Low carb while also feeding family on a tight budget

[aweewhilelonger]

I've done lc in the past and I know it works. My problem is that when I did it in the post it was just me and DH, two salaries and plenty time to cooks / shop accordingly. We found it easy: we could afford a lot of yummy, high quality steaks and had plenty of time to prepare salads / sauces etc. We'd snack on cheese, nuts etc. And we basically emptied the house of all carbs, and just didn't buy them.

Fast fwd to today and we have one salary, two veg/ salad hating / carb loving children and a tight budget! I'm really struggling to envisage how I can juggle all this and stick within our budget. anyone else in this situation and succeeding with LC? Tell me how!

Can you find any of the cheaper cuts of meat? Shin of beef has become a real favourite of ours. Cook for a day or so in a slow cooker, it produces melt in the mouth beef and fabulous gravy. Servers with lots of leafy green veg... ah, i see. Would purees of the veg help at all?

Children do seem to acquire an appetite for carbs before they can cope with other veg. I wonder whether this contributes to the rising obesity levels! In a world where carbs are so cheap and abundant. Long term a lower carb approach is going to do you all a favour, so i hope you do find some support on making it happen.

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with children eating carbs. They need carbs.

Eggs are good - cheap.

Agree re casseroles etc.

It's finishing the children's dinners that's made me put on weight.

I think you can adapt recipes to add carbs for the kids fairly easily (without too much extra faff). The trouble may be that LC is, I find, more expensive as I buy more meat and fish (and less cheap carbs).

Some things you can adapt:

Filling pasta sauces like bolognese, sausage pasta - you have them with courgetti
Chicken shwarma, lamb koftas, etc - you have them with salad. Kids get pitta alongside, maybe some hummous and raw veg (mine are all better on raw veg sticks than cooked)
Burgers - you skip the bun and have salad
Omelette/frittata - you have with salad, they have with some toast or new potatoes
Thick stews or curries - you eat on their own or with spinach, kids have garlic bread or chapatti etc.
Pies - would your kids have one with BNS or mashed celeriac on top?

I'd start by looking at LC recipes and then think what you can add for the kids. I'm not too strict about LC so will eat some beans and lentils on some days, which makes things easier too. On a couple of days you can eat separately - enjoy more adventurous food, and let your kids eat lots of carbs if they want to!

I've got a carb loving family and am in a LCHF diet. I pretty much do what Notrightnowww has suggested and cook for us all but leave out the carb part for me. I also eat eggs daily as they are cheap and nutritious.

I'm in the same boat here. What helps me is a lot of prep, preparing a meal planner and shopping list, doing some prep on a Sunday for the week ahead so I have some stuff to hand like tomato sauce, some kind of salsa. It is possible, but not always easy. One of my boys is ASD so it helps to have a routine and a fairly predictable meal planner. That way some ingredients might be left over from week to week and can keep the bill down.

Ah it's great to know I'm not alone! To clarify, I'm not intending to cut carbs for the kids - its more the prospect of having to cook separate meals for them and me, which I have kind of been doing, it just adds time to the whole cooking process. I think I'm going to have to get more organised and meal plan more, I've pretty much been winging it recently. Cheers for all the suggestions!

I'm in the same position ... I'm just starting to low carb again today after eating stupidly for eighteen months I'm on a very tight budget and find buying meat very expensive. In the past I liked the fact that I could eat lots of steaks and roast meat, but realistically I can't buy that kind of food often now.

I only have one dd still at home and she's veggie and 16 years old so mainly cooks her own stuff. However I usually eat with my bf and he's quite conservative in his eating and picky, so it limits what I can prepare.

In the past I've cooked lots of chilli con carne which I've eaten on its own - no rice etc. - or bolognese without the spaghetti, cottage pie with mashed swede instead of potato ... and lots of bacon and eggs and omelettes.

I eat low carb and live with husband and two sons who all mainline carbs!

We are not on a tight food budget so I don't have that constraint, but I do eat pretty much what they eat but without the carbs. So if I cook bolognese they have it with pasta, I have it over two large oven-baked mushrooms. And because the frugal part of me can't bear to heat the oven just to cook two mushrooms, I'll also cook avtray of chicken thighs at the same time. The next day I'll chop the meat from the chicken thighs and use them in a stir fry with loads of veg, dh and dc will have that with noodles, I'll just have it on its own.

I also eat a lot of salad but that can get expensive.

I adapt what we're having to suit everyone. Eg pasta, i have courgetti. Bolognese, i just eat it with veg and grated cheese, they have chips or rice. Stir fry, i have tofu and veg, they eat noodles. But yes, it is expensive isn't it? I wish you luck with it!

Lots of scrambled & boiled eggs.

Frozen fish?

Belly pork.