How do you make meals stretch?

[UnicornMommy03]

My kids and I moved into a new place and I just started a new job so I'm stretched beyond my means. I find myself skipping meals to ensure that the kiddos eat. It's just me and them and I am just looking for ways to make our food stretch for now. I

Porridge oats also great for bulking out mince type recipes like spag bol as well as for breakfast.
Just don't tell anyone and they don't notice!

If you're still stretching next year and have a garden or bacony, put a few large pots or buckets with courgette plants in them. They give a steady source of courgettes for the summer. If you like using herbs, Rosemary, sage, oregano, mint and chives are plants that you can keep harvesting for years, just cut the top 2/3rds of a branch off if you need some and cut mint and oregano back after flowering. Much cheaper. Keep the ends of spring onions after cutting and put them in a pot of earth, they'll grow into new onions.

Can you use the olio app? You can normally get a lot of food from food waste heroines after 9pm each day. Download the app, request food and go pick it up.

Meal plan. What sort of food are you eating at the moment? Where do you shop?

I picked up a small bag of potatoes in Lidl yesterday for £1.69 and then looked again and a whole sack of jacket/medium sized white potatoes cost £2.99. I hadn't noticed them before so guess they are offering some products in bulk as a cost of living thing.

We'll be eating jacket potatoes till Christmas and I can't think of anything better!

We do a couple of dinners a week that aren’t ‘meals’, but are a plate of random bits that need using up - maybe a few veg sticks, a bit of leftover pasta or a couple of crackers, a slice of cheese, etc. The kids love it and I don’t feel too bad as they have a cooked lunch at school/nursery.

It keeps the costs down only making 4 or 5 proper dinners a week instead of 7!

You can make a really good pasta sauce with tinned sardines - get the ones that come in a tomato sauce. Cook down a tin of plum or chopped tomatoes, add some chilli flakes or similar and then mash the sardines in and cook until heated through. Cheap, good for you and makes the sardines go along way.

Place marking, I can't eat carbs as they have to be gluten free and we have a potato and rice allergy which doesn't help us.

Here are a couple of cheap recipes that are really tasty and filling:

www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/lentil-ragu/amp

www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/pearl_barley_butternut_61137

For breakfast, porridge with a bit of chopped fruit is good, or peanut butter & banana on toast, or make overnight oats (loads of recipes online for them but can be very simple).

For lunch I often make a big batch of vegetable soup to last 2 or 3 days (e.g. carrot & coriander, leek & potato or pea & mint).

It's also worth looking on the Olio app and any local Facebook groups where things are given for free.
In this area we have a [town name] Eco Community group where all sorts are passed on for free from furniture and clothes to unwanted food and surplus veg etc.

Loads of soups and stews. I’m Scottish so we make a thing called stovies which is always fantastic for filling you up and heating you up too and you can make it with any red meat or corned beef like corn beef hash. Slow cooker is the shiiizzzz.

Buy whatever veg is on deal or on 20p stickers in Lidl’s and Chuck it in the slow cooker with water and a ham stock cube or a bone if I’ve got one (sometimes I ask the butcher for a bone for the dog so it’s free but it’s not it’s for soup stock) put it on a start delay for an hour before I get in so it’s ready when I do. Pea and ham soups is easy too bag of frozen peas and a bit gammon or a couple slice of bacon and top up the taste with ham stock cubes.

Buy reduced bread last thing at night when it’s dirt cheap not when they’ve knocked 10p off it and freeze it. Same with reduced sausage and black putting or haggis. Toast it and have toast with your soup or stew instead of bread. Mash black pudding or haggis in with tatties and do a gravy over it.

