Inexpensive meals for large families

Total Replies: 26

Author	Content
edlos1 May 24, 2004 1:15 AM	Hello, Can anyone can please share recipes for large families? We are a homeschool family of 8 and in need of easy, affordable and tasty recipes. I feel like I spend most of my time in the kitchen making the same things all the time because my mind goes 'blank'. Dh and dc are in desperate need of change! Thanks in advance to all who share! In Jesus Name, Lorraine
ASM May 24, 2004 7:33 AM	We are also a family of 8 and soon to be 9. Each month I sit with my family and ask them to list some meals they would like for the month. I make sure there are even amounts of pork, beef, chicken, meatless, turkey so we don't overdue anyone thing. They also help list lunches, breakfasts and snacks. We then do the shopping and package things accordingly into the freezer. The list becomes my inventory and we just cross off a meal as we use it. I also try to include one new recipe each month which sometimes ends up being a flop but by the end of the year I usually have at least 6 new meals for us.
gentile May 24, 2004 8:51 AM	does your family like soup? veggie soup is easy, as is chicken noodle soup. potato soup is easy too, and soups go a long way if you make bread to go with them. :) also, my family loves spaghetti with garlic bread and salad. none of that is too expensive...but we're only 5, not 8. and one of us doesn't eat yet. uhm, i'm trying to think of other recipies, lasagna can be made a little cheaper, and goes a long way with garlic bread and salad. Gen
VictorianGirl May 25, 2004 5:05 AM	We are a family of 7. One of our favorites is to take one package of Kielbasa and cut it into small pieces. Fry this and onions in a small amount of butter. When they are browned slightly add about 4 cups of cooked rice and stir it together. The kielbasa costs about $2.50. We also buy the breasts with the bone in and cut it up into small pieces and soak in Terakyi for 30 minutes and do the same with the onion and butter. After the onion is cooked we add the rice and about 4 TBS. soy sauce and stir. We then put the chicken on top. I got this recipe after we tried it at a restaurant. Meat goes a lot farther like this for us.
3boys May 25, 2004 11:43 AM	This is so easy! I put chicken thighs in a crock pot with BBQ sauce, cook all day on low, break apart when they are tender. I serve with steamed rice and vegetables!!
my4boys May 26, 2004 3:33 PM	Smoked Sausage and Fried potatoes goes over well in our house ! (we have 5 children, but one only 2 months). So I feed 6 of us now, and I always have left overs of this..of course, I make lots of potatoes! Anyway, slice up your potatoes and onion and place in skillet...add smoked sausage and it tastes wonderful! And its easy clean up...I usuaully will make some muffins along with this! Another easy one is pinto (soup) beans with ham in them...serve those w/fried potatoes and corn bread! tummy! Blessings~ Wendy, mom to Landon, Logan, Luke, Lane and Lily
ozark_mama_of_7 May 26, 2004 11:37 PM	Haystacks-- like taco salad, but with more meal-stretching properties. :-) Make chili-flavored meat and beans or beans only, serve in individual stacks with rice, lettuce, tomato, onions, crumbled tortilla chips, salsa and cheese sauce. Chicken and dressing-- mix cooked deboned chicken with leftover cornbread and plain bread or biscuits, sauteed onions and celery, a few beaten eggs, chicken broth, and sage, thyme, salt, pepper to taste. Bake until set. Serve with a gravy made from chicken broth, baked sweet potatoes and salad. Beef and barley burritos-- I make the filling for the tortillas with meat, beans and pearled barley, add shredded cheese and fixings. You can also use rice to replace barley and chicken, turkey or pork to replace beef. BBQ something (whatever meat is on sale) on buns --cook the meat in the crock pot, shred and mix with bottled BBQ sauce, and pile on buns. Serve with cole slaw. Cottage cheese and fruit when we just need a light meal. All we have to go with this is bread and butter or crackers, so it is still fairly economical. Breakfast for lunch or supper--pancakes, biscuits and gravy or omelets. Or have lunch at breakfast -- grilled cheese sandwiches, soup, or a casserole. My children seem to think this is a big change when we are all tired of the same things. Once in a while we splurge and have a nice dessert like apple dumplings or pumpkin pie and big glasses of milk for a meal! Yep, that's right. Heavy on the sugar and fat but it does fill us up. I second ASM's idea of asking for your family's input. The older children can have a price limit for the main items required as ingredients -- this makes them more aware of prices as you shop. Math practice and good prep for their future budgets too. Hope you can get a boost from some of these ideas! Debbie
