Where, exactly, can I buy five cents' worth of tahini? You have to buy a whole container ($5-6). Ditto peanuts, lettuce, teriyaki sauce (unless you steal it from the Chinese joint) peanuts, and tortillas. You can't just buy four tortillas. I hate stuff like this; it's a lie.

Yeah, $5 in OHIO. Not in Boston.

How the hell do you buy 4 chicken breasts, 3 oranges, sweet potatoes, and peas for $5? ORGANIC peas, no less.

@winstonthorne: It's not a lie if you use a small portion of a condiment you already posess and will reuse many times.

I have actually made many recipes from this site and there are some great, frugal resources there.

Sales, manager's specials, markdowns, etc. Menu planning and stocking up when things are on sale that you know will use can make a meager food budget go a long way.

As a young single guy living alone, I've never found any of these ideas practical primarily because they are intended for large groups of people. For a lot of the ingredients, you must buy in huge quantities in order to see the savings that these authors promise.

At that point, you're left with two choices. Either follow the recipe and end up with a lot of leftovers to either try to save (quite a lot will not keep for very long) or throw out, or do a little math, hope that downsizing the recipe doesn't cause any horrific chemical reactions, and eat that particular dish frequently enough so your ingredients don't spoil.

I hate saying it, but sometimes, fast food just makes more sense.

@winstonthorne: that's the tough thing about meals like this for me. unless you plan on making it more than once, or at least making more meals using the 'different' ingredients, it's not worth it.

too often I buy things for recipes and then don't use them. nowadays, i plan on picking out other recipes to use the ingredients so they aren't wasted.

@tonalanswer: Menu planning for a week or even a month can definitely help cut down on the waste.

I loved playing Oregon Trail in my youth. The teachers would reward us with this game in my elementary school. I'm pretty sure you can play it online now. But it isn't the same with the very old Mac computer and watching the other kids do work while I play.

HOLY HANNAH, I forgot how cheap groceries are down there compared to up here! In Canada I can't buy 2 chicken breasts for under $5-6. Sigh, I need to move back. Mind you, if I do a big "family pack" I could probably get the price of the chicken down to $3-4 per 2.

Where the heck do you get that much chicken for $2, do you have to kill it yourself?

@KStrike155: $5/person. You're going to have to put more cash than $5 up front in order to get all the ingredients (which is the age-old issue when you're single or just a couple and trying to eat inexpensively). But call some friends and make it a cheap-eats party.

While the BULK cost of things is more then $5, (a bottle of sauce versus the amount you use), the price points there taken in the use. Buying 1 bottle of peanut sauce obviously costs more than 50 cents, but if you use it 4-5 times and it costs $2, it works out.

Who buys groceries in trips for single meals besides french grandmothers anyway?

@KStrike155: I stopped at the 10 cent lettuce. My MILK is $5.

It's very different geographically. For those in the DC area however, The Washingtonian has an ongoing feature called The Frugal Foodie where they get a local chef to make a meal for 4 people for less than $15. For us DMVers that's a frickin deal.

@lilyHaze: The only way to play Oregon Trail is to spend all your money on ammo, no food, and maybe a couple wheels and axles if you have any money left. Then blow the hell out of every animal you come across.

@mgy: eh, I've never had any problems downsizing recipes, especially like these. Typically I'll make enough for 2-3 meals for myself, i.e. for dinner and lunch the next day, or following 2 days. I can make some really awesome food, very cheap. Salads for lunch are healthy and depending on ingredients can be both cheap and taste awesome. I even make my own bread (usually sourdough) which I can freeze and use as much as I need. Fast food is ok once in a while, but it sure as hell ain't the only game in town for single people.

@lilyHaze: It also makes an excellent drinking game. Put you and your friends on the wagon: a sip each time something bad happens, a shot if you die.

THE ASIAN CHICKEN WRAPS WITH STEAMED SNAP PEAS IS A LIE!

@laughingweek: I buy for single meals when it requires fresh ingredients. I used to do one big shopping trip every week or so, and buy produce that I was going to use for meals I'd planned, but then something would come up and I wouldn't get around to cooking it and the perishable stuff would go to waste. So now I only buy it when I know I'm going to be using it. Even still I have problems with some things. I have a lot of trouble getting through an entire bunch of bananas, or container of strawberries, or a whole bag of salad.

@lilyHaze: You mean Apple ][. That's the only REAL way to experience Oregon Trail.

@diasdiem: When I was in 5th grade, I would min/max every aspect of my Oregon Trail family, eating the biggest meals possible at every stop, everyone in peak condition, full stock of bullets, food, clothes (I believe it was 50 sets), and wagon supplies, and I'd roll as Teacher (no beneficial skills) for maximum score multiplier. (Hmm. I wonder how all those teachers felt about that...)

The secret is that the trading system in Oregon Trail is broken, and you can perform unlimited trades netting %30-50 profit per trade forever.

How about this, instead of planning $5 dinners, why don't you budget $35 every week for dinner? These recipes sound wonderful, but most of these foods you have to buy in bigger portions (and prices) than listed here. If I were single or just a couple, I would rather spend $15 a week on meat and get $5 worth of chicken, beef, etc... and the rest of the money on veggies and pasta.

