Os Moneysaving on a Limited Diet

katylou6180

Hi all,
It's taken me a while to post here, I am a now redundant(ergh) wife, and mother of 1 son. My son and I eat a normally well balanced diet with a few treats here and there, put something in front of him...he will eat it.
The issue here is my OH, who lives on a very limited diet (ma in law has a lot to answer for!) and I find myself cooking sometimes two meals every night, one for me and son, other one for him. I wondered if anyone has any tips to pass on about saving money on the basics he will eat....even making (healthier) options of what he will eat so that we can all eat them without clogging our arteries (maybe with addition of fruit and veg for me and son) and just generally save me time and money! It is probably a total impossibility.....the foods he eats: Meat(all forms inc burgers/sausages), Bread, Potatoes in all forms apart from new and boiled/steamed, Yorkshire Puddings, pastry, Cheese, Chocolate inc cakes, eggs (only if they're scrambled) pate, oxtail soup and crisps. OH is convinced that if he eats a fruit or vegetable he will be sick or choke...have been up the road of hypnotists/counselling etc but to no avail...am at the end of my rope...and any advice given would be appreciated!

Addiscomber

The usual suggestion is to disguise the veg by blitzing it with a food processor or blender into a sauce e.g. carrots and celery blitzed with tomatoes in Bolognese Sauce, thus stretching a smaller amount of meat. However there are only so many dishes that you can do this in.

Is it really not possible to cook meals that include meat and veg but just not serve him the veg? When I was a child I went through a phase of not liking meat and my Mum just cooked "normally" but I was only given the veg and gravy. (We did have some non meat meals so I got adequate protein.) In a way he is being childish and so you may have to treat him as such. I would just be grateful that your son isn't following his example.

Any chance of him cooking his own meal sometimes if he doesn't like what you and son are eating? Not particularly money saving, but he might realise what a pain it is or you to have to cook two meals.

By the way, please don't blame his mother. I can see some poor girl in future saying something similar about me, but she won't know how hard I have tried for years to get a wide variety of foods accepted. In the end you just get worn down by picky eaters who make unpleasant comments about the meals you have spent ages thinking up and cooking, and you take the line of least resistance. I think some kids can just be a right pain the backside over food and are unshakeable.

pretz_2

i would like to give you my sympathies as i have the same issue although it is with a 3 year old, but from what doctors ect have said it emotional set, restricting their diets is a sense of control that only they have so please don't call the man childish he can't help it to a degree.

anyways i found that if i batch cook DDs meals up on a evening when i have a spare few hours then during the week when i'm too busy to even think about cooking 2 different meals they are already done, HM ready meals are great as they are cheap, make you avoid reaching for the take away menu and no added nasties.

also i wouldn't add any veg to his sauce blitzted he WILL taste the difference

katylou6180

Thanks for the advice:) When you said about batch cooking...got me on to a thing thinking-does anyone have any recipes out there for like "freezable, microwaveable, homemade...er junk food" I have tried making bacon rolls, burgers in buns etc and freezing them to nuke in the micro...quite successfully...guess i'll have to get a better grip of what freezes and what doesnt out of what he eats, then batch cook and freeze him some dinners...although I have yet to attempt to freeze my own batter round sausages for "toad in the hole!" lol, any help would be appreciated and it's nice knowing i'm not alone!! I am just dreaming of the say where I can have the slow cooker on...or one pot cooking and all i need is er...one pot!!

Fire_Fox

Will your OH eat baked beans or tomato ketchup? Both count towards five a day.

pretz_2

well the toa in the hole thing is easy theory wise i have never tried it but my mum is a convience queen and buys the aunt bessie things and to what i can remember they freeze it all together in a tin foil tray which has been coated in oil but its all uncooked so i would try prepping it and then freezing just before you would normally put it in the oven IYSWIM most things are freezable write a list on here of what he normally eats meal wise and someone will either a) tried freezing it before or b) no whether it can be frozen or not

Mags_cat

For yorkshire pudding/toad in the hole you can just freeze the made up batter in portions. They don't need to be "pre-formed" if you see what I mean

As long as you remember to defrost it, it works perfectly.

katylou6180

You can do toad in the holes? do you have to cook the sausages, he eats baked beans, but I don't think I could live on baked beans for a lifetime:) Thanks for all help on this post, at least I can batch cook him, and then only cook one meal a day and reheat-I Hope:)