Eating for $2 a Day: Cheap and Healthy Meal Ideas You Need to Try

eating for $2 a day with this inflation in grocery prices can it even be done we are going to check it out can I feed one person for an entire week for right at $14 we are going to scour the ads we are going to go to multiple stores because every penny counts in this extreme grocery budget challenge welcome to Albertson's this is our starting spot today yes Albertson's is a more expensive store however I decided to look at all of the grocery ads at home I was just going to do a Walmart pickup make it nice and snappy and easy but honestly only shopping at Walmart I could not do the challenge it wasn't going to work so I started pulling up the ads for other stores that are more expensive and I found an amazing deal here at Albertson's it's the only reason we're here and it was the inspiration and kickoff for this video it's potatoes when I saw this 5 lb bag for $140 at I knew this would be the base of my meals for the week and when I do buy a big bag of potatoes like this make sure you look inside the bag are there any rotten ones does it smell gross and if you weigh them on the scale you might find some are about 4 and2 lb some are a little over 5 lbs I wanted to make sure I was getting as much as possible because they charge you per bag I weighed a couple of bags all the ones I weighed were just a hair over 5 lb so I figured out that it didn't really matter which bag I picked cuz they were extremely similar and as you'll see later on this will be the base of everything I also wanted to check out the prices of the ham the ham steaks Albertson's was way too expensive so I pick up a substitute a little bit later in the video that you will see but my options were not as cheap as I wanted so I skipped this section completely I am here at Dollar Tree I'm only picking up two items because these two items are cheaper here than anywhere else including Walmart I wanted to get a can of chili it's cheaper to make it yourself I don't want to make an enormous pot and have to buy 15 ingredients that's not going to work with my budget so this is the ticket and also this large container of corn tortillas it's only .25 every other store I can find the canned chili is like $1.99 instead of $125 and the tortillas are also like $169 I can't get them this cheap so these two ingredients from Dollar Tree let's check out a different store I actually picked up three ingredients I got this 7 oz of sausage for $125 this is my ham substitute I talked about earlier when every single penny counts you utilize everything you have at your fingertips and in this store's case it's the digital coupons they're having a sale and a digital coupon and I realize I'm going to multiple stores today I know but I tried to make sure that all my stores were pretty close together and that I set aside about an hour for my shopping today so for one of my meals I am picking up this for 59 I'm now in frozen food I'm only getting three things at this store they're all on sale they're all with digital coupon this is going to be one of my meals it's the frozen corn for 99 they have all these for 9 today 12 oz remember when these used to be 16 oz feels like forever ago there were some great prices at this store today so I tried to grab the lowest of the low with the online digital coupons sometimes I get a little bit of push back by going to different stores however all of these stores I went to were Within a 1 to 5 minute drive of each other like all within a mile radius so it really didn't take that long and I got some ingredients from Walmart I tried to get the black beans from Dollar Tree but it was 12 oz instead of 16 this cheese that I want to buy might blow my budget but I'm willing to donate plasma to paper this cheese it's funny because it's true I was able to find some clearance bread 79 cent so I think I'm going to be able to afford my cheese you really saved the day in this project this this time around I've been doing these extremee grocer budget challenges for years and years now and this time around there's some basic items I always pick up and those items are about double the price now they would be things like oatmeal they would be things like complete pancake mix double canned chili double I mean it's still under $2 so it's still an inexpensive option but double what it used to be I spent $143 $9 on all of the groceries you see in front of you and as I'm looking at it now I'm thinking how is it even possible to feed one person for an entire week with this small little pile of food I still think we can do it I'm excited to show you what we have going on here's everything I picked up tortillas from the Dollar Tree clearance bread from Walmart this was a nice find so I didn't have to make homemade bread cream cheese 99 I went with the extra sharp cheddar from Walmart $2 because it's extra sharp you don't have to use as much of it in each recipe this one kind of bugged me this sour cream because I know at my Fred Meyer I can get their sour cream for 9 all the time and this was $188 so I feel like this was much more expensive than anything else I'm really surprised at the cost of canned chili these days Dollar Tree for this one great deal on the cream of chicken condensed soup this is not something I almost ever buy but I feel like this was a good price the egg prices around here are going up where are they where you are awesome deal on the potatoes at $149 one bag of corn for 9 one pound of black beans my uh ham substitute the sausage from Dollar Tree at $125 that is everything I have let's get cooking to kick off the cooking portion I am going to take my entire bag of potatoes I do need to prep um I don't know a couple of them for my lunches along with the black beans so we're just going to going to prep and ration right now this is the entire 5 lb bag of potatoes it is now gone so how many am I going to need for each dish is the question what if I did like three for lunches okay so we'll set that to the side I could do maybe another two to big ones uh also for lunches and then the rest can be split into my other recipes so half and half probably so this is going to be for my casserole and this one is going to be for my soup so now that I have rationed everything I can start prepping so for my tacos I do want baked