Depending on what your tastes are, it really is easy to plan a cheap dinner. I buy in bulk because I feed a family, and I don't generally shop with a menu. I portion out huge "bulk packs" of ground beef, chicken, ham to save money- You might spend $35 on meat, but that will last you 2-3 weeks if you do it right. I find the hardest thing to save money on is fresh fruits and veggies unfortunately. I wait until frozen veggies go on sale and stock UP! (An extra freezer always helps!)

I think it's just all about self control when you shop- Don't buy it unless you are going to use it. A box of bisquick can go a LONG way for breakfasts, and the occassional cop-out dinner of macaroni and cheese, baked beans and hot dogs is dynamite to a child :)

@rpm773: That's not what it says. It's 5/meal. And it says:

"Makes 4 servings: ... Cost $5.05:"

Nowhere does it say "per person." I could totally believe feeding a family of 4 for $20 though.

I'm single, shop with coupons, hit sales, buy in bulk, use a vacuum sealer for extra stuff, and easily hit the price per servings mentioned in the recipes above.

A little planning and getting over the impulse of waiting to plan your meal before actually wanting your meal makes saving money on meals very easy.

@tonalanswer: You can't just look at it as a one-off thing. You have to plan your meals to not waste a lot.

Where I live in Canada, a jar of tahini puts you out about $10. And no matter how you eat, you can never use it up quickly enough for it to actually be worth that much. I might use a couple of tablespoons on the odd occasion I decide to make hummus.

@laughingweek: Me. We plan some things, have a big stock of staples on hand, but we buy fresh things in small quantities. And we usually bike to the grocery to get it, so the frequent small trips provide a reason to get exercise.

@frodoUnderhill: I was wondering that myself. 4 chicken breasts for 2 bucks?? Hm.

There's definitely a learning curve when it comes to portions, food costs, and teenagers. Erin may have to rethink her "can't cook a meal for more than $5" when her 2 and 4-yo boys are 14 and 16 instead.

When my kids were younger, it was pretty easy to keep dinner costs under $5 and even wind up with leftovers. Nowadays, though, if I labeled a single tortilla chicken wrap per person as "dinner" for my family of 4, the $5 dinner would be inevitably followed by the $10 8:00 pm raid on the refrigerator.

With my teenage son in particular, if I don't provide enough food at dinner, he starts to exhibit that starved-dog food-aggressive behavior that would get him put to sleep as "unsuitable for adoption," were I to drop him off as a stray at the animal shelter (which is not to say that I've ever thought about doing that).

@KStrike155: I completely agree. As soon as I saw that she listed the chicken for $2.21, I realized that there was no way this meal was going to cost $5, and I live in Texas, where groceries are pretty cheap. If it's $5 a person, she needs to clarify that.

@Segador: It's got to be some Aldy's frozen chicken or something.

I make one whole organic pastured chicken last four meals for a family of three. At $10.50 per chicken (average), that's 88 cents per serving of chicken.

And many of the meals I make from it can be prepared in single servings. You cook the whole chicken, freeze the meat, and pull out what you need when you need it. Chicken wraps, for example, can be made one at a time. One small bowl of chicken salad can be divided in half, one portion for dinner tonight, the second portion for lunch tomorrow.

Even with all this, I agree with OneTrickPony. I have a tween boy who is just getting into his bottomless pit phase. For him, I serve extras of everything else other than the main dish and he often supplements his dinner with an entire peanut butter sandwich, a bowl of fruit, and two glasses of milk.

While it's not $5 a meal quite, I find that these are great ideas for inexpensive recipes that are (usually) healthy depending on what you choose:

[simplyrecipes.com]
[www.seriouseats.com]

Lots of other recipes about the Serious Eats pages, but I tend to find the most useful ones in the Dinner Tonight column.

Hillbilly housewife boasts a $40/week 4-6 serving menu, but I have never tried it - I don't eat baked goods and those are a huge chunk of it.

@talithaborealis:

Woops, just saw Hillbilly Housewife's costs more now, adjusted for inflation/economy/etc. 75/week now. Even the cheap stuff is expensive these days.

@Segador:
It's $5 per meal, not per person. I'm from Columbus, Ohio. 99 cents for a bag of peas is about right (on sale) but $4 would be far too much.

The price on the chicken is too low though. We get Boneless skinless breasts at $1.88 on sale at the lowest, that would be about twice what she's quoting here.

She talks about using coupons and that being necessary to the success of her program, but she uses too much fresh food for that to be the case.

I'm not calling her a liar, I just think her recipes are too specific to her individual grocery store's prices to be of much help to people on a wide basis.

For those who think $5/person is hard to do, you really need to learn how to shop. I'd have to really try to spend more than that. My steak dinners run about $4/person.

I love the comment on the article on the Houston Chronicle's page ...

"1) These meals do not have adequate serving size of vegetables per USDA guidelines. 2) There is no calcium/milk/soy milk. 3) There are NO fruits. 4) The serving size would not be adequate for boys 14 and 16. " [the author's boys are 2 and 4]

Even the cheapest, most inhumanely raised chicken costs more than $5 for the amounts in these recipes. I think to be more effective, she should refer to her shopping habits ... how she utilized coupons/sales for these recipes.

