$3 Meals: Feed Your Family Delicious, Healthy Meals for Less than the Cost of a Gallon of Milk Review

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(More customer reviews)This book does a brief overview of how to save money at the grocery store (nothing really new). It goes on to present a major money saving strategy -- making every sauce, stock, dressing, and marinade from scratch. From there, the author presents recipes for main dishes. She finishes with recipes for baking breads and muffins from scratch.
The recipes are sound, and I have no doubt that they will produce reasonably healthy and tasty results. But...
#1 -- there is no reason to make every sauce from scratch. With sound couponing and savy shopping, I can get a bottle of bbq sauce for free (same for salad dressing, bottles of marinade, etc). If I make those things from scratch (and I frequently do), it is a question of quality, not cost.
#2 -- the main dishes presented are not complete meals. Most of them require additional side dishes (vegetable, fruit, and/or starch) to complete the meal. Beyond a passing mention of a crispy salad and fresh bread, the author does not provide any assistance in how to complete the meal and stay under budget. No ideas for inexpensive sides are provided.
#3 -- many of the recipes are not make-able for the advertised $3 pricetag. Unless I were to catch the fish myself, I simply do not see how I could make a dish calling for a pound and a half of bass or cod for a total cost of under $3. Nor could I make a dish that calls for 2 bulbs of fennel along with a pound of chicken and come in at that price.
#4 -- the serving sizes are a bit unrealistic. Most recipes call for 1 to 1.5 pounds of protein (beef, fish, chicken, or pork) and will serve 4 to 6 people. For six people, that's a 4 ounce portion of protein. Admittedly that is the recommended serving for many, but it is not enough for some men-folk and growing boys.
#5 -- virtually none of the sauces/marinades/dressings presented in the beginning of the book are used in the remaining recipes. so what are they for?
I think this book does have some good points, and a lot of good basic recipes. It presents some of the information and tools needed to control grocery budgets, but not all of them. If the author intended to present meals that were under $3 per serving, she succeeds. However, her book implies that it is $3 for SIX people... an unrealistic and unrealized promise. If I caught all of the ingredients on sale at their lowest price of the year, I could conceivably make most of them for under $6 each. If I were shopping on an average day, many of them would come closer to $10.

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