potatoes so I'm just going to pop these three in the microwave 5 minutes I'm just going to give them a quick wash keep the skins on and stick them in the fridge I want to roast them in a pan hash brown style and a cold old baked potato is the best way to do that so that's what I'll do with these these look great okay so I'm just going to grab them and plop them into this container and stick them in the fridge and I'll use these tomorrow for lunch I will be cooking my one PB of black beans in this instant pot it's my favorite way to do it but you don't have to do it in one of these you can do it on a pan in the stove you can do it in a crock pot either way I did soak the beans and cold water on the counter overnight and rinsed them thoroughly I will cover with water here we go until I have about an inch or one finger knuckle of water covering I actually think I need a little bit more so let me add a little bit more water that looks pretty good and one or two tablespoons of this chicken bullion all right I want my two just give that a little stir make sure it's plugged in and before I put the lid on I like to just make sure the ceiling ring is totally under this it is it looks fine and I will hit the bean button over here for 30 minutes it feels like a little long because I soaked them let's go down to 20 and hopefully that will get started and I'll see you when these are done can we do an entire week's worth of breakfast with these two ingredients it feels crazy I know but I'm telling you eggs and toast or an egg sandwich is literally one of my favorite breakfasts it's what I eat most of the time this is my go-to this is what I already do this isn't even like a struggle for me oatmeal would be more of a struggle for me so because there's only 12 of these and there's seven days of the week we can't do two every single day so two of the days will be one egg so I believe two of the days will be a sandwich the other five days will be two scrambled eggs and some toast so let's go ahead up and slice up our bread let's make a sandwich all we need in addition to this is salt and pepper and some kind of cooking fat could be butter could be oil could be anything doesn't matter if you're lucky and you have some jams sitting around that would be delicious as well but it's not needed okay I'm going to use butter because it makes really delicious toast and I'm am going to Toast My Bread right in this Pan the same pan I'm going to cook my one egg for my egg sandwich today so got my bread I'm just going to plop it right there in the butter and flip it over it'll be delicious when I do the first flip I will sprinkle just a little bit of salt if you haven't tried it you should try it it's amazing of course you could use a toaster to make this toast you don't have to do it in a pan but I am telling you it's more delicious like this it is more delicious so if you've never tried it I would encourage you to try it it's amazing look how good this sandwich looks it was enormous it was bigger than my head and don't mind me I kind of burn my mouth on the hot egg right there but it's fine this was so good you could even put it in a baggie and take it get with you if you're in a really big rush two pieces of toast two scrambled eggs this is literally my favorite breakfast I have it like 5 days a week it's so good and if you haven't made your toast like this just in a pan you need to try it it's fantastic and if your eggs taste Bland you just need more salt that's the secret this is my breakfast for five of the days of this week no regrets it's so delicious this is going to be most of our lunches for the week in addition to leftovers from the other meals isn't it amazing that this tiny little bag of dried black beans can create this huge container like this is really a lot of food baked potatoes that have cooled in the fridge and I'm going to use my tortillas as well as the cheese to make some garlic black bean and potato tacos I'm going to cook one at a time so these three potatoes will give me 3 days worth of tacos quite a few of them so I'll put the other two back in the fridge we're just going to do 1 day's worth of filling right now and then once I run out of these potatoes we might just have to do black bean quesadillas which is also fine and and I'm basically going to do a garlic hash brown with these potatoes until they are nice and crispy and I want to cook up my corn tortillas here just here on the flame you can do it on a pan too three tacos every day for lunch this week and if you're into sour cream I do have this for a little dollop on top I didn't even use all my filling I don't know about you but I could eat tacos every day for my first dinner I am making a potato corn chowder I'm going to kick it off with whatever oil or fat you have in your house I have a bacon fat right here you could use uh a vegetable oil an olive oil butter whatever it does not matter I'm just going to get my potatoes cooking real quick if you happen to have an onion that would be great but you don't need it I am taking it off with about five cups of diced potatoes I washed them really well so I could leave the skins on and there's so few ingredients in this I'm using this a shallower pan cuz I'm only because I'm only cooking for one if I was cooking for my family of six I would use this larger soup pan that's sitting over here but I'm using that for something else it's a secret surprise dinner and I will be using salt and pepper pretty liberally uh they are the basis for every meal you don't have to have a lot of other stuff it makes it nice but it's not necessary so I have just some koser salt here potatoes can handle a lot of salt and I just have some fresh pepper you pick up as a way of go okay come on now of course this isn't fresh I got it for table pepper and I ended up getting the wrong grind so I'm trying to use it in my cooking and I want this to be a little on the spicy side I'm going to go pretty heavy and this next one is a slight additional cost but I do think it's worth it if you don't have onions I do have this onion powder I'm only going to be using about 5 cents worth of onion powder in here uh it's about a teaspoon a good good amount of this so we will just sauté these until they get a little bit of a crust and then we will add our stock and our remaining two