MJVA24 May 27, 2004 8:56 PM	I am the oldest of eleven and cooked for about 17 people as we had people that lived with us for awhile before Iw as married. We were also very poor which made us very imaginative! One favorite that we didn't get to make too much as cheese is expensive is King Ranch chicken. We had alot of stewing hens we would stew a couple of those and take the meat off the bones. Using the broth we would thicken it with some salt and spices and cornstarch, and add mushrooms if we had them diced finely. Add the cooked chicken back in. Layer this in a rosting pan or large pan (depending on how many people you are serving) with grated cheese and flour tortillas. Top with grated cheese and bake until hot and bubbly. Serve with sour cream and salsa. Another thing we liked to make was swedish meatballs, we would usually use ground turkey as it was cheaper. Mix your mix with cracker crumbs, a little parsley, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper and a little nutmeg. Shape into pretty small meatballs, Brown in a frying pan in some oil. Remove from pan to baking pan, Using drippings from pan make a white gravy (using milk) and add salt and pepper to taste to it. Pour over meatballs in baking pan. Bake in oven for about an hour or until meat is cooked through. Serve with cooked noodles or mashed potatoes. I am sure I can think of some more, but will just end with those for now.
edlos1 May 30, 2004 6:36 PM	Wow! Thanks for so many great ideas! I really appreciate it...I have big eaters in my family and some of the ideas sound like they will work well for us. Keep 'em coming!!! The dc are especially bored with breakfast - they are not the cold cereal types. They want REAL food! So some quick and easy breakfast ideas would be great! Thanks again!!!
MJVA24 May 31, 2004 12:53 PM	Do they like egg casseroles? I have a couple of recipes, but this is one I make without a recipe Layer slices of bread in a the bottom of a buttered casserole dish, top with a layer of some kind of meat chopped ham, sausage etc. then a layer of grated cheese, top with more bread slices. Mix in a bowl 6 eggs, 3 c. milk, salt and pepper Pour over top of bread and cover with foil. Keep in fridge overnight. Next day bake at 400 for about 30-40 min. I think it is. You can also before you bake top with buttered crushed corn flakes. It is good!
ASM Jun 01, 2004 10:41 AM	For breakfast... Homemade granola is very filling. Omelettes Sausage gravy and biscuits (make the biscuits ahead) Annette
Tandy Jun 02, 2004 4:52 AM	One of my kids favorites for breakfast is a sausage swirl. You make some dough as if making biscuits, and roll it out on a floured surface, then take a pound of ground sausage and pat on top. Roll up and refrigerate over night. The next morning just slice as you would a cinnamon roll and place on ungreased baking sheet at 450 for about 15-20 minutes.
JulieInUSA Jun 03, 2004 10:24 AM	Baked Beans made from dried beans with corn bread and cole slaw-both made from scratch is the cheapest meal I can think of! My crew really likes this meal. You can make the beans with or without meat (ground beef, ground turkey, or pork roast). As long as there is plenty of brown sugar in the beans no one seems to notice the meat! ;oO
kb225 Jun 04, 2004 12:08 PM	We eat a lot of beans, and rice, and potatoes. I usually cook a crock pot full of beans. We eat them plain with a couple of sides one day. The next day I use them to make chili or taco soup. I grow my own tomatoes and peppers so it hardly costs us anything. Kendra
momma7 Jun 09, 2004 4:23 PM	This has been great tread!!
stampinjill Jun 17, 2004 10:09 AM	My kids really like flour tortillas. For breakfast, we roll up eggs (scrambled or fried) in a tortilla. Depending on your kids' tastes, you can add cheese, onion or other veggies to your eggs. You can also roll up bacon, sausauge or ham along with the egg for a very filling breakfast wrap. For lunches we roll up meat and cheese or peanut butter and jelly. I've used tortilla to use up leftover sloppy joe mix when I've run out of buns or to use up other leftovers (steak, turkey, chicken). Top with any number of items you need to use up. My kids also love it when I make little tortilla pizzas. I just spread out tortillas on a cookie sheet and spread pizza sauce (or spaghetti sauce) along with meat and cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes. Or we spread butter and cinnamon and sugar on tortillas and bake until crispy for an easy treat.
MOCA Jul 05, 2004 8:00 PM	For those of you who make beans in a crockpot, can you give more specific directions? And, what are some sample bean crockpot recipes? Thanks SO much! Janet
restoredthruHim Jul 06, 2004 3:02 PM	Eggs in a nest is another favorite here! You cut the center out of bread (you can use the center part for bread pudding, croutons, ect..) and you butter the pan. You put the bread in the pan, and then crack and egg in the "nest" part of the bread. You let it cook and then when it is done on one side flip it over and cook the other side. It is easy and fun for the kiddos to make! ;0) Another one is french toast that is made the night before. Make all the ingrdiants for french toast and put big slices of real french bread in the mixture and let it sit over night. In the morning just pop it in the oven and wallhaa, you have french toast. There is also a wonderful recipe on here for crockpot oatmeal...it is really, really good. Do a search, and you should come up with it. :0) Blessings~~Lesley~~
