Feeding a Family on a Tight Budget

I was asked by Love, INC (In the Name of Christ) to teach a 6 week class on feeding a family on a budget. Since it would run through mid-May, I had to decline. They found someone else, but she couldn't do the first class so I accepted to teach one class. As I've been thinking about what I would share, I thought that sharing how to stretch a chicken would be a good idea.

I bought a chicken last week for $4.51/5 lbs. I cooked it in the crock pot all day with some potatoes & carrots and seasonings. We ate that for dinner tonight as well as some applesauce. Figuring in the price if I had to buy the applesauce,... it would have been $9.11 to feed my family of 10 tonight.

I have put the carcass back in the crock pot with water and figured out how much for the carrots, onion, garlic, and celery that I'll add tomorrow after taking the meat of the bones as well as the rice for chicken and rice soup and came up with only $1.60 (because I've already counted the chicken carcass).

I then figured out two options for the leftover meat--chicken tetrazinni and green beans or chicken and dumpling casserole. Option one will add up to $4.33 and option two will add to $3.75.

All the figuring is buying hormone free chicken, farm fresh eggs, spelt flour, organic carrots, onions, celery, etc. as well as if I had to buy the goat milk. All these figures would go down if people didn't care about "organic" or "natural".

After figuring that all meals will feed 10 people, option 1 works out to 50 cents per person per meal and option 2 works out to 48 cents per person per meal. I have a feeling that people are going to be surprised they can feed their family on so little. I was asked to show how to feed a family of 5 for $5 a meal. This is feeding a family of 10 on $5 a meal!

I figured it might be helpful to those who follow my blog to also see what I come up with. This was my first "test" at what to present and I plan on making lots of handouts with other cheaper meals as well. If you have any ideas/suggestions for this class, I would love to hear them. I will be teaching the class on March 14th.