Welcome to Eating on a Dime, a recipe webite founded by Carrie Barnard over 14 years ago with one simple belief:

Families deserve affordable meals that actually work in real life.

What started as a way to simplify cooking and save money has grown into a trusted resource for busy families looking for budget-friendly, family-tested recipes they can rely on night after night.

Our Mission

We know dinnertime can feel overwhelming — especially when time and money are tight.

That’s why every recipe, tutorial, and guide on Eating on a Dime is designed to:

  • Help families cook affordable meals without sacrificing flavor
  • Provide family-tested recipes that real kids and adults enjoy
  • Simplify cooking with clear, step-by-step instructions
  • Save time with slow cooker, freezer, and make-ahead meals
  • Make home cooking realistic for busy schedules and everyday kitchens

Our goal is simple: affordable, family-tested meals for real life.

Meet Carrie

Hi, I’m Carrie Barnard, founder and lead recipe developer behind Eating on a Dime.

I grew up around food, helping in my parents’ restaurants from a young age. Later, as a college student and then a mom, I learned firsthand how hard it can be to cook at home while staying on budget — especially when recipes are complicated or unrealistic.

Today, I’m a mom of eight kids, and real-life family cooking is what shapes everything we share here. If a recipe doesn’t work for busy nights, picky eaters, or tight grocery budgets, it doesn’t make it onto the site.

What We Share

At Eating on a Dime, you’ll find recipes and resources created for real families, including:

  • Budget-friendly dinners and comfort food
  • Slow cooker and crock pot recipes
  • Freezer-friendly and make-ahead meals
  • Easy stovetop and air fryer recipes
  • Practical cooking tips to save time and money

These aren’t “special occasion” recipes — they’re meals you can make again and again.

Our Editorial & Testing Approach

We take pride in our rigorous recipe testing and research process.

Eating on a Dime recipes are:

  • Written to be easy to follow, even on busy days
  • Developed and tested in real kitchens
  • Reviewed for clarity, timing, and affordability
  • Tested by multiple people and families

Our testing process includes:

  • Carrie and her sister Christina developing and refining recipes
  • Honest feedback from Carrie’s children (our toughest critics!)
  • Additional testing and research support from our team
  • Input from real families who cook these meals at home

This approach helps ensure our recipes are truly family-approved and budget-friendly.

You can learn more about how we develop and test recipes on our Editorial Policy page.

What You’ll Find on Eating on a Dime

We focus on recipes that make real life easier, including:

  • Slow cooker meals
  • Freezer-friendly dinners
  • Budget-friendly comfort food
  • Easy stovetop and air fryer recipes

While I love all of our recipes, slow cooker and freezer meals hold a special place in my heart because they save so much time and stress during busy weeks.

Our Community

Eating on a Dime is more than just recipes — it’s a community of families supporting each other through everyday cooking.

Our readers come here to:

  • Find meals that fit their budget
  • Get dinner on the table with less stress
  • Share feedback, tips, and variations
  • Learn freezer cooking and meal planning strategies

We love seeing how our recipes come to life in your kitchens and hearing how they help make dinnertime easier.

Meet the Team Behind Eating on a Dime

Eating on a Dime isn’t just one person in the kitchen. Our recipes are created, tested, and refined by a small team of real people and real families who care deeply about making meals affordable and doable for everyday life.

A woman with long dark hair, wearing a purple blouse, stands in a kitchen holding a white pot with a lid, smiling at the camera. The kitchen background includes a stove and decor items on the counter.

Carrie Barnard – Founder, Recipe Developer & Lead Tester

Carrie Barnard is the creator of Eating on a Dime and has been cooking for families for over 25 years. As a mom of eight, she develops and tests every recipe with busy schedules and tight budgets in mind. If a recipe doesn’t work for real life, it doesn’t get published.

Christina Auchter – Director of Operations

In 2019, Carrie’s sister Christina Auchter joined the Eating on a Dime team. She used to hate cooking and fell in love with our style of simple, budget-friendly meals.

She now plays a huge role in managing our team (including Carrie) and is foundational in making my DREAMS a reality. She is also known as a freezer meal specialist. She helps families learn how to “cook once, eat twice” — turning leftovers into second meals that save time and money.

Carrie, a smiling woman with brown hair, serves food from a slow cooker into a bowl while standing in a kitchen. She wears a light brown, long-sleeved top and holds a spoonful of meatballs over pasta.
Carrie, a woman with blonde hair, wearing a pink shirt and blue jeans, sits on a cream-colored couch next to a pillow and white flowers, smiling gently at the camera.

