GrubGirl.

WHAT: A reader told me about her blog, Sushi Tastes on a Ramen Budget, which is right up the Grubgirl alley.

What: The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook, by Erin Chase, on sale for $14.99 ($10.19 if you buy from Amazon.). Erin’s the founder of 5 Dollar Dinners, a cheap recipes site that’s gained popularity by creating dinners, well, for no more than $5.

Why:

• The recipes are easy to cook, straightforward, and use healthy ingredients. If I can figure it out, you can figure it out!
• Recipes show the cost of a meal, which serves a family of four (or makes for tasty leftovers for those of you with less mouths to feed).
• Each recipe also comes with a Frugal Fact to help you stretch your food savings and eliminate waste whenever possible.

The only area of improvement I’d suggest is to have more recipe photos throughout the book. However, many of the recipes are old favorites (like the Easy Chicken Potpie), so you should have a good idea of what it’s supposed to look like.

Tested Recipe: I got a chance to use some leftover turkey meat that I’d frozen from the holidays. I’ll probably make another batch of this using some leftover pork tenderloin! The white sauce recipe was simple, and making this from scratch (ok, so there are some frozen vegetables) makes everything just taste so much better.

I’ve been so busy eating that I haven’t made the time to write, whoops! (Really, I’m just having my fill before sharing it with the rest of the world.)

When I do need to cook my own meal, I’ve found a healthy and easy recipe that just requires an oven, and some fresh red beets.

Roasted Red Beets are a great autumn recipe and taste so much better than the canned stuff drenched in that red water.

Thumbs up to the Poor Girl Eats Well blog for her fantastic and economical recipes. Not only does she focus on economical recipes, but she makes sure that the recipes are still full of healthy, recognizable ingredients.