If you are poor, what do you feed your kids?

[SandysMam]

So every thread I read about parents struggling seems to suggest lentils to bulk stuff out and foraged blackberries
If money is tight for you, in reality, what sort of thing do you cook for the kids? Half term is taking it’s toll at the end of the month and I need to add some cheap but healthyish recipes that regular kids will eat!
Thank you!

What they like, so there’s less waste (sorry).

No packaged snacks.

Baked beans. As I find the protein is the expensive bit. Highly flavoured meat, so chorizo or bacon can be chopped into tiny pieces to flavour pasta.

Freeze any leftovers if you can. Even plain pasta.

Do you follow Bootstrapcook on Twitter? She has some amazingly cheap recipes.

Beans on toast, jacket spuds, soups, pasta.

We're sort of ok now financially (still below the average but we have a nice life!), but back in the day we had dark times.

My mum fed 6 of us on £40 a week for years (I’m 30 so not long ago) but always ate well.
Lots of things like Shepherds Pie, Mac and cheese/pasta bakes. Jacket potatoes with tuna mayo, cheese, beans, sausages. Pork chops with mash and veg or rice and veg. Curries, the Sunday roast meat often became a curry.

We had egg fried rice yesterday.
1 and a half cups of long grain rice, cooked
1 onion fried
Handful of peas fried
Two eggs whisked with soy sauce.
Add the rice to the peas and onion, stir in the egg until it's cooked.
Kids love it, both hate egg on its own, so it's a good way to get them to eat it and it's cheap.

Lots of meat from the reduced bit went in the freezer

The Mumsnet chicken of course. Roast dinner one day, stew the next, risotto after that. Feeds 6 of us for three days.
Pasta carbonara.
Fish fingers.
Home made pizzas (much easier and quicker to make than I thought)
Things that can be bulked out with veg - spag Bol, chilli con carne, casseroles etc.

We don’t struggle but my kids are quite normal and happily eat spaghetti Bol or cottage pie where 1/2 the mince is replaced with a few handfuls of lentils, you genuinely don’t notice.

Porridge is very cheap as are baked potatoes.
Beans/ scrambled egg on toast is a perfectly adequate meal with a side of sliced cucumber or tomatoes.
Turkey is often cheaper than chicken.
Pasta with a sauce made from tinned tomatoes and whatever veg you have in.
We buy quality sausages but have just 1.5 each with mash and cabbage.
Risotto made with stock, a small amount of chopped bacon, loads of frozen peas and a tub of cream cheese- huge favourite here and works out to maybe £2:50 for 4 people.

Basically if they like pasta/rice/potatoes there’s lots of options. What sort of meals do they like most?

Root veg can be bought for pennies, homemade wedges instead of shop bought. Roast sweet potatoes, parsnips, broccoli stalks and carrots with chicken or pork

When i was poor it was lots of macaroni cheese, tuna pasta, frozen stuff like cheap pizzas, chips, Kiev's etc and packet pasta like the instant sauce pasta ones

Second bootstrap cook. She has a book out called cooking on a bootstrap, and her new book out in the next week will be cooking entirely from tins! Borrow from the library or some food banks have the recipes photocopied to give out.

We're ok now but I used to do things like make shepherds pie with a much bigger layer of mash and add a tin of beans to the mince. Pasta sauces were thinned out with an extra tin of tomatoes.

I absolutely agree there's no point serving stuff they don't like as it's wasteful. My younger two like porridge but the eldest doesn't so they had different things.

Pasta with tinned tomatoes, random veg and grated cheese
Egg fried rice with veg
Jacket potato, beans and cheese
Oven pizza with frozen sweetcorn and peppers added (when we're home late)
Vegetable curries and rice - DS likes chana masala.

(I'm lucky DS likes veg but I've always struggled to get him to eat meat or fish)

My mum used to make stew with potato, onion, Swede, carrot, sausages (cheapest going or cheap beef cuts), pearl barley or stew mix. Pressure cooker that on high for 5 mins from steaming then add 1 Oxo and a can of cheap beans. Super cheap and you got loads out of it. Dumplings made with marge instead of suet to go with it.

Bacon pudding is good stodge. Make a suet pastry (you can use frozen cooking Marge grated or lard instead of suet). Roll it out and layer with cheap cooking bacon (off cut bacon, 57p at tesco), sliced onions and sprinkle some sage on. Roll it like a Swiss roll and then put it in a muslin or mermaid pan for boiling. You can also bake it. Serve with cabbage, potatoes and home made onion sauce.

I recently saw this on a "back in time" type programme and the family were stumped. We still have this as a treat. It's super cheap but not great for the old waistline so not for those on a diet as it's a bit more-ish.

Halal butchers are also great for cheap skinless chicken wings. Lots of flavour, great for a cheap curry or stew.

