One of the first things eating well on a fixed income is planning. By planning I mean to sit down and think about what you want to eat for the coming week. If you are working and don’t have much time during the week to cook, plan to do make ahead meals that can just be warmed up.

Check out what items are on sale. Most stores now have an on line site that tells you what is on sale. The mail has flyers that are sent to you. Check them out.

Work out a menu and make a list of what you need. When shopping stick as close to the list as you can.

An example of this pictured is a one bone chicken. This meal is planned for two people.

It is one whole de-boned chicken, baby Bella mushrooms, wild and Jasmati rice.

Since I already had the rice, butter and spices I didn’t need to buy more so not enough to factor in at this time.

The chicken cost $5.49. The mushrooms were $3.00.

A total of under $9.00.

$9.00 seems a bit much for a meal at home. Consider that there will be at least six servings from the one chicken.

One bone chicken with mushrooms and rice the first night.

You need to de-bone the chicken except for the drumstick. All others bones including the wings go in a stew pot for using with some spices and onion boiled to make a chicken broth. You will now have the basics for a rich broth for chicken and dumplings. By picking the bones of all its meat you have meat for chicken Quesadillas or tacos.

For the chicken and dumplings, you add two carrots, two ribs of celery, one small onion. One cup of flour and two eggs. There will be enough chicken and dumplings for at least two serving of lunch.

Chicken Quesadilla’s the third dinner.

You get the idea. Basically hopefully you can see that the initial cost of $9.00 has now broken down to about $1.50 per person out of one chicken and a small tub of mushrooms.

I didn’t include the cost of the carrots, onions or celery and homemade salsa because they are used for many meals and from staples in the kitchen like the rice. For all of them broken down would only be pennies for these dishes.