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Low Budget Recipes for Stay at Home MomsCheap Quick Easy Dinner RecipesAre you having trouble coming up with creative, inexpensive meal ideas? Well, don't feel like you need to create a made from scratch budget dinners masterpiece every night. Yes, you want a little variety, but once you find 8-10 low budget recipes that your family really enjoys, make them often, and be glad of the money you will be saving! Here is a sample week of my budget dinners. Just remember, the term "low budget recipes" is relative; what may be budget dinners for one family may be extravagant for another, and vice versa. Rayven's Cheap Quick Easy Dinner Recipes The Menu: Monday: Spaghetti, Salad, Bread Tuesday: Chicken Tacos, In-Season Fruit Wednesday: Chili, Salad, Bread Thursday: Tuna Noodle Casserole with Caramel Apples Friday: Stuffed Baked Potatoes, Salad Saturday: Chicken Noodle Soup, Salad, Bread Sunday: Chili-Cheese Dogs, In-Season Fruit Monday: Spaghetti, Salad, BreadInexpensive meal ideas and low budget recipes start with inexpensive ingredients. For these low budget recipes, you can buy the least expensive ground beef, the 70/30 or whatever is cheapest at your store, just drain and rinse it.
Also, I buy canned spaghetti sauce. At less than $1 a can, its much cheaper than trying to make my own (and saves time). I dress it up to make it taste better. Brown ground beef in pan. After browning, drain your ground beef in your colander and literally rinse it in water. Put it back in the pan and saute the onion, garlic, and green pepper until soft. Add spaghetti sauce and heat. You can add extra spices if you want, like oregano or basil and if you don't have fresh garlic, feel free to use garlic powder. Serve over spaghetti noodles with bread and a salad. All my low budget recipes are adaptable, and this one is no different. This is a great recipe to hide veggies in. Add mushrooms or celery, take away the beef, whatever your family likes. Make it your own. My husband's mother uses Italian sausage instead of ground beef. Spaghetti is an old stand-by as one of the best inexpensive meal ideas. Tuesday: Chicken Tacos, In-Season FruitLow budget recipes are possible when you buy ingredients that take a little work. Case in point, inexpensive meal ideas using whole chickens. One whole chicken will get my family 2-3 budget dinners, and a few lunches as well. Much more economical than a pound of chicken breasts, which costs the same amount! Cheap quick easy dinner recipes start with cooking the whole chicken in advance: In the morning, season the chicken with salt and pepper and place in crock pot. Stick in the quartered onion, the celery leaves and carrot tops, and cover with water. The parts of the carrots and celery you'd normally throw away, use those. Not the leafy parts of the carrots, just the tops you'd typically toss. Wash it all and stick it in. Cook on high for 3-4 hours.
Carefully drain the remaining liquid (take out the onions, celery and carrot pieces) and reserve for Chicken Noodle Soup on Saturday. When your chicken is cooled, take all the meat from the bones. Discard any skin and bones. You should be left with 2-3 cups of meat. Use 2/3rds for tonight's meal and reserve the remaining 1/3rd for Chicken Noodle Soup. If you've gotten a particularly large bird, then you may be able to get a third meal out of it. Reheat the chicken in a pan. Add the taco seasoning mix. Dice the black olives. Make tacos with the tortillas, adding black olives, cheese and sour cream. Accompany with a fresh fruit salad. Variations on tacos are perfect for low budget recipes. Chicken, ground beef, stew meat or even just dressed up refried beans (with onion and cumin) make great fillers and inexpensive meal ideas. Wednesday: Chili, Salad, BreadCheap quick easy dinner recipes make good use of store bought items, such as packaged chili seasoning mix. Buy mild, medium or hot, depending on how much heat your family enjoys for your low budget recipes. We usually get the mild and my husband adds Tabasco to his serving.I always make a double batch of chili. The whole family loves it, and the extras go towards Chili Cheese Dogs for Sunday night as well as lunch for my husband for the rest of the week, providing several low budget recipes. They also make great toppers for Friday's Stuffed Baked Potatoes. 
I make my chili in the crockpot. First, I brown the ground beef in a pan, then rinse and drain it. I throw the onion, garlic and green pepper in and saute the mix a little longer, then add both packets of chili seasoning. While this sautes, I empty all the cans into the crockpot. Then I pour the beef mixture in, mix well, and let it cook on low for 5-6 hours, longer if needed. There's something about slow cooked chili that is just too good! Top with shredded cheese and onions if desired. Serve with bread and salad. Thursday: Tuna Noodle Casserole
Casseroles make great low budget recipes. Combine a starch (noodles, rice) with a meat (chicken pieces from a whole chicken, ground beef, tuna) and some kind of sticking agent (cream of chicken, mushroom or broccoli soups work well) then top with something crunchy or cheese and bake! Cheap quick easy dinner recipes! Here is my recipe for Tuna Noodle Casserole, one of my favorite budget dinners.
