Having a Restaurant in My Home

Eating and meal planning while sticking to a food budget of 0 a week for a family of four can be pretty challenging. Variety is required you so you do not become bored. I have added another personal challenge to feeding our family.

In the past we would dine out twice a week minimum. When we found something that was extremely tasty I would spare no expense and recreate that flavorful meal at home. I would purchase the highest and most expensive steaks. Shopping at the finest food distributors was always a spectacular experience. Spending - was still considered to be a savings when compared to what we had recently paid for one meal. I have modified how we eat since we began this new grocery budget. Now I am adding a challenge just like they do on the T.V. Show survivor. The challenge I have added is to recreate one of our meals that we would eat at a restaurant. The meal can be from a fast food place or it can be from an up scale restaurant and anything in between. The recreation of a meal is easy enough to do but I also must stay within my 0 a week food budget. This challenge will require some creativity, some foods will have to substituted for less pricey alternatives. Let me give you an example, fillet wrapped in bacon for four people can easily take the whole weekly budget. Substituting fillet with rib eye can maximize the meat while still giving us decent quality.
 
Naturally the first time we do this we will start with something very simple. In the future we hope to increase the difficulty. My food challenge this weekend is to make the In n Out meal known as combo #1. Normally we eat the 4 double cheese burger meals with onion on three of them. I will give you a list of all the ingredients we purchased at the store and the unit cost as it relates to the making of the meal.
 
Here is the list of ingredients purchased. 1 pound of hamburger .29, 1 egg .09, head of lettuce .29, Kraft American slice cheese 8 slices .94, 4 store brand hamburger buns .44, tomato .34, onion .61, 2 large potatoes for fries .05, 4 litres of coke products .54.
 
This meal will be hand made with no short cuts such as purchasing already made patties. Back in the early 1980's I was given an old fashion Tupperware patty maker. I still use it today as I can make up to 8 patties with one pound of ground meat. I always make my patties with one egg per pound of meat. I never use bread crumbs, as one wise chef told me that would make it meat loaf not a hamburger patty. The one thing I have not counted was the sauce on the bun. We put a little mayo and some thousand island dressing. We will estimate this added cost at .25
 
total cost to make our at home in n out combo #1 for four people came to a grand total of .74. While this is expensive for a single meal on our budget of 0 a week, it was very tasty. The cost of going out to feed the family would have been .
 
Making this meal at home saved us .26.

Meat Loaf

Having a Restaurant in My Home

Rick and his wife have been able to reduce their grocery budget by almost 50% since they started this challenge of feeding a family of four for 0 a week in 2010. They have now included creating restaurant meals into the challenge without changing their budget. We will put the challenge under the title My Kitchen You can make suggestions for your favorite meal at their blog http://feed4forunder100week.blogspot.com/

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