Farmfoods do three packs of 16 rasher bacon for £7 and chips to suit any budget really and 15 eggs for a quid fifty so we do ‘brinner’ which is breakfast dinner though I dunno where that came from coz we call dinner tea. Tinned beans go with anything. Bake tattie cheese and beans, sausage chips and beans, beans on toast etc. aldis own beans are decent and so are asdas. Farmfoods doesn’t seem to have gone up in price as much as the rest especially with dairy stuff milk butter cheese etc but Iceland is dear now so is the pound shop. Poundstretchers for non perishables like tins and instant noodles (20p a pack!) and things like bisto and oxo and coffee, lidls for tea and kids things yoghurts crisps playpiece etc b&m and home bargains always worth a shout for tinned/jars/non perishable

if your supermarket has a hot bit with whole chickens and things learn when they are reducing them (ours is usually 2pm ish, 5pm ish and 8pm ish) and grab one. Even if you cook it carve it and fridge it for the next day it’s worth it. I shop around loads and don’t buy all my stuff in the same place so it takes longer but I can feed five folk on less than £60 a week doing it that way

My breakfast and lunches are often the same everyday but are healthy, warming and very cheap.

Breakfast-
Porridge every morning with chopped banana and cinnamon. If I'm being really thrifty I make it with water and dehydrated milk powder. It tastes the same but is MUCH cheaper than using fresh milk. A tub of milk powder is only £1.40 and lasts ages you only need a tablespoon or so each morning.

Lunch
Soup and bread - make a big batch of vege and lentil soup - my go to is sweet potato and red lentil or some sort of squash and red lentil.

Top tip - Pumpkin and lentil soup is lush! Just after Halloween you can get funny shaped pumpkins for pennies and they make loads of soup.

I must admit I usually freeze half my soup batches so I can have a break from them for a few days. Then I'm glad to have it again when I defrost the next batch.

Dinners
Packs of chicken thighs/ drumsticks with skin on can be mega cheap like £1.80. I use them to make a roast dinner instead of buying a whole chicken. With salt and pepper on top and cooked till the skin is crispy they are lovely. Also they cook faster than a whole chicken so less energy used. From one pack I usually get a roast dinner and then enough for a couple of sandwiches or to add to a stirfry. (Disclaimer I only have me and 1 small dd to feed).

Do them with potatoes cubed small and tossed in oil with dried mixed herbs on top. Also cheap packet stuffing (around 60p but one pack does 2 dinners) and roast root veg. The whole meal is really cheap and feels fairly decadent for the price.

Never run a less than full oven. I'd usually have a couple of jacket potatoes in with a roast so can microwave for lunch another day but still have them lovely and crispy. Also pop in sausages to cook as they are fine reheated another day as part of a meal (e.g. chopped up with pasta or you can boil some potatoes and peas on the hob to have with them). So then you've run the oven but done the cooking of meat for three meals.

i find this way I can still have some meat in my diet most days but it only costs about £6 per week (a pack of chicken thighs and a pack of sausages). I'm maintaining a healthy weight even though it's not the leanest meat and quite carb heavy.

I could go on but this is long enough!

Big slice of Yorkshire pudding before each meal

Worth looking at if you have any non referral food support places near you as well.

E.g. for us there are "pop up" shops where you can get a full bag of your choice of shopping for £2 and you can go as often as you want.

Those packs of ready made pastry can be really helpful. They can transform leftover meat/veg/gravy into a pie.

We also make our version of Greggs bakes with them. Cut the pastry into 4 rectangles. Put baked beans/cheese/bacon in the middle of each. Fold the corners into the middle and bake. Can do a sweet version too.

Fridge soup is a frequent winter meal in this house, along with crumble for pudding, using whatever hard fruit, berries, plums, tinned pears/apricots we have.

Cut a whole chicken to have three meals even 4 instead of 2. add a side : lentils/ chikpeas/any beans or a vegetable side : carrots/ string beans with rice or potatoes.

beans soup as a one pot meal. (either lentils or broadbeans or split peas)

lentils one sausage and potatoes
lentils sardines and rice
frozen casserole vegetable are cheap for the price they make a perfect stew in a crockpot and will help spread 400g of meat. 1 kilo will make a couple of large meals. you can use them to make soup too.

