Cost Breakdown for supper – 1 adult, 3 children (ages 9, 7, 4)
Total cost for the meal: $3.60
We ate:
Lasagna with a meat sauce, and a cheese sauce
Green salad with homemade Italian dressing
homemade garlic toast, sprinkled with Parmesan cheese
The Lasagna (I made one to eat, 2 to freeze):
$1.99 for a box of noodles (NOT the oven ready kind – I use the regular kind)
$1.76 for sauce (that's 2 cans at $0.88 – yes, I used premade canned sauce, since it was on sale and cheaper then canned tomatoes)
$0.45 – 1/2 can of pureed tomatoes that I had lurking in the freezer
$0.20 for seasonings, herbs, dash of Worchestershire sauce
$4.00 for 2lbs ground beef
$0.99 for a 340gr bag of preshredded Mozzarella cheese I bought on sale, and then froze
$0.50 for 2 cups of milk for the cheese sauce
$0.05 for 1/4 cup of flour, for the cheese sauce
Total: $9.94 for three lasagnas
Now, the fun part is that we ate lasagna two nights in a row. So …
Total per meal for lasagna: $1.67 per night
The Salad:
$0.50 for the lettuce, a head of iceburg (this was an extravagant purchase for me, as the lettuce was $2.00 per head!)
$0.42 for cucumber (about 1/6 of an English cucumber – also extravagant at $2.49 each)
$0.50 for dressing – oil, wine vinegar, sugar, garlic, salt, parmesan cheese
Total: $1.42
Garlic Toast: cost approximately $0.50 – it was kind of going stale at this point anyway, so I soaked it in garlic butter, sprinkled it with Parmesan cheese, and stuck it under the broiler for a few minutes. It turned out great!
Grand Total for supper: $3.60
Total per person for one meal: $0.90 approximately.
Now, I do understand that my kids are young, but this would probably work out the same for two adults as well. I figure my two boys eat as much as one person, and me and my daughter would count as one. The next question might be – can I keep this up? And the answer is yup, for sure, this is how we eat all the time.
The cost of this could be cut back further by using less beef. I could have gotten away with one pound of ground beef, and used 1/2 cup of TVP as well (textured vegetable protein). That would have brought the cost of one lasagna down to $1.32.
hi,
where are you buying your food?
I live in Canada. In the winter food is scarce and expensive.