[amb23]

I haven’t found the ingredients to be too expensive for most of the menus honestly, but I also live by a really cheap fruit and veggie store. (A kilo of blackberries isn’t gonna break the budget when it’s $1.00 a carton.) The book’s recipes are sized for a family of four hence the huge portions; I’m single so I usually cut the recipes in half and save a lot for leftovers. I’d say there’s a lot of substitutes you can make in the book for rare/pricier items and it’s realistic for most middle class budgets. They also group menus by season, so you buy the ingredients for the week when the produce is at its cheapest. But yeah, they do have the occasional ingredient like ground lamb or garlic scapes that can make the menus annoying/expensive to put together exactly.