What are your favorite cheap eats?

(tuned for locals, so some of this may not make sense to you folks who live in real cities)

Whole chickens are much cheaper per lb than specific pieces. MUCH cheaper. If you don't feel like doing the extra prep involved, then the next cheapest thing is something the local grocery mongers usually refer to as "whole chicken cut up" which is exactly what it sounds like.

Stay away from Publix. Unless they're having good BOGOs or sales. Yes they have some nice stuff, but you pay out the butt for it.

Winn Dixie is a little scary, but around here they probably have the best blend of value and quality. They can be HIGHlY variable, though, so learn the prices of stuff you buy and compare.

If you can park your dignity at the curb, Wal Mart has the best bargains in town. Yes, it's Wal Mart, but you don't get to be the 25th largest economy on the face of the earth without offering people some low prices.

Your freezer is your friend, but it can also be a frozen wasteland of forgotten, freezer burned crap. Whenever you put something in, take something out and cook it.

Find store brands you like.

Probably the best advice I can give you to maximize your grocery dollar is to know what you're spending and what you're getting. Math is easy. Learn prices at various places, and do the math for dollars per ounce. Did you know that the mayo in the squeeze bottles is about 20% more than the stuff in the jar? That kind of stuff adds up quick.

Glop Casserole:

1 pound ground beef - $3.00
1 pound macaroni of choice - $2.00
1 pound sharp cheddar cheese - $4.00
4 cans tomato soup - $4.00
1 large can mushrooms - $2.00
1 small can tomato paste - $1.00
1 green pepper - $1.00
1 onion - $1.00
Worcestershire sauce - in the cupboard already

Cut onions and pepper into 3/4" chunks. Saute with ground beef until cooked.
Cut cheddar cheese into 3/4" chunks - reserve a handful.
Combine all ingredients in a large roasting pan and stir well. Season with Worcestershire to taste. Scatter reserved cheese over top.
Bake in 350d oven for 30-40 minutes until top starts to brown.

Voila. For about $2.00 a serving, this will serve plenty of dinner to a family of 4, with enough left over for lunch. If the kids are not teenagers, it will make 2 full dinners for the whole family. It can be made a day or two ahead and be kept in the fridge before baking. It also tolerates freezing and microwave reheating well. Just had it for dinner tonight!

Oh, after baking, this would reheat really well in a crock pot, too, so it would be great as LeMons/Chump pit food. Honestly, you could even skip the baking and just do it in the crock.

JG Pasterjak wrote: Winn Dixie is a little scary, but around here they probably have the best blend of value and quality. They can be HIGHlY variable, though, so learn the prices of stuff you buy and compare.

After 11 years in Scarytown , here is my best advice for saving money on meat at WD by finding the most markdowns:

• Find the largest, lowest volume store in town, preferably in the lower income areas
• Don't plan on buying anything specific; shop prices first and foremost. Look for the yellow stickers overlapping the UPC labels.
• Buy as much as you can between the 21st and the 31st of the month. Break the traypacks into Ziplock bags for freezing. You can portion them out, and if you shape the bags into flat rectangles, they will thaw faster and more evenly than packages in foam trays.
• Shop around 7 - 8 pm, ideally Monday - Wednesday, especially if it is the first seriously rainy day in a while.
• Don't be afraid of whole cuts of browning beef. Some cuts like London broil are prone to fast browning, and it turns off many customers. It is still delicious.
• Look for foods not typical to the neighborhood's culture. Southern store? Good luck finding marked down bone-in pork chops, thin cut steaks, smoked pork, or chicken wings. However, the odds of finding marked down thick cut steaks, lean pork, churrasco steaks, lean chicken, veal, or lamb are pretty high.

Once when I purchased ham hocks for greens at the Publix around the corner, the cashier asked, "Oh, are those for your dog?" Signs that you're not shopping in a WD.

And if you're living life on expert mode, throw every chicken, beef, and vegetable scrap into a gallon freezer bag. When the bag is full, dump it all into a 8 quart stock pot, bring to a boil, and let it simmer for about 8 hours. Boom, homemade stock.

turboswede wrote: Costco dogs

+1. $1.50 for a big hot dog and coke. It's been the same price since 1985!

Should I be ashamed that I have stopped in an IKEA just to eat?

