We’ve always been a bit guilty of eating out more than we should. Over the last couple years we’ve actually scaled back quite a bit. It’s hard to go drop $40+ on a meal when you know you could eat MUCH cheaper at home.
The problem with eating at home has been that we aren’t very creative about making meals. This leads to boring meat/starch/vegetable meals a lot. While I love meat, it has started to get old.
In order to try to mix things up a bit for our dinner meals, we have started experimenting a bit. Here are a few of the new things we have worked in to the rotation at our house:
Lean Pork Tacos: lean pork skewered and thrown on the bbq. A salsa made of cilantro, garlic, white onion and some guacamole. Once the golf ball size chunks of pork have cooked through, we then chop them up in chunks a little smaller than a small marble and put all of the ingredients in warm corn tortillas (which are ridiculously cheap). (Grilling and cutting up tri-tip steak yields equally delicious tacos) Cost: $.40 per taco
Pork strips: We cut lean pork in to strips and then put them in a ziplock bag with some corn starch. Once they are coated, we then put some olive oil in a pan and cook the pork until the corn starch is crispy and browned. We then take the meat and put it over rice with a bit of sweet chili sauce. It’s also very good over rice noodles. Substituting chicken also works well (I am allergic to chicken hence the pork). We also enjoy making this with tri-tip steak from Costco. Cost: $3.00 for everything and we had leftovers.
Tri-tip Teriyaki Steak: We take Tri-tip and cut it up in to small strips and then throw it on the bbq. Once it’s cooked we pour some Yoshida’s teriyaki sauce over it and then serve it over rice with a side of vegetables. Cost: $4.00 for everything and we had leftovers.
Baked Halibut: This is a new one that we decided to try. It was a decent price at Costco and I love Halibut. I googled how to prepare halibut and ended up seasoning it and then baking it in the oven. We served it with rice and vegetables. Another winner. Cost $9.00 with one serving of leftovers for a lunch. Definitely more expensive than most of our other meals but this meal would have cost us well over $40 in a restaurant. (3 Halibut meals in a restaurant is expensive)
Beef tenderloin (filet mignon): with broccoli and garlic mashed potatoes. Costco sells the BEST beef tenderloin. For awhile it was about $8.99 a pound. Recently it has gone up to nearly $12 per pound which is out of our league. It’s still a GREAT price compared to supermarkets but I just don’t like to spend that kind of money on “cook at home†meals. When we were eating it, we were able to grill the meat, and serve it with garlic mashed potatoes and broccoli for about $6 for the entire meal for three of us. Even at today’s price it would still be less than $10 to feed all three of us. A comparable meal in a restaurant would easily cost $75+.
Maybe consider cutting back on meat itself, if for nothing else than to add variety to your dishes. A few vegetarian dishes a week can break things up and can be very cheap. Pasta, stir fry w/ tofu, nicely cooked beans or lentils over rice, (non lard based) refried bean burritos, etc.
There is also mounting evidence that you get a serious health benefit from cutting back on meat. (There are ethical benefits, too, in my view)
Thanks CM. I do need to cut back on meat but it’s a struggle because I can’t eat tofu (soy allergy) and there aren’t a ton of meat alternatives. I’ve actually been considering just trying to introduce some bean/rice/veggie meals to help cut down on meat.
Hazzard
2 budget-friendly recipes:
Hot dog soup –
Boil hot dog
drink water
save hot dog for future use
Jam Sandwich –
Jam 2 pieces bread together
Eat