A tomato soup or a carrot soup does not require a lot of ingredients with a piece of cheese and bread it's a hearty meal.
buy carrots and potatoes in bulk and store the potatoes as best as you can :
Mix potatoes and carrots as a side cut thin to have a quick cooking, they go further then rice are more nutritious.

Always A block of cheese. Always eggs. Always cheap oil, the best quality you can afford.
When you do an omelette count one egg per person instead of three. we are not supposed to eat more then three eggs per week anyways. egg and rice is also a cheap meal.

Pasta pasta pasta. (bulk spaguetti, bulk
pasta, cheese and tomato sauce with nothing else has its merits. add garlic and spices and half a onion to the cheapest of sauce.
extra cheap spicy noodles with an egg can do it too.

always have mixed herbs, vegetable stock pepper salt and then either mustard or chopped tomatoes as a starter for a sauce, you can add the curry style.

find the time slot on the sunday were the supermarkets ditch their vegetables, pastries and bread for extra cheap (pences) then freeze the lot. fresh bread lasts a month in the fridge.

Pizza cost pence to make at home.

Breakfast : Or only porridge in the morning with fresh fruit.

My experience. Take good courage.

cakes : don't buy them make them. Chocolate cake easy peasy. Add 2 carrots or 2 apples to a pound cake recipe, that will make the batter go further with no pb, and it's actually healthier. Cupcakes are a better bet then a cake in one mould. A pound cake made with 4 eggs and 200g of carrots make for 18 cupcakes. (ask me how I know). Baked goods can be frozen up to a month.
master dhals and currys there is a lot of money saving there.
apart for the baking bit. the slow cooker will help you a lot : to have tasty meals economical meals and not being tied up to the kitchen at the same time.

upload olio app and all it's alternative ( toogoodtogo) etc. That can help you also.

I make a cottage pie and it feeds us for two nights and enough for the freezer. Nothing exciting, just a packet of value mince (£2), some peas £0.50), gravy powder and half a bag of frozen mash (£0.50).

Then we have poached eggs and beans on toast one night, it feeds the four of us for £3.

Jacket potatoes and beans are another cheap option.

If you have an asda near you check out their new essentials range - it's not bad xx

I eat with the DC, purposefully serve myself less and the eat their leftovers. There is bound to be something they don't finish off as DC2 in particular is spectacularly fussy and will suddenly refuse to eat his mash despite it being made in exactly the same way to how I'd made it a few days before.
All proper leftovers get put in the fridge and either get eaten by me in random combinations for lunch or tea or, if there is a decent portion, the DC have it, sometimes having different meals as a result.
DC1 actively likes lentils. DC2 doesn't. So some nights DC1 and I will have something lentil based and I'll just do something different (and more expensive) for DC2. We're all happy as we're all eating something I like, especially as it means I can really ramp up the spices if it's just DC1 and me and it cuts down on the costs as only one of us is having the more expensive meal.

@UnicornMommy03 please don’t miss meals. That’s what food banks are for - many local churches have them or get a referral from gp or hv

people keep mentioned lentils - I’ve never used - I love spag bol or any mince with toms and veg either on pasta rice or jackets

so how do I use lentils - what’s the diff between red and green

I picked up a tin of green yesterday to try and add to mince mix to bulk it out and be healthier

do I need to cook /boil them or just add tin to mince mix

thanks

This time of year, big pans of thick soup with lentils. I buy cut price veggies from the market on a Saturday afternoon. My house always smells of soup cooking on Sunday mornings. Any left over scraps of meat go in too. And then freeze it in portions, ready to be microwaved.

Cheese and eggs are relatively cheap protein, so cauliflower cheese or omelettes are good hot lunches. Use herbs and spices to liven up bland meats like pork mince. Rosemary, thyme, sage and bay will all survive winter so grow your own in pots outside.