ingredients and it literally is as easy as this I have about 3 cups of chicken broth I'm using the bullion C cubes so the potatoes are barely covered like this and I'll simmer this until it's the until the potatoes are barely cooked through it's going to take 15 to 20 minutes or so 15 minutes later it's time to add my bag of corn I will add this entire bag and my entire block of cream cheese oh maybe half let's start with half and just see what it tastes like I can always add more I usually do an entire block for my entire family I'm trying to remind myself that I'm only cooking for one here I'm not used to that okay there's 4 oz of cream cheese and it's it's going to take a while for that to soften and melt all in there because it's straight out of the fridge so I'm going to let this go for another 5 minutes or so I will check back in with you then all right I just did a taste test and this is delicious so I'm going to leave it just like this I believe this is easily three dinners so let's dish it out and see what it is that we are working with and I did end up with a half a block of cream cheese left over that I can totally use for my ham and potato casserole okay let's dish this okay I wanted to see how many cups I could fit into this bowl this is a pretty big bowl what do you think two cups that feels like a good serving okay that is two full cups of soup so I'm going to dish out the rest into storage containers and see what we end up with I ended up adding a whole another half a cup to this so I have 2 and 1/2 cups of of the chowder here and then these two containers for two more dinners so I have three dinners right right here this is so good it's amazing how just a couple of ingredients can make such a delicious meal for one of our main dinners which is going to be a potato casserole I'll be mixing everything in this large bowl so I have my cream of chicken soup the entire can's going in and at least half of my sour cream so we'll go ahead open those dump those in here I've already cut up my sausage any kind of meat would be fine if you had ham that would work that would be no sweat I just chose the sausage cuz it was the cheapest option for the oun for the weight for the amount but if you wanted to choose a different Protein that's totally fine I will start with half of this container of sour cream and we'll see how it goes so we just stir this around a little bit I will most likely need to thin this out a hair uh I think I'm just going to add some water if you had milk around that would work chicken broth would also work not crucial water's fine here comes my diced sausage yes I know they look like hot dogs it'll be fine and I have one cup of water going in here right now I'm hoping to make two 8 by8 casserole dishes of this okay I know this looks like super weird right now but it's your standard casserole which where you like dump creamy looking things in a pan I'm now going to add a good old handful of my cheddar cheese that's probably one cup of shredded cheddar cheese got about one teaspoon of pepper going in one teaspoon of salt and now I will very carefully mix in my shredded potatoes I shredded all the potatoes that I had set aside for this casserole here come the potatoes and I did save some of my cheddar cheese to go on top trying to be super careful here so it does not turn to Mush I do prefer to use a shredded hash brown when I make this casserole usually but the whole potatoes are definitely cheaper here are my two casserole dishes each 8 by8 let's divy this up half and half and my oven is preheated to 350 so there's two ways you can do this you can cook all of it right now and just eat it as the wheat goes on another option is to cook one and put the other one in the fridge covered up and cook it in a few days I could probably eat three dinners out of this pan and three dinners out of this pan so we're looking at 6ish dinners out of these two pans if you wanted to bulk it up a little bit you could purchase some more frozen veggies or canned veggies have that on the side that would be great and if you used an actual ham instead of my sausage here you could have extra of that on the side as well I prefer green beans with this casserole but of course you can do whatever you want if you have the extra dough AC said you had some dough for me these are ready to go into the oven 350° for about 30 minutes or so I have set aside two potatoes for two lunches we're going to do chili topped baked potatoes I do have some cheese that I will be putting onto this so I have this cleaned potato I poked it with a fork and it's going to go into the microwave for I don't know 4 minutes 3 4 minutes and then I'm going to heat up my chili just in a pan and and I'll use half this can for today half this can for tomorrow if you would like a copy of all of the recipes from today's video and a shopping list so you can recreate the things that I made in this video I will have all of that down in the description box below was it the healthiest week of food no probably not feels impossible to do that with only $2 a day to feed a person $14 for an entire week with today's grocery prices but we made delicious food I was satisfied I didn't starve and I'm looking forward to doing the next challenge at $3 a day mobile $21 bring us in the way of creative meals and of course if you truly are struggling with food don't forget you can always reach out to your local community churches food pantries family crisis centers there's all kinds of local programs to help out people so nobody has to go hungry and if you don't know where to find those you can always check with your local school district the library the Sheriff's Office all of those people will know about all the local programs that are offered in your area and I'll see you in the next video bye

Channel: Frugal Fit Mom

Views: 620,066

Keywords: frugal living tips, frugal hacks, frugal living tips and ideas, frugal living hacks, frugal living, saving money tips, frugal, frugal living ideas, ffm, frugal fit mom, frugal habits, frugal tips, budget, large family, grocery hacks, money saving hacks, grocery budget, frugal living tips with big impact, extreme budget meals, extreme budget grocery challenge

Id: nu-Eg3rPC7g

Length: 19min 37sec (1177 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2023