We eat pretty simply, too. I stay at home, hubby is the bread--er meat--winner. He grosses around $35,000 a year, and we have three kids, two of whom are teens.

There are so many ways to keep food costs down--it just takes a little time and imagination. I try to keep dinner meat costs to less than $3.50 per meal. Sometimes this is easier than others, but it all averages out. We use ground turkey, ground beef and cheap cuts. Sometimes we buy a splurge piece of meat like corned beef. Of course, corned beef is so salty and full of nitrates a person shouldn't eat it much anyway, but we like to have it once or twice a year. The ground turkey is 99-cents a pound. You can't get much cheaper meat than that. WalMart has frozen fish in boxes that's affordable. I buy whiting and tilapia. I prefer the milder taste of the tilapia, but even the whiting is good and just a little over $2.00 a pound (which keeps it well within my dinner meat budget). We do eat quite a bit of pork because it's usually cheaper than beef, and if a person can eat pork it's actually a great source of potassium--moreso than other meats.

We also shop a lot in bulk, whether it be meats, nuts, spices, etc. One of our grocery stores has a huge bulk section which is awesome for things like granulated garlic. We also use quite a bit of chili powder and I've found the 50-cent a bottle chili powder from the close-out store is just as good as the $2.00 bottle from the regular supermarket and even a bit cheaper than the bulk chili powder, and is usually about twice as big as the $2.00 bottle. I also buy 'fancy' mustards and other gourmet-type foods at dollar stores. I can buy a little bottle at the regular grocery for $2-$4, or I can buy a big bottle at the dollar store.

We also do a lot of store brands if we can find good products. Great Value (WalMart's store brand) Caesar dressing is ever bit as good as name-brand at only $1.17/16-oz. bottle, and it has less than 1 carb per serving. Ragu makes a marvelous cheese sauce (no, not store brand, but another good savings) that's $1.28 a jar vs. the low-carb variety at twice the price. Okay, so Ragu's has one more carb in it. Big deal!

My kids always have been and still are big meat eaters. I've been cracking down on them, especially the oldest one, because she'll eat anywhere from 4-6 ounces of cooked meat for dinner. Even eating LC they don't need that much meat for dinner, LOL.

Our most expensive food items are raw nuts, a couple loaves of LC bread and Carb Countdown. Sure, we'd love to be able to eat great steaks and shrimp all the time, but that's not in our budget.

What most people don't realize is that a meat and vegetable dinner is just as filling, for about the same cost, as a meat, potato and vegetable dinner. One just needs to shop wisely for their meat and veggies.