Can't afford to feed my husband

[Prusik]

Gah, the title sounds pathetic! Please don't rip me to pieces for the fact that he should be feeding himself but it's the simplest summary I can give.

DH is 6ft7 and skinny. He eats a lot to maintain his weight. He's both milk and egg free (milk is allergy, egg is intolerance as his gut tends to get inflamed). He also tries to avoid sugar as he was finding he was getting major energy slumps during the day and reaching for sweets.

Ok, so here goes. I did the food shop last night and it was £100. Haven't bought any luxury items apart from I bought four cartons of supermarket brand apple juice and haven't yet bought meat for the week.

Try to fill him up on protein, ie nuts, chicken wraps, etc as empty carbs just don't seem to cut it. I rely on cheap meat where I can, we eat a lot of mince. And I bulk things out with cheap veg and potatoes. We cook chilli with beans, pulses, etc and I make my own humous as that's a good fix and so much cheaper than the supermarkets.

I'm just at my wit's end. For various reasons we're now at the arse end of poor. We're going down to one vehicle and are really struggling. We don't buy coffees out, don't go anywhere which costs parking... everything we do is free. But I'm still struggling to afford to feed DH. I do buy fruit in for the baby and am starting to cut corners with what I eat just so DH and Ds can be fed. I'm not going without but will just have jam on toast for lunch rather than anything better as I don't want to use food up. This is far from ideal as I'm 28 weeks pregnant change in circumstances happened after I conceived

We get tax credits and child benefit.

Any tips for feeding a very hungry person on the cheap?? He's not greedy, he genuinely needs the food. ds is beginning to look like he will be the same

He doesn't know what I am/am not eating as he's not here in the day

You absolutely must stop protecting him from this. If he's a decent man, which it sounds like (a bit clueless about food but that can be fixed), he will be horrified to find that you're not eating properly.

Complex carbs and fat are his friends here. He needs to cultivate a love of potatoes, lentils and adding oil to everything.

Also, see if you can find one of those old fashioned 'bin' shops, where they have staples in big (clean!!) bins for you to take what you want out and have it weighed - you can bulk buy things like nuts in those at much cheaper prices.

Nuts are really expensive - I'd skip those. I have rake thin DC teen boys who seem to sprout an inch a day and hoover up everything in the firdge. I buy two chickens (£3-3.50 each) and roast them then stick them in the fridge for them to raid.

Try a huge bowl of porridge for breakfast with cinnamon and honey (cinnamon is good for inflamed gut) with wholemeal toast and fried eggs. Total cost about 50p

Triple decker chicken sandwiches for lunch, made with thick sliced wholemeal with plenty of butter, iceberg and mayo to bulk them out. Crisps, a giant oat and raisin cookie and a banana. Total cost about £1.20

Dinner: massive baked potato filled with butter, chilli mince, beans veg and tomato sauce etc with peas and carrots on the side.
Home made apple crumble for pudding. Total cost about £2.50

Apple juice has loads of fructose which can cause gut issues in some people - could he switch to another fruit juice?

Rice and legumes (kidney beans,lentils etc) "rice and peas" is a cheap protein/carb combo.

He's just going to have to lower his standards and eat the same kinds of food that the poor people eat.
Bread, pasta, beans, tinned fish, seasonal veg, etc etc.
If he's in a physical job he will be able to work off the carbs. He doesn't need to worry about getting enough protein either, virtually all foods contain protein, and if he eats a variety of foods he will get enough by default.
There's one thing I do disagree with though. Quite a few posters have suggested cheap value bread. Personally (and I have a lot of experience of eating on a very small budget) I would pay a little bit extra for decent seeded granary bread. It's tasty and very filling, even just with plain butter.

For calories add in some fats

Fruit juice is for me. He tries to avoid sugars

A Thermos Flask is good for transporting soup.

Also buy a breadmaker

Try adding brown carbs ie longer lasting. I would second using mayo (usually OK for egg intolerance as its processed and often seems to not have the same impact but you can check) and peanut butter for extra calories.

Why would you make him soup? It's labour intensive when you're already tired and struggling a bit (understandably), not especially high calorie, and difficult to transport.

Loaf of wholemeal bread and his choice of cheap filling is over 2000 calories and costs about a pound and is no work for you at all.

Oh yeah and soup is a great filler before meals - easy to make too don't need fancy things, great for lunch time as a carry through along side butties or wraps

I have to say - and this may not apply to your DH, but when I was married and we were struggling for money, I was cooking everything from scratch, making cheap meals being very frugal and economical and working a lot of extra time on cooking and going without so the kids had food, my (now X) H was buying expensive wasteful stuff while out - mars bars, pre packed sandwiches, etc etc. He wasn't prepared to be frugal.
Your DH does need to have to spelled out that as a family you are struggling so if he is hungry he needs to fill up with cheap food not expensive treats.

my priorities for feeding in your family would be
Toddler
Pregnant woman
Man

In that order. He needs to think of ways to fill himself up that won't cost too much.

