Living on a budget

We are on a tight budget too, and we have things like: rice with beans, rice with meatballs in mushroom soup (make meatballs. drain frying pan. put meatballs and a can or two of mushroom soup into a casserole dish, and bake at 350 for 30 minutes) spaghetti mini pizzas - I make the dough from scratch breakfast for dinner - pancakes or waffles perogies, when they are on sale stir fry on rice - sliced beef or chicken, fried in a deep frying pan with sliced peppers, sliced onion, snow peas, and mushrooms. Oh, and olive or vegetable oil. Or whatever veggies you think sound good. Add a bit of soy sauce, and this is great. If you don't have soy sauce, just put a bit of butter into the rice. Why not try looking online at allrecipes.com?

we are on a super tight budget because we are in debt up to our eyeballs... how about home made mac and cheese? how about chicken pot pie? have you tried making soups? there are great recipes on the net for soups, do you have a breadmaker? that is something you might look for at garage sales...we make our own bread, pizza dough, desserts etc with ours (we got ours free from friends who had an extra) we eat a lot of pasta, we make our own sloppy joes, we have pancakes and sausages for supper some nights and how about chili?

How about making your own mac and cheese. It's simple, inexpensive and very good. Here is another good recipe: Cajun pasta Fresca INGREDIENTS: 1 pound vermicelli pasta 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 teaspoon minced garlic 13 roma (plum) tomatoes, chopped (or use canned) 1 tablespoon salt 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese DIRECTIONS: Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain. While the pasta water is boiling, in a large skillet over medium heat, briefly saute garlic in oil. Stir in tomatoes and their juice and sprinkle with salt. When tomatoes are bubbly, mash slightly with a fork. Stir in parsley, reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes more. Toss hot pasta with tomato sauce, Cajun seasoning, mozzarella and Parmesan.

I do the same thing sometimes. I make about 10 different dishes and just mix them up good. Sometimes I'll try new dishes from the Taste of Home Simple Dishes magazine. They are good, only have a few ingredients and are quick to make. AT PEACE WITHIN

We are also on a tight budget. One thing that I have found to be cheap and easy as well is meatballs. I just use a bag of frozen meatballs from the freezer section of the grocer and two jars of marinara sauce. Just throw it all in the crock pot and cook it on high for an hour...then on low for another hour. My fiance loves them as well as the kids. He says it's better than Subway. You can have them with bread or by themselves. You might even make some spaghetti with them. We also have things like tuna noodle casserole, taco salad, chicken enchiladas, different rice dishes that I make with usually chicken, rice and a veggie, and yes....we also do the homestyle bakes! I like to make things that don't call for a lot of ingredients, or things that I already have the ingredients for. Things that are easy to keep around such as flour. It is the key ingredient in lots of things and not only can you make dinner...but dessert as well!. You should check out chefs.com. I think that's the one where you can type in some ingredients and it will match a recipe with what you have. They have some great ideas on there. I hope this helped you out! Good Luck:)

I find myself doing the same thing on a low budget with 2 kids the ages are ranged between the two...I look for sales or deals on things and buy them and try to get creative..i make goulashes not sure if I spelt that right or other things...I've made home made sloppy joes just with putting spice and tomato or spahgetting sauce in hambugar and putting it on toast...I'm not creative by all means but I try...If you want different flavor for your meat that is reallllllllly good a friend of mine told me about it's tex mex...It's wonderful

not sure if anyone has mentioned a crockpot but they are GREAT for easy, throw together meals. You can just about throw anything in there, let it simmer all day and have enough to feed the family and maybe some left overs. What we like to do is a roast and then after we have it for dinner one night, then the next night I make a cassarole with the left over meat. Or make stroganoff with the extra meat. We also like to have a while baked or rotissiere chicken one night, then the next night either make enchiladas or make soup with the left over meat. Do you buy in bulk? Like from Costco or Sams Club? They have really good meat there and some of it is very inexpensive and you can buy alot at one time and save money. That might be a great investment for such a large family.

Well... unless I know how much money you have to live on... tight budget does not mean anything. I am also on a tight budget... but I still eat well because I cut down on everything else before cutting down on food. I do that because food is what keeps you healthy... and health is the primary concern. If I want to eat cheaply... I make spaghetti bolognese... which involves buying mince meat, carrots, tomatoes, and an oignon. You fry the sliced oignon and carrots in olive oil... add the mince meat and turn until brown... cut the tomatoes on top... add salt, pepper, bolognese mixed herbs (which you can buy in a jar), three peels of lemon... fill your pan with water and let simmer for half an hour. Boil your spaghettis... put spaghettis on your plate with bolognese on top. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese. You have a very heathy and filling meal for very little money. Chicken legs are also very cheap. Cook them under the grill or in the oven and serve with green peas. Make a potatoe omelette. Slice an oignon and some potatoes... fry them in olive oil... and once cook... add your beaten eggs to it. Delicious. Make a potatoe salad. Boil some potatoes and some eggs (separately). Slice the potatoes and the eggs in a bowl. Add salt, pepper, chives, olive oil, vinegar and mayonnaise. Delicious and filling. You might add a raw sliced oignon to it. Don't slice it too fine... otherwise the taste of oignon takes over. Make a carrot salad. Grate some carrots (medium) and one piece of garlic per carrot. Add olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper, mayonnaise. You may also add some sliced boil eggs like with the potatoe salad. Cook a cauliflower. Make a white sauce. Put the cauliflower in a dish... pour the white sauce on top. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Put in the oven until cheese has melted. Buy some ham and leeks. Boil the leeks and place them on the ham (two slices per person)... pour white sauce on top... sprinkle with grated cheese... roll ham around the lot and place in the oven until cheese is melted. I use tin foil under the ham and use it to fold and keep the ham around the leeks.

