Cheap Eats: Tacos
Here is another one of my posts about inexpensive dinners to incorporate into your meal plans to save money on groceries. For this meal we make crisp and soft tacos, serve it with chips, salsa, refried beans and fruit.
Taco Dinner
Taco Shells $.99/12 package we only need half for our family $.50
Lettuce $.50 (Everyday deals sells heads of lettuce for $.50 or less)
Ground Beef or Ground Turkey $2 for a pound
Taco Seasoning $.50 (this is a price for a packet but I make my own or buy it at the co-op)
Cheese $1 (I shred my own and purchase 8 oz for about $1.50)
Salsa $.60 (I make my own with a can of diced tomatoes and co-op salsa seasoning)
Flour Tortillas $.50-$.99 per package (if you prefer soft tacos) 1/2 package $.25-$.50
Refried Beans $.60 per can
Tortilla Chips $1 (half a bag to go with the tacos)
Fruit $1 (whatever was on sale this week or a can of fruit from the pantry)
This dinner works out to be about $7.95 for our family of 4, plus lunch for 3 people.
I will usually have enough left overs to make a lunch for the kids and myself the next day or to make 3-4 burritos for the freezer. So I will say it serves about 7 people. Cost per serving is $1.14.
I like to keep our meals about $.50 per person for breakfast and lunch meals. At dinner I like to keep it as close to $1 per person but that is not always the case.
Do you have a cheap meal you eat often at your home? Please share it with us.
I have a tip for making this meal go further! When we were growing up in a household of 6 my mom would always bake a few potatoes, cut them up into bite-size pieces and mix them into the ground beef. She would then add 1 can of tomato paste and a little water (to thin it out) and simmer on the stove. The result was a larger portion of great tasting taco meat.
When I made this the first time for my husband he was confused when I started mixing the potatoes in with the ground beef, but now he really enjoys them!
We usually will use re-hydrated TVP to help stretch the taco meat. It looks just like the beef and takes on the flavor of the meat and seasoning. Since it is a vegetable protein it adds protein also. But I never thought of using potatoes as a stretching agent. I will have to give it a try the next time we make these.
I love having tacos for dinner….yours look so yummy! My kids won’t eat them, but I still serve them from time to time in the hopes that they will start eating them one of these days.
My little boy doesn’t like taco’s so I just make the taco ingredients and he makes nachos. This works at our house maybe it will work at your house too.