 Today I'm sharing with you 15 of my budget friendly dinners. Now usually the budget dinners are really quick and really easy, which I'm a huge fan of. This week's actually been pretty crazy. We went down to Moab, my husband and I, and our two daughters. We went to our youth girls' camp and it was so fun to be rafting the river and just having fun in the outdoors. And now that I'm back, back to being a mom where life is wild, I need to get back to cooking dinner and so I'm gonna start with some of my budget friendly meals. Let's just be honest, they're quick, they're easy and they're cheap. Now the ingredients we need for this is our French bread, which is $1. Our milk, we're gonna use not all of the milk, so it'll be about 86 cents. Our eggs will be 159 and our frosting will be 134. Right, we're gonna start by preheating our oven to 350 degrees. All right, now you're gonna cut the French bread into half inch slices. Mine are closer to an inch and you know, it'll still work, it's fine. Now I'm gonna take a pan and spray it with non-stick cooking spray. I like to use a pan, that's just how I work. Then you're gonna take your bread and just do a single layer on the bottom. All right, in a little bowl, we're gonna crack five eggs. We're gonna add 3 fourths cup of milk. Now please don't be mad, there are some things I didn't add to the $5. So I already had vanilla, I already had cinnamon and I already had nutmeg. So hopefully you have these in your house. So we have two teaspoons of vanilla, half tablespoon of cinnamon. Whoa, we won't add as much since I got a little out of control. And then two teaspoons of nutmeg. And we're just gonna mix this up really well, break those egg yolks. Then we're gonna pour half of the mixture onto our little French bread, French dose. That might be more than half, but that's okay. I'm gonna spread it around just a little bit. Okay, then we're just gonna add the rest of our bread on there, just going right over top. I know these pieces are a little smaller, but it will still work. Okay, then we're gonna take the rest of our mixture and just pour it on top. Now for my favorite part, you're gonna take about half a cup of brown sugar. We're just gonna sprinkle it on top. Then if you want to, you can add a little bit of cinnamon too. Now with this recipe, you don't have to let it sit overnight, you can just bake it as soon as you're done. Or if you want to have it overnight, that will work too. So either way, it doesn't matter. But we're gonna bake it at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. All right, our French toast bake is all done cooking. Now I'm gonna take the cream cheese frosting. Yes, I know, it's canned. I actually don't like it, but I'm gonna stick it in the microwave for about 10 seconds or so just to get it nice and soft so we can spread it on top of our French toast. Now the secret is pull this out of the oven, let it sit for about a minute or two, and we're just gonna put a blob of frosting on each French toast bite. Then I'm gently, gently. See I don't want any of that brown sugar to come up. Just gonna spread it across each one. Okay, and we're just gonna let this sit and melt. Now what I'm picking up today is tortillas or a dollar. Cheddar cheese is 186, our eggs are 159, and the salsa I love dipping in salsa comes to $1.23. Okay, we're gonna first start by cracking the eggs. Now, if you haven't seen this before, this is called a cracker. Not sponsored or anything, I just love using it. We're gonna crack all six eggs into a bowl. Then I'm just gonna add a little bit of salt. Sorry, salt is not part of it. I figure most people have salted home, and then we're just going to crunch up the yolks and then mix this all together. And let's skill it on medium heat. I'm gonna spray the bottom of my pan and then just pour in my eggs. We're gonna make some scrambled eggs. Now usually you can add a little milk, cheese scrambled eggs, or water cheese scrambled eggs, or my dad taught me, you know what? You can just cook them just like this and it'll be just fine. All right, we are pretty much done here. Let's just pull this off. All right, next I'm just gonna shred my cheese. Usually I buy pre-shedded, but if you're trying to save money shredding yourself, seriously, it will save you quite a bit. Now, I love these for breakfast time, or I love them for dinner time, or lunch. You know, you can have eggs any time I swear. So we're gonna put our cheese down first on our tortillas. I'm guessing this will make about three. You can