Meal Ideas

A new friend of mine is getting a bit stressed when making up menus and staying on the cheap.  I made this up for her and thought it maybe helpful to others as well so I'd post it here.  These seem to be our go to dinner meals that are cheap and easy to make with real food!  If you want any recipes please let me know and I’ll type them out/find it for you.  I'll keep adding things as I think of them as well.  Please note, if you're a vegetarian I'm sorry.  We like our meat and it's benefits to our health around here so this probably won't benefit you much.  If anyone has any ideas or tips please feel free to comment!  I love hearing your ideas.

Main dishes:

Tacos/burritos, make your own refried beans from dry beans in the crockpot!

Nachos

Enchiladas

Fajitas

Quesadillas

Chili (then have chili dogs another day with leftovers)

Crockpot rotisserie style chicken, I make it with different seasonings for variety then use bones for stock

Spaghetti with rice pasta

Fried rice sometimes with meat sometimes not

Burgers with homemade buns, very easy especially if you have a bread maker

“Ham” & beans, we use the leftovers when getting steaks or get a piece of pork butt

Breakfast type foods. Soaked pancakes or biscuits are our base usually because they're cheap

Homemade pizza

Beef roast with veggies in the crockpot

Meatloaf in the crockpot

Sandwiches with tuna salad or a turkey cooked in the crockpot

Chicken and dumplins (great use of leftover chicken/stock from a crockpot chicken)

Soup, this usually consists of me throwing a bunch of stuff in the crockpot with a little leftover meat and stock.

Sloppy Joes

Strogenoff

 

Sides:

We tend to eat rice quite often.  It's easy, nutritious when soaked, and easy.

Vegetables that are in season either raw or steamed/sauted with butter.

Sometimes I'll also some biscuits or something similar to go with it.