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After the fixed expenses of mortgage, utilities, etc, the largest single slice of our spending each month typically goes to food. Food is also one of those things you’re constantly procuring, consuming, and discarding. Therefore, grocery spending is an important target for saving money, week after week.
I’ve written before on how to target your food spending based on enjoyment factor to save money where it counts, and how to reduce your grocery spending in one simple step. Today the focus is on frugal meals at home.
What's In This Post
What makes frugal meals for a family?
More than a list of recipes
How do you make frugal meals a reality in your home? Most web searches for frugal meals turn up a big list of frugal recipes. I always balk at these lists because I’m not that into cooking (i.e. not into learning a bunch of recipes). Instead, I want food to be healthy, stupid simple, and cheap. And I don’t want to clamor over a pile of unrelated recipes if I can help it.
Also, to me frugal meals are not as simple as a collection of recipes with cheap ingredients. Cheap meals like beans and rice have their place, but a sustainable plan that works for a family with kids usually needs a little more to it for the long haul. Lasting moderate frugality to make yummy, healthy food is better than non-sustainable extreme frugality when it comes to supporting long term financial goals.
Healthy, simple, and cheap… at $125 per week
I can’t say I’ve perfected the trifecta of healthy, simple, and cheap. But I think my current meal system has come a long way towards it. It’s a simple system of related meal options that fall into general dinner themes for each night of the week. And the ingredients to assemble all the meal options are on our standard weekly grocery list on repeat- no special shopping or pre-planning.
Doing this, we spend about $125 a week on groceries, or about $540 per month. Having a plan (albeit a very fluid one) in place, we rarely do take-out. If we do, it’s an intentional choice, not a moment of kitchen frustration. Restaurant outings are a date night occasion or fun family outing (which we will happily return to post-pandemic).
While our grocery bill isn’t the most frugal on the planet (no time for extreme couponing here), it’s still markedly lower than the USDA reported ‘thrifty’ average for the cost of food at home in family of four that includes two young children. Remember, we also live in a rather high cost of living area.
Three elements of a frugal meals system
Our family’s frugal meals repertoire is based on three principles:
1. Everything can be made off a single grocery list on repeat
The weekly grocery shopping is about replenishing the standard list of items. No starting from scratch with a list each week.
We generally don’t shop for ‘special’ things to use once for a recipe and forget about in the fridge or back of pantry. No buying this special spice blend, and that particular marinade or dressing called for in a recipe or that looked good on the shelf. Avoiding this kind of waste is what ultimately makes your kitchen a frugal one.
We have olive oil, salt, pepper, and a short list of other spices that are very versatile and common in the food we eat. That gets the job done. Bonus- no overstuffed spice cabinet!
2. Everything can be made on the fly, almost all without a recipe
Most meal options on our list are basic foods that are healthy and made from real food ingredients, but just don’t require a lot of hullabaloo. Think tacos or tuna salad. A few meals we make come from recipes, but they’ve been done so many times that we’ve now established cooking capabilities without any recipe-glancing.
Creating a themed meal list that includes super simple things like this will help you get the dinner job done easily, with healthy ingredients, while sticking to a frugal spending plan. Simple frugal cooking also tends to be kid friendly and flexible to different preferences.
3. Meals are based on real food
A shopping list of whole produce and minimally processed foods typically costs less, is healthier, and is most versatile for a long list of uses. Real food wins the day, with less reliance on mixes and prepared foods.
Don’t worry, I’m not a cook either. I learned a lot of basic cooking skills watching The Chew many years ago. More recently I finally got decent at chopping and dicing just by practicing it over and over while doing my first Whole 30 (which basically requires 100% from-scratch cooking).
But once you are over that ‘food prep’ hump, buying whole raw produce instead of packaged foods or pre-prepped ingredients (so pricey!) is not as big a deal as it first seems. Time yourself doing it- it’s not that bad with practice.
Benefits of a custom frugal meals system
The other struggle I’ve had over the years with others’ meal plans is that they aren’t necessarily recipes/meals that work well for our family long term. We lean Whole30, so we like meals that easily adapt this way. But at the same time, I’ve eaten vegetarian most of my life, and currently am kind of ‘flexitarian.’ I’m not really willing to stretch into eating pork and beef, but meals that are either vegetarian, fish, or poultry, or flexible to go either way (i.e. separate main entree or optional meat component) work well for us.
I also want to make everything possible in the busy-family-life-saver Instant Pot because it’s fast, easy, and easy to clean (just one pot that goes in the dishwasher!). I’m lazy and don’t plan, so stuff that requires thinking ahead doesn’t go over well. Even setting up a slow cooker never worked for me because it required thinking about dinner hours in advance, usually during the morning family rush.
Basically, every family and cook are different. So someone else’s recipe list or meal plan isn’t necessarily ideal for you. Right?
So that said, how can my system possibly be useful to you? Well, even though the particular dishes might not interest you, I hope you can glean something from the concept of a themed list of possible meal options your family enjoys, coupled to a universal shopping list on repeat. It’s meal planning for people who hate meal plans.
My themed frugal meals system
Instead of a meal plan of slating out dinner each night of the week or month, I generally execute a meal category/theme (at the last minute) each night. I pick a category off my list based on what I’m in the mood to cook and eat.
Within each theme are meal options with varying degrees of effort and ingredient involvement. I can choose what to make last minute because all ingredients are already in the house (recall grocery list on repeat that supports all meals!).
