ok, you are latin so you like rice, beans, tacos etc? Those are very inexpensive to cook.
Here are some tips I use:
I buy rice and keep it in the freezer so no bugs get into it.
As far as meat for tacos, enchiladas, sandwiches you can buy beef and pork marked down at the grocery store (look for the clearance section). Freeze it right away. When ready to cook, put the meat in the crock pot (still frozen) with some pepper and spices, a little bit of liquid (water) and beef bouillon if you like that. In the morning, the meat will be cooked. you can cook it all night and the meat will be done in the morning (Note: some crockpots are hotter than others so you might be able to cook it on low all night). Stick the crock pot in the fridge in the morning. when you get off work that night, take the meat out of the crockpot and you can use the meat for beef sandwiches, taco filling, nachos, etc. There will be liquid which you can use to make gravy (buy some cornstarch to make the gravy) Then just make some instant mashed potatoes or nuke a baked potato and you have a good meal. Make your own tv dinners with the extra left overs to freeze for when you are tired and don't want to cook.
Save the little trays from TV dinners or buy some glad ware so you can have some frozen meals. If you make enchiladas or lasagne you can freeze the extra into meal sized portions and freeze. The freezer is your friend as you are too busy to cook chasing after a 15 mo. old.
I'm not sure if you can eat bread but I bought a bread machine at a thrift store for $8 and I make some killer bread. It only takes 10 minutes to assemble the ingredients and the bread cooks on its own while you are doing your doing mom stuff.
I pre boil pasta noodles and store in zip lock gallon bags in the fridge. When you are ready to eat, just add jarred sauce when you are in a hurry or need to pack lunch for work.
I also make my own soup. You can make it on the stove or in a crock pot. This is super cheap meal. Just add chopped chicken or beef, water, boullion, frozen vegs, a can of diced tomatoes, some left over rice and let it simmer. You have soup ! I also add the pre boiled pasta noodles at the end if I am not adding rice to the soup. The noodles get soggy so you don't want to let the soup simmer with the noodles.
Hope this makes some sense and helps you. there are lots of tips online !
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