Meredith links to me and I get more hits in a morning than has been usual around here lately. The fame and coolness is rubbing off...

The problem I have with doing this meme is that I do not particularly track my expenses in meal production. I admire those who do, but I'm pretty lousy at it. I'll do my best to guess at what I've made that's cheap, but I really have no idea. Easiest or fastest meals, I would have a lot simpler time figuring out.

Cheapest and Healthiest and Most Delicious Meal You’ve Made:

I think this is a fairly impossible question to answer. I've made lots of things I consider to be healthy and lots I consider to be delicious. Add cheaper to that and I'm pretty much at a loss -- maybe vegetarian black bean chili or garden vegetable soup would fit the bill.

Cheapest dessert recipe You’ve Made:

In the summers, when we have abundant raspberries growing the backyard, we often have raspberries topped with whipped cream. Whipping cream isn't particularly cheap, but a little whipped up with some sugar and vanilla goes a long way and tastes fabulous.

Cheapest Meal for a Large Group of People:

Soup or lasagna. At least those are my favorite things to make for a large crowd. Chicken noodle soup and corn chowder are pretty simple to whip up in large batches and I usually have corn and/or leftover chicken in the freezer along with homemade broth (or bouillon cubes in a pinch). Lasagna isn't probably all that cheap, unless you get a good deal on ground beef and ricotta, but it can feed a lot of people, which is always a plus.

Cheapest Vegetarian Meal You’ve Made:

Probably the black bean chili I mentioned above, although I once used up leftover vegetarian succotash chowder by turning it into a casserole. That had to be pretty cheap too.

Quickest Healthy Meal You’ve Made:

The black bean chili only takes about 20-30 minutes to make, but when we're really racing around trying to get a meal in a hurry, we usually fall back on cheese quesadillas and a salad or noodles with homemade pesto and a salad. Pesto is fairly cheap to make if you grow the basil in your garden and buy a huge bulk bag of pine nuts at Sam's Club. We eat a lot of pine nuts and a bag usually lasts us a year stored in the refrigerator.

Sigh. I need to track my spending and become more frugal. In the meantime, there you go. I did my best.