really stretch out your eggs. You could make four. Okay, next we're gonna add some eggs. We're just gonna try and spread them out the best that we can. Now I'm gonna put our tortilla right on top of here. Let that cook, it could go for a bit. It's been on for about two minutes. We're just gonna flip them real quick. All right, these are done. So we're just gonna pull them right off. Part of the $5 is the salsa. So we're gonna just pour that into a bowl and then dip in our breakfast quesadillas. The first thing that I got is Rotel, or the Walmart version of it, and that came to 60 cents. Next, I bought a bag of carrots, which I'm gonna chop up. It was just a dollar for the carrots, and I only need one cup. Next is frozen spinach. Now this is a 12 ounce package. I only need five ounces. So we're just going to use half of it. So it'll be about 50 cents. Now the original recipe called for one container, which no one knows what one container is. So I actually got the smallest container because it was only a dollar for about a cup of sour cream. And the last thing I got is our frozen tortellini. Now this was the most expensive thing. It came to about 298, but this is what makes the soup delicious. And one last thing. At the store, I did buy a zucchini, which would come to about 75 cents. The problem is, is that I have searched high and low for this little zucchini. I have no idea where it went. So we're gonna pretend that we put zucchini into this recipe even though I don't know what happened. I swear I bought it, but now it is gone. First we're gonna chop up the vegetables. Now, if you had zucchini, you'd be chopping up your zucchini too. But you know, we're just doing carrots right now. All right, now you can make this one in your Instant Pot, but I'm gonna make it in the stock pot today just to show you a different way to make it. So first I'm gonna start with the can of rotel. We dump it into the bottom and add the vegetables. So here are my carrots and put some zucchinis in there. Okay, we're pretending. Next is about five ounces of spinach. So it's about half the bag. So we're just gonna eyeball about half the bag of the frozen spinach. Then there's all kinds of seasoning. I'll put those down below in the description for you. So we gotta make it taste good for the seasoning. Right, right. Now like we did before, we're gonna cheat and use some water and bullion cubes. So we have four cups of water here and we're gonna add just the four bullion cubes. Okay, we're gonna turn this onto low and let this simmer for a bit until pretty much the carrots are cooked through. That's what we want cooked. I might've gone a little carried away with this spinach. There is a lot of spinach in here. So if we're gonna make this, try to stick to five ounces. I think I did more like 10 ounces, but that's okay, I like spinach. Now we're just gonna add all the tortellini and let this cook until those are cooked through. So every package is a little bit different. So it says boil for about three minutes or so. They cook really quick. All right, the pasta is all cooked. Now it's time to add the sour cream. And we're gonna mix this in really good because you don't want chunks in your sour cream in your soup. All right, it is all done. Nice and creamy. So the first thing you're gonna need is ground turkey. That's $3.58. Manwich is $1.22. And the buns are $0.93. Now this recipe is one of my favorites because all you have to do is cook up your meat, dump in your manwich, and then serve it on buns. And you are good to go. Now the first ingredient this recipe calls for is ground beef. The only problem was that ground beef was really expensive to date. It was like $5 to $7 for just one pound. So I decided to just get ground turkey. So instead of $5, it was only $2.77. Next up is a can of black beans, which was only $0.62. One can of diced tomatoes, $0.72. And then came the corn. Now you can usually get corn for about $0.50, but the shelves were empty, so I had to pay a little bit more. It was about $1.18 for this little can of corn, but hopefully you can find some for $0.50 at your store. Now the rest of the ingredients I had at home, so I'm not counting that towards my $5. I'm gonna start by using my handy dandy Instant Pot. You can also use the slow cooker or just your stove top for this recipe. So you're gonna first start by pushing the saute button. We want to get the pot nice and hot to cook our meat. All right, now that it's hot already to go, we're gonna take the ground turkey and just cook it