Can You Afford Not to Buy This Approach?

Well timed and packed with 300 recipes, Linda Larsen's "The Everything Meals on a Budget Cookbook" (Adams Media, 2008, $14.95) has landed atop our cookbook pile. With food costs on the rise, the volume warranted a thorough examination.

It would be easy to dismiss a paperback with chapter headings such as "Chicken Cheap Cheep!," but there are family-friendly dishes worth making in this book, and plenty of tips.

Larsen is a Minnesota home economist with a degree in food science and nutrition, and this is the latest food-related addition to the publisher's "Everything" series of books that cover 21 subject areas. Her recipes come with cost-per-serving price tags, and all but seven of the recipes total less than $2 per serving. (The cost analysis was done using NutriBase Clinical Version 7.0, based on January-February 2007 prices gathered from SimonDelivers.com and Peapod.com.)

Others may brag about devising meals for as little as 50 cents per serving, but Larsen contends that her recipes contain the right amount of calories (300 to 600 for entrees, for example) to satisfy family appetites.

This is plain cooking, using slow cookers and canned fish; you may wish to add spices or seasonings you have on hand. But it's easy to see how making one or two low-budget meals every week could be more than a novel exercise, especially using Larsen's planned menus and space for shopping lists in the back of the book.

Perhaps most interesting is the chart of price comparisons for equivalent foods. Care to test your "Price Is Right" sensibilities? Tackle these questions and then see what Larsen found.

Which is more expensive:

1. Cake mix or cake ingredients?

2. Prepared guacamole or homemade guacamole?

3. Shredded cheese or block cheese?

Answers are here.