How much does an average dinner at home cost you?

[Tinker'n'Fun]

My meals tend to be on the low side at around $5 - $8 per meal for 2 or 4.

For example:

Last night I made a chicken-mushroom bowl and tonight I will make Panera copycat Broccoli soup:

2 containers mushrooms $3.00
1 onion - $.33
1 pound chicken - $1.99
Half and half $.50
Chicken Broth $.50
Rolls $2.00

So meal #1 was $8.33 for two with one full lunch and one lunch on bread instead of rolls.

Meal #2

Broccoli - $1.50
Half and Half $.50
Chicken Broth $1.00
Onion - $.33
Carrots $.25
Cheese - $1.25
Corn Starch - $.25
Rolls - cost in last nights dinner

Total cost meal #2 - $5.00. This is will also have 3 extra large bowls for leftovers.

I guess we have smaller meals some days of the week. We can have full meals with meat, starch, veggies all in the same cost area. I always tend to use ingredients that play well with others.

Our food costs here seem lower than many other places. I can get three large green peppers for $1.29.

 

[TwoMisfits]

Well apparently my problem is I eat too much?? We ate most of the steak, all but 2 slices of the cheese, both peppers, and all mushrooms (and quite frankly I didn't have as much as I would have wanted. They cooked down to nothing). So there is nothing left to plan another meal with other than sub rollls which I don't eat and 2 sluces of cheese (which I will eat for a snack). I did take leftover steak to work for lunch so that saves me $5 there.

No way there was enough food for a 3rd person nevermind an entire family lol.

So, your meal had steak for 3 (since you had a lunch later), sub rolls for 3 or more (which could be ground up to breadcrumbs if you hate the other meal ideas, and cheese for 2 1/2-3 (since you have a snack for later)...while I, like you, look at the meal as $15 and the lunch/snack later as free, a lot of people look at the dinner as cheaper (say roughly $11-12, going by your budget) and assign the "free" later lunch/snack a cost ($3-$4 or so). So, it doesn't sound like you eat too much or you spend too much to me (since steak meals are expensive...and remember, your cheese steak has a certain quality of meat and cheese and roll likely to exceed the fast food place next door).

But, a trick for extending the "more expensive" main dishes...plan your cheaper sides for them (and vice versa - do more expensive sides with cheaper main dishes). And if you had no side with this meal, maybe plan one for the future - roasted green beans are really cheap right now and give a good low calorie "french fry" crunch to a cheese steak meal (or if it's your splurge meal, throw in a 1/2 bag of french fries to bake or roast some potatoes with dill). These super cheap sides can serve 2 people for about $1 total and will allow for less meat/cheese usage (or more leftovers.

I do this with my family's garlic butter lemon shrimp dish (their favorite food is shrimp) - I always serve it with orzo ($.50 - $.75/box on sale) and a fruit/veggie that's cheap in season. The main dish costs me $4-5/person, but the rest of the meal only adds about $.75 more/person, making it much more economical.

 

[Shelly F - Ohio]

Food waste is something we've been making a real effort to improve on at our house. Something that has helped us a lot is having leftover ingredients rather than leftover prepared food. For example, if we chop up too much onion or pepper for a meal, we don't cook it all. We put the extra in containers in the fridge so that it's ready to go for the next meal. That way, we are finding that we are able to use it up better. The other advantage is that it is easier to make a meal for one without the hassle of cutting everything up. For example, I'll throw together a quick omelet or quesadilla with the chopped up veggies sitting in the fridge. If I had to start taking everything out and chopping it then, I probably wouldn't bother just for myself.

I freeze my extra chopped peppers and onions.

Tonight our dinner cost $5.50 total. Left over chicken I baked in balsamic salad dressing, left over potatoes and creamed corn and pudding.

I looked at the cost of tomorrows dinner which are pork chops in the crockpot with enough for leftovers for the weekend. and rice with green beans should cost $6.00 total.

 

[mks18412]

Tonights meal of organic chili cost $4 for a family of 4. We should have leftovers.

 

[crisi]

We did salmon risotto for 3. A cup of arborio rice (about $2), chicken stock (free from a chicken carcass homemade), a salmon filet ($3) and leftover thai sweet potato soup ($1).

The sweet potato soup in there was really good. I'll do that again. It was a make it up as you go along dinner. The salmon filet was leftover from a package of multiples and tucked in the back of the freezer, the rice is a pantry staple, the chicken stock we had on hand, and the sweet potato soup was a leftover.

 

[JillianMarie]

I find this to be a very interesting exercise. Tonight's chicken pot pie came out to be about $6 for the whole thing. So, about $1 per serving. I made baked ziti earlier this week and I think that came out to be somewhere between $1 and $2 per serving. I certainly don't have a hugely stocked pantry, but if something like tomato sauce is one sale I'll buy a couple just to have so I suppose that helps keep averages down. I'm definitely going to keep better track of this, if only to satisfy my own curiosity.

