Thrifty Thursday - Ham and Potatoes

Thrifty Thursday

                                                                                                                                              

     During a conversation with my sister about convenience foods, she had mentioned it was cheaper than eating healthy.  This made me think for a bit because I always thought it was cheaper to make it yourself.  She pointed out that she could feed her family on $15 at McDonalds.  It seems possible off the dollar menu, but that probably won't fill my family up and it would lack vegetables.

     From this, I became determined to price out at least one meal per week to make sure we are eating inexpensive as well as healthy.  Not all my meals are truly considered "healthy" but they contain the proper food groups.

     Please also understand that prices are different in other areas.  We live in an area with very low cost foods.

First we started with our protein.  We had an inexpensive ham.

With the extra ham, the next morning I made ham and eggs in muffin tins:

The cost of the ham was $9.85.  We used a little over half of it for our meal.  This was three slices each and three for my husbands lunch (we usually cook for 5 so he can take some to work).  I calculated about $5.00 worth of ham for the entire family.

We also had baked potatoes.  I cooked them in the solar oven (as well as the ham) to avoid heating the inside too much.  I purchased a 5 lb bag of potatoes at $2.50 and used about 1/3 of them (5 potatoes).  I also bought a pound of butter at $3.28 and calculated about a tablespoon of butter per potato, making our total for the potatoes at $1.33.

Since I wanted a bit of convenience in there, we went with a frozen dough ball rather than making my own rolls.  The package of 12 rolls were $1.30, and we used 4.  Calculated with a teaspoon of butter, we came up with $.56.

For our vegetable, we added a 16 ounce bag of frozen brussel sprouts.  This came to $1.33 for the whole bag.
Note:  I did not calculate in the spray oil in the dough pan or green onions on the potatoes. I don't imagine it is that much...maybe $.03?

Here is the total breakdown:
Ham $5
Potato with butter $1.33
Roll with butter $.56
Brussel Sprouts $1.33
For a Grand Total of    $8.22 for the entire family.

Take that McDonalds!!!!