cheap food

Looking for more dollar options for lunch? Arby's recently launched a $1 menu featuring the chain's signature items such as oven-roasted, freshly sliced roast beef sandwiches, curly fries and Jamocha shakes. The company said it will refresh the dollar menu periodically to showcase seasonal...

Top Chef finalist Carla Hall thinks the simplest dishes can give us the greatest pleasure. Here is the Washington D.C.-based caterer's take on a roasted chicken with tomato-olive relish and roasted potatoes. Not only is the recipe easy, it clocks in at about $15. Butterflied Chicken 4-pound...

AOL Food editor Sarah De Heer puts tacos to the test: Can she make them at home cheaper than she can buy them from a fast-food joint? Find out in this Savings Experiment.

The Best of WalletPop looks back at some of our most popular, timely and useful tips on how to save money. You've clipped coupons, shopped sales, bought house brands and stocked the freezer, but you still haven't saved every last penny unless you've shopped the salvage store. Those dents and torn...

Three years ago I made a batch of "champagne brownies" that had been making the rounds of food blogs. I decided to go local, and buy all my ingredients from around Oregon; including the sparkling pinot noir and the Dacoba chocolate. My price tag for one pan of brownies came in around $60 (luckily,...

I've always been a fan of cheap meals that I can easily make at home, such as spaghetti and casseroles. Why? Because I'm cheap, and they're tasty and easy to make. With the recession unfortunately still around and unemployment rising, finding ways to cut costs and make less expensive meals at home...

What's Out: Buying Organic. Pregnant with my first child about four years ago, I did what most first-time parents do: I boned up on baby books. I also started to obsess about food and where it came from. Was the animal grass-feed and allowed to roam free? Was this pear sprayed with pesticides? Did...

The grocery industry has been set on its ear by the recent economic crisis, as shoppers seeking to wring more from their food budget abandon the upscale markets such as Fresh Market in favor of price-first merchants like Wal-Mart. Playing to the shifting buying habits is upscale grocer Wegmans,...

A couple of years back, my wife and I stumbled across a copy of Jan and Michael Stern's incredible chili cookbook, Chili Nation. As we're often in the mood for self-destructive, punishingly hot food, we decided that we would cook every recipe in the book. By the time we were finished, our daughter...