Making a meal plan is important! And learning how to build a frugal plan that is nutritious sometimes seems undoable….but you CAN DO IT! And, today, I am going to share a great go-to meal plan that will feed your family for $2 a day per person!
Think about how much that can save!
I hope you enjoy these recipes! They are filling and healthy, as well as being kid friendly (for the most part).
You can find all the recipes below!
Have a GREAT week!
Here’s a useful meal planner/grocery list pad – https://amzn.to/45vzEfT
Here’s a link to the pullman bread pan – https://amzn.to/45waFsM
If you want a Nutri-Chopper – https://amzn.to/3RqrIqh
Here’s an Instant Pot (but look at the thrift store first!) – https://amzn.to/4ck8TNl
If you need a crock pot, here’s a super affordable one! https://amzn.to/3UTCjvQ
(Thank you for using my Amazon Associate links! It really helps our family, since we get a small commission for sending you their way)
If you didn’t see last week’s meal planning guide video, you can find it here – https://youtu.be/V4zdR39Cu3c?si=0Wa6MmBYO1LZMphC
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I hope you enjoy all of these recipes!
I love you!!!
Lori
Homemade Simple Sandwich Bread
5 1/2 C AP Flour
1 TBS yeast
2 C very warm (115 F) water
3 tsp salt
1 TBS honey
2 TBS sugar
1/4 C mutter, softened
In large bowl, combine all ingredients, adding yeast last. Combine well and knead on floured surface until smooth and satiny.
Cover and allow to rise in warm place for 1-3 hours.
Pour out ont counter and shape into large log shape.
Oil pullman loaf pan and add dough. Place lid on pan and allow to rise 1-3 hours. (alternately you can use regular loaf pans and separate into two or three loaves, depending on size)
Preheat oven to 350F. Bake for 45-60 minutes, until golden brown.
Allow to cool slightly and remove from pan. Cool completely on a baking rack.
French Toast
12-16 eggs
1/4 C milk
salt
pepper
loaf of HMS bread, sliced thin
Heat griddle or pan to medium heat.
Scramble eggs and milk. Season with salt and pepper.
Dip each piece of bread in egg mixture. Place on griddle. Allow to cook for 3 minutes on each side.
Serve with maple syrup.
Salsa Chicken
2 Chicken breasts
2 C Salsa
1 C water
Place chicken in crock pot. Pour salsa on top of chicken.
Cook on high for 4 hours, or low for 6-8 hours.
Serve with rice or riced cauliflower. Top with extra salsa, cheese and sour cream.
Sausage and Kraut
2 pkg keilbassa sausage, or equivalent
1 32 oz sauerkraut
1 TBS olive oil
Heat oil in iron skillet. Slice sausage. Place in hot pan and cook until most sides are browned. Add sauerkraut, juice and all. Cook, uncovered, until most of the moisture is removed.
Serve with green beans and your choice of fruit.
Vegetarian Rice and Bean Bowls
2 C Rice, prepared
2 C Beans, prepared
lettuce, chopped
tomatoes, diced
cilantro, chopped
cheese, shredded
sour cream
salsa
Combine all ingredients in bowl and serve warm.
Chicken Salad
2 C cooked chicken
1 C mayo
1 apple, chopped
1 C grapes, chopped
1/2 C walnuts, chopped
1/2 C cranberries
1/2 C dill pickles, chopped
2 TBS sugar
2 TBS lemon juice
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
Combine all ingredients and serve on HMS bread
Taco Soup
1 lb ground beef
2 lg cans crushed tomatoes
1 pkg frozen corn
2 C rice, prepared (optional)
2 C black beans, prepared
2 TBS cumin
2 TBS chili powder
1 TBS paprika
2 TBS dill weed
2 TBS salt
1/4 C dry milk powder
Brown ground beef. Remove any excess grease. Add all other ingredients. Cook on medium heat for 30 minutes. Can also be cooked in crock pot.
BBQ Baked Potatoes
2 C chicken
2 C bbq sauce
Cover chicken with bbq sauce and cook in crock pot for 4-6 hours.
1 potato per person
oil
salt
butter
sour cream
cheddar cheese, shredded
Wash potatoes. Coat with oil, Pierce with fork. Salt, if desired.
Bake in oven at 400F for 60-90 minutes.