Scots oats make the cheapest breakfast and porridge doesn't need milk. Microwave it with a few sultanas or chopped apple & cinnamon.

Look at 'unfashionable' things like tinned sardines. Only 40p but mixed with some chopped onion & tomato, makes a rich pasta sauce. Veggie risottos are good too. And don't waste anything. If my ds leaves some cooked chicken at supper, I have it in a sandwich next day.

@Blondeshavemorefun I pretty much use just dried red lentils and tinned green ones.

For the dried red ones they need to be boiled for 20 mins if using in a soup I usually fry onion, celery and grated carrot for ten mins, add cumin and garlic and cook one more min. Then throw in veg I'm using stir it in the spices for about a minute. Then add water stock cube and a cup and a half of lentils. Then simmer 20 mins and blitz with stick blender. Once at the boil you turn the heat right down and simmer with the lid on to keep costs down.

if adding to spag Bol I'd prep the spag Bol as normal but have the lentils boiling in a pan at the back of the stove at the same time. Then throw them in when you add the sauce/ chopped tomatoes. It makes it go so much further like you've used 3x the mince! Or you can just use the tinned green ones they need no boiling and can be chucked straight in.

@Blondeshavemorefun we use green or brown lentils in spag bol if that helps. Red ones can go a bit mushy, and find they’re better suited to soups, curry, etc.

Have a look in the world foods section of the supermarket - we often get basics like beans, rice, tomatoes, coconut milk, costing a lot less than if we bought better-known brands.
As others have said, bulk out meals with veg, beans, lentils. Nowt wrong with baked beans in a shepherds pie, for example. Black beans and rice is a fave meal for my kids.
Please do try to access a foodbank OP - it’s literally what they’re for. Even if you just it once, it will take the pressure off, and mean you can get some food in you.

Thank you @BrainPater and @Punkypinky

so red for soup /go mushy and boil first

green tinned for spag bol

any diff in flavour of red and green and are red always dried so need to be cook first and green tinned /ready to use

Thinking of food my kids love....I am now a proud owner of an airfryer but before I was, if I had the oven on I would always do a couple of things in the oven.

Bubble and Squeak with a fried egg (made from leftovers so you just ensure you over-cater potatoes and cabbage the day before). You can use sprouts in bubble and squeak too, if your kids like them.

Tomato chorizo pasta - whilst chorizo is expensive, it lasts for ages and you need hardly any to make a great flavour. Slice it very thin and very gently fry it with a finely chopped onion in a dry pan, add a tin of tomatoes and some Italian herbs. Let it simmer then stir it through pasta.

Cheese or mushroom omelette with bread and butter.

Jacket potatoes with grated cheese and baked beans or some veggie sausages.

Toast and marmite followed by a good homemade pudding eg homemade apple crumble or tinned fruit and custard, frozen berries and blancmange, orange jelly with tinned oranges, baked apples with raisins.

Welsh rarebit on toast.

Cheese pie. Lots of recipes online - it sounds unappealing but it is SO tasty and my kids love it with baked beans.

Scotch pancakes (drop scones) - there's a recipe on BBC Food that has orange zest but you really don't need orange zest. So easy quick and yummy. Just have them with salted butter for tea or a weekend lunch.

Slow cooker ham - just a slice or two, with loads of veg and mash. You can have the ham next day with bubble and squeak. Then the next day fry a chopped onion then stir in a pinch of mixed herbs and a few chopped up tomatoes and some ham and this is a GREAT filling for omelettes (eat with bread and butter) or savoury pancakes.

Sausages and mash and whatever veg is cheap. You can stretch with mountains of tasty veg - winter is great if you can afford to put the over on, cook yourself a huge batch of roasted carrot, Swede, onion quarters, parsnips. Often you can get winter veg in a cheap box or yellow stickers. They reheat really well next day in a microwave.