No Food, Only Ingredients

"Ughhhhh. We don't have any food. We only have ingredients." 

This is what my wife and I have started to say every time we open the refrigerator. We're on a diet, and we've found its much healthier to cook foods from good ingredients instead of buying packaged or boxed dinners. They taste better too, but it doesn't help when you're hungry NOW! Cooking food takes forever. Especially when you're hungry.

The things that break my diet break my budget

I like to eat out. Sort of. I don't like being in restaurants very much, but I like their food. Take out was designed for me. If I find myself away from home, or without the time to make food I find myself wanting to eat out. This is both expensive, and makes me chubby. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Arby's curly fries and my kryptonite. They also cost about $3. This doesn't sound like much, but I can make a pretty good meal for myself for $3. I'll drop some examples below. My wife also got suckered in by those entreprenurial sugar demons, the girl scouts. $4 a box, and those cookies barely aren't enough to satisfy the munchies.

Figure out what you like to eat

I like meat. My wife likes to throw out the notion that we should try to have a meatless meal every once in a while. Her go to is pancakes and eggs. It just doesn't work for me. I like pancakes and eggs, but meatless meals don't make me full. Within an hour I'm back rooting in the fridge, and I don't find anything because we only have ingredients. I like meat. I like hearty meals. I also like having goodies on hand

Start a Food Storage

It's not all that hard to start a food storage. Don't just buy a lot of things that you don't know how to use, like raw wheat. That is hard to deal with, unless you know how to use it. Start by buying a little more of what you buy anyways each time you go to the store- specifically shelf stable items. 

Buy Roasts

I know my meat hacks. There are a lot of cuts of roast that are the same cuts as steaks or chops, but they're cheaper because the butcher didn't cut them into slabs for you. For example, I like pork chops, especially with the McKormick's Smokehouse Maple seasoning on it, it's to die for. It was made for pork chops. This is literally the stuff the angels in heaven put on pork. I get passionate about meat and its proper seasoning. This is the real deal. You can save money and still have quality.

Pork chops cost about $10 for a pack. I bought a pork roast for $4, cut it into slabs, and made me some fantastic pork chops. I do the same for Beef steaks. I cut my steaks from roasts for about $1 each doing this. Pork chops were about $0.50 each this way. I make a roast every now and then, but that takes a long time. I usually don't think about it so far in advance.
I opened up a can of corn, cooked up some rice, and had a meal. I cooked up extra rice and cooked all the chops though, and put them in containers for my wife to eat for lunches. I've included a picture. Now, until they run out, we have food in our fridge, not just ingredients.

Brownies for days

My mom's side of the family has a fantastic cakey brownie recipe. My favorite thing about this is that they freeze really well. I just made a batch, cut them into a dozen pieces and froze the lot of them. Ok, some (not even most) made it into the freezer. I do the same with chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin cookies. My mom does lemon bars, peanut butter bars, and a million other things, but I'm not on her level. Brownies are easy. They are also another munchy snack, and they're not expensive to make. They're much cheaper than girl scout cookies, and they last longer than 5 seconds. I'll include the recipe below. The trick is to make a lot of something when you're not hangery, so that you have it on hand later, whether its desserts, pork chops, or any other meal. Planning ahead will save you money. Drop other easy recipe ideas below. I like good food and saving money.

Brownie Recipe:

In sauce pan melt together
2 cubes margarine or butter
4 tablespoons cocoa
In a bowl beat:
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Stir in
2 cups flour (Whole wheat flour works well. You can add 1 tablespoon gluten flour to
lighten it.)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
Cocoa/margarine(butter) mix
Pour into 9X13 pan. Bake 350 degrees for 35 minutes.