to serve homemade soup 3 nights a week

[Belini]

I have five weeks to save a rent depost for a larger house. I have three DS and twins on the way would I BU to serve them homemade veg and lentil soup 3 nights a week and also not buy junk such as crisps biscuits and juice for the next five weeks to give them a better home. The reason I am asking is that my mother has reacted like I have suddenly decided to feed them on bread and water and has went to supermarket and bought some "essentials" these include puddings diluting juice polish and kitchen roll. The last two were in response to me saying that i was sure there was some cleaning stuff I could do with out. AIBU??

It doesn't have to be the same soup every night :)
I love soups, can eat them 3xday if possible.

Summer time is perfect for soups - vegetables are tasty and inexpensive too.

All that lovely fresh veg for free and there's so many economical and tasty dishes that you can make with it instead of putting it in a pot with a load of lentils 3 times a week.

Variety is the spice of life and it can be great fun and extremely satisfying creating delicious meals on a shoestring for a limited period.

If you've got rice, pasta, flour, butter, cheese, milk, eggs, and garlic/herbs/seasoning, you'll be able to make a different dish every day of your 5 weeks' belt tightening. You may even find some new favourites that you'll turn to time and again when your finances are less restricted.

Belini, dp works nights so he cooks our evening meals mon - thurs. And we have stew (mainly veggie stew) FOUR NIGHTS A BLEEDING WEEK. and have done for years If my kids can put up with veg stew nearly every night for the last 9/10 years then I am sure yours will be fine for 5 weeks.

Hmm, I bet there are a few of us who could do with a batch of easy, cheap and filling veg dishes. Bikini, how about starting a thread asking for soup/stew/other such recipes?
Alternately, get BitterAndTwistedChoreDodger to PM you her "how to feed a large family for less than 30 pounds" and adapt it for your non-meat-eating kids.

BTW, did I read that right - you have three kids and are expecting twins? Holy cow, you brave woman. Congratulations! This mum of one bows to you :)

Bikini??? I meant Belini! That was either my stupid iPhone or a huge brainfart. Sorry!

Just a thought but what else could you get your mum to buy you could save the money in less than 5 weeks

How dare you - this country needs consumption of commercial low quality over-salted soup to get out of the recession, and giving your kids healthy home made food is not acceptable!

Next you will be wanting to make home made juice instead of buying froot shoots!

Well if you're being U for the next few weeks, then I am incredibly U all the time!

Lentil soup
carrot, coriander and lentil soup
Plain old veg soup

are big favourites in our house.

Lentils are cheap, as is a big bag of sainsbury's basics carrots/onions (exactly the same as the more expensive ones, just more interesting shapes/smaller!)

It's easy to make sure it's well balanced, they're nutritious, low fat/salt and easy to sneak in less popular veg like spinach.

I wish mine would eat home-made soup. DH, who was brought up on Heinz, and thinks home-made soup is the food of the devil, turned them off from an early age. Good cheap and filling recipe here though if they will eat onions (you could of course do it without the onions but I think that would only really work if you added the bacon)

About 1-1/2 lb potatoes thinly sliced
One or two onions thinly sliced
layer the onions and potatoes in a casserole dish
Pour over a pint of cheese sauce
and bake in the oven for about 90 minutes - remove lid for the last 20

To make this a bit more tasty you can lardons to the layers (or bits of offcut bacon or those off cut bits that they sell really cheaply at the deli).

Serve it with carrots and/or cabbage.

My husband and son loves soups especially one with chicken.
It is much cheaper to buy whole chicken and dived it in portions and put rest in freezer.
It much cheaper than buying chicken stock or chicken stock cubes and tastes delicious.
Cubbed potatoes,sliced carrots you can add brocolly too.
I also add smalles pasta or if there is no pasta at home then rice, soup is tasty and filling.and no one after half and hour will run into kitchen and open fridge to see what he can eat because he is hungry.
You can cook cabbage soup too, you need tine piece of meat for stock and tastier filling soup , white cabbage, carrot and potatoes.
there is seasoning mix in tesco.polish food isle at the moment its down to 50 p from 99 kucharek, i add tablespoon to my soups and they are delicious, everyone are happy to eat one soup even two days.

Belini , may I just say I think you are an absolute star.

I remember you from your other thread about your family's reaction to your twins and I wondered how you were getting on. Well, it seems!

Good for you for thinking of real, workable plans for your family instead of whining about what you haven't got.

YANBU in the slightest .... I've frequently served soup, baked beans or other economical dishes in our house when we've needed to cut back. Ring the changes and it's a good healthy diet. Chocolates and snacks don't get replaced when I've got no money - it's no great hardship. As for kids getting bored. My mum used to make a delicious beef broth.... would have eaten that every night as a kid if it had been available.

In the winter we live on veg soups and stew. Veggie soup can be really filling with added pulses, rice/pasta/pearl barley. I would happily live on veggie soup as would DD1.

Home made cheese scones also cheap, quick to make and very yummy with veg soup!

no, thats fine, if the kids like it and eat it i really don't see the problem, better than nuggets and chips and as for cutting out all the junk, i don't buy hardly any junk now and i have been known to use a multi purpose cleaner for everything and dusted with a damp cloth, and if your mum feels the need to buy things let her, but remind her if she comments that shes buying things that you never asked her to,

We generally have soup five nights a week! Usually it's home made, occasionally buy the cartons of fresh soup but homemade is almost always nicer. We have it with either fresh bread or toast, occasionally a bit of cheese or humous if we have any. It's not a lot for a main meal, but I find I don't need big meals every day anyway, and DP has his 'main' meal at lunchtime at work on weekdays.

Definitely no need for crisps or biscuits, they should be an occasional treat (if you can afford them) not an everyday staple.

I think my DCs would love home-made veg soup with home-made bread three times a week. It's one of the few entirely veggie meals my carnivorous son eats without the slightest complaint. Very filling, too, although that might be down to how I make soups - generally the only way you can tell the difference between my veggie soup and a veggie stew is that the former has macaroni in it and the latter has dumplings

I think it's fine, OP. My two youngest's favourite meal is a homemade lentil and vegetable soup. They would happily eat it every night if I let them. I'd rather they had something like that every night than chicken nuggets and chips, or pizza.

I think it is fine.

I think it's fine too, I just my dc would eat my home made soup! Agree with adding barley to bulk it up - am astonished that some people think soup isn't filling!

Sounds great, OP.

I wouldn't worry about not serving beans on toast if the DC get bored either. Carbs, smidgen of fat, protein, some vitamins in the tomato sauce - it's fine for the occasional evening meal if you're on a budget.

Good luck with the saving

Sounds lovely, with or without the extra bread. My DD would love that, DS not so much but would eat what he was given. I would probably give them a pudding afterwards to fill them up and make it seem a little less basic. I can send you my recipe for microwave jam (or anything else) sponge if you like, cheaper than chips ;)

Sounds good.
If they get bored you can make burgers with red kidney beans.
Or dhal, dirty cheap dish.

You are right in not buying snacks but if you want to treat them you can make pancakes with a banana, it will cost few pence.

Good luck with the new house.

The ingredients that go into veg soup can make a lot other great stuff: curries, rice & veg, pasta with tomato/veg sauce etc. I don't know how well you're stocked up on spices and herbs, but I'd suggest varying it a bit.

That said, veg and lentil soup sounds a lot better than beans on toast, and apparently that's an acceptable evening meal.