What’s for dinner?

On Monday, I gave a small glimpse into what our family eats for breakfast.

Today, I am going to cover our dinner ingredients, which is kind of not a small list.

We eat spaghetti and tacos, like normal people. We also eat some meals that aren’t in our usual line up. Theoretically I could go a whole month without repeating a meal. However, since we are trying to keep a small grocery budget, I have started putting spaghetti and tacos and homemade pizzas into the line up more than once. I try to make sure that I only repeat a meal once every two weeks. Why do I repeat and how does it save me money? Well, take spaghetti for example. I use one lb of ground alpaca in the sauce, but our alpaca comes in two pound packages. I cook up the entire package, but freeze the second pound so I can use it in a future meal. Also, I buy the pasta in a large package for the best savings, and making the meal twice in a month insures I am using the entire package in a month.

If you are truly interested in what we eat for dinner, here are some examples:

• Hearty Black Bean Quesadillas:  I double the recipe and freeze the second half. This made making dinner a snap the other night. All I had to do was take them from the freezer and cook them over low heat.
• Korean Beef and Rice: Not too much to say about this. It’s just good!
• Asian Marinated Chicken Thighs: my link to it doesn’t work, but you can google for this recipe
• Black Bean, Sweet Potato, and Quinoa Chili: Hearty and healthy.
• Spaghetti: I have always made spaghetti with the pasta in one pot and sauce in another. I love this recipe because I only get one pot dirty. I use about 1lb of spaghetti and a can of sauce. It will serve dinner and lunch for several days. 

Some of my methods for saving money on dinner ingredients are:

• Plan a month’s worth of meals. I use Plan to Eat. Our lunches and breakfasts are so simple, I only use the planner for dinner. 
• Plan meals whose ingredients complement each other. I can use spaghetti noodles to make this. this and this. I choose 4 meals per month that use noodles and space them one week apart. I do the same thing with other ingredients, such as carne asada and rice. (our favorite rice is Short Grain Brown Rice or Brown Jasmine Rice. It’s a little spendier, but a lot tastier)
• Soups: We love Black Bean Soup here.  
• Salads and veggies for dinner that are on sale. When broccoli is on sale, I will make it several nights, but in different ways. We always have salad with our dinners, which is honestly a way we could save more money. We love those chopped salads and I know it’s cheaper to make your own, but the one time I did, it took me hours and at the end of the week, I had to throw a lot away because it made so much. 

I realize that there isn’t really anything earth shattering in this post. Our dinners are so varied that it’s difficult to contain it all in one post. Planning our meals has been the biggest stress, sanity, money and time saver. I never ask “What’s for dinner?” because dinner is always planned and prepared. 

Do you have any money saving tips for dinner?