How much do you spend on average for Dinner?

The title says it all really?

I'm trying really hard to get as frugal as possible. I'm making as much as I can from scratch (which is normal). I'm staying away from el gourmet ChaChing meals unless it's a special occasion. And trying really hard to keep our meal costs down to a minimum without losing flavour or substituting with processed foods.

So how much do you spend on an average meal?

I'm about to do my weekly budget and meal planning. So I'm looking for some great ideas as well.

We use a lot of basic meats - sausages, mince, lamb chops mostly but we add in chicken, steak and pork. We use 1kg of snags per meal, so that is $6.90 per kg, plus veges which would be under $5 so under $12 to feed a family of 6 with enough left overs for DH's lunch for work the next day. We would probably spend about that much each meal. We are meat and veg people so we rarely do the ChaChing meals ROFL (I like that term!) and that saves us a lot of money. You can so much with very basic cuts of meat so you still get your WOW factor. With chump chops (forequarter or shoulder chops) you can BBQ them with a marinade, grill them with a bit of seasoning sprinkled on them or make a goulash. Neck chops (or rosettes I think they call them in the city LOL) can be used for stewing as well and they are quite a tasty cut. You can use a rack of lamb as either a roast (leaving the rack whole) or cut them down into cutlets and either crumb them or season and grill them. And then there are lamb loin chops, such tasty little devils on their own, but gorgeous with a sprinkling of garlic salt and grilled or BBQ'd. Then you can do chicken and pork schnitzels, or chilli con carne with the mince. Veges are easy to dress up and make more attractive than just plain old boiled veges. Sometimes we might only have steak or chops, but I might do roast veges for something a little different. Even a roast leg of lamb can give you two meals - one as the roast and another as a shepherds pie by cutting off the left over meat and dicing it into small cubes. Or if you want an easy Sunday dinner, you do your sunday roast for lunch and then meat fritters for dinner with the left overs.

ETA - I forgot to say that because we kill our own sheep for meat, we have all the off cuts as well. Often if we have a meaty sheep, I will use the bellies and make a rolled seasoned roast. I get the netting from our butcher but tying it works just as well and it is a very cheap cut of meat. I just trim it and them make a stuffing (the possibilities for flavourings is endless) and go from there.

great thread!!

Hmm tricky one. I would guess about $15-$20 for dinner, maybe? It really depends. I try to have a loose meal plan so a roast, 2 xpasta, 2 x few meat and veg meals, rice meal and vege meal and then adapt at the supermarket depending on what I can get on special. I find if I am too prescriptive I am then locked into buying certain things. This is particularly good when marinara mix/ricotta/roasts are on sale as they are often near half price (or have been recently)
I also find I can make up the $$ with the vege meals. I do spend a bit on pantry items as staples but as you would know it gives heaps of flexibility. I am also trying to freeze unused portions rather than eat extra and stew the sadder looking fruit rather than waste it by throwing it out. We had yummy apple and pear last week, banana cake and DH and the girls were very happy.
Rouge you always inspire me to do better in regards to cooking so I am keen to hear what you do too!

ETA Goodness I have much to learn!!!! Hope to get some more great ideas xx

Oh Trill, I'm falling about here :rofl:. Up here in the "city" lamb loin chops is a ChaChing dinner...up to $25/kg depending on where you shop...same goes for rack of lamb. I do remember a time when it was practically the cheapest thing in the butcher shop but no more! *sigh* I've been buying up lamb shanks for the deep freezer at $4/kg, I think someone's made a labelling mistake at our shop because the rival's selling them for $10/kg...although I did notice the price went up by a dollar as soon as the coolish evenings started :o. I'm sorry I have such a whiney note in my voice, but lamb is my absolute FAVORITE but it costs a fortune!!! We mostly have roast lamb - because that's the most economical way to have it - but not often.