up in the bottom of the Instant Pot. And if you haven't seen this, this is my lovely chop and stir. I'll put a link down below for you. My favorite tool in the kitchen. Okay, once the meat is cooked, then you can drain the grease if you want to. Then you're just gonna start adding the things in. So we have our black beans that I've rinsed and drained, diced tomatoes. We have our canned corn that I left all the liquid in there. Now the important thing is we wanna kind of scrape the bottom. We don't want any of that ground turkey left on the bottom of the pot, just cause that will give you the burnt notice. So scrape that bottom just a little bit. Now it calls for some seasoning. I'll put this down below in the description for you. Now it also calls for chicken broth, but because that wasn't in the budget, I decided to do the bouillon cubes. Now the one thing I love about the Instant Pot is that you can add your water. You can add two to three cups. I'm adding two and a half. And then I'm gonna add three bouillon cubes and you can just throw those right into your pot. And they will cook and dissolve while all of your soup cooks together. Okay, I'm just gonna mix this around one more time before we put the lid on. When we're done, we're gonna go ahead and put the lid on. If you have a little knot, make sure that's turned to ceiling, not venting. Now because everything is pretty much cooked, we're just gonna go pressure cook and we're just gonna cook it for about five minutes. So I'll set the time, then you can just walk away. All right, when it was all done, I went and let all the pressure out of the Instant Pot and then what's left is a delicious taco soup. So the ingredients you need for this one is whipping cream, which is 216. An onion is 50 cents. Broccoli because we're using half the bag is 84 cents. And then of course you need some cheese. So our cheddar cheese is $1.86. So we're gonna start by pushing the saute button on the Instant Pot. First we're gonna chop up an onion, but this is my little secret. If you haven't seen it, I get about three paper towels, get them soaking wet. I'm just gonna put them in between me and the onion. So when I chop up the onion, I'm not gonna be dying inside. My eyes won't be dying. Then just gonna chop it up. Now that we pushed the saute button, it's getting warm and toasty in there. So we're gonna add about a tablespoon or so of olive oil. All right, now that it's nice and hot, we're gonna go ahead and add the onions into it. Just mix those around. We're gonna cook them until they're nice and soft. Okay, now that we've got them all nice and softened and browned, we're gonna add a little bit of chicken broth. Now I didn't buy chicken broth, so we're gonna do the trick I did last time and do the chicken bouillon cubes. So first I'm gonna add three cups of water into my pot. And then just like I said, we're gonna just add three of these. So you add one of these per cup of water. Next up, I have my broccoli. Now I cooked it for about a minute just to soften things up a little bit so it wasn't frozen. So it'd be easier to cut these giant pieces into smaller pieces. All right, once your broccoli's all chopped up, go ahead and just put it into your instant pot. Then into the pot, we're just gonna add about a fourth teaspoon of nutmeg. Now we're just gonna cook it all up. So go ahead and put your lid on. If you have a little knob, make sure it's turned to ceiling, not venting. Then we're gonna push pressure cook and then we're just gonna cook it for about two minutes. So once you set the timer, you can just leave it and it will cook. Now when it's all done cooking, you're gonna go ahead and release the little knob to let all the pressure out. All right, once you can take the lid off because all the pressure's out, we're gonna add about a cup and a half of whipping cream. Now again, you can use whole milk if you'd like, but if you want it nice and creamy, whipping cream's where it's at. All right, after all the whipping cream is in, we're gonna come down here and push cancel, then push saute again and we're gonna add the cheese and the hot sauce and then we're done. Just gonna shred this whole block because we want the two cups. Then as I shred, I just dump in the cheese. And the last thing is hot sauce. The original recipe called for one tablespoon, but that's kind of a lot. So we're just gonna add a little more than one teaspoon. You can add a tablespoon, just depends on how hot you like your soup. Now it's just time to mix it all