The $5 Menu

Who said you can’t have good food with just $40 a week in grocery spending?  Here’s what I mean:

This dish is adapted from a recipe in a Cuisine at Home magazine I kept for a number of years.  It’s called Eggplant Parmesan Napoleons.  The star of this dish is the eggplant, which is one of our family’s favorite veggie.  It’s important to note that the dish was for four servings but Steve and I only ate one each.  However, it’s more important to remember that I did not expertly calculate quantity to cost; neither did I just pick out a number.  I tried as best I can to come closest to the cost of items specified for this dish.  Here’s the breakdown:

Grilled Chicken Breast – $1.00

Bought a 3-piece pack for under $3 but used a coupon of $1 to total just under $2.  We grilled all three pieces but only used 1-1/2 pieces between the two of us for tonight’s dinner.  That brings the chicken cost per quantity to $1.

Would you just take another look at the juicy tender chicken my Hubby grilled?  It looks delicious and it tasted like it too!

Eggplant Parmesan Napoleons – $3.00

The fresh mozzarella came in two packages from Sam’s at $7.00.  I used half of one package for this dish, which leaves the cost to $1.75.  We only ate two of the napoleons to make the final cost of $0.90.

The eggplant was bought for $1.00.  With two napoleons consumed, the quantity cost is at $0.50.

Too bad I did not get a picture of the whole tomato before it was sliced!  I say that because the one tomato we used was from our garden and came totally free!  However, the rest of the $3.00 for the napoleons is from the flour, eggs, panko breadcrumbs, and oil used to fry the eggplant.

Spaghetti – $0.30

Kroger had a good sale on pasta this past week so I was able to get a 1-lb. box of spaghetti for $0.88.  We only used a quarter of the spaghetti, which leaves our quantity total to $0.22.  I just threw in $0.8 cost to the two tablespoons of butter I added to the hot spaghetti since the butter came from a bulk butter purchase at Sam’s.  There was also a little sprinkling of parmesan on it.  The green flecks are chopped parsley, fresh from our garden!

Here’s how we did:

Chicken – $1
Eggplant Napoleons – $3.00
Spaghetti – $.30
Total = $4.30 (plus tax) = $5

You put the dish altogether and it looks like this:

Not bad for a $5 menu ha?

Got a $5 menu you can share?  Leave a comment!