$2 dinners (hold the fine print, please)

I was killing time at the Walmart magazine rack the other day, waiting on the kids to set their spending money on fire -- I mean, find those indispensable items that would give their lives meaning -- when I noticed an article on $2 dinners.

That’s what it said on the cover, anyway. When I flipped open the magazine, though, it turns out the writer was talking about meals that cost $2 per serving. For us, those would be $12 dinners. That’s $84 for seven dinners -- about what I usually spend on all our groceries, including laundry detergent and shampoo and toilet paper, for an entire week.

As it turns out, we had an actual $2 dinner at our house just last night: Baked leftover spaghetti topped with a little mozzarella cheese, leftover banana bread, some iceberg lettuce (I know, I know, but that’s what my husband prefers) and homemade brownies flavored with cocoa powder. I figure the brownies contained about $1 worth of ingredients, and we used about half a head of lettuce (50 cents) and about 50 cents worth of cheese. Everything else had been through another meal previously, and for accounting purposes would have already been “expensed.”

Here are some non-leftover dinners that really do cost $2, with no fine print. They make less-than-ideal glossy magazine photographs, but at least your kids will go off to college knowing what to eat when they're broke:

-- Ramen noodles, a sliced carrot, 1 cup of frozen peas, 1 can of tuna.
-- Baked omelette and toast.
-- Grilled cheese and tomato soup.
-- Peanut butter and jelly pizza. (Make your own crust).
-- Baked potatoes topped with a can of chili beans and a sprinkle of cheese. (Use potatoes from a bag, and you’ll pay just a few cents per potato.)
-- Store-brand macaroni and cheese, store brand green beans and store brand tuna.
-- Tuna noodle casserole, using a homemade white sauce instead of cream of mushroom soup.
-- Homemade pancakes or waffles and homemade syrup, made with one part brown sugar to one part water.
-- Homemade polenta topped with spaghetti sauce or salsa and sprinkled with cheese.
-- Beans and rice