I'm so glad about the job offer! We lived for about five years on almost no budget, so I got really good at that kind of cooking. I'd make a big pot of beef barley stew--like $10 for the whole pot, with frozen veg and lean ground beef--and serve it all week in different ways. First as stew, then I'd make individual Yorkshire puddings and plop a spoonful of the stew in before baking, then I'd wrap puff pastry around blobs of it to serve as pies, then stew again with dumplings, then over mash.  We'd get a little tired of it by the end of the week, but after making the stew I only had to invest another pound or two a day for potatoes or puff pastry (which, sadly, is much cheaper in the UK).