How much do you spend on average for Dinner?

[Trillian]

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.