There are two questions I get asked a lot, "What is your favorite restaurant?" and "What is your favorite recipe?"

The first answer changes depending on my mood and my cravings of the week (and also adjusts depending on the tastes of the person to whom I'm speaking). The second one is pretty boring, because the answer is usually, "a recipe that works with whatever is on sale for the week."

The truth is, we tell the same story that just about every family of four does these days, and that is, we often eat what is on sale to make our pennies stretch farther and the meals last a little longer; growing kids can sure eat a ton of food.

So the problem I think many of us face is that difficult balance between convenience and cost-effectiveness. I'd be lying if I said we've never eaten Swanson chicken nuggets and Ore Ida French fries after a long day at work. Sometimes it's all you can do to open the plastic bag and toss everything onto a cookie sheet and into the oven.

But convenience comes with a crazy cost, and that's what makes far too many of us scramble for savings at the end of the month. One of our friends related a story about how he tries to shop inexpensively for their four children, but was sucked into the money pit by buying Totino's pizza rolls.

By his account, three pre-teen boys can eat 90 pizza rolls for lunch and still be hungry and whining until dinner. The rolls, by the way, cost $2.50 plus tax for a box of 15, so that was a quickly scarfed down $20, which could have easily purchased a two-pound beef tenderloin and a bag of potatoes. Those four for $10 frozen pizzas may also seem like a good idea, but for $10, you could buy two whole chickens and 12 ears of sweet corn. And the aforementioned chicken nuggets and French fries could easily be swapped out for a huge multi-meal serving of homemade macaroni and cheese (my favorite is Rachael Ray's mac and Cheddar cheese with chicken and broccoli, although don't be fooled, it takes about an hour to make, not 30 minutes).

I tried to find a solid statistic for the 2006 average grocery bill for a family of four, but I wasn't able to find a consistent number. Overall, it looks as though most sources feel the average family of four spends between $150 and $200 a week on food, or $7,800 to $10,400 a year. That's a lot of dough.

I have a few kid-friendly frugal and easy recipes I'll share here, but my best suggestions are to make a big pot of soup every Sunday, buy as much as you can in bulk and have multiple meals with that same protein in one week, and try to stay away from convenience foods, they inevitably end up being much more expensive and oftentimes much more unhealthy than we realize.

Cheesy Ground Beef Sandwiches

1 large loaf Italian bread
11/2 lb ground beef
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 pkg onion soup mix
1 small onion, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Slice the bread in half lengthwise and scoop out the inside of the bottom half and place the bread on a large piece of foil. Brown and drain ground beef. Add the onion, pepper, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, and onion soup mix and sauté over medium heat until the onion and pepper start to soften. Spoon the meat mixture into the scooped out bread and top with the cheese. Put the top of the bread over the cheese and meat and wrap the entire stuffed loaf in foil. Bake for 20 minutes or until the bread is toasted and the cheese is melted. Cut into slices and serve.

Hot Chicken Sandwiches

1 whole chicken
1/2 cup celery, diced
Celery greens from diced celery
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small onion, diced
1/2 cup flour
1 tbsp butter
8 Slices of sandwich bread
Salt and pepper to taste

Put the whole chicken in a stock pot and just cover the chicken with water (about 6-8 cups). Bring the pot to a boil. Add the celery greens and the garlic and allow the chicken to cook until it is tender and cooked completely through (the time will vary by size. A 3-4-lb. chicken will take about an hour.) Remove the chicken from the pot and allow it to cool. When the chicken is cool use two forks to shred the chicken meat from the bones.

In a large saucepan, cook the celery and onion in the butter over medium high heat until translucent. Pour 1 cup of the simple stock from the pot into the saucepan. Gradually stir in the flour until you have formed a gravy. Add the shredded chicken and salt and pepper. Serve over slices of bread as an open faced sandwich.