My husband and I challenged ourselves to not buy any groceries this week, and we've been eating like kings since Friday with some inventive meals. I wrote about it on my blog here if you want to check it out. It's looking now like we won't need groceries next week either, except for some milk and maybe fresh fruit.
Here's some of my tips:
-Buy some chicken drumsticks (this is the cheapest cut in my area, and they are usually 50% off on managers special on wednesdays or thursdays because that is when the stock from the weekend starts cutting it close to the sell by date) and make roasted chicken one night, add on veggies, rice, etc.
-use the bones of the chicken to make stock, also any excess meat. use some of your frozen veggies and some pasta, leftover rice, or whatever you have to make soup (in the crockpot even!)
-you can make penne, ziti, orzo, shells- whatever kind of pasta, with a plain spaghetti sauce (no meat), have that for dinner one night. The next night toss in some frozen spinach, a bit of chicken stock (or water & boullion), and whatever your favorite veggies are. You can also add chicken if you have some (canned works fine). Voila! You have soup. I've made this with 1c pasta and 1 1/2c sauce, and by the time I added veggies and broth had a huge stockpot full of soup. Tastes good with stale bread.
-I see you're a midwesterner- hit the farm stands or garden enthusiast neighbors!
-Throw a less-than-desirable cut of pork or beef in your crockpot all day, season with a bit of your favorite barbecue sauce, and bake some corn muffins from the $0.25 mixes. Serve the pulled pork/beef over the muffins, or use buns if you can find them cheap enough.
-Smoked Sausage on the grill with corn on the cob...yum!
-Bell peppers are on sale in my area now (and popping up in the garden) so stuffed peppers (or cabbage if you like that more) is a super cheap meal. You can stretch the beef really far with rice. In my house we usually buy some extra peppers and make a TON of extra filling, and then the second day have rice with beef, tomato sauce, and peppers poured over it
-Egg Rolls. You can buy a package of egg roll wrappers in the produce department of the grocery store, there's about 30-40 for $2. Buy a pound of ground turkey (or pork, chicken, etc. but I like to use turkey and it is usually $2 here), a package of chinese seasoning ($0.50), and a bag of coleslaw mix ($1.50)- mix all of the inside stuff together, stuff the egg rolls (there's instructions on the pack) and make a huge batch of them. You can freeze them and have them for probably the rest of the month- you'll be sick of egg rolls FAST.
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