuce was .16 the tomato was .10. The cucumber was .50 but i used like maybe a 6th, that's .08. That's 0.34 and then the cost of dressing I don't even know how much that costs.
So total that $1.10.
None too shabby.
Plus there's leftovers. While there might be leftovers. Russ is thinking about finishing it off. If he doesn't I'll have it for lunch tomorrow with the rest of the tomato and cucumber that needs to be used up.

I actually followed my plan!

I made spaghetti tonight! I asked Russ what he wanted for dinner and he told me to just make a decision and stick to it. So I said, okay. and I stuck with my first decision. yay me. While cooking, I started to worry that it was turning out to be expensive. But I was wrong.
The spaghetti:
ground beef was 1.95
spaghetti sauce was .79
pasta (I didn't have spag noodles so I just used bow tie which I bought for a dollar and this was the second meal I've used them for. I used about 1/4 the bag the first time and 3/4 the bag this time) .75

The zucchini was .33
The garlic bread was 2.20 for 8 slices and I used 4 so that's 1.10
Total:  $4.92
Just under my goal of $5.00! Plus, there's a ton on leftovers. easily lunch tomorrow and Sunday.
Plus Plus, Olive Garden's Spaghetti cost $9.95. And that's just for one, not counting drinks Russ and I would order if we went there. Score.

dinner tonight

For dinner tonight I made BBQ chicken  sandwiches, and this has got to be my favorite thing to make for dinner. and Russ loves them, so it's a win-win. It's the simplest recipe ever. All you do is put 1 chicken breast in a slow cooker and pour the bbq sauce all over it. I don't measure I just dump it. Let that cook all day and after or 7 hrs or so come back and shred the chicken and pour more sauce over it. Cook that for like 1/2 an hour more or so. butter your hamburger buns and toast them in a frying pan till nice and toasted. This is important because otherwise the bread can become too soggy. Then just top the buns with the shredded chicken. That's it. I served it with corn and some Sun chips. Easy peasy and yummy for a fun casual dinner.

Dinner Tonight

I love my slow cooker. I love coming home knowing dinner is already cooked. But tonight, well...dinner was gross. I made 20 garlic chicken which came to a rough total of $3.50 and it was not good! So I made myself chicken nuggets and russ ate a bagel.
I served the chicken with knorr's alfredo pasta sides and zucchini. The only thing we ate was the zucchini!

Dinner Tonight

Made dinner tonight. Somehow I got the dates wrong on my meal plan post- I worked last night and made dinner on Wed and well, I just didn't wanna make french toast so I made the pork chops instead. I just breaded the boneless pork chops with an italian crumb/parm seasoning blend and pan fried them in olive oil. Then I made a sauce out of 1 c chicken stock and 1/3 chive and onion cream cheese till it thickened into a sauce. I served it with biscuits and veggie sticks.
Pork chops: 4.00
chicken stock: 1/2 a .83 can- .40
Cream cheese: 1/2 a 1.99 tub- 1.00
veggies: carrots and radishes: roughly .25
biscuits: 1/2 a .50 can- .25.
The meal was about $6.50. Not terribly expensive, but I really want to try and make sure dinners cost less than $5 in the future!

Dinner Tonight

I made dinner again tonight! yeah! I'm on a roll. I made Brown Sugar Chicken. The chicken was just okay; Stephanie at A Year of Slow Cooking raved about it, so I was expecting something different, I guess. Russ said he'd eat it again.

The chicken was from a bag of thighs I bought at Costco a LONG time ago, and russ has been after me for a while to make them. (He said he was proud of me for cooking them tonight!!) They cost like $8 and there's like oh 15 in there so that's like um.....54 cents each. I used 4 of them so that's 2.16.
The brown sugar, vinegar and soy sauce are (I consider) pantry staples plus I have no clue how much I bought them for, nor how much 2 tbsp would be so...
The lemon-lime soda was 1.39. The recipe only calls for about 1/4 c but I never would have bought it otherwise (yet...I did drink the rest).
I served it with Chicken and Garlic Rice-a-roni that was 1.00. I severely overcooked it, so look for it in future food waste blogs.
And bagged salad that was 1.67 and this was the third and forth servings of the bag, so that's about .83 plus fixings. I'm rounding to 1.00
SO
my total was $5.38.
I would have made it under $5 if I didn't wreck the rice! (It made about 6 servings but I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna eat the rest, so I'm counting the whole dollar. ) Sad.

Dinner Tonight

I made dinner tonight...sorta. Tonight Russ and I went to my store party. I've mentioned before the perks and (many) downfalls of working at a grocery store. Well, one of the perks is that we had a party today. Russ and I went and there was a prize drawing and Yours Truly won the Vizio 22" Flatscreen TV!! I was super excited.
Then when we got home, it was late and I was not about to cook a whole dinner, and my mom had just given us a can of chili, so we made chili dogs!

Chili- FREE
hot dogs- .11 ea. x2
hot dog buns- .25 ea x2
cheese- the whole 1lb bag was only 1.99! We used about 2T of that, so that's like...what?
Total: Just over .75 cents!!
I think that makes up for the chicken fiasco yesterday!