Yahoo Finance 9 Killer Resources for Inexpensive Recipes
One of the biggest budget line items for families is food. Simply putting a meal on the table for the whole family, whether there are two, five, 10 or even just one of you, can really add up over time.
The average American family is estimated to spend nearly $4,000 a year on food eaten at home, plus an additional $2,600 a year eating out, and that eats into a very significant portion of a family's monthly budget.
[See: 10 Meals to Make When You Are Trying to Save.]
So, what's the solution? For many families, it's to seek out low-cost recipes made up of ingredients that you can always get affordably. Finding these recipes, however, isn't always easy, especially in a world where the attention often goes to high-priced restaurants and complex recipes with esoteric ingredients.
That's where the local library comes in handy. Most libraries have an incredible selection of cookbooks and food books that cater directly to low-cost-recipe seekers. Here are five favorites:
[See: 12 Ways to Save Money on Food.]
" Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4 a Day," by Leanne Brown is chock full of recipes for people on a tight budget. The goal of the book is to figure out how to eat as well as possible on the $4-a-day food budget that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, provides people. The results are pretty incredible. Between the green chile and cheddar quesadillas and the broiled lime tilapia (and countless other things), it's amazing what can be prepared for $4.
" Budget Bytes: Over 100 Easy, Delicious Recipes to Slash Your Grocery Bill in Half," by Beth Moncel doesn't just shine as a collection of inexpensive recipes -- though there are more than 100 of those -- but also as a collection of strategies for acquiring the foods at a lower price and preparing them at a minimal cost. It's not just about cheap recipes here!
" Good Cheap Eats Dinner in 30 Minutes or Less," by Jessica Fisher focuses on low-cost recipes that don't take long to make. While the recipes in here aren't the most complex and diverse, they are low cost and do tend to please the whole family. This is a great book if your family is constantly busy in the evenings.
" The $7 a Meal Slow Cooker Cookbook," by Linda Larsen is packed with more than 300 recipes for the slow cooker, each of which comes in at a pretty bargain-basement price. These meals can easily feed the whole family and they usually leave leftovers. Plus, given that they're slow-cooker meals, they require very little time in the evenings.
" Family Feasts for $75 a Week," by Mary Ostyn offers more of a weeklong planning approach to recipes, as it assumes you're buying groceries once a week and doing at least some of the meal preparation in advance. This is a spectacular book if you're an organized person who plans out meals ahead to save time, and will add some significant money savings to that equation.
Alongside these wonderful food books, the Internet is an absolute powerhouse for finding inexpensive recipes of all kinds. Here are four killer resources for finding countless low-cost recipes online.
[See: 12 Shopping Tricks to Keep You Under Budget.]
Budget Bytes ( budgetbytes.com/) is the companion website to the cookbook mentioned above. It offers not just a collection of brilliant low-cost recipes, but additional articles on topics related to low-cost food preparation, such as smart ways to plan meals and build grocery lists.
The Stone Soup ( thestonesoup.com/blog/) provides an absolutely wonderful mix of recipes, low-cost food discussions and keen insights into preparing low-cost food that you may never have considered.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide ( poorcouplesfoodguide.com/) offers recipes and articles on food topics for beginners and advanced home chefs with a constant eye toward low-cost strategies. One particularly good series on this site is the string of articles in which the authors evaluate a common, store-bought convenience food and discuss how to replicate it for a lower price (and it's usually healthier and cheaper, too, and ends up being just as convenient).
Eat Cheap and Healthy! ( reddit.com/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/) is a wonderful discussion forum where users can share low-cost recipes as well as provide suggestions for improving the recipes that others post. You'll find all kinds of related discussions, too, such as strategies for prepping meals on the cheap and how to find a low-cost slow cooker.
These resources will boost your efforts to put inexpensive, tasty and healthy meals on the table for you and your family!
Trent Hamm is the founder of the personal finance website TheSimpleDollar.com, which provides consumers with resources and tools to make informed financial decisions.
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