126 MEALS FOR $30! | Emergency Extreme Budget Grocery Haul 2020

Hello my frugal family and welcome to today's video. My name is Christine and today we will see how many

meals

we can create with 30 dollars for this frugal challenge. I have teamed up with my friend Gabby and her channel will be linked below. and she specializes in authentic Mexican dishes, so if you want to see a couple of Mexican

meals

for a family of 6 for only 30 dollars, visit her channel as soon as you finish watching this video, let me tell you a little. lots of details about my thirty dollar challenge before I show you what I ended up making so people have complained to me before about my frugal

grocery

shopping because I already have stuff around the house and in this video I'm going to address that I'm going to do everything possible to spend just thirty dollars on breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a family of six for the entire week.

I'm going to assume that you basically have nothing in your house except salt, pepper and oil, if you have some other pantry spices that will make these dishes a little easier to prepare, but what I'm going to show you won't include any of that for the For the purposes of this video, you will probably see a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. It may not be the perfectly balanced diet you are looking for. Some people really only have $30 a week or maybe less to spend on groceries to feed their family, so I hope this is an accurate representation of the different things you can do. with such a low

budget

now, if you are really struggling, I want to mention that you can check out your local churches for help, you can check out your local food pantries or crisis centers, there is no shame in using these services for people who are My city has problems with several of these services and for those who do not have problems with money, these are great places to give your time your money and if you would like to donate the items you are looking for, I have been volunteering my time with my children. at our food pantry once a month for the last few years, it's a really rewarding experience for us and especially my kids to see other people really struggling to feed their families.

Now, without further ado, let's get to the

grocery

shopping and cooking part. video eat for $30 this week at Walmart what can we find? I thought eggs would be a great breakfast option because of the high protein and fat content. I'm not too excited about the price, but here they are trying to feed six people. 376 for three dozen eggs I would love to make my own pie crust but the ingredients would actually cost more than just the refrigerated one so I'm doing something I haven't done in 10 years is buying pre-made pie crusts or making chicken bullion For some quick flavor and at 98 cents for basically 12 cups, that's pretty good.

I found this amazing deal on spaghetti, three pounds of great value name brand spaghetti for $48, that's great and for a quick dinner or lunch, you know, a can of pasta sauce, I thought. a little rice would go very well with our meals for the week. I can get a five-pound bag of regular white rice for two dollars and 22 cents. You think it is a very good purchase and combined with beings it is a complete protein. The cheapest beans I found. It was a two pound bag of pinto beans for a dollar 48. I think it said right there.

I like tomato paste, plus it has a very concentrated flavor for not a lot of money and I wanted to get some vegetables, some fresh vegetables, but they were too expensive and I hate them. As you can see, I had a hard time finding frozen mixed vegetables, they were no longer at my Walmart, that's pretty standard, so I found this 15 ounce can for 458 cents, which was significantly better than the 8 or 10 ounce frozen bag for a dollar. I picked some onions to give them a quick flavor. I love cooking with onions. onions are always on my shopping list all the time. some fresh tomatoes to go with our rice and beans dish to give it a little freshness because there will be plenty this week I'm missing fresh ingredients, some garlic, I think it's a great flavor component, take some bananas for potassium and fiber for the week.

I don't eat bananas, I'm allergic to them, but everyone else in the family likes them and is okay with them. I wanted some apples to accompany breakfast. I was having a hard time finding some that I liked. It was a good price. All the ones in the bags were quite expensive, but the Golden Delicious ones were the cheapest. A pound of carrots for 82 cents is not. best price I've ever seen but it was going to work for this week and guys one of my favorite deals at the grocery store if you can find a big bag of chicken leg quarters and this is even more than I've ever seen In the past, I've seen this big 10 pound bag for about three or three dollars at 350 or so, so keep an eye out because you can use it in a lot of different ways, a can of cream of mushroom casserole that I was going to make and I thought about buying bread, but I thought it would be cheaper to buy flour and yeast and make my own, so that's what I did to help us all week.

