Whether you are following a tight food budget or just want to cut down on your meat consumption, below are some simple ways to do both.
*Add some rolled oats and an egg to raw ground beef and mix it all together. Then, cook as normal. The meat tastes the same and it goes a lot further. This works great for meatballs and hamburgers.
*Cook with lentils and smaller portions of meat rather than using large meat portions. Lentils are inexpensive, healthy, and contain lots of protein.
*Roast a chicken and eat it for more than one meal. The roasted chicken could be for supper. Then, remove the left over chicken from the bones and use it for sandwiches, quesadillas, salads, or chicken potpie. (There are a lot of ways to use left over chicken!) Then, boil the bone to make a delicious soup broth.
*Add rice when cooking meat loaf. It tastes great and you won’t need to use as much meat. Grated carrots also work well in meatloaf.
*Rather than serving whole steaks, dice them up and stir fry with veggies. The meat will go a lot further and served with rice or needles, stir fries make for a delicious meal.
*When making chili, add a can of corn and a few cans of different kinds of beans. It will make a lovely, thick dish without adding a lot of meat.
*Buy a turkey around Christmas or Thanksgiving when they are extremely inexpensive. Ask to have the turkey cut into halves or quarters and then freeze them. If you decide to cook the whole turkey, freeze leftovers and use them in salads and for sandwiches, etc. Boil the carcass to make turkey soup.
If you enjoy having a glass of wine now and then but you really don’t like spending the money on it, consider making your own wine. My husband and I just made our very first batch recently and although it is somewhat time consuming; it’s also kind of fun. It will probably take us less time the next time we try it because we will know what we are doing. The first time we had quite the adventure filtering our wine, but nonetheless we learned how to do it so the next time should be much easier.
and with all of the supplies we spent about $190.00. We ended up with 31 750ml bottles – so that works out to approximately $6.10 per bottle. When we make our second batch, if we end up with the same number of bottles, they will only cost $2.25 each because the only thing we will need to purchase is the wine mix. Not bad! 
Have you ever noticed how the cookies you buy in grocery stores are not only expensive, but they aren’t nearly as good as homemade? Why not try baking your own instead? They are not as expensive and it doesn’t take that much of your time.
When I attended university I lived on a tight budget. Here are just a few of the things that I did to help me save money while studying: