How often are you having this sort of thing for your evening meal?

[Bemyclementine]

Scrambled eggs/beans on toast
Baked potato
Soup and roll.

I'm trying hard to cut my shopping costs but neither me or the DC like the cheaper options if some things. I'd eat them, but they won't abd then it's waste. (Such as sausages, or breaded chicken) They dont like pasta bake from a jar.

I just feel like something on toast/potato/soup aren't really options. Or are more like lunch options again, happy to eat them myself but want the dc to have proper food abd a good variety. I think I'm probably making life hard for myself

What about Mac n Cheese? Or pasta with pesto?

Never. They’re lunches here.

I usually have something simple and fairly cheap and jacket potato with cheese and lots of salad is something I have fairly often (basic salad just finely sliced lettuce with grated, red cabbage and sweetcorn). I also do chicken thighs (with bone and skin so a pack isn't expensive) with a marinade (just a packet one - Polish shops do some good ones) and salad.

You can eat well and healthily at a lower cost - I would make sure there were some sort of veg with every meal though (mushrooms/tomatoes with the scrambled egg).

We had this sort of thing as children in the 80's. We try to have soup one night a week in the Winter it is a hearty soup though ( minestrone/ leek and potato) and served with nice bread and cheese. Jacket potatoes tend to be a weekend lunchtime thing here. We will have pasta bake ( sometimes called payday pasta by me).

I've had beans on toast for dinner today, I had soup on Friday. I like simple meals tbh and I'm happy to have them two or three times a week. If I lived alone I would rarely cook anything more taxing.

I know anything you like can be dinner but I'm just wondering why if you're not skint are you often giving your children porridge for their dinner when your husband is away?

Beans and toast is a form favourite. I am cutting out bread at the moment - but maybe once a fortnight?

Never. Those are lunches in my head.
To be fair we do sometimes have jackets with dinner but with cheese beans, sausages for the meateaters, might stuff mine, some fried mushrooms on the side for me and some green veg.
but maybe once a month, it’s a really boring dinner!

Baked potato often.

Maybe with some leftover chilli and grated cheese, maybe with tuna mayo, sometimes with creamed spinach and an egg on top, grating of Parmesan and put back in the oven to bake.

So you’re looking for ”stick to the ribs” style food to fill up your teens.
Lasagne is still basically pasta and meat sauce with added bechamel (costing pennies). It’s the baking that makes it so stodgy.
Meat and veg pie, same idea.
Toad in the hole as pp have said.
Bake a whole loaf of garlic cheesy bread to go with your soup and add lentils to it.
Cakes are more filling than biscuits.

I realize these call for more oven use, but cooking twice as much and reheating in the microwave should lower the cost.

As long as they’re getting enough protein and vitamins, the rest is to fuel their energy levels. I have 4 adults to feed now. We all get served the same amount of protein and the hungry ones fill up on the rest of the meal. Pre-teen DS during a growth spurt was known as the Vulture, as he’d swoop down on anything his little sister left. He thought toddler food was irresistible (easy to hoover up finger food with no strong flavours). Maybe yours are looking for similar!

Jacket potatoes with cheese and beans is a weekly dinner in my house and was when growing up. Occasionally beans on toast but as we got older not filing enough unless there was a filling pudding. I give my dc beans on toast as they’re still little for dinner.
Soup is fine. Very filling if there’s plenty of potatoes in it and bread. Soda bread is cheap and quick to make.
Eggs chips and beans was always a cheap filling meal.
Cheap roast dinner is carrots, plus another veg, value stuffing, boiled or mashed potatoes and sliced beef covered ( from the cold meat section). in gray and heated in the oven.

Woolton pie is cheap and filling. There are lots of ideas in ww2 recipe books

Add a filling pudding if you’re serving something like beans on toast such as pancakes, bread pudding, bread and butter pudding or fruit crumble. You can buy tins of fruit pie filling.

If cutting costs, get rid of the cinnamon swirl, crisps, Greek yoghurt, reindeer thing - mine would eat all of that stuff because they are bored / fancy them, not hungry.
Breakfast - cereal and toast.
Lunch - school
Dinner - any of the things you mention. They are all suitable for a main meal in a decent portion size. Add extra toast. Plus a piece of fruit and a boring biscuit (bourbon, rich tea type).

About once a week. We also like ' breakfast dinner' sausages or bacon and eggs on toast with beans hash browns or potato cakes if any in, or omelette and chips/ toast, or toasties/ Welsh rarebit/ bubble and squeak

We'd have something like that once every 2 weeks and it's generally because something else was planned for tea but we got home late.

Jacket potatoes are a weekly thing here, but usually as a side to sausages and beans or with chilli.

