What a Polish Family of Six Ate in One Week When the Shelves Were Empty

What did a Polish family eat for a whole week when the store shelves were empty? Babcia Zofia opens her mother's string bag and walks you through seven cheap dinners, Monday to Sunday, cooked from eight plain ingredients — and counts what each one costs today in an American grocery store. The total: about $40 for the week, less than one dollar a plate. These are real old-fashioned Polish recipes from hard times: frugal meals, budget dinners and cooking from scratch the way Polish grandmothers did it. THE WEEK: Monday – Polish beet soup (barszcz / borscht) with potatoes Tuesday – Easy drop dumplings (kluski kładzione) with fried onion Wednesday – Thick Polish split pea soup (grochówka) Thursday – Apple pancakes for dinner (racuchy) Friday – Herring in sour cream with potatoes boiled in their skins Saturday – Stale bread fried in egg (chleb w jajku) Sunday – One chicken, two courses: chicken soup (rosół) with homemade egg noodles, then chicken in sauce over rice If you are looking for cheap dinner ideas, poor man's meals, Depression-era style recipes, ways to lower your grocery bill, or how to feed a family on a budget, this is how a Polish mother did it with a pot, a spoon and what was in the bag. Tell me in the comments which state you are watching from, and which day of the week you would cook first. Subscribe to The Polish Method — a new video every week on old Polish cooking, frugal living and running a kitchen on very little. #polishfood #frugalcooking #cheapmeals