We tend to have thawed ground turkey in the ‘fridge and just put another package to thaw soon after we use it up. So ground meat is generally at-the-ready. Anything involving chicken is made in the instant pot and cooked straight from frozen- no thawing chicken, no handling raw slimy chicken. So no pre-planning to thaw stuff makes the spur of the moment choice relatively unencumbered.
This simple approach helps solve that ‘staring in the fridge not knowing what to cook’ problem. Instead, all your go-to’s are right there on your list without relying on your memory… but also without a planning session each month or week to slate out meals ahead of time. And the ingredients are all in your kitchen because your shopping list is designed around these categories.
Our family’s current meal list
I’m putting the details of our typical frugal meals below in case certain ones interest you. But remember the real point is the meal category list concept coupled with an all encompassing grocery list on repeat. Find your own preferred categories and recipes and create your list. Then create a comprehensive grocery list that covers all the ingredients for the food you make regularly, simply replenishing what’s used each week.
I’d bet you already eat a lot of the same things that are on our list, but building it into a written out themed list can be helpful answer to that “What’s for dinner?” question when your brain is tired in the evening. Maybe there will be a few new frugal meal ideas here for your own new list. Any of the below items we tend to serve with some sliced fruit, applesauce, etc as well.
1. Mexican Night
Refried bean and cheese microwave burritos (switch out refried beans for black beans or Mexican chicken).
Quesadillas with shredded Mexican cheese and black beans (or Mexican chicken)
Rice bowls or salad bowls: Chipotle-style DIY bowls made at home. White rice in the instant pot is stupid simple! Don’t forget smashed avocado, yum.
Instant Pot Mexican Chicken for any of the above dishes: Add approx. 1 cup salsa to Instant Pot. Add a few frozen chicken breasts (or chicken thighs if you prefer). Sprinkle with 1 T chili powder, 1 T cumin, 1 t each of garlic powder, salt, and paprika/smoked paprika and a pinch of black pepper (or use a taco seasoning packet). Cook on high pressure 12 minutes. Cut cooked chicken into chunks (or shred) and put back into sauce.
2. Soup, Stoup, or Chili Night
I love making soups because they’re a straightforward one pot meal that can be done relatively quickly in the Instant Pot (even chili that tastes like it’s simmered for hours). Soups tend to make great leftovers. They usually can contain a ton of vegetables with little resistance from the kids. And they can serve as a either main or a side. Add some French bread and now you’ve got a downright fancy frugal dinner.
Magical everyone-always-eats-it (even babies) Curry Vegetable Lentil-or-Chicken Soup, inspired by a vegan curry lentil and vegetable soup I ate from the Whole Foods lunch buffet many years ago!
Minestrone: I use this recipe but not necessarily with gluten free ingredients. Nice to have options!
Butternut squash soup: there are so many ways to make this… which basically means you can’t mess it up! Ours is usually a base of sauteed onion, carrot, and celery seasoned with salt and pepper, plus chunked up potato, chunked butternut squash, and sometimes an apple. Look at this recipe and play around with warm spices and variations. I highly recommend an immersion blender for pureed soups (no fancy dicing when it’s all getting blended, and right in the pot blending, so easy!). I have a much older version of the Cuisinart immersion blender, but this one looks well reviewed and much less expensive if you want one for occasional use.
Chili: use my printable chili recipe to create your family’s favorite chili.
3. Sandwich & Wrap Night
Tuna salad, in tortilla wrap or sandwich.
Open face tuna melts: smear tuna salad onto toast, top with slice of cheese, put under broiler until cheese is brown and bubbly.
Egg salad, in tortilla wrap or sandwich.
Any of these items work great with a side of leftover soup or chili from that week!
4. Pasta Night
Instant Pot Mac & Cheese: use my printable IP mac & cheese recipe to create your version of this IP creamy favorite.
Spaghetti with marinara, optional ground turkey (or ground beef) mixed in or made into meatballs (or vegan Aldi “meatballs”).
5. Protein + Starch + Veg Night
Protein: Burger/veggie burger, brats, or steak on grill, seared salmon fillet, or seared tuna steaks
Serve with potatoes (grilled/roasted, mashed in IP, etc.) & green veg (frozen peas, salad, any fresh veg quick sauteed [e.g. zucchini w/ garlic])
6. Breakfast for Dinner Night
Who says you can’t have breakfast for dinner? I’d be lying if I didn’t list this as an official category at our house. It’s a regular event for sure!
Scrambled eggs with toast
Omelets with various filling options: chopped up deli meat, shredded Mexican cheese, sauteed veg (zucchini, mushrooms, and/or bell peppers… leftover sauteed veg is great for tomorrow morning’s scrambled eggs)
Pancakes with blueberry topping: make a simple pancake mix yourself (or try our favorite gluten free mix), and add microwaved frozen blueberries for a great sugar-free fruit syrup, plus a touch of butter and real maple syrup.
7. Friday Pizza Night
Make your own flatbread pizza. Add marinara sauce, shredded Italian blend cheese, and everyone can choose their own toppings! We usually have on hand pepperoni, mushrooms, spinach, pesto, etc.
In conclusion…
There we have it, how our family of four has seven days of dinner at home per week, spending about $125 per week. Remember, we shop at Aldi which is a universally low budget store. Shopping there keeps our food costs low and also makes simple grocery shopping really simple- it’s not a fancy giant store!
I hope you gained some ideas about how to streamline dinner while embracing more frugal living at your house. Please share your hacks for frugal meals planning in the comments. Happy dining 🙂