Thriftism

Love baby red mashed potatoes? Add garlic and they get even better. This incredibly easy recipe offers you an affordable restaurant quality side to serve at your next family meal. Saving money never tasted so good! What you need: ~8-10 baby red potatoes Pot to cook potatoes 3 Cloves Garlic (or equivalent powder, but I prefer fresh.) 1/2 tsp Salt 2 Tbsp Butter 5 oz Milk Potato Masher or Food Processor Start by rinsing your potatoes. You want to mash sure the skin is nice and clean if you plan on eating it. Potato skins have a great array of nutrients and make a wonderful addition to your diet, but you can peel your potatoes if you prefer. Cut/Quarter your potatoes and add to your pot. Add enough water to cover potatoes and boil for ~20minutes. You can check if they are done by using a fork. If there is little resistance they are done! Hence the saying  "Stick a fork in me, I'm done." Now if you have a potato masher you can add the rest...

Walking along a bustling street in the center of Manhattan, you can smell the hundreds of different food cart options available for lunch. If you're lucky there won't be too long of a line and you can grab a plate from the Halal Guys or maybe find a good Shawarma place. If you're anywhere else that doesn't have these types of food available you're usually out of luck and have to settle for something from home or typical chain fast food restaurant food. But maybe you don't have to settle... By making your own version of this chicken and rice dish along with that mystifying white sauce, you can have almost all the joy of eating from your favorite food cart anytime. An added benefit is you can reduce your sodium intake or avoid certain ingredients if necessary and you can save a lot of money by not eating out. So whether you're in the heart of the Midwest and can't get to a restaurant or in the center of Manhattan and just want to save some dough, try you...

 Bean Burgers that Taste Like the Real Thing   <$0.30/serving With all the nice, or at least not freezing, weather we have been having lately, I start to get my summer cravings. In the winter it tends to be soup, chili, anything hot… Spring and summer veer more towards fruit, steak, salads, and one of my favorites- burgers. I absolutely love homemade hamburgers. However, these are not very cost friendly right now. The cheapest hamburger I could find was $4/lb which can easily turn your meal budget upside-down. So I started exploring for some option to get my burger fix without blowing the budget and guess what, beans are super cheap. Beans and rice seem to fit into many of my solutions, but they really work. I was able to make these burgers for less than $0.30/burger, buns and lettuce included! Anyway, these bean burgers actually taste and have consistency similar to a real burger. I won't tell you they are exactly the same, because I don't think that is...

We made quiche (or as Race calls it-egg bake) to use up some of our eggs. We got 4 dozen when they went on sale for $0.96/dozen. I wasn't too sure about how it would turn out as we basically threw in whatever we had, which wasn't too much. I did buy spinach to add to it just to get something healthy in there. I think overall it can't be too bad for me to eat and it did taste great! Here is a breakdown of the ingredients with costs. We might have put some garlic powder in and we did add hot sauce when we served it, but these costs are minimal- probably less than 1 cent.    Quiche 10 eggs 0.8 .96/dozen 16 oz Spinach 1.79 2 Onions 0.53 3.97/5lb 3 Potatoes 0.58 2.88/5lb 1/2 C Cheese 0.99 1.98/2 Cups Total 4.69 Per Serving 0.39 We mixed everything together and baked it in a 9"x13" cake pan at 350 degrees for around 40 minutes. Any pan will work and any batch size will work ( fewer egg...

Winter is coming and with that cooler weather. Fend off the cold with a warm, healthy, and cheap dish. The best part about chili is you can really make it your own. What You'll Need 1 C dry red beans 1 C dry pinto beans 1 C dry black beans 7 Tomatoes or 2-3 cans diced tomatoes (Preferably reduced salt) 2 Onions Lots of Chili Powder Garlic (Fresh or powdered) Meat (Optional) I try to avoid adding salt to anything and try to buy ingredients with the least amount of salt as well. Salt causes bloating and in general isn't great for your body. Some salt is necessary, but everything now has so much salt that anytime we can cut back on that it's good. I used all dried beans because they are ridiculously cheaper than buying canned beans and again it reduces salt intake. You also lose all those preservatives that come with the canned beans. Lots of people avoid dry beans because it can take a lot longer to cook. You can either soak them overnight or do a quick soak wh...