The Tight-Budget Kitchen Playbook: Cost-Per-Meal Math, Price-Spike Swaps & Pantry Economics | Fast, Cheap & Confident

Prices move. Eggs jump, chicken settles, peppers cost like they're made of something rare — and a household that cooks feels every move the same week it happens. A price list can't fix that; it's out of date before the ink dries. A method can.

The Tight-Budget Kitchen Playbook from Fast, Cheap & Confident teaches the method — kitchen-table economics for households that cook, from the same San Antonio kitchen as the $7 cookbook readers already know.

What's inside (13 pages, US Letter):

- Start Here — the honest frame. What this book is: a method, not a price list. Every price in it is an EXAMPLE price, labeled on the page: "example prices — check your store this week."

- The One Formula. Batch cost ÷ servings = cost per serving — plus the three rules that keep the math honest: count shares, not whole packages; count the servings you really got; round like a skeptic.

- The Formula, Worked Once in Full. A real dinner (Turkey Taco Skillet, from Dinner Rescue) priced ingredient by ingredient at labeled example prices: $5.65 a batch, $1.41 a plate — and what happens when the turkey costs more this week (the plate becomes $1.56, and the method absorbs it).

- Your Turn — a blank worksheet. Eight lines to run the formula on your own dinners, at your own store's real prices.

- The Meal Base — 15 real dinners, ranked. Fifteen dinners from Fast, Cheap & Confident ($7) and Dinner Rescue ($10) — including the five free $25 Grocery Challenge dinners — priced and sorted into four tiers, from a $0.64 lentil soup to the one honest splurge (broiled salmon at $3.65 a plate). This playbook ranks and prices the dinners; it does NOT reprint the recipes, so you never pay for the same recipe twice. The books are sold separately, on the same shelf.

- Price-Spike Swaps. Ten swaps for when a staple jumps — fresh to frozen, breasts to thighs, beef to turkey-and-lentils, fresh herbs to dried — each with the flavor-preserving trick that makes it work.

- Pantry Economics. Buy the staple when it's cheap, not when you need it; the two-week buffer; first-in-first-out rotation; shopping the buffer back up on sale weeks.

- The Weekly Tight-Budget Routine. The whole system on one page: check prices, pick the protein by cost, shop once, batch once, chain the leftovers, clean out on Friday, close the loop with two minutes of math.

What this playbook is not — stated plainly:

- Not the Money Command Center ($15). That's a whole-household money system. This playbook never leaves the kitchen.

- Not the $25 Grocery Challenge — which is FREE and stays free. The Challenge is one week done for you; this is the deep method behind it. Nothing from the free Challenge is locked inside this book.

- Not the Grocery Budget Tracker in the Themed Planner Pack ($14). The Tracker is blank pages you fill in; this is the method and the worked math those pages are for.

- Not financial or investment advice, and it makes no income claims. Kitchen economics only.

- Standalone: not included in THE VAULT or any membership tier, and buying it includes nothing else.

Free companion: the Cost-Per-Meal Calculator app runs this formula on your own numbers — linked from Jerry's Linktree.

What you get: 1 PDF file, 13 pages, US Letter, designed for home printing. Who it's for: any household that cooks and is tired of grocery prices being something that happens to them — especially readers of the $7 book who want the money layer on top of the recipes.

By Jerry Madrigal, San Antonio, Texas — author of Fast, Cheap & Confident. Everything Jerry makes: https://linktr.ee/jerrymad123