Thursday, October 30, 2008

Frugal Dinners ... Again???

it's the end of the month and i'm running low with ingredients for tasty meals and ideas. i wrote about my frugal meal challenge last may when we had more month than money. it was a stretch to be creative, but we didn't starve or die from malnutrition. so once again, i'm putting on my creative hat to figure out meals for the next 5 days.

i have cheese, pasta, beef brats, chicken bites, canned salmon, some frozen and canned veggies, some dairy and other misc pantry items. what i don't have that i usually like to have on hand is frozen chicken, hamburger, pizza meat toppings, fresh veggies and $$$ for eating out!

so here's what i'm thinking for the next 5 dinner meals: salmon fettucine made with the salmon and pasta, add some veggies and call it good. cheese quesidilas tonite with ramen cabbage salad. another dinner will be brats on homemade hot dog buns. i think i have enough flour for that. never tried making hot dog buns but i make bread so i think i could conquer this too. a couple cheese pizzas on friday nite and serve with some carrot stix. and on sunday we'll have pancakes with canned fruit, syrup and peanut butter.

how bout you? what's your go-to meals when there's more month than money? and are you changing the way you eat to make your grocery dollars stretch? i figure with gas prices coming down shouldn't grocery prices come down soon too?


6 comments:

Joanna Barrett said...

I always have cream of mushroom or chicken soup, tuna, pasta, bottled spagetti sauce, and canned vegies in the pantry. You'd be surprised how many different dishes you can make with these few items. I too have to get reall creative about half way through the month. I often wonder if Deryk ever gets tired of tuna caserole and baked spagetti caserole. Oh well, it keeps us with in the grocery budget.

Mary Ann said...

I'm trying to make more casseroles that are made of inexpensive(and healthy) ingredients. We've never eaten lots of just meat meals but I had gotten to where we were eating a lot more chunks of meat! So I'm trying to stretch food that way.

I'm grocery shopping this weekend, so our meals have been a little interesting, too.:-) I fall back on rice, frozen veggies, pasta,any meat I have on hand,breakfast for dinner and stuff like that when I get low on staples.

About the hot dog buns- I read on a blog once(not sure where) where the lady used bread dough and wrapped around the hot dogs and baked it. I haven't done that yet, but have kept it in mind since if we have hot dogs on hand, we often don't have buns! (I'm organized that way-LOL!) Thought I would pass that along.

kristi said...

We have a lot of easy meals. I found you through Bobbi at mixed blessings.

Anonymous said...

Ours is a simple tuna casserole, made with egg noodles, cream of mushroom soup, peas, tuna fish, cheese and breadcrumbs.

And, I have a blog award for you: http://ccswch.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/kreativ-blogger/

*carrie* said...

Gail,

I've mentioned to you before that I really stretch meat, especially since I don't eat beef or pork. And now that it's hunting season, Eric will be bringing home fresh pheasant every weekend!

mr bill said...

I did a pot roast for myself and then with the leftovers made a shepherds pie. I love pot roast leftovers. A little mashers, peas or frozen veggies and there you go! I eat a lot of chicken soup as I usually have some sort of chicken and noodles and stock lying around.
Mr Bill