@AlxFherMana: I've only seen chicken for $2 when it was something that the butcher probably found hiding in the back of the freezer. The pricing is unrealistic.

@talithaborealis: Her menus are great for when you're in truly dire straits financially but I can't bring myself to feed the family margarine and powdered milk. No.

@winstonthorne: It's not really a lie. I think it mostly depends on what you consider a staple--the things you replace as soon as they run out. For me, tortillas, sesame seeds, and olive oil are staples. So I don't always have a batch of tahini made already, but when I don't, I have the stuff to do it. (And tortillas are actually pretty easy to make, too, out of things that most people probably have around.)

Obviously, you consider salt and pepper staples, because you didn't mention those. But yeah, most people do tend to stick with a couple different cooking styles, and their pantries would reflect that. And it is a little more difficult and expensive to branch out from those, at least initially.

Also, I would just like to take this opportunity to brag that one of my local grocery stores has a huge bulk section, so you can actually buy precise amounts of things like peanuts.

@winstonthorne: the best thing to do in this instance is work freezer meals to your advantage. when i cook lasagna, for example, i make at least 3-5 trays of it. then i can cut 30 servings, freeze them, and have homemade lasagna anytime i want over the next 6 months. do this 4 or 5 times and you have a nice stock of things to choose from and you're never at a loss for what to eat on those busy days.

plus, isn't that just what a lean cuisine/insert-favorite-frozen-box-meal-here is? anything a company is selling you as a freezer meal you can make at home yourself.

anyway, yeah, whenever a recipe calls for something i need to buy a lot of, and i don't see myself using it for anything else anytime soon...i make enough portions of it all at once to use said ingredient. i mean, you're cooking anyway, right? might as well make a ton :)

We have started making what we call "subway at home". It's pretty darn good too. We buy all the ingredients we would normally have at subway and we have been building them exactly the same way, with different breads. The current set of food we have costs about 20 to 25 dollars and we only have to replenish some foods at a time. We might run out of bread before meat, so we buy a loaf of bread and that's all it costs us that time. We have, mostly for fun, calculated the cost of each sandwich with all the ingredients and it ends up at about 1.25 each. They are very large too because we add meat, cheese, olives, lettuce, tomato, onions, cucumbers,banana peppers, salt pepper and oil, ranch or mayo or mustard. The bread tastes different than subway and that's ok with us.

@Prole: I think that's possibly what it is. Trader joes sells a big bag of frozen chicken for around $10 or $12 and that equals about $2 for three pieces. It would help if she clarified how much weight the chicken is and also how much food we are really talking about. It would be feasible if the three or four chicken breasts were only equaling to less than a pound but not so much if you need more.

If you go shopping and buy specials, with a flexible repertoire of recipes, you can eat cheaply, especially if you're cooking for the family.

And your freezer, crockpot and pressure cooker are wondrous things.

Look around, too. Ethnic markets and places other than megamarts can save you quite a bit. (Whole Foods, not so much.)

@mgy: I agree. I'm both single and not a big fan of cooking. There's all these great recipes...that require a lot of ingredients. I don't keep Tahini or rosemary on my shelf (I think I have salt, pepper, and garlic). I don't need a ton of leftovers, because I don't enjoy eating the same meal over and over for days on end.

@diasdiem: Bananas and strawberries can get chucked into the freezer, at least.

@OneTrickPony: Responsible people would turn first to neutering.

Don't tell me you never thought about that, either.

@laughingweek: there are some thing I only buy fresh and they are either not abs to be frozen (herbs, tomatoes) and don't keep long of they're just not advisable frozen. If we are doing a seafood bake (and only because seafood is on sale that week) we have to buy it as fresh as possile and it can't be frozen for later use.

I keep chicken stock and some heartier veggies on hang (onions an potatoes) but I would never buy frozen fish fillets or frozen chicken. It's just better to buy it fresh and then freeze it. Pre-frozen chicken tastes like cardboard.

I'm not arguing that some people prefer to low-carb or lower-budget or what have you, but if we're really feeling guilt for eating a single flour tortilla? Our relationship with food may be beyond repair.

@pecan 3.14159265: I'm a good speller I swear! It's just that Internet is down so I'm using my iPhone and the auto correct doesn't use context... So abs is a word and hangs is a word, but neither are the words I wanted!

I think these recipes are also a matter of circumstance. I hate sweet potatoes and to substitute them with something else may cost me a little more. Does this make the under $5 goal a sham? And I think there needs to be information about how much food one needs ...obviously a family of two adults and two young kids who aren't bottomless pits could fare but what about two teens or extremely athletic adults? The $5 meal should merely be an evidenciary starting point to say "this can be done" - but the results may not be typical.

@floraposte: Indeed. And I think people take the sugar, calorie and carb hating to new levels...

I'm like, you know, you DO need to eat 2000 calories per day.

You could even have a cookie every morning if you adjusted your diet that way, let alone a flour tortilla.