Pasta is my go-to for economical meals. I'm normally cooking for myself, so my pasta dishes tend to last me a few days. Below is a recipe that I came up with recently. Let me know if you like it! You'll need: 2 tablespoons cooking oil (I used Olive oil) Onion Powder Garlic Powder 1/2 Box of spaghetti 2 pouches Salmon (already drained and deboned, very convenient) 4 oz Cream Cheese 1 can Peas Sea or table salt ( to taste) Parmesan Cheese First season your water in whatever pot you plan on cooking your pasta in. I season my water with 2 tablespoons of cooking oil (so the noodles don't stick), 2 tablespoons of salt, and one tablespoon each of onion powder and garlic powder. Bring the water to a boil, and add your noodles. Cook pasta until done, and remove the pot from heat. Drain any excess water from the pasta using a strainer then place the pasta back back into the pot. You're going to make the "sauce" right on top of the noodles now. Place the 4 oz of cream cheese into the pot with the noodles and turn on a low heat setting. Begin to softly fold the cream cheese into the noodles until it is completely melted. Add the salmon now. It may come out as a sheet, so break the salmon up in the pot as much as possible while mixing. Once the salmon is completely mixed in and both the salmon and noodles are coated with cream cheese, and a bit more garlic and onion powder to taste ( and salt if you'd like). Lastly, gently fold the peas into the pasta, being careful noT to break them as you mix. This meal costs me, on average, less than $7 to make, and lasts me at least 3 days.
One of the cheapest meals we can cook are giblets, they are super cheap and really delicious. The only problem is that they can take more or less one hour to prepare and cook, but from the expenses point of view we can never find meat as cheap as that, all of us in my place love them.
I think that if you need to feed a family for a low price while keeping the foods attractive, if you go to a locally sourced butchers for meats, buy a big bag of rice, and visit discount supermarkets for veggies, you can actually give your family a well made meal, with a good range of different nutrients, and the total cost per person can be kept quite low.
More often than not the local butcher is way more expensive than buying the meat in the supermarket. No doubt that the quality is superior, but I don't think that it's the cheaper option. I think that there are a lot of cheap options, lettuce for example, we can buy a huge one just for some cents and I do love lettuce.