Do you really never compare notes about what you each had for lunch?
You're pregnant with his child and surviving on crumbs from his table.

Please can people stop ripping in to my dh. He's a lovely lovely man and if he were to read this thread he would bollock me for even thinking about going without. It's me that's the problem - I'm just not buying enough food to last the week but because he's taking lunch out with him to work it's more obvious as I just make do with whatever is in the cupboard.

The problem, I think, is more naivety than anything else. It's hard to know what corners to cut and where.

As for pp comment about formula and nappies - mum buys the nappies, formula for Ds is a milk free prescription formula (ironically it's now all three of us who are milk free!!)

STOP protecting him from the fact that you're going without food so he can munch almonds, which are really expensive.

I would try massive hunks of bread as snacks in between meals. Ditch the nuts except as a treat; they cost a fortune.

Keep your meals nutritious. Frozen veg cheaper than fresh. Bulk it out with lentils and rice etc.

ps I feed three and a dog on 50 a week. And that includes toiletries as well

More pulses, fewer nuts! Nuts are ridiculously expensive. Buy big bags of dried pulses - cheaper than tinned. Buy frozen meat. Cook with plenty of fat. Porridge for breakfast. Soup with barley in.

For some more ideas here's a thread from the MSE forums on cheap snacks to fill up hungry teenage boys thread.

Mentioned in there is all bran loaf, which was a fave cheap and simple, filling family recipe my mum would make. It's a simple teabread kind of recipe - take a mug of all bran cereal (own brand perfectly fine), chuck in a bowl with a mug of any sort of dried fruit - sultanas, chopped up dried apricots, chopped up prunes, mixed fruit, whatever you want. Add some spices like cinnamon if you like that sort of thing, along with half a mug of sugar. Pour over a mug of black tea and leave to soak till it's all soggy, you can even leave overnight. Then add a mug of SR flour, stir together, chuck in a loaf tin and bake in a low oven for an hour or so - until a toothpick comes out clean. You can eat slices as is or with some butter on. You can also make in a muffin tin for a more portable version.

OP, my dh is Dairy intolerant and whilst not as hard up as yourselves are far from rich.
A cheap meal for us is chicken curry, mine can't have chilli either or tomatoes.

There is an initial outlay of herbs and spices, but if you can use chilli you might not need them.

We use coconut milk (99p) and dessicated coconut (pack lasts for ages). Rice is a good filler and the substitute milks are fine in porridge.

And instead of jam on toast you should be eating beans/eggs/cheese on toast or the equivalent. Cheap food is perfectly fine and will provide all the nutrition you need during your pregnancy. There's just not much nutritional value in jam, as I'm sure you know.

Also buy a breadmaker -seriously ? They can't afford a coffee out, parking, or anything other than basic cheap foods. She might as well hire a cook and a child minder while she's at it.

Don't know why it keeps saying Remove from trolley. Just ignore those bits.

1kg carrots
2 x 2.5kg potatoes
3 pack of peppers
1 Savoy cabbage
1 swede
6 pack Granny smith apples
10 pack bananas
6 pack Royal gala apples
1 cucumber
1 six pack tomatoes

British Pork Shoulder Steaks 780g
Morrisons Diced Beef 460g
Morrisons Market St British Beef 12% Fat 675g
Morrisons Mint & Balsamic Lamb Shoulder 370g
morrisons Traditional Pork Chops 700g
Morrisons Unsmoked Gammon Joint 750g
Utterly Butterly 500g
M Savers Mature Cheddar Typically: 700g
Morrisons Medium White Loaf 800g
4 M savers Part Baked White Baguettes 2 per pack
Morrisons Banana & Coconut Muesli 750g
Morrisons Baked Beans 410g
3 x M savers Chopped Tomatoes in Tomato Juice 400g
4 x M savers Marrowfat Peas (300g) 180g
Morrisons Lasagne Sheets 500g
2 x M savers Spaghetti 500g
Morrisons White Lasagne Sauce 430g
3 x Morrisons Apple Juice from Concentrate 3 x 200ml
Lancashire Farm Greek Style Yogurt 1kg

-£5.63
Total
£49.48

Allbran loaf! My Mum used to make that growing up. A wave of nostalgia just hit me. Lovely! It does give you the runs if you eat loads, though! (Same as All Bran!)

There is an old-fashioned book called Frugal Food by Delia Smith that you can still find second-hand for cheaps. It really is very cheap food, and you might need to update some of the spices to the modern era, but it served me well through years of being abjectly poor.