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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, everybody, it's Mariel.

Take a moment and think about the last thing you cooked.

How much do you think the carrot in that recipe cost?

What about the three cups of vegetable broth? Beth Mansell could

actually answer that question. She's the founder of budgetbites.com, a recipe website for folks

with small budgets. She studied nutritional science in college, and she learned this costing method

in her classes. So it's a technique that you will find a lot

in food service operations like restaurants and cafeterias. She says you figure out the price of that

carrot, add it to the cost of all the other ingredients in the recipe, and then divide it by the number

of serving so you know how much each of your meals is costing. Beth says when you do this, you start to notice patterns.

For instance, her recipe for lentil bolognays costs $1.40 per serving.

It's hard to get a meal that cheap at a restaurant.

But some of the components are way cheaper than others.

Like one carrot, $0.15.

One cup of red lentils, $ cents. Half a cup of walnuts,

...