I know that the homestyle bakes, with the conveinient prep and low price, seem like a good deal, but you would really do better with the grocery budgetb while getting some variety if you would start with the meat counter, and see which meats are on sale. Then buy cheap side items to go with these meats, such as the store brand flavored noodles, mac and cheese, rice, frozen vegetables. Basically, make sure you fill your freezer first and go around that. This way you get variety while staying within a budget.

In our family, i experienced handling our budget meals too. What i usually did is prepare a delicious lunch in which the budget for a dinner will still be enough. So for lunch it is a bit expensive and for the dinner i make it for a cheaper one, so the budget for a day will still be equal. In some instances, i look a recipe over the internet and try to delete the other ingridients which i think will not have an effect so much on the taste.

I always try to make enough for two meals, one for the table and one for the freezer. I buy fruits and veggies during the season and freeze them so I will have them when their prices are sky high. I also use ground turkey in place of hamburger, no one knows the difference once its cooked and its a lot cheaper.

Make a dough of wheat flour and roll it out into a circle. It should not be dry. Take the previous days vegetables and put them in the centre. Cover it with another circle of dough, wetting the edges to act as glue. Lightly roll it again to spread the vegetable evenly. roast it on a frying pan with little butter till it is light brown and cooked. This will utilise the left over and give the kids something new to eat. U can boil potatoes, smash them, put in a little butter and cheese or if you like, some spices. Wet a slice of bread, squeeze out excess water, put in the mashed potatoe and roll the bread around. Deep fry it till golden brown. The kids will love it. May God give you pleanty in life.

Hi, i can understand your situaion and i find no harm that yo r making do with a tight budget and managing things to save up. Thats good in a way, and i guess you are eating good home cooked food as well, just that for the kids it maybe becoming a little routine, to have the same things day in and day out, they need a chnage i guess. Maybe if we knew what all you buy and what all you cook, we could suggest a variation if recipe, keeping those things in mind only, otherwise its difficult here to tell the recipes, as things used in those, maybe different from what youre buying, within the limited budget. But i can say that even a little small kind of a change in food at times, is enough to keep the kids happy, some soups an bread or some chips or well things like that or a pizza or burger made at home.

I always cook a meal which can last for 2 days,keep it in the fridge and steam or fried it again or microwave and there 2 meals in 1 cooking day.

We also live on a tight budget but you can be creative with the simplest things. As long as you have a couple of staple foods, eg. potatoes, eggs, rice, pasta. you can do lots of things. We often make curries because you can add almost anything to them to make them different and you can make a lot at a time and keep it for a day or two in the fridge. Usually we have a little bit of meat but a vegetable curry is just as easy, cheaper and will last a little longer. With potatoes, you can mash, fry, bake, roast, boil. Any of these can give you the basis for a meal. I have very young kids so I try to make things look fun if I can. eg. I have mixed mashed potatoes with mushy peas to give them green mash and then I'll maybe just give them fish fingers with it. Don't restrict yourself with which foods goe with each other. I like beetroot and mint sauce sandwiches! (Might sound strange but it's quite healthy and not very expensive particularly if you make your own sauce - you could probably get a simple recipe off the internet) I sometimes use bbc.co.uk/food where you can type in a recipe or you can find a recipe to make with ingredients you've already got so you don't have to go out and buy special stuff. For your staple foods, they are all pretty much equal in taste and quality so a cheap version is just as good as a more expensive one.

You could try burritos they are pretty cheap to make. You could make the tortillas from scratch and have the kids help out. They are pretty inexpensive to make. Baked potatoes are another thing we like to make. We just do ours in the microwave. I add galic salt then chili and shredded cheese. You don't even have to add the chili. Have you done ramen noddles and a sandwich for dinner?

We used to be on a tight budget, and now we are going back to it because we now have a limited income. We stock up on cans or pork and beans and chili. We buy lean ground, chicken drumsticks, and the family sized packages of pork chops, plus farmer sausages. We also get spaghetti sauces, various kinds on sale, and macaroni and spaghetti in the no name boxes. We buy salad stuff on sale. Now depending on what kind of spaghetti sauce, you can make spaghetti and meatballs, or by varying the spices, you can have Mexicali macaroni (using the hot spaghetti sauce with red and green peppers and coriander or cilantro), you can also make a sauce for the pork chops, etc. If you shop at a bulk food store, you may be able to get the dried goods cheaper, and if you grow your own herbs, you will also be better ahead.

Usually I make things that can be eaten for several days like chili, spaghetti, fried rice. I never buy food unless it's on sale. I only feed myself and my bf but I still have to watch every penny. You could also make stews and casserole. Not sure if you're already making those kinds of meals already.

one thing you can also do is cook a big batch, and freeze it in. That way you don't have to eat the same thing twice but you can leave a few days in between

I too live on a tight budget! but a cheap meal that me and my wife do is fritos, chile beans ( usally nallys ) cheese, and sour cream. aka frito pie.