The last thing I bought was a huge container of old-fashioned Quaker Oats for just a dollar. I was at my discount store and saw this deal and had to pick it up. It was a lot cheaper than at my Walmart or like 250, almost $3.00 for the same size container. This is all I bought for the entire week of meals for a family of six. It really doesn't seem like much. I spent a total of thirty dollars and 98 cents on the nose here is my receipt for Walmart 2998 Holy Moly and a dollar for Quaker Oats at my discount store because I had stuck to a

budget

of thirty dollars, a couple of things I would have done differently, which would have prepared me better for the coming weeks if your budget is regularly low, for example, I would have made my own pie crust, but because I was really trying.

To meet my budget of thirty dollars for the week, I didn't have the money to buy the butter, so I think it was 48 dollars and the smallest butter I could find was almost three dollars, which put me over my total, but I wouldn't have used the entire container of shortening, so I could have used it more and combined the shortening with the flour to make my own pie crust. You see what I'm saying, there were a couple of spices I wish I could have bought. but they just didn't fit into the budget for this week, let me tell you that it is a law to try to shop this way.

It's okay for a few weeks to maybe go to 35 or 40 dollars to save money in the next few weeks and then you will have the benefit. To make things from scratch, let's talk about chicken leg quarters. I feel like this is one of the best buys in the store and is often overlooked, it's 10 pounds, it's a lot of meat, so this is the thigh and drumstick combined, it has bone in it. With skin it is dark meat which means it will taste better, it has higher fat content which means you will feel fuller for longer and it doesn't overcook and you can use this in a wide variety of applications.

Here is everything. kit and kaboodle beans and rice of course, lots of flour, a packet of yeast so I can make my own bread for the week tomato paste, old fashioned oatmeal is a great option for breakfast, lots of fiber keeps you going full for a long time. take a little garlic and onion to give it a little flavor in a couple of recipes, chicken bullion. I don't buy canned chicken broth. I always buy it this way, usually in a larger container, but these little ones are really cheap. I wish I had the money to do it. my own cream of mushroom soup this week, but no, we'll just use this can to help us with one of our recipes, a couple of tomatoes to go with our bean dish and some fresh vegetables.

I wish I could have bought more it just didn't fit this time a couple of carrots increased the amount of vegetables a can of spaghetti sauce because technically I had like 98 cents too much. I could have cut back on the bananas or skipped them altogether, but I liked it. the option to add a little more potassium to our diet this week and a few more calories since everything will be a little low. The only thing I really don't like about shopping at a single store is that my Walmart has probably the worst prices on apples in my area.

This was a bit of an expensive purchase, I can usually get this closer to a dollar a dozen eggs, but not at the moment, so three dozen eggs that will also help us for breakfast, let me put all this away and let's go to what we have. They are eating all week. I'm doing some preparation for the night before tomorrow. I'm soaking the two pounds of pinto beans, the whole bag in a ton of cold water and I'm mixing two loaves of no need, no mixer needed, crusty bread. The recipe is here and I will also leave it below as you can see, the only ingredients are flour, salt, which I already had, yeast that I bought and warm water, so I think I have enough left to make at least four more loaves, if not more .

I'll stir six of them and cover them with plastic wrap and let them sit overnight and prepare them for my two loaves of bread. I'm doing this is what they look like after sitting overnight. It's all bubbly and sticky. I'm going to do two. the loaves will be eaten one today and another tomorrow. I'm just going to take some flour and sprinkle it on my counter. I'll toss them in the flour and put a towel on them and let them rest for about 30 minutes before putting them in the oven. my two little bass aren't as big as here, well I have very big hands okay but there you go that's the size of each of them they aren't that big but they should feed all six of us for one meal each.

We're going to set the timer for thirty minutes and we're going to go back and check that now you're going to want to put whatever pan you're using to make the bread in the oven while you preheat the oven to 450 and then we're going to put our dough in these pans so I have a Dutch oven you can use any Dutch oven, a regular one, this one is very, very small or a Pyrex bowl is fine too, so we'll do both so you can see the difference between them, so take them out very Carefully using a hot pad is not so nice.

Ryan made it for me for Mother's Day last year and then we'll put our donut on just as a reminder, don't grease these pans, you can sprinkle a little flour, a little cornmeal if you have that. in your pantry to keep it from sticking but it really won't stick as much here we go there in my pants and this one we're going to cook without a lid but when I do it in a Dutch oven I like to put the lid on Turn it back on don't forget to use your skillet hot because then you'll cook this one with the lid on for 30 minutes and then take the lid off and do another 10 and then this one for 40 minutes okay so let's put them back on I think.

