My lil girl just started kindergarten and we've had to add her snacks and lunches etc to our food budget, thus needing to save money where we can. Do any of you cheapasses have any suggestions on cheap, home cooked dinners that a 5 year old will eat? A link to a good website with some recipes and such would be awesome too.
Ground meat in mac and cheese, chili, breakfast casserole, things of that nature.
Many years ago, I was very young and very broke and times were tough. I had 4 mouths to feed, including two kiddies under 5. I'm talking - you've got two babies and the power has been shut off broke. The interweb was not yet a reality but the Moosewood Cookbook was.
http://www.moosewoodcooks.com/all-recipes/
Good luck - times get better.
Pasta based dishes can be quite economical. Stock up on ground beef when its on sale and add that to marinara sauce or make meatballs.
Tacos (what ever meat is on sale) with white rice and black beans. Add cilantro to white rice after its cooked if they'll eat it. Works best with the small street taco sized tortillas.
Do you own a bow?
Search for a recipe I posted here called Glop. Inexpensive, filling, and tasty!
Own a rice cooker by any chance?
I'm a big fan of stir fry. Some peppers, onions, rice, cabbage, and cheese if you're feeling fancy. Easy to cook, good for you, and nothing too offensive for kids (maybe he cabbage).
Pasta is crazy cheap but high in carbs.
My kids (3 and 5 years old) love salad too.
Check out Good and Cheap by Leanne Brown. You can download full cookbook from the internet for free
Beans and rice.... In this case red beans lol... I use more boring smoked sausage and use chicken stock instead of water... My picky son loves it... But he loves sausage lol http://allrecipes.com/recipe/authentic-louisiana-red-beans-and-rice/
Also hard to go wrong with chicken... We frequently do a whole chicken in the pressure cooker http://www.pressurecookerdiaries.com/pressure-cooker-recipes/dinner/how-to-roast-a-chicken-25-min-roast-chicken-recipe-in-a-pressure-cooker
Its quick and you can do a ton of things with the chicken... Did chicken tacos the other night and made some awesome chicken stock also on the pressure cooker when done (used her recipe for it)... Think I'll make some awesome chicken and rice soup.
We've had this thread before. I'll see if I can find it.
Kids love this: Cook flat noodles, drain and return them to the pot. add one can of cream of mushroom soup. Cut up hot dogs, add in, stir and heat up. Sounds gross, I know, but its way better than the sum of it's parts.
Cook same noodles. drain and remove from pot. Add in half an onion diced, and as much diced bacon as you think is appropriate. Cook, add in noodles and serve. Don't drain the bacon fat unless you've used a tonne of bacon. It adds flavour and keeps the noodles from sticking. Serve with a green salad.
Kids love this pasta sauce....
1.5 pounds of browned ground beef
2 cans of tomato soup
1 can of beef consomme
plus anything else you'd like. We add some garlic, onion and mushrooms.
We've found the slow cooker to be fabulous for this sort of thing. I can buy a whole chicken at Kroger for something like a buck a pound or thereabouts and then just put it in the cooker before I leave for work. All it needs is a couple pats of butter stuffed up under its skin and by the time I come home it is falling off the bone and ready to eat. You can pretty much put any cheap cut of meat in those things, give it a while to cook,and it'll come out pretty tender.
Also rice. Super cheap, nutritious, easy, and can be made into all sorts of things. We buy the 5 pound bags because storing the giant sacks is just too tough.
Stick noodles as my 6 year old calls it:
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 large can chicken
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 bag chow main noodles
1 handful cashews
Combine onion, celery, chicken (with water) and soup in a casserole dish. Stir and microwave 8 minutes or so until onion and celery are slightly cooked. Stir in cashews and 3/4 bag of noodles. Add remaining noodles to top and bake 30 minutes at 350 degrees.
There are dozens of hamburger casserole dishes out there. We have ~6 different ones we use, some with pasta and some without. The wife and I can usually get dinner twice with some left over for lunch out of most of them.
Buy bulk? A 15 pound turkey makes many, many dishes of frozen turkey & gravy. The remnants can be soup, stew or mini pot pies. (get the 5 y/o to help with dough and filling small quiche dishes)
You can pretty much live on rice and beans. I grew up with these staples when I was a kid in PR and had no idea that it was poor people food. Still cook the stuff today.
When you buy large bags of rice and dried beans, they get REAL cheap.
Chicken bought in bulk and put in the freezer is a good accompaniment.
Forget beef, Pork and Chicken are your friends.
When I was a dirt poor student in SD, deer hunting was my best friend.
There are several websites and/or cookbooks for recipes using ramen noodles. Also, there are online websites with recipes for foreign dishes (Indian, Chinese, etc.). We tend to do vegetarian dishes that I find online from these websites. Also, visit local markets geared towards foreign cuisine or a large farmers market. We have a couple of Indian and Chinese markets nearby. Some of the prices and selections will surprise you. If you have an Aldi's nearby they tend to have pretty good prices, you just have to look really carefully at the fresh fruits & veggies as sometimes they aren't in the best shape. I usually find that turkey legs (drumsticks & thighs) are usually pretty cheap because they aren't as popular and IMO they have the best flavor.
(Leaving my comment here because SWMBO is not WMBO anymore, and moving out soon. Therefore this non-cooking bachelor needs ideas lest I revert to my old Hamburger Helper days.)
Also, quesadillas(cheap frozen "peas and carrots" with the small carrot cubes make a good inclusion), goulash, anything with a lot of eggs. I'm more or less just listing off what I eat as a broke student and what I was fed as a broke child.
There was also this stuff we all used to call "mexican dog food" which was just ground beef, beans(whole and/or refried), salsa, corn, and maybe some other stuff in a big frying pan topped with cheese, made for good burrito filler, nachos, or sometimes just dump some smashed corn ships on top before adding the cheese and eat it straight.
I don't know why they call it hamburger helper, it's pretty darn tasty on its own.
I love my crock pot. I throw a chicken or some turkey bits in there with whatever I have around and have lunch for a few days.
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