My goal is to provide dinner for my family for an average of $5 except on special occasions. We don’t have to eat beans and rice to accomplish this goal! I shop the grocery sales each week. Then I plan my menu based on the foods I have already at home (at a great price). I balance more expensive meals with less expensive ones. We typically only cook a main dish 4 or 5 times a week. Each main dish cooked will serve 4-6, and the leftovers will be for easy dinners on the weekend, or to freeze for another week. This cuts down on cleaning, cooking, and meal planning- saving at us lots of time!
Be sure to check out our Dishing It Up Easter Recipe Hop and Tupperware giveaway!
Last week we strayed from our menu quite a bit. The first 3 meals below we actually ate last week 
This week we’ll be cooking (in no particular order):
Garlic Pork Chops, Green Beans, Pineapple, Toast with Honey
Grilled BBQ Chicken Legs, Baked Beans, Sweet Peas
BLTs, Carrot Sticks with Ranch, Bananas
Grilled Chicken, Creamed Corn, Baked Potatoes
Little Caesar’s Pizza and Apple Slices
For 2012, I will no longer be showing the cost breakdown for our meals. This is very time consuming and for little purpose since I’ve spent the past 18 months showing that a family of 4 could eat for an average of $5 per dinner. If you’d like to see some $5 menu ideas with cost breakdowns, please browse my pages for $5 Dinner Plans.
This post is being linked up to Menu Plan Monday over at OrgJunkie.
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My aunt just told me about your site and I love the idea of making $5 meals for my family of 5. I was wondering if you kept the earlier postings (pre-2012) so I could see the recipes and cost break down. Thanks!
Hi Marjorie! Welcome to TTP. I do still have all of the old posts. They can be accessed at this link: http://www.thriftytexaspenny.com/search/label/%245.00%20dinners I include it in all my menu posts and you can find it on the drop down menu under frugal living/recipes as well. Please let me know if there is anything else I can help you with!