Lower carb, autumnal, cheap, and my toddler will eat it…

[BuffaloCauliflower]

Trying to meal plan for this week and could use some ideas. We’re spending mad money on food and some of it I can suck up (like higher quality meat and fresh fruit) but I really need to get it down, but also ideally need to be eating lower carb (I need to lose a bit of weight and DH is T1D) and seasonal. All my autumny cheaper food involve lots of things like mash and bread! Toddler will eat chicken and salmon fillet all day long, but gets expensive. We will happily eat lentilly bean things, as will baby, but toddler won’t. Same for nice hot salads. Soups can be cheap and filling but I struggle without lots of bread with them 😂

Any ideas?

Roast veg, I love it. Red pepper , tomatoes, squash, carrots, sweet potato. Any left over I freeze for soup.
Clean potato peelings can be fried, with a little oil in the air fryer, to resemble crisps or skins.
I also keep clean veg peelings and ends off peppers etc to make into soup.

Sweet potato, Jerusalem artichoke, pumpkin, swede, celeriac, beetroot, as well as carrot, leeks, celery & various mushrooms - all in season.
Not forgetting cauliflower, kale and red cabbage.
Loads of dishes and salads you can make.
Kale makes excellent "crisps" , too.

Traybake of roast veg with quinoa.

Does the toddler refuse all lentils things? Chickpeas, butter beans kidney beans etc?

Have you tried tofu as a substitute for meat? Lean white fish?

Soups can be cheap and filling but I struggle without lots of bread with them

You need to retrain your brain - try rice cakes or a few oatcakes on the side if you want something to dip in.

You need to have straight low carb swaps in your mind so when you do a meal you know exactly whats going with it:

rice - cauliflower rice/cauliflower + broccoli
pasta - lentil pasta / endamame pasta
cous cous - quinoa

Soup bulk out with celeriac rather than potato

Bread I found hard, as I’m coeliac but DH has rye as a lower carb.

Seed crackers are easy to do and nutritious compared to a rice cake. Literally little piles of grated cheese and mix in a trail mix.

I made this which tasted really autumnal. You could easily swap the potatoes for sweet potato, or a mixture of butternut squash and potato.Sausage mustard and apple hash