Serve topped with bbq chicken and desired toppings
Ham and Egg Casserole
1/2 loaf HMS bread, cubed
2 C ham, chopped
8 oz shredded cheese
6 eggs, scrambled
2 C milk
salt and pepper to taste
Combine milk and eggs. Season with salt and pepper,
Oil 9×13 baking dish. Cube bread and place in bottom of casserole dish.Sprinkle ham and cheese. Add egg mixture.Bake at 350F for 35 mins, or until eggs are set
hey y’all welcome back to homemade simple if we’ve not met before I’m Lori I am so glad you’re here today last week we talked a lot about how to create and stick with a meal plan that is both nutritious and Frugal today I want to share with you a specific meal plan that you can use for your family to feed each member of your family for $2 a day or less I know that that seems really hard and that you’re going to be starving but these meals are packed full of nutrients to get your body through the day to make sure that everyone in your family is very well nourished throughout the week so I hope that you enjoyed today’s video if you haven’t already please subscribe to the channel and if you can give the video a thumbs up that really helps the channel reach more and more people let’s start by reviewing a little bit of what we talked about in last week’s video and then we will get on to the meals [Music] [Laughter] in last week’s video I tried to go into pretty good detail about how to build your own Frugal meal plan especially for those who may not have a lot of experience with that I know that the subscribers on the channel are changing a bit and so I wanted to make sure and give you a resource for how to build your own meal plan instead of having to to rely on someone else building a Frugal meal plan for you I know it’s important to include things in your family’s meal plans that they will actually eat and maybe my family eats things that your family really cannot stand so that was sort of the intention in last week’s video If you haven’t seen that video I hope that you will go and check it out I will link it right here and I’ll also link it down in the description box I hope that it’s a resource that will serve you and you can go back to whenever you feel like you might need a little bit more instruction or different ideas about how to build your own meal plan but I thought that it might be helpful today for us to talk about a specific meal plan that can feed your family at little cost but it will also serve your family well nutrition wise it is possible for us to meet the nutrition needs of our family and still not sacrifice the budget in the process so I wanted to share this specific meal plan with you this week just to give you sort of an idea of what a nutritious Frugal meal plan will look like and give you a little bit of confidence going forward that you can feed your family very good food on a very small budget I thought maybe the best place for us to start with this meal plan was at breakfast I’m going to go over how to make this bread loaf it is really easy and it turns out really good every time so be sure to stay tuned for the bread recipe but for breakfast I have several options for you and number one is a really easy to make but very filling French toast so I know that you know how to make French toast but it’s a really good time for us to talk about why these kinds of meals are good for a Frugal meal plan in my area a dozen eggs ends up being about A50 that’s about 12 cents an egg which is very very affordable and then if you pair it with this homemade bread which is the equivalent of two loaves for $1 so0 50 a loaf that really allows you to pack a lot of nutrition in your meal plan for very little money when I calculated the cost for each of these meals I did it per serving and I did it with cost at my local Walmart store that will give you a little bit of a ballpark about how much these meals are going to cost per service also some of these ingredients I have at my home on my Homestead and they were no cost to me but I know that not everybody has access to that so I did include the store bought cost for each ingredient in this meal plan so it should be pretty reflective of a true cost analysis as best as I could I may have missed a few things but I did try to be pretty specific about the ingredients that I used and I tried to make the person serving cost based on the per serving of each container okay now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way the French toast ended up costing 35 cents per serving that was with no syrup so the syrup if you want to use it probably would add about 5 cents each and then if you wanted to have it with the fruit salad it would cost about 085 cents per serving which is still really affordable my next option for breakfast is the Old Faithful that I always come back to oatmeal it is really affordable it is very healthy and if you put a couple of toppings on it it is really delicious it ends up being about 30 cents of serving with the brown sugar and walnuts and really you cannot beat that next let’s talk about this really easy and delicious recipe salusa chicken it is very simple to put together all you have to do is to put a couple of chicken breast in the crock pot cover it with your favorite salsa add a little bit of water to the bottom of the crock pot and put the lid on and allow it to cook for about 4 hours on high or maybe 6 hours on low this really is a simple recipe and it just makes dinner time so easy it also is full of nutrition and so this is a really good place for us to start on our meal plan to go along with the salsa chicken I just heat up up one bag of rice cauliflower in the microwave and then I also heated up a bag of whole kernel corn on the stove those are both really easy to do and also very affordable so the total cost for this meal ended up being $130 cents per serving that was really because I used these whole chicken breast if I had used the chicken that I’m going to talk to you about later the legs and quarters that I found at Aldi the cost of this meal would have gone down down to 