162 real recipes for the weeks a kitchen actually has, from a Tuesday at seven to Thanksgiving for eight. Every ingredient is priced, and next to each dish is what the store charges for its version.
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This one is from the chapter on feeding a family for under two dollars a day. Every recipe in the book is laid out like this, and each prints on one sheet for the counter.
Pantry noodles, out of the can and the box.
Under two dollars a day
Pantry noodles: spaghetti in garlic and canned tomatoes
serves 5 · about 35 minutes · $0.80 a plate
1 lb spaghetti$1.19
1 can (28 oz) crushed tomatoes$1.89
4 cloves garlic, sliced thin$0.66
1/4 cup vegetable oil$0.17
1/2 tsp sugarunder a cent
salt for the sauce and the water$0.07
the pot$3.99
Oil and sliced garlic in a wide pan over medium low. Two minutes, until it sizzles and goes blond. Browned garlic makes the sauce bitter, so pull it before that.
Tomatoes in with the sugar, salt and some pepper. Up to a boil, then a bare bubble for 20 minutes, until the oil pools on top.
Cook the spaghetti in well-salted water just short of soft. Keep a cup of the water.
Lift it into the sauce with tongs and toss over low heat with a splash of the water until every strand is coated.
The store brand jar is a fair price, ten cents over the can; it's the name brand jar that costs twice what this sauce is worth.
Every line is priced. Costed at real stores this September, to the cent.
The store's version, like for like. Here the jar of sauce, with the same spaghetti bought either way.
No flattery for homemade. When the store is the better buy, Brenda says so on the page.
Where the money actually goes.
Six meals from the book. The big number is what they cost made from its pages. The crossed-out one is the same food bought the way the store sells it.
Thanksgiving for eight
$36.38$54.08 the same table from the store
Sunday dinner for six
$13.86$31.92 the pizza box, delivered
Lunches for the family, all week
$25.59$111.77 the same lunches, bought
Five pounds of beef and the rice, twenty plates
$27.53$68.07 one-pound trays and ready rice
An afternoon in the freezer, 110 plates
$144.19$309.24 the store-brand frozen kind
The funeral lunch for fifty
$88.56$675.00 catered
Forty weeks a kitchen has.
The book is sorted by the week you're having, not by ingredient. There are 8 parts. Tap one to see its chapters and every recipe in them.
Part 1 · The money7 chapters · 26 recipes
The Social Security month: the check comes on the third, here's the whole month
Check-day chuck pot roast, and the two suppers after it · The French dips, two nights later · The stew, at the end of the week · Potato and egg skillet · Beans in tomato sauce over potatoes · Rice cooked in the jus, toasted first
Under two dollars a day: the true floor, and what it really feeds you
A pot of dried beans · Rice and lentils with fried onions · Pantry noodles: spaghetti in garlic and canned tomatoes · Fried cabbage with butter and onion
The realistic hundred-dollar week for four, the full menu
Baked potato supper, with the toppings bar · Cabbage and smoked sausage over rice · Breakfast for supper: fried potatoes, eggs and pancakes
The five-pound pack: one afternoon at the stove, twenty suppers in the freezer
Five pounds of ground beef browned at once · The weekly pot of rice, frozen flat · Spanish rice supper
The month ran out: two weeks out of the pantry you already own
Must-go night · Tuna noodle casserole on a pantry white sauce · Salmon patties · Eggs poached in tomato sauce
Everything I stopped buying
Coffee creamer, cold brew and iced coffee · Jar vinaigrette and buttermilk ranch · Homemade yogurt, and the Greek strained out of it · Home-shredded freezer cheese
Buy it before it goes up: the two-week pantry
Hardtack · Powdered milk, reconstituted, and where it passes
Part 2 · The week8 chapters · 35 recipes
Home at seven: twenty-minute suppers
Fried rice from day-old rice · Clean-out frittata · Chicken quesadillas from the picked meat · Thin-sliced skillet beef and vegetables over rice
