What’s For Supper

As a parent I have been asked “What’s for Supper” on a daily basis! When living on a budget, you may seem to have a limited meal selection. When meal planning is done properly, you can have a wide “variety” of meals. The ingredients may seem like the same ho-hum items, but when you mix them up from one meal to the next, you can continue to enjoy each ingredient for ages to come. So what kind of meals are we talking about here? Well you definitely need to know what your tastes are and of those you intend to feed. But at the end of the day, you are looking for meals that can feed your entire family for a minimum of 2 meals in one cooking. This is also dependant on how big your family is. But for the sake of this article, I will assume a family of 4.

One such limitation in meal selection that I have seen recently is Rice and Beans. Now some may laugh or mock this selection, but these two items can go a long way. With rice, you can add a huge amount of variation simply by adding different flavours. To add the various flavours you may be looking for, simply go down the soup isle of your local grocery store and find the dried soup mixes that they carry. Based on my tastes, add a pack of soup mix for every 4 servings of rice you intend to make. The nice thing about this type of adding flavour, you can get a serving of vegetables in with the rice also. When you add various types of beans to the rice, you can make your rice very hearty!

Now I know what you are thinking, “I need my meals to be healthy also!” When you are planning your meals you can do some research as to what ingredients contain what nutrition value. So for this, I mean you don’t have to have a meat item to get proteins, or dairy to get calcium.

When I mentioned meal planning done properly earlier, what I was referring to was taking the time, prior to grocery shopping, to plan out the meals for your week or month. The reason why you want to plan out your week or month of meals is so that you can buy in bulk. When you buy in bulk, you typically get things cheaper. Another way to reduce your bill at the grocery store is to buy the price reduced items. You will have to freeze or process these items once you get home, but the little extra time will be huge in savings. You will also need to have storage for the extra food, but the savings will be such that the storage will basically pay for itself. If you find that you can’t afford your own storage unit, like a freezer, at the beginning, find a friend or two that are willing to help you out by using what you are not able to. And yes, they would need to pay for their portion.

So exactly what is this meal planning I am referring to? Meal planning is all about deciding at the beginning of the week or month exactly what you are going to be eating. Meal planning helps keep your budget and meals in check because you only need to go shopping once for the selected time period. So you would need to select the same number of recipes for the number of meals you are shopping for and then make a shopping list of each ingredient. Cross reference this list to what you still have in your cupboards and then remove items as needed. Best part is you can include your entire family in this process.

So to help you get started with your meal plan here is a list of 15 meals that can go a long way for a family of 4:

1. Chilli
2. Spaghetti
3. Home made Mac & Cheese
4. Stews
5. Omelets
6. Stir fry
7. Lasagna
8. Stuffed Peppers
9. Home made Soup
10. Pork / Beef roast
11. Chicken / Turkey – The whole bird
    1. With items 10 and 11, you can have multiple meals similar to the first night and also make sandwiches with the meat and soup out of the broth (liquid from cooking)
12. Bigger noodles that are stuffed
    1. Cannelloni
    2. Manicotti
13. Pancakes / Waffles
14. Casseroles
15. Pot Pie