The picture: mashed potatoes and corporate meatloaf. Meatloaf was free.

Cost per person: $1.50

Of course the corporate meatloaf is just a side dish. The meal is mashed potatoes. My first "you are in charge of x" when growing up was to make the mashed potatoes. This served me well as a teen because I could make gigantic batches to insure that I wasn't going to starve eating whatever the other course was even if it was extremely low calorie 90s recipes. Between my brother and I we could easily eat three or four pounds of potatoes in a single sitting. There were never any leftovers.