Mitchell wrote: Should I be ashamed that I have stopped in an IKEA just to eat?

You're not the only one. Haven't been able to get the misses to do that again since the whole horsemeat scandal, though.

Bigass burrito for $5. And a lot better the Taco Bell. Hell yeah!

As far cooking and groceries, a chicken from Publix last for several meals at our house if I am being lazy. Salads with chicken are also cheap. I like to make my crockpot BBQ which is cheap. Also pasta is hard to beat for cheap and tasty.

Winn Dixie? Aren't they the ones that got caught repackaging old chicken by dipping it in bleach to make it look "fresh" and changing the date stickers?

Cheap eats for sure... but I don't want to ride the bowl for three days to save a buck.

I buy a whole chicken (bigger the better)season and roast. cook a pound of bacon. good bread. then veggies (avacado, tomato, onion, and letuce), can make most of week with very nice club sandwiches for the wife and i. It usually runs less than $20.

CiCi's Pizza. Drink water and you can stuff your face with all the pasta, salad, and pizza you can eat for like 4.99. Our family of four can eat for like 12 bucks. We even have a better version called Stevie B's that's got better pizza and costs just a little more.

ryanty22 wrote: Up in central Va at North Anna nuclear power station I used to go in there and get a BLT wrap that was loaded until it was about 3 inches diameter for about $3.50. Hell it was reasonably enough priced that while up there during outages Id go into the plant for breakfast, lunch or dinner on my day off

You could have all the ambience of a candlelit dinner without lighting the candles 'cause dat E36 M3 would glow in the dark.

1988RedT2 wrote: CiCi's Pizza. Drink water and you can stuff your face with all the pasta, salad, and pizza you can eat for like 4.99. Our family of four can eat for like 12 bucks. We even have a better version called Stevie B's that's got better pizza and costs just a little more.

Yeah, "pizza."

Heavenly ham sells their bones for $5, often have them on sale BOGO. Because slacker teens do the sammich carving, one has enough meat on it for a meal and a sandwich, then throw the bone in a pot with a couple pounds presoaked beans, a carrot and a big ole onion. Palmful of salt, cover with water and cook a couple of hour, eat for a week. Fifty-cent cornbread mix for a side if you're feeling dee-lux.

I've been to poor, stayed there all night. Doesn't mean you can't eat tasty food.

Margie

skierd wrote: Grocery store rotisserie chickens are cheap for the amount of meat you get. Usually cheaper than a 2pack of boneless skinless breasts, and already cooked ftw. Add a bag of steamer veggies and that's a good dinner for 2.

if you have a pressure cooker you can buy whole chickens even cheaper and can cook em in about 45 min (from time to opening the chicken up to being done)... last week we picked up 3 whole chickens for under $7... store had a few for 1/2 off and when we noticed we grabbed all they had left and tossed em in the freezer. can make a pretty good roast chicken with it just adding some carrots, onions and celery while cooking, also make super cheap chicken for soup, chicken tacos, chicken and rice and anything else you could use chicken for and when you are done eating the chicken spend a little time and you have some really good and super cheap chicken stock.

been diggin the pressure cooker of late checking out good recipes... can do beans and a ton of other things that would take all day cooking in the crock pot in an Hr or less and a lot of em are inexpensive options http://www.pressurecookerdiaries.com/pressure-cooker-recipes

on the other side of things... if you want to eat good and cheap while at work take a look at http://www.thermoscooking.com/ you are more or less using your thermos as a slow cooker (crock pot)... plenty of neat recipes online but his web page gives a good idea of what the point of it is.

1988RedT2 wrote: CiCi's Pizza. Drink water and you can stuff your face with all the pasta, salad, and pizza you can eat for like 4.99. Our family of four can eat for like 12 bucks. We even have a better version called Stevie B's that's got better pizza and costs just a little more.

Our version of that around here is called "Pizza Ranch." My wife and I refer to it as the "Pizza Trough."

Swank Force One wrote: Butter, cream, and cheese in this situation are considered "condiments," not "food." It's not cooking, it's putting enough of something else on something to make it edible.

Ehh, everybody's wrong about something, looks like yours is potatoes. ;-)

Dollar General Market or IGA will get you the "best" buys around here. Just dont delay eating it or getting it frozen.