Kasey Harris – Recipe Content Writer

Kasey is a Recipe Content Writer at Eating on a Dime, where she creates clear, detailed recipe instructions designed to make cooking at home easy and stress-free for busy families. She makes sure each recipe solves common cooking questions and challenges. She focuses on practical, family-approved meals that are budget-friendly and simple to follow. Two of her family’s favorite repeat recipes are Crock Pot Italian Chicken Soup and Pepper Steak—go-to dinners for cozy, no-fuss nights.

Haylee Williams – Social Media Manager

Haylee runs all things social for Eating on a Dime—handling everything from content creation and video editing to strategy, posting, and community engagement. She loves making our Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube channels a valuable resource for busy families. She transforms budget-friendly food into engaging, scroll-worthy content that connects with audiences and drives results. Her family’s favorite meal is Crock Pot Beef Stew—an easy go-to for busy nights.

Carrie, a woman with fair skin and long auburn hair, wearing a bright pink sweater and blue jeans, smiles while sitting against a white background inside a circular frame.
A group of eight children and an adult woman posing in a kitchen with a granite countertop. They are smiling, surrounded by bowls of fruit, including strawberries and pineapple.

The Barnard Family – Official Taste Testers

Carrie’s kids are our most honest reviewers. While they are all much taller now (this picture is from 2018), they are still our biggest critics. From picky eaters to growing teens, every recipe gets real feedback from real kids. Their input helps ensure our meals are truly family-approved and something families will want to make again.

Angie Fischer – Photographer

Angie is a Kentucky girl who loves cooking for her family and capturing real, everyday food. She’s a food photographer with a passion for thoughtfully prepared dishes that look just as good as they taste. Angie focuses on creating visuals that support recipes and celebrate the joy of simple, home-cooked meals. Her family’s favorite recipe she loves to make is Barbecue Pork Chops.

Carrie, with short dark hair, wears a light pink dress with small floral prints as she stands outdoors on green grass holding a camera, smiling at the camera. Trees and a fence are visible in the blurred background.
Carrie, a woman with shoulder-length hair and glasses, smiles at the camera. She is wearing a dark top and the background is black. The image is in black and white and framed by a circular border.

Simone Ruf – Videographer

Simone is a food photographer and videographer who creates custom, tutorial-style content. She loves combining her passions for cooking and visual storytelling to bring recipes to life. When she’s not in the studio, Simone can be found out and about with her dog, Enzo, or volunteering at local shelters, photographing adoptable dogs and cats.

Melissa Wilbur – Videographer

Melissa loves translating the cooking process into clear, visual steps that feel accessible for cooks of any skill level through videography. Video gives her the opportunity to showcase a dish’s texture, movement, and finished beauty—capturing the full experience of how it looks and feels to make and enjoy. Her favorite Eating On A Dime recipe is the TikTok Cinnamon Rolls—now a weekend request from her husband.

A woman with short dark hair, wearing a red, black, and white striped top, smiles warmly and touches her neck. She is framed by a circular border against a light background—her style is reminiscent of Carrie’s effortless charm.

Together, this team helps ensure our recipes are well-researched, clearly explained, and tested beyond one kitchen.

From Real Life to Lazy Day Cooking Club

Lazy Day Cooking Club was created out of real life.

Carrie and Christina prepare food in a bright kitchen; one slices a red bell pepper on a cutting board, while the other adds cheese to a plastic bag with other ingredients. Various kitchen items are around them.

As a mom of eight, I found that the easiest way to get dinner done every night was to prep meals ahead of time and use my slow cooker and freezer to stay organized. After years of trial and error, I realized that planning and prepping meals in advance saved time, money, and stress.

That crock pot freezer cooking experience turned into Lazy Day Cooking Club — a community where families learn how to:

  • Prep meals ahead of time
  • Use freezer cooking to stay on budget
  • Get dinner done even on the busiest days

The same affordable, family-tested recipes you see on Eating on a Dime are the foundation of everything we teach inside the club.

Connect With Us

Explore our recipes, cooking tips, and freezer meal resources — and join a community of families cooking real food for real life.

You can follow Eating on a Dime on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or Youtube, or sign up for our free newsletters so you don’t miss a single recipe.

Our Promise

At Eating on a Dime, everything we share is created with one goal in mind:
affordable, family-tested meals for real life.

Our recipes are developed and tested by real people in real kitchens to make sure they’re budget-friendly, reliable, and easy to follow on even the busiest days.

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Media

With over 3 Million Fans on Facebook and recipe videos with over 100 million views, Eating on a Dime has become a trusted source for easy budget friendly recipes the entire family.

Eating on a Dime has been featured on KOCO5 where we shared our money saving tips for cooking at home. We were also featured in an Oklahoman Article as a money saving Experts where we share how to stretch your budget in the kitchen.

My recipes have been shared on BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Business Insider and Parade!

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