Bread and egg soup

I just saw this on Martha Stewart. It's a Spanish peasant recipe. Very cheap and healthy. Take day old bread and cut in pieces of about 1". Put some olive oil in a wok type frying pan, heat and add the bread to brown. Add about 7 or 8 cloves of garlic chopped. Stir for a bit and then add chicken or vegitable stock to make a soup. Poach eggs, either separately or add to soup stock and serve a poached egg with each bowl of soup and add some parsley on top to garnish. Whalla a very inexpensive hot lunch or dinner. I suppose you could make variations of this with some vegies added, I would think it would make a good onion soup too or a can of chopped tomatoes added might make it tasty and a bit more healthy. This would be a good way to use up homemade bread that is getting a bit dry. I guess you could use stuffing mix too.

Recipe guide with nutrition and cost per serving

I just came across a web site that gives you lots of search opportunity. If you are on a very limited budget at the bottom of the page you can put in cost per serving such as 0.20 per serving and it will give you recipes that you can use for that little.
http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/

Another site that I read said that if you want to eat healthy start first with the weekly specials on vegitables. Get as many as you can afford. Then check the weekly specials on whole grains, then check weekly specials on fruits and then legumes, last meat, if you can afford it.

http://www.wisebread.com

I cooked .50 cents worth of garbanzo's yesterday. I have enough for to add to a main dish meal and I made a nice batch of hummus. Garlic, lemon and ground sesame seeds. I had a nice lunch yesterday and today with the hummus with enough left for at least two more lunches. I also made a cream soup with lima beans, carrots, potato and onion. Very nice on a cold rainy day and will last a few days. I think it might be possible to live on a dollar a day for food, while eating hearty and healthy.

One dollar a day diet project

I spent yesterday reading the blog of a young couple who tried living on a dollar a day for a month. That was $1.00 each. http://onedollaradaydietproject.com
I think this is an interesting concept. It certainly got me to thinking how I would eat on $1.00 a day. Legumes and brown rice are a big part of my diet but I also eat a lot of fruit and vegitables. They drank tang for vitamin C and several people commented that if they only went out and picked a few pine needles they could make tea and get their vitamin C. I have pine trees but another way to get your vegies is sprouts. It made me get busy and start some lentil sprouts. They sprout easily and are inexpensive. I also cooked some garbanzo's last night and made hummus this morning. I love hummus and I think hummus on toast with sprouts would make a very good meal.
Another blog I found said that if you have a crockpot and a bread machine you can eat very cheaply. Home made bread is good and healthy and I cook beans and soup overnight very often in my crockpot.