together. We're gonna let all that cheese get nice and melted. Now the thing is it's still on saute, we do not want it to boil. So once it starts getting nice and hot, you can turn it off and just have it keep on warm and it'll be ready to go when it's center time. It's looking good. So for this recipe, I found bread that was 93 cents. The cheese is 186. Your can of tomato soup is 117. And we are gonna use a little bit of butter. Our butter came to 318, but we only need a little bit. So we're gonna count that as a dollar. Now to make life a little bit easier, we just cook the soup in the microwave. Then just quickly shred the cheese. Then on the skillet, I like to put my butter down first. The bread, the cheese, right on top. Gonna add more butter. All right, so we're first going to get some sweet potatoes. Now you can use regular potatoes. They actually were out of like individual regular potatoes at my store. So sweet potatoes were on sale. Now for the sausage, I usually use apple chicken sausage, but they weren't on sale this week. So we're going with the smoked sausage, which is still delicious. First, I'm just going to peel my sweet potatoes. I think I didn't know that a peeler did this. I just recently found out and it's my favorite thing now. Okay, so with this sweet potato, we're gonna cut them into bite-sized pieces. The smaller that they are, the faster they will cook. So I like to do pretty small pieces, if you can see here. It's pretty little. Then I'm just gonna dump all of the sweet potatoes onto the sheet pan so I can use this to cut up all of the sausage. We're just gonna cut that in half so I can cut one section at a time. With the sausage, I just like to cut little pieces too, just because you don't want a huge sausage bite with your sweet potatoes. All right, sausage is done. Let's put it in with the sweet potatoes. Now we're gonna add a little bit of olive oil. If you don't have olive oil, just have vegetable oil, that works too. Then we're just gonna mix this all together just so it's coated with the oil. So when we put the seasoning on, it will stick onto all the pieces. Okay, so now I'm just gonna add a little bit of garlic salt. You can do salt and pepper too if you want. I just love garlic salt with sausage and sweet potatoes. You can always add more when it's done cooking too. And then you're just gonna mix it all together again. Okay, then we're just gonna spread this out. We're gonna cook it at 400 degrees, I don't know, for about 20, 25 minutes. We really just are cooking it till the sweet potatoes are cooked all the way through. So we'll just keep checking those. All right, it is all done, ready to go. That looks so good and smells so good. Our box of pancake mix is 168 and this will make a lot of pancakes. Then we're gonna have a bottle of syrup comes to 148. Our eggs are $1.59. Now I don't know about you, but breakfast for dinner is one of my favorite things to make as a mom, because it's quick, easy and cheap. Not a bad dinner and it will feed your whole family. So the first ingredient you're grabbing is whole wheat English muffins. If you don't love whole wheat, you can just buy normal English muffins too. Next is two cups of broccoli. Now the fresh broccoli was actually too expensive and so I went and checked on the freezer aisle and you can get two cups for just a dollar. So we're gonna do this and then steam it. Next up is our cheese. Now it's a lot cheaper to buy a block of cheese than it is the shredded. So we're gonna save money and buy a block. Now from the previous recipe, we need a five eggs. This one we need 12. So we're using the rest of the 18 eggs. So we're gonna just count this as like 50 cents. Also for this recipe, I'm gonna use more of the milk. I'm gonna use leftover ham. I apologize if you don't have ham. It might cost you an extra dollar or two. You can buy some just diced ham or whatever ham you wanna use. But if you have leftover ham, this is the perfect recipe for it. First we're gonna cut up four English muffins into bite-sized pieces. These are all cut up. Now I'm gonna steam the broccoli so it's not nearly so frozen. Now while the broccoli cooks, I'm gonna cut up my ham into bite-sized pieces. You want about two cups of ham. Okay, in a nine by 13 pan, we're gonna spray it with some cooking spray. And we're gonna add our broccoli. So about two cups of broccoli. And I didn't cook this all the way through, but just enough so it wasn't frozen. Okay, next we're gonna add our bite-sized English muffins and then I also cut up