Dump it in and walk away: the crockpot, and the summer version
Slow-cooker pork shoulder, five suppers · Five chicken dump bags · The summer crockpot: shredded chicken for cold suppers
The Sunday that cooks the week
Big-pot meat sauce · A pan of slow-cooked onions, and the browned tomato paste with them · One tray of roasted potatoes and root vegetables
One pound of ground beef, four dinners
Oat-stretched meatloaf · Half-bean chili · Ground beef and potato bake · Stretched meatballs on a bread panade · Skillet beef and macaroni · Sloppy joes
One chicken, forward: four dinners planned before it goes in the oven, and the stock at the end
Roast chicken over potatoes, carrots and onion · Chicken and rice skillet · Chicken and dumplings, with drop dumplings · Chicken pot pie, under a biscuit crust · Stock from the carcass and the bone bag
Breakfast for a family under a dollar a head
Oatmeal from the canister six ways, and the instant packets in a jar · Pancakes, and the double batch that goes in the freezer · Sausage gravy over biscuits · Freezer breakfast sandwiches and burritos
Lunches that leave the house
Chicken salad · Egg salad, and a dozen hard-boiled eggs on Sunday · Cold bean and tuna salad · Sardines on buttered toast · Hand pies from Sunday's leftovers
Cooking for one: living alone and still cooking real food
One pan, eight single portions in the freezer: smothered chicken thighs in onion gravy, over rice · Savory one-pot oatmeal supper · Eggs for one: fried egg over rice · Eggs for one: scrambled with cheese and toast · One chicken thigh and one potato, roasted together
Part 3 · When it goes wrong6 chapters · 20 recipes
No kitchen: motel, RV, hospital week, hot plate, rice cooker
Rice-cooker supper: rice, vegetables and thin-sliced meat in broth · No-cook peanut butter noodles · Canned chicken wraps, no heat · One-burner canned potato hash
The lights are out: the first supper, and the eight-day version
The first supper: what comes out of the refrigerator first · Camp-stove canned beans · Rice and beans on the grill
The freezer died, the ice storm, the thing you didn't thaw
Supper cooked straight from frozen · Brown it all today, freeze it cooked · The ice-storm pot: one stew from whatever thawed
Nobody can stand at the stove: the sick week, hands that hurt, sit-down cooking
Poached chicken thighs, and the broth they give free · Sit-down sheet pan: sausage, potatoes and onions · Creamed eggs on toast
The doctor said cut the salt and the sugar, and the soft-food supper
The salt-free seasoning jar · Skillet chicken with lemon, garlic and a pan sauce · Blended vegetable soup for a sore mouth · Baked custard
The food-bank box: what to do with the lentils and the odd produce
Lentil soup with caramelized onions · Lentil taco filling · Refried beans and bean burritos
Part 4 · Feeding a crowd9 chapters · 37 recipes
Thanksgiving for eight under forty dollars
Brined roast turkey · Pan gravy · Bread stuffing · Mashed potatoes · Skillet green beans · Cranberry sauce · Pumpkin pie
Christmas dinner without the December bill
Slow-roasted pork shoulder for the Christmas table · Scalloped potatoes · Overnight breakfast casserole from stale bread · Hot cocoa and wassail from the pantry
The Easter ham and the week it feeds
Baked ham with a glaze you mix yourself · Ham and bean soup from the bone · Ham salad for sandwiches
Sunday dinner for less than a pizza
Smothered pork chops in their own pan gravy · Potato cakes from last night's mash · Reverse-seared chuck eye, the poor man's ribeye
Everyone's home: the reunion weekend, twenty people in one house
Breakfast for twenty: oven eggs and a pan of biscuits · Taco bar for twenty from three pounds of beef · The cooler lunch: sandwich platter, pickles and a jug of tea
The church basement pan: twenty to seventy-five people
Chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes · Funeral potatoes · Green bean casserole from scratch · Church-basement macaroni salad · Sheet cake for fifty
Grilled chicken quarters in a jar marinade · Coleslaw · Potato salad, made the day before · Baked beans from the bean pot · Sweet tea, lemonade and juice from concentrate, by the gallon
