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):
Mac n Cheese with Ham, Green Beans, Bananas
Grilled Hamburgers, Baked Beans, Carrot Sticks with Ranch, Rolls
Chili’s (with a gift card from Christmas)
Easter Dinner
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.