the ham on here too. And then I shredded up some of the cheese so we have a three-fourths cup of cheddar cheese. All right, now we're just gonna gently kind of mix this all together. You just want broccoli and ham and English muffins. Just kind of all, all spread out a little bit. We're gonna go ahead and set this aside and then get our eggs and milk ready. All right, into the bowl, we're gonna crack just 12 eggs. Now there's one extra egg. I am actually just gonna add it anyways because I hate just having one egg in a corn. To the eggs, we're gonna add one cup of milk, about one teaspoon of paprika. This is almost gone, so I'm just gonna use the rest of it here. And then instead of four teaspoon of crushed red pepper, so I'm just gonna grab like a pinch of it and just kind of put it on in. And I forgot one important thing, salt and pepper to taste. You want some of that. All right, mix that in here too. All right, I think we're ready. Okay, now we're just going to very carefully and gently pour this on. Now this recipe says it needs to sit overnight. I'll be honest, I never do overnight. I don't have the patience for it. So I'm gonna let it sit in the fridge for about 20 minutes. Let it soak in all of that bread and then we're gonna go from there. But if you're gonna make it in the evening and then cook it in the morning, perfect, perfect for overnight. We're gonna cover it with foil and then stick it in the fridge. All right, whether it's been in your fridge for just a little bit or overnight, we're gonna take this and add the rest of Archie. So it's about an extra cup or so. We're gonna cook it 375 for 45 minutes and we're actually gonna cover it while it cooks. Okay, here we go. All right, it is done. Browned on top, it is looking so good. For this recipe, I'm grabbing potatoes, which come to $2.08. Sour cream is $1.16 and cheese is $1.86. Now my favorite way to cook potatoes is in the Instant Pot. So I'm gonna put about six potatoes in here. You can put as many as you want. You need at least one cup of water. We're gonna put the lid on. Then we're gonna push pressure cook. Now these are gonna cook for about 15 minutes because they're kind of small. So once we set it, we can just walk away. Potatoes are done. Let's pull them out. Usually it'd be more gentle to keep the skin on, but you know, all right. Then I like to serve my potatoes cut in half. Then I just like to add a little bit of sour cream and a little bit of cheese. So for this recipe, we are getting some black beans, some diced tomatoes with the chilies in them, some marbled Kobe and Monterey Jack cheese, some long grain rice. And then I got some great value taco seasoning. Okay, so we're gonna cook it in the Instant Pot just because that's my favorite way to cook rice. So we're just gonna add two cups of rice. Now for every cup of rice, you need one and a fourth cups of liquid. So we're gonna add two and a half cups of water. We're also gonna add our other things too. So we're gonna add our diced tomatoes, our black beans. Now these are rinsed and drained, the tomatoes are not. And then just one packet of the taco seasoning. So you're going to mix in the taco seasoning just a little bit just because we don't want powder to kind of fly everywhere. So mix in your taco seasoning. Okay, so now you're gonna put your lid on. If you have a little knob that turns to sealing, make sure that's on sealing. Then we're gonna go down to pressure cook and down to seven minutes. So white rice cooks for just seven minutes. Ooh, there we go. Okay, we're gonna set it and we can just walk away. Okay, while your rice and beans are cooking we're almost done cooking. I'm gonna go ahead and shred the cheese now so we can be all ready for it. All right, the rice is all done cooking. Oh, we'll get all the rest of that out. All the pressure out so we can open the lid. Oh, it looks good. Rice is all cooked. We're just gonna mix this all together right now. Granted, this is only a $5 dinner so you could add chicken to this and make it like a spicy rice bowl, something like that. But because we're trying to stay within the budget we are just going to do it with beans. Now I like this with some cheese on top. It's one of my favorites. So our sauce is $1.40. Our noodles come to $1.58 and the bread is just a dollar. Now really quick, if you haven't figured out how to cook spaghetti in the Instant Pot this is my favorite way. I love cooking noodles in the pot. So I like to break them in half. They'll cook a whole lot easier and then we'll