In the early 60’s, when my husband was still in school and working only part time, Betty Crocker ran an offer to figure out a monthly food budget with recipes for anybody who would write in.
I had 2 babies at the time, and I submitted our family for the budget help. At the time I was spending $12 a week, and we were eating well — everything prepared from scratch. Betty Crocker wrote back and recommended that I figure out a way to get more money because they were sure that I was depriving my family of essential nutrients!
It turned out that I could not meet their budget criteria because all of their menu plans required the use of Betty Crocker packaged mixes and meal helpers. “Scratch” cooking wasn’t considered an alternative.
OTOH, my local grocery store of the time (the Co-Op in Berkeley, CA) published a free pamphlet with recipes, submitted from other shoppers and members, that promised a month’s worth of recipes that would serve four, for $1 per day. Some of them were really good and I used them often.
I should scrounge through my old recipes to see if I still have that book. I’m sure that we ate better then than we do now.
Please look for the book and share some of the recipes with us. FR has a weekly cooking thread that is posted every Saturday. Here is a link to last Saturday’s thread:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2779806/posts