ETA
Couldn't say how much we spend per meal, I'm feeding four (one with a very big appetite) and I often cook something, stretch it out with extra veggie, then it's 2 nights dinners. Pot roasts and silverside (slowcooker of course) is a good option which will do 2 nights, add some cauli cheese (which *everybody* loves) and it's quite a substantial meal with a few other veggie on the side. I also chuck a can or two of beans or lentils in with every stew I do, it means you can get away with using less meat but still have leftovers for the following night. Can you tell I'm a big fan of not having to cook every night? Other things that stretch the budget:

Pasta - using a jar sauce (sorry) but add a few interesting ingredients, like a single chorizo, sliced & fried, mushrooms, a sprinkle of olives. Serve with a side of steamed veggie
Veggie fritters - my family are mad for these - no matter what I put in them - because it's practically the only 'fried' type food we have. Serve with fried tomatoes or anything you have on hand really.
Ratatouille - I make a big batch in summer when all the veggies are cheap, then freeze. It's an instant dinner-stretcher, good for when you have leftovers but not enought for a whole meal - just add ratatoiulle. Also good for disguising cheap cuts of meat (bake in ratatouille - mmmm)
Have a designated easy-tea night - open a can of soup (or get a container out of the deep freeze) and have it with grilled cheesies. Or scrambled eggs. Or baked beans. Whatever your family likes that's quick and brainless.

LOL MD, you're right! Loin chops are expensive in the city too, I forgot about that. I take it for granted too much that we dont have to buy lamb, so I forget how much it costs in the shops.

OK, here is a tip. If you buy your meat at a butcher, ask for Hogget as opposed to Lamb because a Hogget is an older lamb, and in theory not supposed to be worth as much but Lamb is much dearer. Some butchers will sell Hoggets for as much as lamb and label it as lamb, which is technically true but tere is a difference, but people who don't have knowledge of that wont realise there is a difference. You could even ask if they have Mutton, which is older sheep - no longer lambs. Not many butchers in the city would sell Mutton and certainly not the supermarkets but it wont hurt to ask because it is cheaper again.

And currently lamb is really expensive and will be for quite some time. The market is really strong for Aussie lamb and sale prices are at record highs and the cost that the buyers pay in the sale yards is passed onto the consumer, hence the high prices of it. Beef however is dropping slightly so cuts of beef will be cheaper than lamb.

The bitter irony is, you are lamenting at the cost of lamb, but we profit from that because we sell them for so much. On friday we sold 60 lambs at sale and got $128 per head for them!

I can get midloin chops for $10/kg at the Vic Markets. So if I want lamb I'll buy it from there, otherwise it has been suggested it can go up to as high as $40/kg and I've seen frenched cutlets for more than that at safeway!

I'll post some of my ideas later on :D

we pretty much always cook enough to either do lunch or dinner the next day - depending on what it is and how we can make it different. spag bol one night, pasta bake the next (and usually a lunch or two goes in the freezer)

average night is maybe 10-15 for a meal - but as i said, we use left overs for other meals so it would be less than that

we're on something of a shoestring at the moment, so looking for bargains. we buy meat in bulk (do you have a Lenard's local? our local has, until i think the end of this month, breast fillets for $6.99 a kilo so we've bought a fair bit and probably will again at the end of the week - soooo much you can do with chook fillets!) we get mince at the local-ish butcher and buy in bulk cos it works out cheaper that way. we grow our own veg as much as we can and we cook from scratch where we can. we buy a roast at least once a fortnight - as trill said - a roast lamb doesn't really take much effort to cook and you can make shepherds pie next day or some other variation. an average leg of lamb gives us three meals

we make spag bol from scratch. making tomato sauce as a type and putting it aside. 1kg of meat, a pot of tomatos from the garden (and whatever extras we put in it), and a fair helping of veg - costs maybe $10-$15 depending on the season and what fresh veg we have, gives us spag bol tonight, spag for DH to take to work tomorrow, and a pasta bake for the freezer for a lazy night. pasta bake is either plain with cheese on top, or i make a cheesy sauce - depends on how much room there is in the dish.

