RIVER ROUGE, Mich. (WXYZ) — If you're looking for big savings with a small budget, we got you covered! I'm taking on a challenge at the dollar store, thanks to an email from a viewer.
I got a viewer email, telling me she does the majority of her grocery shopping at a dollar store, and she saves a lot of money doing it. So you know that’s where I had to come this week, and I brought someone with me.
This is Chef Kimyana Price, and I challenged her with $10 to see what you can make with ingredients found at the dollar store.
This cash-stricken challenge is a cake walk to Price, who teaches budgeting on low funds to her students.
“Sometimes, some kids don’t have a lot, you know $5-10; if you think about it, it's not really a whole lot," Price said. "But to be able to give them that tool where they can actually purchase items that they can actually cook in class and then go home and cook again is something they enjoy doing.”
I was impressed with the selection we saw. I had no idea the dollar store had this much stuff.
"Honestly, I think we're going to do a stir fry first, and maybe we might be able to do another meal as well," Price said.
So into the basket goes Jasmine Rice, tortillas, all-beef steakums that we're half-off, spring rolls, frozen veggies, and soy sauce, for a grand total of $9.25.
The next time I meet up with Chef K is at the River Rouge High School kitchen.
"I’m just going to kind of chop this up, we’re going to toss this into a hot skillet, and were also going to toss in our vegetables, and we’re going to make a sauce," she explained.
The sauce is soy sauce, corn starch, garlic, ginger, and brown sugar in a pan, and the egg rolls are baking in the oven.
“This is one of those meals you can make in less than 30 minutes," Price said. “We have our protein, our vegetable, and we’re going to have our grain."
For an added bonus, we made another meal with the leftovers to make sure no food goes to waste.
"We’re going to take the same stir fry that we have with our vegetables, and we’re going to put those right on a tortilla, so we've got fajitas," Price said.
Two meals for under $10, and this whole idea came from a viewer's email. If you have a tip you think the rest of us could use to save money on food, be sure to send me an email at Kiara.Hay@wxyz.com
