The cheapest, easiest, non-pasta/bean dinner on a budget - roast a chicken. A whole chicken is 89 cents per pound at CostCo or WalMart, so for roughly $7 you can feed your family of four twice, eek out a third meal and find yourself not wanting to pay $4.99/pound for boneless, skinless breasts EVER AGAIN.
First - bathe your chicken in the sink and remove his innards. Pat him dry, then quarter an onion and insert in the body cavity (he doesn't feel a thing). Then slice up a clove of garlic into fourths. Stab your bird in some thick places (think breast and thigh) and insert the clove in the hole. Rub with butter, salt, pepper him and shove him in the oven breast-side up (oven preset to 375, of course). Then sit down and read a magazine until it starts to smell good (try not to do chores, it ruins the atmosphere). Make easy sides during the last bit, remembering he has to rest after you take him out of the oven.
After you've eaten dinner, immediately strip the remaining meat from the bones. Put it in a zip bag and save for later in the week or freeze. Take all the bones and the carcass and dump them into a big pot. Cover with water, add vegetables like celery or carrots, another quartered onion, lots of S&P, a bay leaf and a granny smith apple, quartered, if you have it. Boil then simmer until bedtime. Stock is healthier for you than canned stuff and you can use it to eek out that third meal - soup!!
Please note the second chicken meal is a casserole of your choice, but I have plenty of suggestions if you need one. YUMMY!
If you shop in bulk like I do (and you SHOULD) and you walk out of CostCo with two chickens, consider this - if you chop up the raw chicken yourself before you freeze it, you have another meal prepped for later the next week. Pre-cut chicken is at least $1 more per pound and the cost only increases as the butcher does more work for you. Besides, I have a kindergartner missing 5 of her front teeth and the LOVES chicken legs. Did you when you were a kid?
Anyway, I imagine you'll find you're a winner with your cheap & easy chicken dinner and you might have some money leftover for Godiva!
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Hey, Jenni! This is Krista, Greg's wife. He forwarded me the e-mail about your new blog. Love this post. I've always wanted to try this... With our new grocery budgeting plan, maybe we can start swapping great deal-finds! :-) Have a great one!
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