toddlermommy Jul 07, 2004 11:33 AM	I recommend the magazine a Taste of Home's special issue on Budget dinners full of full meals (including sides and even desserts) for around $1 per person. You can do an internet search for it (cost is about $5).
fromohio Sep 20, 2004 2:23 PM	my mother was from a family of 12 during the depression. they had lots of potato soup. my husband is from a family of 8 and they ate beans and cornbread alot.
MJVA24 Oct 01, 2004 11:49 AM	Our enconomy meals was pasta. That is what my family liked to eat. We often didn't have meat with it, but would instead have spaghetti with a red sauce without meat, spaghetti with cream and spices on it (we had a cow) It is like Fettichine without the parmasan. It tastes pretty good! One time we got alot of stewing hens really cheap so the meat would be around cooked chicken. Another cheap meal we made often was tacos. If we had cheese we didn't have sour cream and usually the other way around too. We would spice the meat we had (some of us didn't like meat on tacos) and we had alot of TVP so we would add this to stretch it. We sometimes made our own tortillas too if we didn't have any. We fed 17 people every day on a basic non-exsisitant income! It was very challenging! We ate lots of salads as we could get the pickings from the grocery store. We fed most of it to the cow, but kept enough for salads for the week! The cow provided us with a great variety, we made different sorts of cheeses, yogurt, etc. from the milk. Pudding, custard etc. We were given lots of bread so we cubed it, dried it and made chicken and stuffing dishes with cooked chicken and gravy. Anyhow, I just wanted to point out how we lived without surviving on beans! My dad doesn't really like beans and the only way we ate them usually was refried beans or in chili.
glutenfreefamil Oct 08, 2004 5:07 PM	We aren't a very big family (only four) but here is ideas from a family on a limited budget We save every bone from meat.......chickens, pork, beef roasts etc and we save the bones. We even boil chicken bones twice - it really does work. We will make huge pots of soup and then eat them for several days. We eat alot of Vietnamese food (husband is Vietnamese) and one of their secrets - cut food really small that way people won't take as much onto their plate. It looks alot when cut up small. One meal is a salad made from cabbage and pork and shrimp. You cut each up very small so it seems like a nice amount on your plate. I can post the recipe later if anyone would like. I know a pound of beef can go 3 - 4 meals in our house because the meat is sliced so thin and spread out in the meal. I hope this helps. Oh - one more thing......if you can find a local market that caters to ethnics alot of time the meat there will be cheaper than at an American store. This rule applies sometimes! I know soup bones have been much cheaper for us and pork is much cheaper. Usually $1 or more a lb. But you also have to figure in the gas mileage if it is out of the way. Also realize that these stores won't have the pleasant surroundings of the American store either....aka they might smell like a butcher shop and be really dirty, but in our opinion the savings are worth it:) Teresa
Mom_in_Ireland Oct 11, 2004 10:21 AM	Teresa, I would love some Vietnamese recipes! We have a son adopted from Cambodia and would love to have some southeast Asian food in our diet! I know it wouldn't be exactly the same, but it must be similar. Thanks! Barbara
MJVA24 Oct 11, 2004 10:39 PM	I would like some of the recipes you have, Teresa. The salad sounds good, although I do not like shrimp so would probably leave that out! : ) I think we have alot to learn from other cultures. My husband is Russian and the thing I have noticed is they will fix several different dishes, but will eat the same thing day after day. They can eat the same soup for as long as it is good for, and then have mashed potatoes and cabbage rolls three days in a row. They eat very well on special days, but quite simple otherwise. We tend to like alot of variety. I don't think we have any ethnic markets here as I live in a smaller town, but that is a good tip! Thank you!
waite101 Jul 21, 2006 7:30 AM	Hello All --- There is a great cookbook out there that is used to teach/train those planning to manage large food facilitys (schools, etc.) It's called Food For Fifty by Mary Molt. This is a college text book, but I found it at my library. If your library does not have this text ask them to check librarys that will share (mail) the book to your local library for your use, or ask them to order the book ( they usually will). This book gives reciepts for large groups. I make 1 reciept and divide it into 3 portions. I serve one portion and freeze the other 2 . This book has great reciepts, and great tips for cooking for large groups, and cost and nutritional values . If you want to buy this book , ( I did cause I used it soo much ) I got a used copy at Amazon for $16 ---- don't get a new copy, it cost around $90. I hope this helps . Waite101