burritos or similar - not a really exxy meal. we make up bulk meat when we do it, then freeze some for another meal. usually get enough for two dinners, and toasted sanga with cheese. for a variation with the left overs, instead of makking more burritos, we heat some wedges in the oven, nuke the meat, spread it on the wedges, top with cheese and put back in he oven to melt. can be topped with anything you might want (sour cream/salsa etc) - makes for a good dinner on the run if you're busy, or can make a heavier lunch while you're at home if you are really hungry. toasted sangas with the meat and some cheese are good too - even E likes them already!

meatloaf - we do half mince, half sausage mince (it costs a bit more, but we get good quality meat as it's not oily that way) - mix them together, add onion, grated carrot, capsicum, whatever spices - put it in the oven with a curried tomato glaze. easy. usually we make this mix in bulk, cook an approriately sized meat loaf for dinner that night and left overs for sandwiches next day, use the rest in sausage rolls for the freezer.

chicken - so many variations! current hit with miss E is curried schnitzels - cut thin, pretty much a normal schnitzel with curry through the bread crumbs for added flavour. with the cheapy fillets at lenard's, enough chicken for dinner tonight with leftovers for lunch tomorrow would be about $3, maybe $4. add vegies with that - even if we were buying them, i can't see a nights veg being more than a few dollars.

chicken pasta bake - cost a bit more initially depending on what veg you put through it. basically chicken, pasta and whatever veg you like, lightly fried (brown chicken, remove, fry veg), then mixed through a cheesy sauce. we do this in bulk and freeze three or four nights worth of dinners. so four or five dinners takes a kilo of chicken. probably about $20 in veg/milk/cheese(we put in turnip, swede, parsnip, zuc, carrot, onion, spud) - and that will give us at least two lasagne dishes of meals - so two nights plus lunch for each tray. what does that come out to - maybe 30bucks for five or six meals

as mentioned - roast lamb - you can do the roast one night (i add garlic for flavour but not much else), then leftovers can be made into anything really. we tend to get roast one night, sangas for DH next day, then use the leftovers as either shepherds pie (at least two nights worth) or we slice the meat thinly and put it in the home made gravy to reheat in the oven over a couple of nights - DD doesn't like mash, so doing it this way we do different veg that she'll eat - she won't eat the mash on shepherds pie...

Trill, I suspect us big city peeps who don't know the difference are getting hogget & mutton for lamb prices - in the supermarkets, anyway.

Our tea last night cost $8.70, so $1.74 per person. We had rissoles (bought pre made and marked down), vegies and one of those continental pasta side dishes.

I'd say I usually spend around $15 per meal on average though. Although one night I stopped in at Safeway and grabbed some pasta, tuna and a jar of sauce for around $5.50. I was quite proud of that effort :lol:

I would say around $10 a dinner is all I would spend. Often there is also leftovers. I like to cook from scratch where possible, so I would make up a huge spaghetti sauce, enough for a few meals and freeze the leftovers.

I think we spend anywhere from $10 to $20 per dinner. I do aim to get DH's lunch for the next day out of it, but it is not always possible. Even with us growing most of our own veg I am struggling to keep the food budget in control, but I have just started meal planning and that does seem to helping, just need a few more weeks of it to take effect. I am putting my foot down a bit with DH and he is just going to have to put up with more soups, he is not really into them, but they are great for a super cheap meal when I am using the veg we have grown.

I have a Womans Day budget dinner cookbook and I have been using that for some inspiration. It has been quite helpful and we have had some nice meals out of it so far.

We'd spend, on average, $5 per meal - but all we usually do is dinner. DH has lunch at work and maybe a bowl of cereal in the morning if he gets up in time - and I never bother with breakfast at all. I have lunch, which usually consists of a pie or sausage roll that I chuck in the microwave or oven.

But when I say $5 per meal, it's because we usually buy, say a $8 tray of beef stir-fry and split it up into two meals worth before putting it in the freezer. Then, we're basically using $4 of meat, and either one cup of rice, one cup of Deb or some salad
BUT! This is just me and my DH (as DS is still way too young to be eating what we eat)