96 cents per serving which is incredible anytime you can have a good nutritious meal for less than a dollar per serving it just really is going to ramp up the your ability to save money at the grocery store and on your food budget while still not sacrificing the dietary needs of your family this next meal might be a little bit controversial whenever we are talking about nutrition but I love a good soft sausage and Kraut dinner so we’re going to include it because it’s a good protein source and if you use the right kind of crow it’s very good for your gut health uh I was busy with Chris we had an outside project this evening so Kelsey made dinner which I really appreciated so you’ll get to see her at work in the kitchen but for this meal I used two packages of Kil boss’s sausage I also used one large large container of sauerkraut she just sliced them up and then cooked them in an iron skillet I remember while we were eating she said she wishes that she had cooked them for a little longer I really like to cook the sausage until most of it is brown on both sides before I add the Kraut that just lends to a little bit more flavor and for all of the flavors to M together a little bit better she did a really good job and it did taste really good she also cooked up some green beans some canned green beans which are very inexpensive but also serve as a really good side dish and she also cut up some watermelon so this was a nice well-rounded meal the total cost for this meal was right at $1 per serving which is excellent okay next up let’s talk about this vegetarian rice and bean bowls I’m going to use my instant pot a lot on this meal first I’m going to cook my black beans I’m just going to add about 2 cups of beans and 8 cups of water I’m going to seal my instant pot and turn it on to cook on the bean setting for 1 hour after the hour is up the beans are ready to be processed I like to put my beans in a sandwich bag try to get out all of the air and then pack them into the freezer this is a very easy way to have black beans on hand with without having to spend the extra money for the canned black beans this ends up being very inexpensive per serving for a really good healthy protein to add to this meal after I finish with the beans I’m going to clean the instant pot and make my rice in there as well so I’m just going to add 2 cups of rice and four cups of water this is a very simple and easy way to make really good fluffy rice every time most of the time if I cook rice it’s too hard and I don’t cook it long enough or I don’t add enough water but this is a really good way to make rice so that you don’t have to buy those already made packets in order for it to turn out good now I’ve prepped all of my ingredients and I’m ready to put my bowl together so my ingredients for this meal are R the rice and beans that we made in the instant pot I chopped up a little bit of lettuce I also shredded some cheese and diced up some tomatoes and cilantro I have some salsa and also some sour cream so there’s quite a few ingredients for this meal but it is very very inexpensive per serving after calculating the cost of each item in this bowl the cost of this meal ends up being 76 cents per serving it’s really hard hard to beat that for a dinner that is packed full of vegetables and nutrients and also tastes so good next up I thought I would talk about making some chicken salad sandwiches this is going to allow me to talk to you about this delicious bread recipe that is so easy to put together but it comes out perfect every time I’ll be sure to put the recipe down in the description box so I’m not going to go through every single step and ingredient but just know that it’s definitely worth your time to check out making this recipe it turns out really good and soft I really enjoy having homemade bread sometimes it’s too busy around the house and we end up having to buy some from the store but I really don’t think anything can replace a good loaf of homemade bread it’s so versatile it’s so easy to put together and it really is taking back ownership of your food system in your home when you have mastered the ability to make a loaf of bread so this is a really easy recipe to start with it doesn’t take a lot of time it rises pretty quickly and you do get to KN the dough which is one of my very favorite things to do what I really like about it is the affordability of it a loaf of bread at the store has gotten so High I think the average cost that I see nowadays is about $4 for a loaf of bread I I just can’t believe that they are charging that price for a regular loaf of bread and then when I think about being able to Source the bread in my home it costing about 50 cents or less for the same loaf that is healthier for my family and very easy to put together the the work time on making your own loaf of bread is maybe 20 25 minutes you do have to work at it you do have to be around so that you can go to the next step but active work time is less than 30 minutes to make your own loaf of bread so if you’re afraid of homemade bread let this be your signal to give it a try if you see anything being done on this channel I can guarantee you that it is very easy and very doable for anybody to do so go ahead and give it a try you’re not going to be sorry I really like this loaf pan I think it’s called a pman pan but it’s got this lid that goes on it so that when it rises it rises into a big Square sort of like the Sunbeam loaves of bread that you see at the store I really like how this Cooks up nice and evenly every time I also like how whenever I’m ready to cut it it cuts very evenly and easily I just really like this pan I would highly recommend you check it out I’ll be sure and Link it down below so that you can find one on Amazon yourself I do not think you’ll be sorry okay now that we’ve talked about the bread let’s talk about the chicken salad I found this chicken at Aldi for $574 for a 10 lb bag that was shocking I knew that they had the bags like this at Walmart but I’ve not really seen them at