It's pretty obvious that you need a lid for the bread, so if you have a bowl and not one of these dutch pots, I would look for some kind of oven-safe lid to put on top so that it cooks properly, it's still fine to eat. It's just not as pretty and has such a nice crust, it always covers up the bread, but here we go, two loaves of bread for the next two I still have a ton left from this bag of flour. I think there are only two left and me. I took out 6 cups. We will have bread all week.

Breakfast days one through three will be oatmeal topped with two chopped apples for some sweetness, fiber, and vitamins. As you can see, I cut two apples and there are four left, so let's divide them between the containers. Oh, Ryan is telling me that he doesn't want apples, so he's going to skip one of these bowls on the apple or he's going to skip that one. Ryan doesn't want apples. I still have quite a few. but these are really big apples. I ended up cooking 6 cups of water and 3 cups of oats for several minutes and I still have plenty so I'll easily get through the first 3 days and if you have a pantry stocked enough you can add a little brown sugar, it's cinnamon on top of these.

Today I didn't do it because we are going to the

extreme

. Two slices of homemade bread. A fried egg with salt and pepper and half a banana. I only have enough bananas to make this for two days. I'm out of bananas, so breakfast on days four, six and seven will consist of a fried egg, salt and pepper, if you want, and two slices of homemade bread. One loaf of bread can easily feed my entire family of six with a couple of slices. leftover so we can make less than a loaf of bread for a meal and if you already have butter or peanut butter or jelly or something like that in your house you can go ahead and add that to your bread but this is good just eat it plain . the beams soaked overnight I just drained them and rinsed them and put them in my 8 quart instant pot and as you can see I'm sitting on over 8 cups so we'll add the water on top of this you can cook too. these just in a pot on the stove or in a crock pot it's totally up to you for my first few days of lunches we're going to make a dish of beans and rice.

I have half an onion and three clovesof sautéed garlic and a little bit of oil and we're going to add the pinto beans that we cooked down to two pounds and I hope I would love it if this dish could help us eat three or four Chiz. I mixed two cups, maybe two and a half. cups of water with one more of my chicken broth blocks and these are larger so it's like the equivalent of two cups of broth instead of one. Let's pour this into our beans. I already added a touch of plain water to make it work. half my can of tomato paste, look, I would say three tablespoons or so, if you have oregano in your pantry, now is the time to add it.

There are a couple of ingredients I would have liked to add, but they didn't fit. This week's budget is a little cilantro, a little green pepper, but it just didn't work, so we're going to bring this to a simmer and simmer it for about an hour while we cook the rice to go with it. rice for my beans I decided to start with two cups of dry rice and 4 cups of divided rice and beans into six containers, this is what a lunch would look like for the six of us and since most of us have to go to school and work, most of them are At Tupperware, all of my kids have a microwave available at school and Dave has one at work to reheat his items.

I measured out a cup of rice and a cup of beans and I still have more than half the pot left. I added quite a bit of salt. There is a misconception in many of my videos. about how much food I'm serving, so I want to show you one of our big bowls that I use a lot for filming because it's wide and white and looks nice, but for comparison, this is your standard Perel cereal bowl. Okay, I want you to look. in the size difference here and here Correll Bowl my bowl is very large and it's like the usual serving size so if you put all that in it it will fill it almost to the top.

I just like this bowl for filming days. 4 5 and 6 for lunch we were going to have chicken fried rice, it should have soy sauce and stuff, but if you don't have that, you can eat it this way or scrambled with some of the eggs, carrots and onions. I bought rice and chicken before, it turns out that you have soy sauce, you can add it or it's okay to eat it like this, just a little salt and pepper. I was going to put some sliced ​​tomatoes on top, but Dave ate them all with his rice. and beans for our last lunch.

I took the rest of the unused tomato paste, mixed it with a little water and made a sort of spaghetti sauce over the rest of the pasta and of course more homemade bread for my first dinner. I'm going to start with a 10 by 15 glass baking dish. You could use a 9 by 15, which is 9 by 13 on the inside so you can see it's significantly larger next to each other, so I will use the largest one. Because I'm increasing the amount of rice in this just to make it more filling for my active kids, we're going to start with 2 cups of our very, very simple raw rice and I'll top it with half of this chopped onion.

