Three to Five

Everyone has a different way of budgeting for food, I think. I decide on what we can purchase by a per-person/meal/plate entree budget (or what one person can eat per meal or plate), which used to be $3.00 maximum. Since prices have doubled and tripled on meat, I've had to raise that max to $5.00. The veggies and side dishes I make are all pretty cheap (we grow a lot of our veggies now) so I don't worry about budgeting those.

My entree limit pretty much puts beef off my shopping list, as in if the beef I want to buy is more than $10.00, and will only serve the two of us for one meal, I can't buy it.

Exceptions:

1. Ground beef, which averages about $8.00 per lb. on sale here. I can stretch a pound to two to four meals (if I make pasta sauce with it, six.) One pound also makes two mini meat loaves, for example. I buy three or four pounds at a time and freeze it.

2. Flank steak, if I can find it for under $10.00 per pound, makes two meals of London Broil or marinated Korean BBQ steak for us at $2.50 a plate.

3. Infrequently: Now and then I'll find some small top sirloin steaks in a value package that works out to be about $6.00 per steak, and buy that as a treat for my guy, but that's a dollar over budget.

That's about all the beef I can afford these days.

Chicken is our primary entree protein now. I buy four or five pounds of chicken breast at a time on sale and cut the breasts in half to make single portions, which works out to about twelve plates, or six meals. That runs me about $1.25 to $1.50 per portion. Much cheaper than beef, but the problem then becomes food fatigue. I can't serve five nights of chicken dishes, even if they're all different, because my guy gets tired of them, so I also opt for reasonably-priced pork, lamb, shrimp or fish (the latter is for me.)

Making alternative, non-traditional entrees is my new obsession. One night a week we have homemade pizza, usually cheese or cheese and pepperoni, which my guy has yet to tire of. The cost works out to about $4.00 to $5.00 per pizza, and it takes us two meals to eat the whole thing, so $1.00 to $1.25 per plate.

Last night we had tuna salad sandwiches for dinner. That cost about a dollar a plate, and we don't mind sandwiches now and then instead of a traditional meal. Another variation of this is grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup, which because I get everything on sale works out to seventy-five cents per portion.

If we're not hungry, we have a snack instead of a full dinner. I had a bagel last week as a substitute for the meal, and even with cream cheese added that cost less than fifty cents. Sometimes we split a can of soup and eat toast with it for a super light meal, which works out to about $1.00 per plate.

Leftovers are everything now. We save at least two meals' worth of extra food to serve as another meal every week. We also bring home anything we can't eat at a restaurant and use the leftover food as a meal substitute.

I think the trouble people are having with grocery bills being so high is that they're trying to eat like they used to before [insert whatever reason you believe is responsible for the insane rise in food prices.] The trick is to be more flexible and inventive with your budgeting and what you eat. Breakfast for dinner, there's a cheap alternative. Homemade dishes always cost less than convenience foods, so dust off your cookbooks and try to get back to cooking from scratch. Stop eating out so much, too. I'd recommend skipping frozen food altogether; the quality has gone right into the pits, and the portion sizes are laughable, especially if you're trying to feed a six foot four two hundred pound man like I am.

Have some fun with your meals and get your family involved in the process. Right now my guy and I are reverse engineering his favorite Japanese mall food so I can make it from scratch. I make the base recipe and he gives me feedback on how I can improve it, so the next time I tweak it. By this method I learned to make his favorite pizza, bagels, stir-fry and garlic knots. We love doing this, too.

Image Credits: Steak picture by Trang Pham, chicken skewer picture by Husky Kuma, pizza image by Andreas Riedelmeier, all from Pixabay.