joyand4 Jul 31, 2006 3:26 PM	I grew up on mostly southern-style food, and am the youngest of five. Mom often served cornmeal mush with breakfast. One morning, we ate it hot with butter and maybe syrup or jelly, like oatmeal. She put leftovers into a very well-greased bread pan and in the refrigerator. The next morning, she sliced the cold mush, dredged the slices in flour and pepper, and fried them in leftover bacon fat. Mush can also be a side dish for any meal. Grits can be eaten as a side dish or in a bowl by themselves, with or without gravy. My four children prefer them with Velveeta, for a higher-protein and calcium breakfast. Even the baby (14 months) likes it. My little ones like homemade baby pancakes, not much bigger than a half dollar. Pancake liquid doesn't have to be water or milk, either. Plain pancakes can be much more fun with orange, pear, pineapple or apple juice for the liquid. Sometimes we experiment further with nuts ( my mom has pecan trees) or a little coconut or dried fruit. For a treat like birthdays, they decorate their "funny face" pancakes with chocolate chips, maraschino cherries, and whipped topping. We also eat a LOT of oatmeal with whatever fruit is in season. I save any juice from fruit cans to go into our breakfast oatmeal. Sometimes we cook it with cup up canned pears or peaches. For birthdays, I often forgo the usual frosting on cakes, and splurge with sweetened whipped cream for between layers and the top instead (sometimes mixed with in-season berries). We save the leftover cream from the cake and add it to the oatmeal the next morning. Maybe not low fat, but delicious! Beans and rice together provide a complete protein. One of my favorite rice dishes is Spanish rice. Its ingredients kind of depend upon what's in the refrigerator, but usually involve long-grain rice cooked with a can of tomatoes, some celery and peppers and onions, maybe parsley, chili powder and Tabasco, salt and pepper, a touch of cloves and cinnamon or cocoa, sometimes cilantro or green onions. Without meat, it can be a side dish, but I like it as a one-pot meal, and throw in whatever sausage, bacon, turkey, etc. that I have. Jambalaya can be another economical way to clean out the fridge. Essentially, the same dish, but different seasonings. I usually use more poultry/seafood combos with it, and omit the chili powder, cilantro, cloves, cinnamon, cocoa. We frequently have cush for lunch. It's kind of like homemade stove-top stuffing. Crumble leftover biscuits and cornbread, and cook with onion and celery and whatever meat is handy, with a minimum amount of liquid, preferably broth. Pot pies are also good meat extenders. I sometimes make 5 or 10 piecrusts, and freeze the ones I'm not using. The filling is made with a little bit of meat made with usually chicken gravy, and the usual pot pie vegetables. Company really likes them, too! Chicken and rice soup is really cheap and good, too. Homemade bread jazzes any meal up, but that can be not just yeast bread, but tortillas or biscuits or muffins or scones, etc. I often buy chicken legs on sale and save them for chicken and dumplings whenever we have company. I boil and debone the chicken, and boil the dumplings in the broth. We make boiled biscuit-style dumplings here. Cook half the time with the lid on, and half the time with the lid off. It's a family favorite. I may have to look for the book by Mary Molt. The idea of freezing 2/3ds of the recipe sounds good. We make the egg casserole that MJVA24 mentions with green chilies for a little kick. This is an interesting thread! Especially with gasoline prices through the roof! Take care, Joy
healthandmercy Nov 14, 2006 1:02 PM	Whole Wheat Tortillas/Pinto Beans, "Mush" or Soup....yummmm We have the same for breakfast and lunch: Whole wheat tortillas with mashed pinto beans and cheese on the griddle. I cook enough beans at one time to fill about 10 /32 oz yogurt containers and freeze them. -or- we have 5 Grain "Mush" porridge (wheat, millet, lentils or peas, oats, brown rice) Put through a coarse grinder (Vita-Mix use code "06-001389" for free shipping ) I also freeze this. Soak 1 cup of flour overnight with a little kefir, cook in the morning with butter, cinnamon, sea salt and sweetener, such as raw honey. Lunch-Soup/Stew, made with a rich homemade broth, made from bones. Who says white flour is the cheapest?

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: MEMBERS, Moderators, SITEADMINS.]

Titus 2 Open Forums

Welcome to Titus 2 Open Forums!

Welcome to Titus 2 Open Forums!

Login

If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
If you already have an account, you may login here:
Username: Password:

[ Contact Us ]
Login