Frugal in Forty: Day 12 - Meatless Mondays: Making Meals Multiply

Meat is without a doubt the biggest expense in our food budget. I spend easily more than half our weekly alotment on it. This is because meat is, by and large, the most important part of my meals. Growing up my mother always made a 3 section meal - meat, a starch/carb, and a vegetable. Obviously there were meals like spaghetti that excluded this, but as a general rule of thumb, you could count on there being meat at every dinner. This is something I have carried with me throughout my entire adult life - a dinner doesn't feel like a meal if it doesn't involve some kind of meat. However, I've decided to try and change that, one step at a time.

Enter, Meatless Mondays. I am going to attempt to make one meal a week sans meat. I chose Monday because I like the alliteration we usually indulge over the weekend, be it grill outs or family dinners or restaurant gatherings - so Mondays are a good time to give ourselves a break.

Tonight I made chili, and I used hamburger - which is what spurred this idea - I could have very easily omitted the hamburger from this dish. If I would have removed the cost of the meat, I would have had about 6 quarts of chili, packed with a ton of different types of beans (the secret to stretching meals like this!) and veggies for around $7.00. That is, in my opinion, a good deal any way you slice it! Not only does that break down to 3.50 a person, but this meal can easily stretch into three meals and a lunch of leftovers. Throw the chili on a baked potato, over some rice, mixed in with some salad, eat it with tortilla chips as a lunch or snack, the possibilities are endless.

The benefits here are not only financial, as we know that an excess of meat is not good for health either.

I will be spending time over the next few days brainstorming meals to replace on Monday's that are meat free. This won't make a huge dent in our bill, but I know that we must start with a single step before we run - after all, slow and steady wins the race - I hope to eventually cut our meat costs in half.

Do you have any meatless meals that you find you are able to make cheaply?