Delicious and Healthy Dinner on a Budget

Here is a great example of a dinner on a budget.  We prepared this for last nights dinner.  This meal will run you about $2.60 per person and is a great meal for a family looking for a nutritious meal without the heavy burden on your budget.

The meal includes all natural organic vegetarian fed chicken breast tenderloins free of hormones and antibiotics, a side of fresh lightly steamed organic broccoli, and wild rice with parsley.  This meal is a healthy favorite in our home and is quick to prepare.  I will be posting the recipe for this quick dish in the posts to come.

Tip:

Chicken

To cut costs we used the Nature’s Rancher, Boneless, skinless tenderloins found at Whole Foods in the Frozen section.  These chicken tenderloins cook up quick and are super healthy.  If you find you can’t afford fresh organic chicken yet, opt for the frozen bag of natural organic vegetarian fed chicken free of the added hormones and antibiotics.  The bag runs from $7-9 depending on the store and location and makes many meals. You can also find the same organic chicken breast or tenderloins at Trader Joe’s for a little less with the Trader Joe’s brand providing 5lbs of flash frozen chicken tenderloins, also boneless, skinless free of hormones and antibiotics for $8-9.  This bag lasts all week and cuts food costs substantially.

Wild Rice

To keep the cost to a minimum we picked up only what we needed for this dinner from the bulk section.  Buying bulk rice and whole grains cuts costs substantially allowing you to buy just what you need preventing you from getting stuck with a big box that lasts a couple months that you may not be able to afford.  Don’t go without or overspend, pick up bulk items. Our rice cost was right at $1.00

Organic Broccoli Crowns

To cut costs on our vegetable we read the store flier and found that the sale vegetable was broccoli allowing us to pick organic broccoli for 1/2 the price of its standard rate.  Don’t jeopardize your health, eat healthy and pick up your vegetables based on the deals and discounts running each week.  We built the meal around the vegetable finding other items that went well with the broccoli saving big on the meal. The broccoli crowns ran a little over $1.20 picking up just what we needed for dinner.

Dinner for 4 was $10.40 total plus the cost of seasoning which we had on hand.  Picking up these great deals allowed us to make other meals during the week with the chicken.  We had some leftover chicken from dinner which we chopped up for healthy chicken sandwiches for lunch adding lettuce and tomato stretching that $10.40 beyond just dinner. Enjoy!