least not in the past 2 years at Aldi so this was a really great find perfect timing for my budget video because it really allowed these meals to be much more affordable so I’m just going to put all of this meat into the instant pot I cooked it for about an hour and a half I think and then it was all nice and ready not only do I have have three meals worth of meat but I also have a gallon of chicken broth that is ready to go in a ton of different recipes so this $5.75 really went a long way to provide my family high protein food at a very low cost now that I’ve got the broth put up it’s time for me to separate the chicken from the bones so I’m going to do that real quick and then I’m going to put together some chicken salad for our chicken salad sandwiches for our next meal I’m going to chop up this chicken first again I divided that chicken into thirds so I’m using 1/3 of it in this chicken salad I’m going to chop up an apple and also some grapes I like to use this Nutra Chopper I know I’ve talked about it a million times but it really is handy I mean it would take forever for me to chop up an apple apple and grapes I did try to use it for the nuts and I will say it’s definitely not made for nuts it does not Chop nuts at all it will just make a mess so don’t do that I’m going to add a little bit of lemon juice probably a tablespoon 2 tablespoon of sugar and about a/4 cup of cranberries I made this mayonnaise from avocado oil and eggs I’ll talk to you about that in another video so stay tuned for that recipe I also needed to add some pickles I was really excited about these pickles because I had bought the pickles at Costco and then I had run out and I wondered if I could make more pickles using their brine because this brine was really good and the pickles were really crispy so I tried it I chopped up my own cucumber and put it in into this container and it worked so there’s a bonus Frugal tip for you you can reuse the pickle juice to make your own pickles be sure and add this meal to a meal plan in your very near future okay next up let’s talk about taco soup I know I sound like a broken record I know I talk about taco soup a lot I’m really sorry about that but sometimes you just have to have those go-to meals that are not only going to be inexpensive to make but also are going to be filling and nutritious and this is one of those that I just always fall back on I always have the ingredients almost always have the ingredients in my in my house to prepare a pot of taco soup and even though it’s getting warm and it’s not really soup season anymore this is still going to be a good go-to even in the hot months of the summer so I just start with a pound of ground beef you can get ground beef around here for about $5 I know that that is going to up the cost but the nutrition value and the extension value of this meal meaning that it will go a long way there is a lot of servings in this pot of soup so that’s also going to get a lot of use out of that $5 I’m going to add a lot of seasoning so that it will be very flavorful I like to add corn and this time I also added some rice to make it go even further and to increase the amount of servings and then I’m also going to add some of my black beans and that’s going to increase the protein content even more so this is going to be a really substantial meal for supper and also it’s a perfect meal for lunch so this pot of soup makes at least 12 maybe even 15 servings so that allows me to get a lot of good out of this one meal now the breakdown on the cost it ended up costing 95 cents per serving and that’s including the toppings that I have so if you want to exclude the toppings it can be as low as 75 cents a serving so this is an excellent option for those weeks when you need your food to go a really long way and you need it to cost as little as possible last up today we have a barbecue baked potato I just love how simple and easy it is to throw together this meal it has all the pieces of a delicious comfort food meal with zero effort I just put the chicken in the crock pot with a little bit of barbecue sauce and then prepare the potatoes I like to put oil on my potato skins make sure you poke holes and then they will explode in the oven if you don’t and then I like to just salt the outside of my potato skins and bake them in the oven for probably about an hour to an hour and a half depending on the temperature I usually put mine on 400° you can also cook these in the microwave you can cook them in your instant pot that will prevent your house from getting so hot in the summer from the stove being on for an hour at a really high temperature but up to you however you want to cook them and then just putting these few toppings on some butter and sour cream and cheese topping it with the barbecue chicken and then adding some barbecue sauce to the top I mean it cannot be simpler and it really is an affordable Frugal meal as well so this meal ended up costing a18 per serving so it’s not only inexpensive but it’s also filling nutritious and it’s super easy to make well that’s all of today’s recipes I did miss giving you one more recipe I would have made a ham and egg casserole I ran out of time so wasn’t able to include that in this week’s video but I will leave the recipe down in the description box it will give you a full 7 days worth of dinners you can use all of the leftovers for lunch there were plenty of leftovers for our family and then the breakfasts that I showed you at the beginning should get you through and give you a very well balanced well-rounded meal plan that will allow you to feed your family for right around $2 a day I hope you enjoyed today’s video if you know of someone who could benefit from this video please be sure to share it with them also I would love to hear all of your favorite Frugal meal recipes down in the comments below I love to get all of your great ideas thank you again for watching today I hope you have a wonderful week I love you and and I will see you again next time [Music] [Laughter] [Music]