Best Cheap At-Home Dinners....

chops+fresh green beans = less than $5/person

oh, and GRILL DAT

anything in the slowcooker is your friend. Chilis, stews etc....

Box of Pastaroni and a chicken breast. Around $5 for 2

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From scratch tomato sauce and pasta

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or the other direction, pasta, butter, garlic, cream, milk, or maybe even "coffee mate" to make a sauce...
ETA: potatoes......... During some pages of the "Early Years", we made alot of meals on potatoes.. We used them as the main entree, boiled, fried, baked or whatever, and added sumptin, sumptin with them...

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Red beans should top this list

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+1

Cant go wrong with some red beans and rice, even throwing in some sausage is still less than $5 and there's usually leftovers for another day for both my wife and me.

pasta with olive oil, bread crumbs, parmesan
pasta with anchovies
pasta with egg
pasta with various combinations of the above and cheap vegetables or canned vegetables. some halved cherry tomatos are nice.

beans of any kind with salt pork or sausage

Pork Steaks! Basically a pork shoulder that is cut into steaks. They are DIRT CHEAP. We eat them at least once a week and each time we still go on and on about how great they are...especially for the price.

Here are the best things to get when you want to eat cheap. First of all, we don't want a starch heavy diet since that will lead to certain fatassness. Yes it is cheap, but it is not healthy either. You want a certain amount of veggies/fruits, meat and starch with every meal. And some of the best things you can buy are:

Whole Chickens You can eat for three days off of a whole chicken. The first day you bake it and eat some of it. The second day you pull the rest off and have chicken spaghetti or chicken salad, the third day you boil it down and have chicken and dumplings or a soup.

Rice Great for side dishes, casseroles, and cheap. Just add some butter and salt and skip the gravy unless you are eating it with a hamburger steak or something.

Hamburger meat spaghetti, tacos, baked hamburger steaks, meatloaf are all easy to make and cheap. Buy the big rolls of ground beef. Forget the lean stuff, just do some extra situps.

Pasta Need I say more. It is cheap, pasta sauce has veggies in it. You can buy the cheap pasta sauce and be happy.

Frozen Veggies These are usually cheap and they will keep forever in you freezer. Just heat some up and have with your starch and meat.

Salad in a plastic container. Costs about 4 bucks, but will last for a week without going bad, good for multiple meals, and is very healthy.

Potatoes Are cheap and can be cooked a hundred different ways. Don't get to reliant on them though, they are a starch and your body will turn that into fat if you eat a lot of it.

Generic drink mixes Everyone gets sick of water all the time. buy some generic sugar free drink mixes at Wally world. Buy some sodas every once in a while as a treat.

Bags of fruit cost about 5 bucks and will last you a week. Good for snacks and with breakfast.

Eggs, Toast, Cereal and real oatmeal for breakfast. All can be bought generic for cheap. Once again, treat yourself to some bacon or sausage every now and then, but don't feel the need to keep it in your fridge.

Spices can be pricey. Here is what you need in your spice rack. Salt, Pepper and Mrs. Dash. That is all, nothing else.

Cake mixes are a good way to treat yourself once a week or so. You can buy the mix and the frosting for about 3 bucks.

You can eat well, healthy and for less than 10 bucks a day with this list. Use the dinner leftovers for lunch. Avoid keeping stocks of snacks and instant food in your house. These are costly and make you fat quickly.