Meanwhile, put the french fried onion rings into a Ziploc bag and get rid of all the air. Pound the bag and crush all the onion rings. Sprinkle on the casserole and bake another 5-8 mins. Serve with apples and caramel dip below. Use the extra cream cheese leftover from the Tuna Noodle Casserole for a great dip for apples. Let the cream cheese soften on the counter, and while the casserole is cooking, mix with the brown sugar and vanilla until well blended. Chill in the fridge until after dinner. Dip and enjoy! Friday: Stuffed Baked Potatoes, SaladUsing leftovers creatively goes a long way towards saving significant money on low budget recipes. Our favorite cheap quick easy dinner recipes from leftovers include Stuffed Baked Potatoes. Bake your potatoes in the oven or microwave. Now get out all this week's leftovers! Chili, chicken tacos, even spaghetti meat taste great as toppings on your taters. Cheese and sour cream, even bacon bits or broccoli are good too. A creative way to use up leftovers. Saturday: Chicken Noodle Soup, SaladThere's something about comfort foods like chicken noodle soup that just make me smile. And talk about low budget recipes! Chicken noodle soup tastes terrific and is extremely economical.
In the morning, start your noodles. Whisk the eggs and salt together and then stir in the flour, until you have formed a ball. Roll out dough with rolling pin until about 1/8 inch thick. Now take a butter knife and slice the dough into 8-12 large (uneven) squares. This makes it easy to turn while drying. Sit the noodle squares on a dishcloth and turn every hour or so throughout the day. About an hour before needed, cut the squares into ½ inch strips of individual noodles. Continue to dry. Meanwhile, place chicken and stock into crockpot. Add freshly chopped carrots, celery, and onion. Salt and pepper. Cook on low all day as your noodles dry. A half hour before dinner, put the noodles into the soup. Serve with bread and salad. Freeze leftovers for when someone is not feeling well, or eat later in the week for lunch. This makes a terrific comfort food! Sunday: Chili-Cheese Dogs, In-Season FruitWell, I never said that these low budget recipes would be extremely healthy, now did I? But you can substitute turkey dogs (and for that matter you can substitute ground turkey in the above chili) if needed. Make these budget dinners your own.
This is one of my favorite cheap quick easy dinner recipes. The secret to making chili cheese dogs to die for is how you cook the dogs. You boil them. Set a pot of water to boil, adding 2 minced garlic cloves and a pinch of salt to the water. Boil the dogs for 3-5 mins. Meanwhile, reheat some chili in the microwave. Put a dog in a bun, top with chili, and then put shredded cheese on top. Microwave 15-20 seconds to melt the cheese. Top with onions. Yummy! Fresh fruit balances out the meal. Shopping List for Rayvens Cheap Quick Easy Dinner RecipesDid you like this week's menu? Great! I've put together a low budget recipes shopping list for you, listing all of the above ingredients.Budget Dinners: SaladsIn many of the above low budget recipes, you'll find references to a dinner salad. We eat a lot of salad in our family; its a great way to get our full servings of vegetables. Salads can be very nutritious (depending on what you put on them) and can be an economical way to use up small qualities of ingredients.Salads can even be a great way to use up leftovers. Remember the chicken tacos? If you have some meat left over, toss it in a salad! Cheap quick easy dinner recipes! A word of caution: do not waste your hard earned money on iceburg lettuce. It has absolutely no nutritional value. Spend a little extra to get some leaf lettuce, like romaine. We buy a bag of 6 heads of romaine at Wal*Mart for about $6. It might not seem like an inexpensive meal idea now, but you're helping your health, which will save you money on doctor's bills in the future. Here are some ideas on salad toppings to turn your greens into low budget recipes:
$45 Emergency MenuLike the idea of low budget recipes, but want something with more emphasis on the low budget? Remember, the term inexpensive meal ideas is relative. What is cheap to one family might not be to another. But, lucky for you, I know of an excellent source for an emergency menu.Let's pretend for a moment that you have not a single item in your pantry, you have a family of six to feed, and only $45 until you get paid next week. Well, it can be done! Visit HillBilly Housewife and the famous (and free) $45 emergency menu, complete with shopping list. $45 Emergency Menu
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