Stretching the food and the dollars

I do a lot of "planned overs" for our meals and I have fun using ingredients to see how many different dishes and meals I can make. I don't like to eat the same thing night after night or even twice a week so variety is my key to happiness in our house. I knew it also saved money doing this but I had never really broken it down to see how many meals we could get for how much money.

Last week I decided to do an experiment to see how many meals a whole chicken could produce and how much it cost.  I rounded up a bit on things like two buns, BBQ sauce, etc. because that is a bit hard to pin point. 

The first meal was whole roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and sliced tomatoes.

Whole organic chicken    $13.00

Spices, celery and lemon for roasting      $1.25

Mashed potatoes with butter and sour cream and chives      $1.50

Sliced tomato    Free 

Made dinner for two

The second meal was BBQ shredded chicken sandwiches with zucchini fries.

BBQ sauce        .50 cents

2 buns                .50 cents

zucchini 'fries'    Free 

Made dinner for two

And the last meal was a large pot of my chicken soup with cheese and garlic biscuits.

White norther beans        $1.89

All veggies and spices    $2.00

Chicken broth                 Free (made from the chicken carcass) 

Cheese and garlic biscuits recipe makes 6 we ate 2        .50 cents

Made dinner for two with 4 large servings of soup left over for the freezer.

So for around $21.00 this produced 5 meals for 2 people.  10 meals total, not bad at all.  I understand that this price is lower due to having a stocked pantry with everything needed so I didn't have to go buy spices, etc.  

Do you enjoy planning meals with left overs?  I can't be the only one that makes extra mashed potatoes so we can have cheesy pan 'fried' potato patties another night.