Last night I spent $50 on soup.
No joke.
I made a seafood cheddar corn chowder.
Here’s the cost ingredient by ingredient (some Amazon affiliate links included):
Add it all up and you get $50.
Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I shelled out a lot of moola for those ingredients. No doubt, you could certainly spend a little less if you’re not as anal as I am about shopping organic.
But before you call me an elitist food snob, let’s keep breaking it down (and you can probably see where I’m going with this).
From those ingredients I made a MONSTER pot of soup (and I really mean MONSTER).
There was so much soup that my five and a half-quart stock pot couldn’t hold it all. I had to transfer some of it to a smaller pot.
Now I will get AT LEAST 10 meals out of this.
So I’ll freeze half and get about 5 meals out of it this week.
So let’s do more math.
10 meals divided by $50 equals $5 per meal.
Let me repeat that - $5 per meal!
That’s incredible when you consider the quality of the ingredients and the most important thing of all…
It was friggin’ AMAZING!
So rich and hearty, so creamy and cheesy and SO incredibly satisfying.
And contrary to what Dr. Oz (and all those conventional doctors and dietitians) will tell you, SO INCREDIBLY HEALTHY.
I’ve found on average that most home-cooked meals I make with good quality ingredients come out to about $5 per meal.
And yet, people complain about the cost of organic food but then spend twice as much on fast food or take out.
The moral of the story? Learn to cook and you may be able to afford more good quality food than you think.
Your health just may improve as well.
This is why my new e-book, The 30-Day Heartburn Solution, is more than just about heartburn. It’s also about REAL FOOD and teaching people strategies to cook things in a way that makes most efficient use of their moola and their time.
Like making seafood cheddar corn chowder.
I like the way you made the $50 logical. Sometimes I get weird and emotional about the money thing. I’m not sure I’d get quite as many servings out of the pot, we’re a REALLY hungry family
. We spend a lot on food.
We are too but this is a cream, butter, and cheese base. One of those heavy things that fill you up quick.
My older son and my husband eat like they’re both giants, too. Hubs usually eats 4-ish servings in one sitting. Son usually goes for about 2.5. It gets intense.
I was curious if you ever considered changing the layout of
your website? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say.
But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so
people could connect with it better. Youve
got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or 2 pictures.
Maybe you could space it out better?
Yes, I’ll be changing it real soon! I know I’m looooong overdue for some updates.
Hi Craig,
Yum. Mmm. $50 is a lot, but the rationale has won me over and now I can’t get the thought of it out of my head. Recipe, please!!!???
Hi Ellen, I’m posting the recipe soon!
[…] week I wrote a blog post explaining why I spent $50 on a soup. I was specifically talking about a seafood cheddar corn chowder that I […]
Hello. When you say you got at least 10 meals out of this, how many people or servings is each meal?
Hi Ginny, each serving is for one person. So if this was for a family you wouldn’t get 10 meals out of it.
I love cabot cheese but have ceased to buy it since it’s not organic…. am I missing something? Is it gmo free? I’m anal about being organic too
The recipe looks AMAZING!
Hi Kat, the Cabot cheese was the one place I didn’t splurge a bit. True, it’s not the best quality cheese.
You can save the shells from the shrimp and boil them to make a stock rather than using fish.
Where the heck to you get your raw milk and cream from!? Our raw milk and cream is 15/gallon to 22/ gallon for the pure jersey!
Hi Rema, I get it from a local farm here in western MA. I’m guessing you live in CA? I hear raw milk is quite pricey there. I’d still pay it though.
You must not live in California, because our raw dairy is much more expensive than that!
Melanie, ha ha, you are correct! I live in western MA.
$50 does NOT sound like a lot of money to me, for a REAL soup! And after you broke it down, I’d say no one should have an excuse to eat that good everyday! LOVE soups! Nice job!
My family of 8 would polish this off in one sitting, lol. But for a special occasion, it would still cost way less than eating out. I look forward to seeing the recipe!
I think $50 is a ton for just soup. I have a family of 7 and that would feed us for one meal, maybe 2. $50 for one meal is not frugal to me. I can make a 8 qrt. stock pot of yummy soup that feeds us several times and it costs $10.00. No, it is not sea food soup, but my family would not eat sea food anyway.