Erin Chase's cheeseburgers and salad dinner cost her $4.19.

Can you feed a family of four dinner for five dollars or less? Erin Chase believes you can. In fact, she says on her web site: “I cannot make a meal that costs more than $5. Even if I try. My brain will no longer allow it.”

Rachael Ray featured Chase on her program The Rachael Ray Show, and Chase’s blog that shares tips on coupon clipping and eating healthy has skyrocketed in popularity.

Coupons are the key

On 5dollardinners.com, Chase says her $5 dinners would not be possible without coupons. She recommends that you only buy meat on sale. She uses ecoupons but also clips coupons out of newspapers. She reminds readers that she lives in the Midwest, where grocery prices are generally lower than the rest the country.

She has more than 200 recipes posted on her blog, and she says she values health just  much as frugality. Despite her one-income household, she never needs short-term loans to afford groceries.

More benefits of Five Dollar Dinners

Besides saving money and being healthy, Chase is enthusiastic about teaching her two young sons good eating habits. She always uses her grocery store club card, and she recommends that readers come up with their own dinner dollar amount based on their family size and the prices at their local grocery store.

Recipes

Chase has traditional, simple meals such as $5 Tacos and Fish ‘n’ Chips. She has some pretty creative ideas for meals on there, too. Although the site is called $5 Dinners, there are breakfast recipes such as Banana Stuffed French Toast, Breakfast Tacos and Bacon and Tomato Omelets.

Dinner recipes include ideas such as Blueberry Wild Rice and Butternut Squash, Mango Avacado Soup, Lasagne Roll Ups, “Cheater” Chicken Divan and Bacon Wrapped Pork Roast. I am a little skeptical about the healthy aspect of that last one, but she includes the prices of her ingredients in the recipes, so I know it was a $5 Dinner.