Cheap and Easy - just my style

Hiya laglen, You have put everything in there and it sounds great and really nice to eat. Hope you all enjoyed it I mean that. My ideas for great Dinners usually happen on the spur of the moment. Often though I don´t have all the right ingredients so I have to dream something else up.

Laglen, good value for dinner for 4! Did you add the swiss cheese to the mac and cheese or put it on the roast beef sandwiches? I have a quick thing I like to do which is not expensive and is filling if I'm not super hungry. It probably serves 2 and I copied the idea from a local restaurant. Make a salad of one head of romaine, served with just blue cheese dressing on it. (can be store bought more cheaply than homemade) and another salad of shredded red cabbage with vinaigrette dressing (just oil and vinegar, s and p and just a small head of cabbage). The flavors balance out nicely from the richness of the blue cheese dressing to the tartness of the vinaigrette. It's cheap and easy and the veggies are filling.

french dips are yunny. we have been making our own bread which is very yunny.

WEll, it sounds really good anyway! I don' do a lot of "out of the box" cooking either. But every once in awhile I will try something. Mac and cheese is good for me! But you could also throw in some weiners and make a whole meal out of it with little work involved!

Hi, Laglen. :) Thank you for sharing this with us,dear. However, for the budget coscious Filipinos like me, $10.56 is already a lot for a home made dish.You can buy 10 kilos of good quality rice for that price.:) Anyways, when I'm not in the mood to cook yet I don;t have a choice, the easiest is pasta, spaghetti. It is my daughter's fave. Half kilo of spaghetti for $2, tomato sauce for $1 and ground beef/pork for $3 ,cheese,milk and spices for $1.50, a loaf of bread for $ 1.50 and a cola for $1. Bread and cola are optionals, though.So, for a $7.50, we have a dinner and probably something for breakfast the following day,too.:)

That very nice last minute special dinner, I also like cooking, some time in hostel we cook on weekends, we already purchase different things from market and then cook by our self in hostel, it is good idea for last minute special dinner...:) Happy myLotting..

it is my style as well... i only cook simple and cheap dishes everyday for me and my hubby to eat... we don't have any children yet... so that makes our job much easier at the moment... being asian, most of the dishes i cook are stir-fry... they are yummy, simple, cheap and easy to cook which suit my lifestyle... take care and have a nice day...

I cook all the time, for me and for family and friends. Last minute special dinners are no problem for me due to some measures I take. I use my freezer to store some sauces, cooked legumes in 1 portion size, pesto, homemade hamburgers. I use my pressure cooker for many jobs and I always have frozen cooked legumes. Every time I buy a kilo of legumes, I put it all to soak overnight in lukewarm water. Cooking them the next day takes less time than answering a post here. And I place them in ziplock bags when they are cold. I make pesto for the whole year when it´s in season. It doesn´t take more than 10 minutes to do it and put to freeze and I can easily turn a boring veggie soup into a minestrone or some boiled spaguetti into pasta al pesto. I do the same with several kinds of tomato based sauces. How many people ate with your meal? You didn´t tell us that. Happy posting!

Wow, that's great. Wish I could make last minute dinner and make it special too.

I agree with cheap and easy. I cook at home myself and try to use whats inside the refrigerator rather than going out and buy ingredients for just one dish. I usually cook soup and veggies for lunch.