Definitely agree with highly flavoured meats. Cheap mature cheese as well goes a long way. My SMP will be kicking in soon so it will be veggies, eggs and value basics all the way.

I tend to bulk out with cheap veg makes everything go further so spag bol finley chopped carrot and celery with a whole big onion as a based then whatever veg your lot like i use courgette and aubergine you could use mushrooms and pepper too. I also chuck in a tin of beans/chick peas of some kind like kidney or butter. You could even not use the mince as long as you throw in a beef stock cube.

My ‘luxury’ buy was a packet of peppers, an onion, packet of cherry tomatoes and Tesco sweet corn. Chop them up very finely, then mix in a bowl. It meant I had them to add to pasta, baked potatoes, sandwich, omelette, etc. Expensive to buy individually, but It’s amazing how far a bowl can stretch.

I had some leftover roast lamb the other day. Only about 200g though, so when I made it into a shepherd's pie, I bulked it out with a tin of green lentils. My DC (teens) don't really like lentils but the sauce was so tasty that you couldn't really tell there were lentils in there. It was yummy.

I would also buy a big bar of orange chocolate and make rice crispy buns.

Soups and stews with a chunk of buttered bread.
Spaghetti and sauce or just olive oil and some grated cheese
Stuff some red or green peppers with a rice and chorizo or mince combination. Again give them some buttered bread

2 of mine love home made soup so that's easy. The other two hate it...

Pasta, potatoes, beans, cheap sausages

Anything I can cook in bulk and freeze. I also chop and freeze big bags of carrots/onions/peppers.
Mash potatoes.
Soups - potato & leek, lentil & red pepper (using a cheap jar of red peppers from Home Bargains)
Chicken legs.
Cheese from Lidl.
Whatever I have picked up in the reduced isle and frozen.
Mexican beef (slow cooked cheap cuts).
Frozen wedges from Lidl (about 60p a bag).
Bacon mishapes from HB are flavoursome in pasta or with spuds.
Whatever fruit and veg is on offer.
Pancakes are really cheap to make and loved in this house.
Quesadillas.

Very little meat and no fish.

Spaghetti with butter, garlic and grated cheese
Macaroni cheese
Cauliflower & broccoli cheese
Egg curry
Omelettes
Roast chicken - use leftovers for a stir fry or biryani next day
Baked potatoes with cheese and/or baked beans
Leek and potato soup (served with lots buttered toast)
Mixed bean chilli and rice

Fruit is not particularly cheap but bananas are good for things like homemade muffins, milkshakes (with added peanut butter), or sliced on peanut butter on toast

Don't want to sound smug but my kids eat really well on a very low (temporarily) income. We're lucky we already have everything in place to make this happen (car to travel to supermarket, huge chest freezer, two slow cookers, cheap electric and has tariff etc - most people in food poverty are not this lucky.

I shop at Aldi, Lidl, Asda, Tesco and our local market. I time going each place to get the best deals. I got a whole enormous salmon for £3 in Asda last week (went at 8.30 when bargains good), filleted it after watching YouTube video and there were 16 good sized fillets. Aldi reduce their stuff by a whopping 50% the day before it's got to be used - hence a freezer full of chicken portions, good quality mince, sausages etc.

I buy lots of pork - leg or shoulder often £3ish a kilo. After a roast there is so much meat left to make hotpots etc in my slow cooker.

I bulk buy spuds, pasta and rice in huge bags so it's cheaper. I buy veg frozen and tart it up with spice to make it tasty

I'm also a fairly good cook, and it helps that I can look at what there is and make it taste good rather than have to buy to a recipe (like DH!)

Again, I'm lucky - all this is dependent on my existent infrastructure, and the fact that for us this is a cash flow issue rather than long term grinding poverty.

Iceland sell 1100g of fresh mince for £4 it's split into two packs evenly.
Once cooked and drained it can be used for so many meals. I own a cafe so want to make decent food and maximise profits beef broth and dumplings, cottage pie with veg in a giant Yorkshire pudding, home made mince and onion pie, spaghetti boll enchiladas etc the list is endless.

We are good now, but when times were tight.... Main meals wise.
Using dried soya mince instead of beef for shepherd's pie, lasagne,
enchiladas wth turkey mince and diced veggies
Baked eggs in veggies,
Macaroni cheese with broccoli,
Baked potatoes
Tuna pasta bake
Egg fried rice
Risotto (pea and lemon)
Oxtail stew (slow cooker) with dumplings
Frozen basa-defrosted then lightly dusted with flour and salt and pepper and pan fried.
Salmon fishcakes made with tinned salmon
Tuna fishcakes (tinned)
Daal,
Veg curries (mild)
Shopped at a wholesale veg market and Aldi Lidl and big Indian supermarket for spices, grew herbs in garden.....