 

[rdevine10]

Our meals are for a family of 4 - 2 adults, one 11 year old (who eats more than me) as she is going through a growth spurt, and one 8 year old who has a healthy appetite at dinner (as she doesnt eat lunch well at school).

We do not eat processed foods. I am gluten free, youngest DD is dairy free. We eat a lot of meat, starch, veggie meals. Never have casseroles, etc.

We also try to eat organic when possible within out budget. I try to stick to under 800 for a month of groceries- I do a big shop every 2 weeks and a quick produce/perishable run the alternate week.

Our meals run anywhere from about $6 to $12, with leftovers. My cheapest meal this week was:

Homemade potato leek soup- $1 for 2-2 1/2 pounds of potatoes
Leeks- free (frozen from garden last year)
2 slices organic bacon- ? 50 or 75 cents?
half a box organic chix broth- $1.50
Im not counting for spices

dollop butter- if I must maybe 15 or 20 cents?

1 cuke cut up - $1
several carrots cut up- ? 50 cents
few slices italian bread for 3 (since I dont eat it)- ? 25 cents

Total was maybe $5 with leftover soup.

 

[Sorsha]

This is an interesting exercise; but hard to figure out, if I am trying to figure "parts of a whole" (a dollop of butter, a splash of olive oil, a 1/2 cup of this-or-that, etc). I try not to buy overly processed foods, and make things from scratch whenever possible. I buy groceries every two weeks (paydays) except for fresh fruits and veggies (which are bought when we want/need them) and milk. My two week bill is usually between $300 and $400, but that is 3 stores (grocery, WalMart, and Costco) and includes non-food items (cleaning, toilet paper, etc) and pet supplies.

Also, I feed a LOT of people; DH and I, DD19 and her best friend (who is living with us for the time being), DD13 and DD10, and almost always leftovers that DH takes in his lunch the next day. Occasionally our best friend who lives alone across the road too, but she contributes food items when she comes to eat.

Sunday nights are almost always our most expensive meal of the week. Last night, for example, we had a boneless turkey roast (purchased at Costco at Christmas and tossed in the freezer) that cost about $13 when we bought it. To go along with it we had homemade mac and cheese (really simple; a bechemel sauce base, with about half a Costco sized bag of shredded cheese and a 1 lb box of macaroni) that probably cost about $5 total, and 2 lbs of fresh steamed asparagus that we found on sale for $1.50 a lb (so $3 total). Total cost for the meal without adding in things like a little flour and butter and milk: around $21. That fed 6 people plus made a full lunch for DH plus one more meal of leftovers for one person. $21 divided by 8 = $2.62/person.

Tonight we are having corned beef, potatoes, and cabbage. The corned beef is large and a flat-cut (more lean, but more expensive) and cost about $17. The potatoes are from a Costco 20 lb bag that cost about $8, but I will only use about 3 of them (they are monstrously huge) so the cost there is maybe $1 total. The cabbage was on sale and cost about $1 as well. A couple of the kids don't care for cooked cabbage, so they will have tossed salads - again if I average out the cost for the bagged salad, the raw carrots, the dressing, the croutons, etc, maybe $1 for a couple of kids. Altogether, dinner tonight will probably be about $20, and serve 6 with a lunch for DH tomorrow, and maybe even leftovers. Total: about $2.50 a serving.

I am going to guess that this is about average for us. We buy most of our meats from Costco - more expensive but MUCH better quality, IMHO, especially the beef. We don't eat pork, and eat very little ground meats. We try to eat fish once a week, and that can be more expensive if you are getting the quality stuff and watching your Country Of Origin. We try to have a vegetable and/or salad with every meal, and try to buy fresh as much as possible. We also support Farmer's Markets in the summer, and that can be more expensive. Finally, I make a lot of things from scratch, and getting all the ingredients to make a big pot of marinara, for example, can be more expensive than cracking open a jar of Prego. However, when I make a big batch of something like the marinara, I always get two meals out of it because half goes into the freezer.

 

[Sorsha]

One other thing that everyone has to consider: food prices vary hugely from location to location.

I am going to be able to buy food SO much more cheaply than someone in Long Island or Los Angeles. Someone in the middle of the fruit-growing regions of Florida can get wonderful fresh fruit all year around much more cheaply than I can - strawberries in January in Montana will bankrupt me (and be nasty besides). The cost of a gallon of milk can swing just as widely from location to location as a gallon of gas.

So we all have to be careful that we aren't comparing ourselves too much to another person who might have much different prices for the same things.

Oh, and I saw a previous poster say that they had cut out (among other things) products containing High Fructose Corn Syrup. We did that a year ago, and saw our food budget go up quite a bit. It is amazing how many things have that crap in it, and it a product DOESN'T contain it, it is usually twice as expensive. *grump*