You can brown ground turkey or beef, add stewed tomatoes, onions, garlic, whatever you have...add some water or broth and throw in rice or noodles and simmer covered until rice or noodles are cooked. My mothers version of Hamburger Helper, long before there was such a thing...she called it slop.
I also love sweet potatoes and yams, but I peel and cut up, roast in a HOT oven in a heavy pan with a little olive oil,lots of cloves of garlic with skin on, and rosemary, after about 20 minutes pour in some chicken broth, and cook until done and evaporated....is actually from a weight watchers cookbook.
Rotissere chickens at the grocery store are usually less expensive than buying and cooking yourself. Cook rices in broth or boullion cubes instead of buying mixes. Shop bulk...I live alone, but my Mom and I will go in together on stuff from Costco and split.
Pasta is a real $$$ saver.
Like someone else said, cooking yourself from scratch is a real money saver. I love to cook, so its not a problem. I had 8 people for dinner Saturday, had stuffed filet mignon, Scalloped potatoes, Asparagus and a cheese fondue pumpkin, spent about $80 bucks for the meal beacause most of it was bought at Costco. Of course, still not a cheap meal, but could have been a lot more expensive.
Starting Score: EQ 679, TU 697I agree on the garden issue...but to me there is at least one thing worth growing at home - Tomatoes. If you can grow them, there is nothing as good. And they were very expensive in the stores this summer, even here in the land of Sacratomato.
Another idea is to check out your grocery stores online...mine has some pretty amazing coupons they send. I am not a coupon clipper, but these are for 10 dollars off, last weekend a 20 dollars off on anything in the store. I also got a free floral bouquet.
What works for me and my family is cookup rice. You get some rice, chicken, coconut milk and black eyed peas and boil it all together in a pot (chicken should already be cooked with seasoning) and it lasts a long time and tastes better after each day.
Also, make a big lasgana and freeze what you don't eat in individual wrappings...microwave when you want a meal with salad.
Grow your own tomatoes and other spices, fruits and herbs if you can...saves lots of money.
Starting Score: TU- 682, EQ- 698, EX- 713
@Anonymous wrote:what's harder to do less expensive is eating for 1 or 2 instead of 4 or more since prepackaged is so expensive and i can't tell you how many items bought for a recipe have gone bad because i don't need the whole thing. since it's just me and my man i don't pay as much attention to what i buy as to where i buy it.
There's just me, and I still make the recipes I posted above - I just either eat 'em all week or eat it for one meal and freeze the rest for later use. 
Cooking in bulk like that is always more economical, but yep - you do have to kinda pick and choose which 'big' recipes you do, to avoid throwing out expensive, unused, leftover ingredients, and only do those that use ingredients that'll keep between times or that you use in other stuff regularly.