Here come the onions and I'll wait, man, this onion straw, my eyes are burning. Next, we'll take out our huge bag of chicken and find out how many sections of chicken we actually have and how many we can use. In this dish I put the 10 pounds of chicken in this big glass bowl and I got 10 quarters of chicken thighs, so for this dish I'm going to take 3 of these pieces, cut them into 2 portions and place 6 pieces of chicken in here. mix over the chicken and rice, you want to use the smallest pan, you would just cut the rice and liquids in half, if you have a stocked spice cabinet you will already have this, which is the biggest achievement of this dish, so if you have Uncle Tony's that's what we call it, sprinkle the entire top with this, if not you're just going to sprinkle with a little salt since we're on an extra budget II this week we're just going to use salt, put it in the oven and bake it at 375 a 1 hour I still have more than half of my original bag here's the entire chicken rice dinner here's our leftover rice, it's probably enough for two people I'd imagine, so we'll save it for a leftover lunch later in the whole week, I'm not going to lie, this rice is one of my favorites to eat and here are all the dishes on the table, we have a piece of bread for everyone so far, you have a couple of extra dollars, have some broccoli as a side or maybe a salad, but if not, it's enough food.

I'm getting ready for my dinners the next two nights which will be chicken pot pie for two nights in a row which is great because my family loves chicken pot pie and I need some cooked chicken so I'm going to have this It's very, very big, so put it in my Instant Pot. I have two chicken leg quarters, which are one, two, three, four pieces, so to speak, they're very, very large, I would say. at least a pound and a half each, so maybe three pounds of chicken. I'm going to cover this quite a bit with water to try to start getting a good broth, so I took the chicken that I cooked in the instant pot, pulled it off the bone and put it in my two pie crusts with a can of mixed vegetables each and I have my pie crust right here.

I'm just going to make a pie crust on top to make sure I get two of this and I'm going to make my sauce from the chicken broth that I took out of the instant pot along with some flour, oil, salt and pepper in a pan , so I'm going to make my sauce right now and then I'm going to put them in the oven. Here is my simple rule about oil and flour. I'm going to cook this for a few minutes. I'll add a little salt and pepper and add my chicken broth. Here's my sauce. I added about half the jug of chicken broth and now we're going to pour it into our cakes.

Alright? We're going to stir them and cover them with our pie crust, two full pies, one for dinner tonight, one for dinner tomorrow and I thought I was only going to have enough bread to go with tonight, but yesterday we only had half a loaf, so we have enough. bread to last us two more dinners before I have to make more. We have leftovers. I have some chicken pot pie, some spaghetti, and some rice and beans. I divide this between whoever each wants. clean them up for tonight along with some more homemade bread. I made a very large pot of chicken noodle soup that we will eat with some homemade bread for dinner for the rest of the week.

He has a lot of that, the leftover chicken he had. From that huge bag I took it out and got some nice broth, some of the chicken cubes, the spaghetti, the noodles, the carrots, the onions and some salt and pepper and of course I showed you how to make the homemade bread before if you have. in your pantry, some thyme or some bay leaves, that's a nice addition and as you can see, from what I was able to gather, it's very, very difficult to feed a family of six with just $30 and have a wide variety of foods.

Eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables and have a good balance of proteins, carbohydrates and fats. I also notice that I point out some flaws when it comes to having to buy, like packaged pie dough versus the ingredients to make your own, even though it would cost. more up front, you would save money in the long run and of course several of these dishes I made would be better with some standard pantry items, Italian seasoning, brown sugar, these are things that a lot of people already have in their pantries and that I I did not have. included in this video, you can use each and every one of these ideas in your own life if necessary.

There are all kinds of people who can benefit from ideas like the ones I have shown in this video. These aren't the only ways to do it, these may not even be the best ways to do it, but they are some of the things we were able to eat this week. My family wasn't thrilled to be a full meal for so many days in a row, and honestly, they were. I really miss my homemade pie crust on chicken pot pie but it is what it is, we all survived, we all had enough to eat, bellies were full at the end of the day and that's all that matters now if you guys enjoyed this quote

extreme

for edibles. challenge, let me know below and I'll consider making another one very similar to this one if you haven't subscribed yet and want to see any future videos I make.

Go ahead and do it then press your thumbs up or down. button depending on what you thought of this video and see you in the next one