Standalone

Feed 'Em All for Under $25

If You're Standing in the Kitchen at 5 O'Clock Wondering How You're Going to Pull This Off, This Book Is for You

Let me tell you how I got here.

There are six of us. My wife and me, our 18-year-old who eats like he's training for something, twin 13-year-old girls who have strong opinions about food and will absolutely not be talked out of them, and a 3-year-old who some nights eats more than the teenager and some nights survives on air and crackers. And then there's me. A big guy who likes a real dinner, which to me means there's meat on the plate and nobody's getting up still hungry.

Feeding all of that, every single night, on what groceries cost now? That's the puzzle I've been solving for years. And I'm not going to pretend it's easy or that I've got some secret. What I've got is a stack of dinners that work. Meals my family actually eats, that fill everybody up, that don't blow the budget, and that I can get on the table without turning the kitchen into a science experiment.

That's the whole idea behind this book. Every dinner in here feeds my family of six, with leftovers when I can swing it, and lands under twenty-five bucks. Almost every main has meat in it, because that's how we eat and I'm guessing if you picked this up, that's how your family eats too. (There's a meatless chapter at the end for the tight weeks, and even I go back for seconds.) None of it is fancy. All of it is real.

Here's what I've learned the hard way, and what you'll find baked into these recipes:

Cheap cuts are your best friends. Chicken thighs, pork shoulder, chuck roast, a roll of ground beef, a ring of smoked sausage. These are the workhorses. They've got flavor for days and they cost a fraction of the fancy stuff. Half this book is just learning to treat them right.

A little meat goes a long way when you stretch it smart. Beans, rice, potatoes, pasta, a can of tomatoes. These aren't filler, they're the foundation. A pound of beef can feed two people or it can feed eight, and the difference is just knowing how to build the meal around it. I'll show you every trick I use.

Picky eaters aren't the enemy. My girls taught me that the goal isn't to win the fight. It's to make food they'll actually eat without me cooking four different dinners. You'll notice a lot of these meals can be split, topped, or customized at the table. That's on purpose.

Done beats perfect. I'm a dad with a job and a busy house, not a chef. These recipes are built for a Tuesday when everybody's tired and somebody has practice. If a meal takes one pot and forty minutes and makes the whole table happy, that's a win in my book. And there are a lot of wins in here.

I'm not going to preach at you about meal planning or tell you to spend your Sunday prepping fourteen containers. That's not my life and I'm guessing it's not yours. This is just what actually works in my house, written down, so it can work in yours too.

Grab a cart, grab a pot, and let's feed everybody.

Alex

Before You Start

How I Sneak in Veggies

I'll be honest: getting vegetables into my crew, especially the picky girls, took some figuring out. Lecturing never worked. Hiding them did. Here's what actually gets vegetables onto my family's plates without a standoff:

Frozen is your friend. A bag of frozen peas, corn, mixed veg, or chopped spinach is cheap, never goes bad, and disappears into almost anything. Stir a cup into rice dishes, soups, pasta, casseroles, or skillet meals in the last few minutes.

Grate it small. Grated carrot or finely chopped mushroom melts right into meat sauce, chili, meatballs, and goulash. It stretches the meat and adds a vegetable, and the kids never spot it.

Wilt the greens in. A few handfuls of fresh spinach stirred into a hot pasta, soup, or skillet at the end cook down to almost nothing and vanish into the sauce.

Roast it with a glaze. Vegetables that are charred and tossed in something sweet-savory (honey-garlic, teriyaki, a little BBQ) get eaten. Sad steamed broccoli gets pushed around the plate; roasted-and-glazed broccoli gets eaten.

Let them build it. Taco bars, baked potato bars, and rice bowls let kids add their own toppings. A vegetable they chose themselves goes down a lot easier than one you put there.

You'll see these moves built right into the "Serving & Variations" notes throughout the book. None of it is fancy. It's just what works in my house.