Forward

When facing hard times, the pressures of trying to make ends meet day in and day out can be truly daunting.  The stress of constant worry is what defeats us more often than not.  “How will we pay the light bill?”  “Is my employer going to fire me?”  “Will we lose the house?”  It can be as devastating to your overall well-being as the economy is to your wallet.

When you’re going through hard times it helps to know you are not alone.  You may be new to the world of paycheck-to-paycheck, broke-ass living but it’s a very big community. It’s populated with every kind of ethnicity, nationality, religion and class.  How we get through is with a little help from our friends and that’s what this book is about.  How we make great family dinners work with little to nothing is what I am going to attempt to teach you.  I do not claim they are gourmet nor are they always the healthiest, but there are tricks to that as well, these recipes are time tested and will feed a family of 4 for pennies a day. 

This book for the most part will cover entrees.  You’ll want to accompany the recipe with your favorite sides of veggies and salads.  You’ll also notice that these recipes are very basic and simple to create.  The reason for this is very simple, if you’re struggling and trying to stretch your food dollar, it doesn’t make sense to offer you a recipe with a lot of ingredients and seasonings that you don’t have on hand or can’t afford to procure.  Also, I wanted to leave room for your own creativity.  Find out what you like.  Add or subtract as you desire.  No recipe should be set in stone; where’s the fun in that? Another reason for keeping these recipes as simple as they are is time.  If you’re a struggling single parent, the idea of cooking a meal after a long day at the office can hardly be appealing.  The majority of the recipes contained can be cooked in 20 minutes.  When your children are hungry and ready for dinner and your boss asks you to stay late at work, a twenty minute dinner is infinitely more do-able than a more elaborate meal.

I learned these tricks growing up in a single parent house in the seventies with a mother who struggled to feed two kids working as a secretary.  I have never had money and was born with the broke-ass gene so I feel uniquely qualified to advise on how make a meal out of next to nothing.  With some careful planning and a cabinet full of basic low-cost staples, you can make it work.  So what are we waiting for? Let’s start with the basics: