Making pancakes for bread
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
United States
October 16, 2012 3:28pm CST
Well, since I have more month than I have money, I have to improvise. I've done this before and I thought it was fine. My picky family will have to eat it as a hamburger bun or go without.
When have you had to improvise to get through the month?
What did you substitute with when you ran out of a food item?
Your thoughts mylotters?
4 people like this
15 responses
@mentalward (14690)
• United States
17 Oct 12
I've used bread but not pancakes for hamburgers. However, if I'm down to almost nothing I make pancakes in a little thing, I'm not sure what they're called, they're made to make pancakes or fried/scrambled eggs in a specific shape. I have one that is a circle but it makes the pancakes smaller and thicker than they would be normally. They turn into the "bun". Then I scramble some eggs and that's dinner. If I have any fresh veggies, I'll put them in the scrambled eggs first. It's almost like McDonald's McGriddle sandwich but without the meat. Of course, if I have some bacon, that goes on it. I've found them to be nicer to eat for dinner than for breakfast because they are kind of heavy. I always have eggs and the ingredients for pancakes handy because they're cheap.
I've also had ground beef without buns or bread but did have noodles and cheese so I made a casserole out of it and no one even wondered why there were no buns. It was kind of like a home made Hamburger Helper.
2 people like this
@mentalward (14690)
• United States
18 Oct 12
I actually found a heart-shaped pancake mold at Goodwill but bought the round one at Walmart, I believe it was just $1.00. They're sold on Amazon, too, but cheaper at Walmart.
I wanted to post a photo of some but myLot won't let me upload any photos right now. (Another glitch? My hopes were high because I just received two discussion notifications today after not receiving any for at least a week. Oh, well.)
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
Those round thingies you have sound great. I would like to find something like that. Your scrambled egg sandwich sounds great. I am going to have a fried egg for lunch today and make a sandwich out of it with a little mayo.
I have made ground beef in a skillet and drained it and then added mac and cheese to it. My family likes that.
@celticeagle (168126)
• Boise, Idaho
16 Oct 12
I think pancake batter is what is used for corndogs. Corn meal, pancake mix. When we run out of a food item we don't usually have anything we can use instead of it. I think that is a great idea. You are very inventive in the kitchen. If they don't like it they could just eat the hamburger by itself. Their option.
1 person likes this
@celticeagle (168126)
• Boise, Idaho
20 Oct 12
I know about picky eaters. My grandson is picky and wouldn't eat the meatloag his mom fixed tonight because it had onions and greenpeppers in it. And yet he likes the fast food hamburgers that come with onions cut up on it. He is fickle.
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
Yep, SIL and daughter wouldn't try the pancake as a hamburger bun, even though I told them how good it was. I was surprised that it was so good.
I've made homemade corn dogs by placing the hot dogs in a roasting pan and pouring corn bread mix (Jiffy) over them. I make sure the dogs are well covered on all sides by the corn bread mix. My family likes them. They are eaten with a fork because we don't have sticks to put in them after they are done. My corn dogs are rectangular because I cut between the dogs and serve them.
I have to be a bit creative in order to feed my picky family... if they don't like it they can buy something to eat or go without. I make good food.. had some flops, but not many.
1 person likes this
@suspenseful (40192)
• Canada
17 Oct 12
When I run out of bread, and that is because I just plan a week at a time, if I have wraps, I will use them, or I will make biscuits. But that also if I have butter and that is sometimes expensive. I will also make crepes or I will make a sort of pancake. Of course, I will use rice or pasta or potatoes. Most of the time it is getting through the week as I buy weekly but when bread or anything is expensive, I will buy something else.
1 person likes this
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
Bread is very cheap at Ingles which is just a couple of miles from us. It's 98 cents a loaf. It's $1.29 at Save a Lot (no savings there) and it's about that at Walmart here, so Ingles is the best place for us to shop. We shop the yellow tags (sales) and if it doesn't have a yellow tag we don't buy it. But when I have no money to buy groceries, I have to make due with whatever I have and improvise.
I buy for a month, but I always have more month than I have money for food. I spent over $400 and some of that was for non food items like TP which is high and paper towels which are $14 for 12. They are jumbo rolls and last longer so they are worth it.. but all the necessities of non food items like dish soap, laundry soap, over the counter Tylenol and so forth.. it bites into my food money. It just doesn't last.
Tonight SIL will buy some groceries.. he will probably spend $60 but that won't last the two weeks left in the month... so he will have to buy some more... I can't help it... I only make so much from SSDI and online. I am supposed to buy all the food and the Internet and he pays everything else.. oh yes... I pay $200 on the rent.. they pay $550. We rent from SIL's mom.. she was an investor and bought this house for us to buy within 5 to 7 years... if we don't buy it in the 7th year she said she would go ahead and sell it to get her money back. I wish she would just let us buy it as rent on a contract. SIL is too in debt right now to get a mortgage loan.. he has a GI loan but he said they would laugh him out of the office with all the expenses he has right now. He has to get his car paid off.. in 2 years.. and then maybe he can do something like get a mortgage.
@natliegleb (5175)
• India
17 Oct 12
its a good combination to go with it and i am sure it will taste real good.i am also going to try it
1 person likes this
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
You will like it.. it's really good and you can't tell the difference. I'm really keen on texture.. and the soft pancake with the hamburger is just out of this world.. good!
@NailTech (6874)
• United States
16 Oct 12
I probably would have just left the bun or anything else as far as bread off the hamburger and ate it alone, if I had to. Pancake buns don't sound appealing to me and we could save those for breakfast. Good idea though. Did they end up liking them? I have to improvise alot and today I did that when I made some plum cake pie and used some liquid agave instead of the sugar granules the recipe called for and it still tasted good.
1 person likes this
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
My daughter liked them made as toast. I toasted some for the hamburgers, but I was the only one to eat them. I couldn't tell the difference. I had the hamburger and ketchup between the pancake 'buns' and it was wonderful... but son in law and daughter were too fussy and picky to even try it. They ended up only eating hamburger because there was nothing else to speak of to make.
@911Ricki (13588)
• Canada
17 Oct 12
I dont like buns with my hamburger (I know weird). I usually only have to feed myself and the brats. So with the cat food sometimes I will add water to their wet food to make it go further. For myself I have done a few things to save money. In college I use to eat the weirdest combinations just to maje a meal. I use to mix banana with yogurt granola, then add it on toast. I use to eat real cheap with sidekicks, and bran bars with apple juice (typical college eating).
1 person likes this
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
I love yogurt, granola and bananas and strawberries. I will have that for breakfast when I have it. I also have put yogurt and Cheerios together and at them together when I had no milk. I've put shredded wheat and orange juice when I had no milk. It was weird, but tasted okay to me. I like oatmeal, banana and yogurt. I like coffee with buttered toast dropped into it.. it's called soaky. I also like oatmeal with buttered toast broke up into it. I just love that.
@flowerchilde (12529)
• United States
17 Oct 12
I have cooked a meal for my family before without my sharing any of the meat by making a gravy and I will have bread and gravy. Things have been better though since those days, right after we bought our small and humble home, which made things tight for a while. Now I supplement our income by doing some childcare five days a week.
@GardenGerty (160883)
• United States
17 Oct 12
Hey, that sounds good. You can add some seasonings into the batter, like onions, if you have them. So many bread companies are making "thins" to eat your sandwiches on anyway, so you are right in style. To stretch the budget here we will get the processed ham that is boneless, and slice it for sandwiches, cube some of it into casseroles,use some of it with dried beans (really cheap) and so forth. It goes a long way that way. I always have eggs on hand. I keep both canned milk and dried milk to have for cooking.Hubby and I will eat "breakfast casseroles" that I put little bits of ham, bacon or sausage, chopped fresh veggies, leftover veggies, etc into and whatever kind of cheese. We do not always eat bread with our meals. You do what you have to to fill the belly. I will stop at one particular store on my way home from work in the morning as the morning is when they have marked down things so we always have potatoes to microwave and top with left overs or to make into soup, etc.
1 person likes this
@cher913 (25782)
• Canada
16 Oct 12
wow, this topic is right up my ally! just yesterday i went to make a gravy and meat combo. (gravy and some meat left over from our Canadian Thanksgiving a week ago and the rest was steak left over from a couple of days ago) and thought i would serve it with rice. no go! no rice left downstairs in the basement (where i keep extra cans, sort of like a pantry that i have put together under the stairs)
hubby had bought some little potatoes that happened to be on sale so i quickly cut them up, boiled them and we had a good supper.
i do shop once a week (we take my inlaws shopping as hubby's dad has altzheimers and his mom doesn't drive) but if i run out of something during the week, i wait til we shop. i never set foot in a grocery store other than my once a week visit.
as for the money issues, oh yes, i SO know what you mean. often times, hubby and i have had very little money between pays (he also gets paid once a week but we also put money towards our mortgage once a week).
unfortunately, this happens to me every so often too but it is good that we can be creative, eh?
1 person likes this
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
Yes, it takes a lot of ingenuity to make ends meet when we are short of funds to provide food for the family. I had a little rice the other day but nothing to make gravy out of, so I took a flavor pack out of a Ramen Noodle package, and made gravy with butter, flour, milk and ramen flavor packet. It turned out quite good. It fed us for lunch and supper and there was some left for the next day.
I have those Mac and Cheese in a box with the powdered cheese. It's not very tasty.. I can hardly taste the cheese, so I made it creamier and tastier by adding a little mayonnaise to it.. and it was wonderful. My daughter turned her nose up to it because I told her it had mayo in it, but if she is hungry enough she will try it.
@jsitko (1169)
• United States
17 Oct 12
That sounds like a great substitute for any kind of bread. My Mom used to do tht a long time ago when I was a kid. There were 8 of us in the family so she had to make the money and the food stretch. Many times we had our vegetables and meat mixed in the pancake batter too, it was real good. There were a few times there wasn't enough meat to go around so Mom would chop it up and use it in the pancake or in a gravy over the pancake.
I still do this sometimes or I will make some kind of cheese and meat roll ups just like using pita bread. Pizza tacos are good too. Just need to be a little creative and your family will love them. Pancake is cheap enough to use in place of other more expensive items. It also has a longer shelf life which makes it very handy to have.
@wilsongoddard (7291)
• United States
26 Oct 12
Why not make biscuits instead? Homemade biscuits only require a few inexpensive ingredients and are fairly easy to make. It's been a little while since I baked any, since I have spent a few months in a space where I don't have an oven; however, if memory serves, the total time from prep to pulling the sheet out of the oven is 30 minutes or less.
@much2say (55901)
• Los Angeles, California
16 Oct 12
We used to live right across the street from the market - so if I needed anything, we could easily walk over and get it. But now that we've moved, I have to drive to go get even one item - and sometimes it's just not worth the time or gas to go get it. I've used regular slices of bread for hamburgers and hot dogs - don't want it, don't eat it kind of thing (pancakes sound like an interesting idea!). I don't like cooking with baby carrots, but sometimes I've had to take some out (that is normally my kids' snack) to toss in salads or soups or whatever because I ran out of carrots. I know I've had to substitute various spices and such . . . like today I need Worchestershire sauce but I keep forgetting to get it - so I will probably use this Japanese pork chop sauce in place of it. Or I've had to use beef broth instead of chicken broth or visa versa because that's all I had.
1 person likes this
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
That sauce sounds interesting. I will have to look for it. I don't have any Worcestershire sauce either. I like steak sauce and when I have it I put it in stews for flavor.. it really gives the soup a boost.
@courtknee525 (3742)
• United States
17 Oct 12
That actually might be really good. It kind of reminds me of the McDonald's breakfast sandwich that uses pancakes as the "bread" with sausage, egg, and cheese in between. They're actually pretty good because the pancakes have little dots of syrup already cooked in so you get the salt of the meat but the sweetness from the pancakes.
I'm sure it would be similar when using it with hamburgers. Sometimes instead of buying a package of hamburger or hotdog buns (there's only 3 of us so they usually end up going to waste because we don't use the whole package in time) we'll use slices of bread for buns. I'm sure we've improvised with other things too but I can't think of anything else right now.
@PointlessQuestions (15397)
• United States
18 Oct 12
I didn't have any bread, so I made pancakes out of flour, water and egg. I didn't even have any milk for it, but it came out great and tasted just like a hamburger and bun. I will do it again if I have to. I have bread now.
@bunnybon7 (50973)
• Holiday, Florida
17 Oct 12
i couldnt tell you how many times ive made pancakes or just as the kids always call it "fried bread" for bread. mine are so used to it through the years its a bit of a treat for them even grown. a while back i had to do it for we ran out and no one was ready to go to the store and when my grown kids saw it they said, yay, mom made fried bread. now if i could figure a substitute for potaoes it would be great and /or meat.