Part 5 · The freezer2 chapters · 6 recipes
The freezer marathon: one afternoon at the stove, three weeks of suppers in the freezer
Freezer burritos: beans, rice and the browned beef
Soup for a month
Potato soup · Chicken noodle soup from the carcass · Big vegetable soup, built all week · Ground beef and cabbage soup · Tomato soup from a can of tomatoes and a white sauce
Part 6 · The old ways2 chapters · 8 recipes
What our grandparents ate: Depression suppers that still feed a family
The poorman's meal: potatoes, onion and hot dogs · Hoover stew · Fried cornmeal mush · Milk toast · Dandelion greens with bacon and vinegar
The formulas
The universal casserole · The soup formula · Cream-of-anything
Part 7 · The bakery aisle and the dessert table3 chapters · 16 recipes
Biscuits, tortillas, cornbread, pizza dough
Buttermilk biscuits · The biscuit mix jar · Skillet cornbread · No-knead Dutch-oven bread, and the garlic bread from it · Flour tortillas and skillet flatbread · Pizza dough: four pizzas or two calzones from one batch
Old-fashioned desserts without the bakery
Dump cake · Baked apples · Water pie · Freezer cookie dough balls · Wacky cake
The snack cabinet
Stovetop popcorn, and the brown-bag microwave version · Oven tortilla chips from stale corn tortillas · Homemade hummus · Oat bars · Frozen grapes, and banana soft-serve
Part 8 · Too much of something3 chapters · 14 recipes
The garden all at once: freeze it, don't can it
Whole frozen tomatoes, and the sauce they become · Blanched frozen vegetables: beans, broccoli, corn, carrots, cauliflower · Refrigerator pickles, and the second jar out of the brine · Shredded zucchini bags: bread, muffins and fritters · Applesauce, apple butter, and the applesauce cake · Roasted winter squash puree, and the soup it becomes
The day after: turkey, ham, the roast
Turkey tetrazzini · Hot turkey sandwiches with gravy
Stale bread, sour milk, soft fruit, and what the bones are worth
Turkey stock from the carcass · Croutons and breadcrumbs from the heels · Bread pudding and French toast, and how to revive the loaf · The fat jar: bacon grease, schmaltz and drippings · Sour milk, buttermilk and the last of the cream · The soft-fruit bag: banana bread, syrup and smoothies
Who's cooking
I'm Brenda Carver.
I've kept a kitchen in small-town Ohio for twenty-odd years and fed a family out of it on a lot less than the store thinks it takes.
I'm not a chef and this isn't a diet. It's what I cook and what it costs, written down once, so the next time the month runs short or eight people are coming Thursday, you already know what to make.
Cook from it for a week.
If it doesn't earn its place in your kitchen, write to me within seven days and I'll refund every cent. Pay once and it's yours on your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle. No subscription.
The whole cookbook, 162 recipes in 40 chapters, sent to your email the moment you buy as a PDF and an EPUB. Read it on a phone, tablet or computer, or print any recipe on one sheet.
How do I get it onto my Kindle?
Use the EPUB file. Open Amazon's Send to Kindle on your phone or computer, choose the EPUB, and it arrives on your Kindle within a few minutes.
Can I get it on paper?
It's digital, so it arrives right away. Print the recipes you cook most; each fits on a single sheet.
Is it only for tight budgets?
No. A few chapters are for the hard weeks, and most are for any kitchen: weeknights, the crockpot, Sunday dinner, the holidays, bread, desserts, the garden.
Is it the same as The Home Savings Manual?
No. The manual covers the whole house and what to stop buying. This is a cookbook: what to cook, how, and what it costs. They don't repeat each other.
Are the prices still right?
They were checked at mainstream American stores in September 2026. Your store will differ, and the comparisons hold because both sides move together.
Brenda's other book
The Home Savings Manual
The rest of the house: cleaning without the store, pests for pennies, the pantry, the medicine cabinet, and the settings on machines you already own.
