I will add to everyone mentioning stews of various sorts. I'll add, though, that there are a lot of interesting stew like dishes from cultures around the world that can mix things up. Indian curries are incredibly tasty and you can make a large amount with whatever meats and vegetables you want. Indian food is also very healthy compared to a lot of other foods. Then you have various Arabic and Middle Eastern stews. Moroccan stews with dates, prunes, raisins, or other dried fruits can be very tasty if you want a sweet alternative to the standard American stew. Cajun cuisine is also chock full of tasty stews, especially if you are a seafood fan. There are some excellent Thai and Japanese soups and stews that use a lot of rice and fish, both of which are much more healthy than meat or potatoes.
I want to recommend brown rice in general. You can get tons of it for cheap. It contains less sugar than potatoes or wheat based starches, and can be used as the foundation for most any stew or soup. Greek lemon based soups with rice are great and can give you all your food groups in a single dish.
I'd also suggest if you do noodle dishes to do baked ones. Putting some sort of stuffed noodle in a baking pan and covering it with sauce, meat, and cheese is cheap and can feed a family for several days. Plus pasta heats up really well. While many people focus only on Italian pasta dishes, pasta is used in a ton of different cultures. Thai and Korean dishes often make use of pasta in the form of rice noodles.
Another favorite of mine is pie. Most people in the US associate pies with dessert but in Europe pies often take the form of a main dish. In England meat pies are very popular. In the US we sometimes have Shepard Pie or Chicken Pot Pie but there are tons of meat pies that are incredibly tasty. They usually aren't as healthy as a rice based dish or even a pasta but you can make a pretty massive pie filled with cheapish foods and serve a ton of people easily. In France they make Quiche which is a cheese pie. Most often it is made with swiss cheese and onions. You can add meats and vegetables as you wish. Ham or bacon is often used for meats while mushrooms are a very popular addition. Add in some more American veggies like broccoli or spinach if you like. Just make sure to cook and drain the spinach before you put it in the quiche. In fact, pro tip, always cook your spinach first, and always cook frozen leaf veggies of all sorts first. They'll have soaked up liquid and will ruin the texture of your dish. Cook them and drain them and then put them in with everything else.
The last suggestion I wanted to make was buying in bulk. Depending on the size of your family it may be advantageous to buy in bulk and freeze your food. Buying a 10 pound bag of potatoes costs a lot less per potato than buying three or four potatoes every time you want to make a potato dish. The same is true of virtually any food. Of course fresh foods almost always taste better than frozen ones so you are sacrificing quality for cost but if money is more important to you then buying in bulk might be good. Another thing you can buy in "bulk" is beef. If you live near a cow farm (which you most likely do in Washington) you could purchase either all or part of a cow and then store it in a meat freezer. Fresh beef will last 6 months or more if you freeze it right away and keep it frozen. If you can find another family who would want to share a cow you could buy half each. You'll get several hundred pounds of meat at a fraction of the cost you would pay buying the pre-cut stuff in the stores, plus you get to personally choose your cow and you can be absolutely certain where and how it was raised and slaughtered. You do have to know how to butcher your own meat and need to know what cuts to use for what things but the money you save can be worth it. Of course you have to pay a lot of money up front but then you won't have to buy meat again for at least half a year if not more. You can do similar things with pigs if you'd like.
Oh one last thing. If you want to do something fun and romantic and get some great food out of it, making bread or pasta from scratch with a special someone is a great date idea. Practice beforehand of course, but good homemade bread and pasta is vastly superior than anything you can buy outside of a local bakery and will cost you less than generic store white bread. You can make a ton of different kinds of breads and pastas just by mixing up the types of flour used and adding in additional grains. Also, baking cake from scratch is I find a lot harder but if you get good at it you will save a fortune. Stores charge you like $10+ for a cake that you can make for under a dollar. They are charging you for the time they take to make it, but if you have the time you can make it for yourself for next to nothing. Cake is just eggs, flour, sugar, and fat plus whatever flavor you want. Icing is literally just sugar and food coloring. Whipped cream is exactly what it sounds like. Take some cream and whip it and you get whipped cream. A bottle of store bought stuff will cost you $3 or more but you can make a gallon worth of whipped cream for not much more than that. Basically, the more you make from scratch the more money you will save, and baking is a great way to bond with loved ones or spend time with children.
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