add the liquid. So the rule of thumb when you cook noodles in the Instant Pot is you just wanna make sure that the water is covering all the noodles. You don't want crunchy noodles. Now the lid is gonna go on. If you have a little knob, make sure it's on sealing, not venting. Then pressure cook and all the noodles cook for four minutes. Noodles are done cooking. I'm gonna pull them right out here. Then I just heated up my spaghetti sauce. Make it all nice and just ready to go. So all you need for this recipe is our pizza sauce which is $1.14. Muffins come to $198 and our cheese, which is $1.86. First you're just gonna grate the cheese. I'm gonna cook these in the air fryer. So we have our English muffins, our pizza sauce and our cheese on top. Now whether you use this or an oven you just cook it until the cheese is melted and it's a little crispy. All right, these cooked about three minutes and they are ready to eat. The things I needed at the store is a five pound bag of Idaho potatoes. Next, this recipe calls for 10 strips of bacon but 10 strips of bacon is kind of expensive. So we went with the bacon bits. A lot cheaper, still the same bacon flavor. Next is one eight ounce package of cream cheese. Then you need some cheddar cheese in there. So we just grabbed a block of cheddar cheese instead of the shredded just because it's a lot cheaper. Now this recipe also calls for sour cream and butter but I already had those two things so I apologize if you don't. That might bump up your price a little bit past the $5. Now I'm gonna try and cook all five pounds of potatoes at the same time. So I'm pulling out the giant eight quarts so we can cook them all. Now you wanna make sure that you've washed your potatoes really good especially if you're leaving the skins on and I'm gonna leave the skins on cause I love potato skins. Our potatoes actually didn't go all the way to the top. So if you have a six quart it might just work. Just fill it up as much as you can. Okay potatoes are washed. We're gonna add about a cup of water in here and then just put it right into our Instant Pot. All right go ahead and put your lid on. You have a little knob that says sealing and venting. Make sure it's on sealing. Okay we're gonna go to pressure cook and we're gonna take our time all the way down to 20 minutes. Now with this machine because it's my eight quart I do have to push start but sometimes you can just walk away once you set the time. All right the potatoes have been done cooking for about six minutes. We're gonna release the pressure and let them out. All right all the pressure's out. Potatoes are dead. All right drained all the liquid. Pull this little dude off. Now I love this recipe because we're gonna work just straight from the pot. Now my beaders broke last time I used them so I don't have beaders right now. So we're gonna do the potato masher and just mash the heck out of all these potatoes. While we're mashing we're gonna add a half a cup of butter or one stick as my mom used to call it and then we're gonna also add the eight ounces of cream cheese. And then the last thing if you have sour cream it's about one cup of sour cream. I only have about a half a cup but it'll still work. All right then we're gonna keep on mixing this. Now if you had beaders you would mix this until it is nice and smooth but with my potato masher this is about as creamy and as smooth as I'm gonna get it today. All right we are not done yet so we're gonna add salt and pepper to taste and there's a lot of potatoes here so be a little generous with your salt and pepper okay. Then we're gonna add half the package of bacon. Just be careful sometimes that little blue thing comes in it and then about a cup and a half of your shredded cheese. Carefully mix this all together. Okay we're gonna dump this all into our nine by 13 pan. Now we're just gonna spread this out. Okay now you're gonna take the rest of your cheese. I don't have a ton left about half a cup or so. One thing I would change is probably buy a little bit more cheese because this is a lot of potatoes. Then I'm just gonna take the rest of the bacon bits. We're gonna go on top here too. So we're gonna cook this 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or so. My potatoes are already hot so mostly just until the cheese is melted we should be good. All right these are all done cooking. My kids are gonna be in heaven. If you like these meals make sure to check out our other easy meals right up there. All right okay I'll see you next time.