Carnitas tacos: $1.40/serving

It’s been a very long time since I’ve found a pork roast for less than $3 a pound anywhere except Winco, but I happened to be walking by at the precise moment the Fred Meyer butcher came out with the markdown cart, and snatched this one up before anyone else could even glance at it. It’s not a fabulous deal, but it’s within budget. To celebrate, I’m breaking one of the tenet rules of the $35 a Week Plan: Don’t meat the centerpiece of the meal. This meal is pretty much all meat (save for the tortillas, pickled onions and cilantro), but since I only do it once or twice a year, I’m only slightly repentant. Besides, if you’re going to go all out with pork, carnitas is the way to do it.

Burrito pie: $1.41/serving

As if the name and photo didn’t already give it away, this hot mess of a meal dates back to when I first graduated from college. (The recipe is scrawled in my even-back-then-barely-legible handwriting on a stained, torn-out sheet of binder paper.) It doesn’t really have anything to do with burritos, or pie, but no one has ever cared. It’s not only quick to throw together on a weeknight, but it’s turned out to be one of B.’s favorite dishes. He’s lucky I even made it for him in the first place, but I do admit, even after all these years it’s still pretty good in an early-aughts “Mexican” food kind of way.

Tofu mole tacos: 42 cents each

Now, I’m not always one to toot my own horn, but I hereby announce that this is the best tofu dish I’ve ever made—or even tasted. I’m not anti-tofu by any means, but even I admit it can be an impenetrable, waterlogged block of blah, resistant to all but the most drastic attempts at flavor or textural improvements. This dish changes all of that. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to even tell this is tofu—it has a firm, almost meat-like texture and really soaks up the rich, chocolatey mole flavor. (This does call for pre-made mole sauce. Back in October I made a super-fantastic version from scratch and still had a bag of it kicking around the freezer, which is how I conceived of this dish to begin with. You can certainly use store-bought, but be forewarned I can’t vouch for it in taste or price.)

Black bean quesadillas: 58 cents each

It pains me to say this, as I like junk food just as much as (if not more than) the next person, but Americans gave quesadillas a bad rap. Somewhere along they line they became insipid flour tortillas packed with enough rubbery cheese to kill a small animal; an oversized, flavorless health hazard any reasonable person would feel deeply guilty for eating. These flavor-packed, fresh-tasting, polite-sized versions are what I imagine quesadillas were originally intended to taste like. It’s not about the cheese, but about balance.

Sopa de lima (Mexican lime soup): 93 cents/serving

Yes, I am aware this looks like the handiwork of a blind and mentally challenged intern at Chevy’s. The blame lies partly with my iPhone “photography” and partly with the fact that I was hungry and didn’t feel like spending 10 minutes artfully arranging tortilla strips and individual strands of cheese. But trust me, you won’t care what it looks like either when you make it. It’s that good. In fact, I usually make this in the summer when I’m craving light, citrusy things, but my husband specifically requested it this week, so I went with it. And, turns out, it’s just as good in the cold-weather months as it is the warmer ones.