Cheap and Easy Recipes: Homemade Pizza Dinner (Feed 4 for $4.88)

Did you try the Lemon Shrimp Pasta? What did you think? Pretty good, huh? It’s hard to believe the entire meal only cost $5.05, right? Well I have another cheap and easy recipe that I’m sure your family of 4 will love and the total cost for this meal is only $4.88.

Every Friday is Italian night at our house, so when I’m planning our weekly menu I look for cheap and easy recipes that fit into this category. One of the kids favorites is Pizza so this tends to be on the menu a lot. Before creating Feed 4 for 5 we use to spend a lot on pizza, either the frozen ones from the supermarket or a prepared one from a local pizza joint. By the time we added a vegetable to the menu we were spending anywhere between $15-$30 dollars a pop, ouch.

There are a lot of options for making your own pizza at home. You can buy the pre-made crusts and sauces or you can buy the pizza kits, either way it’s still not very economical. Making pizza from scratch tastes so much better, costs less and is easier to do than you think. I can’t wait to share with you my secret for making the best tasting pizza sauce around.

• White Flour – (5 pounds for $1.19) purchased for a discount grocery store. *Buying in larger quantities lowers the cost even more.
• Wheat Flour – (5 pounds for $2.59) store brand. *To lower your costs even more you could substitute the wheat flour with white flour. 
• Yeast – (3 packages for $0.89) store brand.
• Sugar – (4 pounds for $1.79) purchased from a discount grocery store. *Buying in larger quantities lowers the cost even more.
• Olive Oil – (12 ounces for $2.39) purchase from a discount grocery store.
• Zesty Italian Seasoning – (1 package for $0.59) store brand. *I use the packages that you mix with oil and vinegar for salad dressings. To cut your costs even more you could purchase a 1.23 oz. jar of Italian seasoning for $1.00 from the Dollar Tree.
• Tomato Sauce – (15 ounces for $0.49) purchased from a discount grocery store.
• Mozzarella Cheese – (16 ounces for $2.99) purchased from a discount grocery store.
• Pepperoni – (16 ounces for $3.69) purchased from a discount grocery store.
• Lettuce – (1 head for $1.00) lettuce regularly goes on sale for a $1.00 or less.*Check your weekly store flyers for sales.
• Salad Dressing – (16 ounces for $1.00) purchased from Dollar Tree.

Savings Tip
Preparing a Menu – this is an important step to saving yourself both time and money. Beginning may seem a little intimidating but once you know how to do it the hard parts over.

How to create a menu
Set up a master menu like the one below. When it’s time to do your menu planning look for recipes that fit into each category. I’ve set up my recipe box by the same categories that are on my weekly menu. When it comes time to planning I just pull out the recipes for each category, choose one and wah-lah, I’m done.

**On the back of each of my recipe cards I’ve included a shopping list to make the task even easier. Along with the cheapest places to purchase the items.