I don’t regard things on toast as an easy or quick dinner when I’m cooking for a family - once I’ve made and buttered at least a dozen pieces of toast I’d rather have just shoved in an oven pizza or two. If it’s just me I often do cheese on toast and an apple.

Very often, normally two or three times a week.

Egg/beans on toast is a standard weekly dinner for us as we get in late from DD1's activity one evening so I need something I can get on the table in 5 minutes.

We had jacket potatoes tonight for dinner with tuna mayo, but often have them with cheese, beans, chilli etc.

We do a cheap pasta dish once a week. Marmite spaghetti (Nigella) recipe is super cheap. It doesn't taste of marmite it just is a small spoonful with the pasta water to make a sauce. Or I fry garlic in butter and olive oil and toss pasta in that, or pesto is pretty cheap. With some veg added it's a very low cost but filling meal.

If DDs are hungry toast, apples, bananas, Weetabix and glasses of milk are all standard things they eat that are quite filling.

I love this thread; thanks for creating, OP

We have 'soup and something' once a week, generally. It's a nice, easy supper and can be easily varied by type of soup or the 'something' in question.

Baked spud weekly - I like it with cream cheese and spring onion, maybe some pancetta. Or with cheese, beans and polish sausage chunks.

Other easy things:

• weekly - stuffed pasta, garlic bread and sauce.
• monthly - omelette with mushrooms, maybe smoked ham
• pasta shells with baked Tiktok tomatoes and feta

If I lived on my own I'd have quick cheap meals most nights, and batch cook for when I felt like somethiing nicer like a curry.

For me it would be about nutritional balance. eg scrambled egg is basically just protein and carbs. So where is your salad or veg? Fine if you've had loads for lunch, but it would be difficult to get your recommended portions of veg if you just had something on toast a couple of times a week for dinner. For beans on toast as an evening meal I'd have to have a whole large tin to myself and 2 pieces of toast otherwise I'd not be full. Again, not much in the way of veg there.

I would not view soup and a roll as a main meal though unless there was some form of protein in there eg lentils. It just wouldn't fill me for long enough. A large portion of home made soup and a sandwich might if I had enough filling in the sandwich. I don't like tinned soup, and some of it has barely any calories so not enough for growing kids as a main meal. eg half a can of heinz tomato only has a piddling 102 calories. There's the same in a kit kat!

Home-made soup with bread - about once a week in the winter. I usually do something like minestrone, squash and red lentil, or cabbage and white bean (nicer than it sounds). Easy and cheap to make. We will then use what’s left for lunches. Find this filling enough for a dinner, though sometimes put a sandwich or cheese on toast with it, or will have desert of some kind that day too.

I don’t think we’d eat tinned soup for dinner, I haven’t bought it in years actually although I used to love Heinz cream of tomato!

Eggs/ ‘something’ on toast - every so often, can be once a week sometimes other times won’t be for ages. Tends to happen more frequently when DH is in charge of cooking! Usually add some kind of veg or a piece of fruit on the side.

Jacket potato - not that often as DH isn’t really a fan and DD didn’t used to be, but she recently told me she likes them now so perhaps I’ll start adding them in on nights DH isn’t eating at home.

All of those options you listed can be the basis of a really balanced and nutritionally complete meal - e.g the scrambled eggs on decent bread toasted, maybe grate a bit of cheese or even sprinkle some nutritional yeast over. If the kids will eat it you could add a bit of spinach or some mushrooms, or a bit of avocado on the side (I know that’s not very budget friendly though). I used to do cheese and spinach eggy bread quite often - DD won’t entertain it now sadly.
Tomatoes, a satsuma or glass or orange juice - vitamin C aids the iron absorption.

They would all probably be options I would go to over cheap sausages or breaded chicken honestly.

Another cheap and easy favourite I do is cook pasta, add frozen peas to cook with it towards the end, stir through some butter or oil and then loads of grated cheese and black pepper. Not the healthiest but genuinely one of my favourites.

I live alone so maybe twice a week? I tend to go

Pizza (my fave food so once a week!)
Batch cooked frozen meals (cottage pie, lasagne etc) with fresh veg/salad x 3 week
Simple meals (eggs with toast, jacket potato, soup) x 2 week
Once a week I either cook something elaborate or eat cereal depends on the week

@SkankingWombat do you like mushrooms? Garlic mushrooms (nothing elaborate, I just do with garlic, salt/pepper and a bit of creme fraiche if you like) with grated cheese is weirdly good on a jacket potato
Or I do tuna but with diced gherkins, red pepper, red onion, tomatoes and mix it all with mayo/salad cream and it goes a long way

I occasionally do a burger or chicken burger with lettuce in a brioche bun. I serve it with a handful of cherry tomatoes.

I love an all day breakfast. I justify it as I'm on a diet by using half fat sausages and low salt and sugar baked beans and give up my toast.