Our Walmart receipt from two Saturdays ago is still stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like Missouri, with seven dinners circled in blue pen. It came to $46.87 before tax, and it fed the two of us dinner for a week with food left over.
We got pre-approved for a mortgage a couple of weeks ago, and since then I've been looking at every line in the sheet a little harder. Groceries are our second-biggest bill after rent. So I tried something: one week, seven dinners for two, every one of them under five dollars, all from the Walmart in town. No Aldi, no drive to Columbia.
The rules
Each dinner had to cost under $5 for both of us. I counted what we actually used, not the whole package, and I counted pantry things too, like oil, butter, milk and seasoning, at what they cost us. If something made leftovers, that was a bonus, not a reason to fudge the math.
| Night | Dinner for two | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | Sheet-pan chicken thighs, potatoes and green beans | $4.79 |
| Monday | Ham and beans with cornbread | $4.69 |
| Tuesday | Bean-and-cheese burritos with rice | $4.70 |
| Wednesday | Breakfast for dinner: eggs, hash browns and toast | $3.78 |
| Thursday | Smoked sausage, peppers and onions over rice | $4.65 |
| Friday | Homemade pepperoni pizza | $4.22 |
| Saturday | Chicken fried rice | $4.63 |
| Week | $31.46 |
That's $31.46 for 14 plates, or about $2.25 a plate.
The recipes, short version
Sunday: A family pack of bone-in chicken thighs was $1.77 a pound. Half of it went on a sheet pan with chunks of potato, oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder at 425 degrees for 45 minutes, with a can of green beans on the side. The other half went in the freezer for Saturday.
Monday: One smoked ham hock from a two-pack, a pound of dried great northern beans soaked overnight, an onion and water, simmered on low all afternoon. Cornbread from a 72-cent box mix. My dad grew up on this, and there was enough left for Tyler's lunch.
Tuesday: A can of refried beans heated with a little salsa, rolled into six flour tortillas with shredded cheese, with rice on the side.
Wednesday: I worked until 9, so this was Tyler's night. Six eggs scrambled with cheese, half a bag of frozen hash browns and toast. Eggs were $2.88 a dozen, which still feels like a sale after what we paid early last year.
Thursday: A $2.97 rope of smoked sausage, sliced and browned with a bell pepper and an onion, over rice. Fifteen minutes, start to finish.
Friday: Pizza crust from an 88-cent pouch mix, half a jar of pizza sauce, most of a bag of mozzarella and a third of a package of pepperoni. A large from Casey's would have been around $18.
Saturday: The rest of the chicken thighs, thawed, baked and chopped, then fried with day-old rice, two eggs, frozen peas and carrots and soy sauce.
The receipt
The receipt was $46.87, and the dinners used $31.46 of it. The other $15.41 is still in our kitchen: a ham hock in the freezer, most of the potatoes and onions, four tortillas, a few eggs, rice and the rest of the pepperoni. That all rolls into this week.
One thing I didn't use was our home-canned tomatoes from Debbie's kitchen. I wanted to make spaghetti, but at $3.66 a quart, one jar would have blown a five-dollar dinner all by itself. Those are saved for chili season.
What Tyler asked for again
Three of them. The smoked sausage and rice was the clear winner, and he asked for it again the following Monday. Ham and beans came in second, mostly because of the cornbread. Pizza night may be a weekly thing now.
The fried rice did not make the list. When I asked if he'd want it again, he said, "Let me think on it," which from Tyler means no.
Our usual week of dinners runs about $60 to $70, so I'm not pretending we'll eat like this every week. But if we swap in three or four of these, we save around $15 a week. That's about $65 a month we can send toward closing costs instead.
