Time to pull in belts again....

babyshoes

If you get a bag of bread mix, you can easily do 'diy' pizzas - make up the dough, roll it out into portions and part-bake it, spread a mixture of tomato paste, herbs and oil thinly on it, then leave it out with a bunch of toppings - everyone does their own when they are ready to eat.

RAS

sandraroffey wrote: »

doesnt buildings insurance cover leaking roofs????

It usually covers accidental damge but not lack of maintenance?

motherkitty

Know just how you feel - DH and DS have always been the awkward ones in my family that you have to plan the meals around, but there are only 4 of us!
Think the sack of spuds and HM pizza idea is great, although you dont need to buy a packet of mix. I know you are pushed for time but you ca make a base very easily with value plain flour (half a bag) and a packet of dried easy blend yeast. Add a tsp of salt and tsp of sugar and mix with warm water. Just knead for a couple of minutes and pop back in the bowl you mixed it in, cover with a cloth and just leave it in the kitchen for and hour and a half or so to do its thing. Knock back, knead for a minute and roll out to fit tins and top with sauce which you can make with a tin (or maybe two of tomatoes and some sugar, seasoning and herbs. My DS will only eat cheese and tomato so one stays plain, put whatever you have on the others. This amount would probably feed 6 or 4 more hungry people. You would have to tweak it for your own family.
Could you make a huge batch of bolognese sauce and freeze? Use some for bolognese (serve with cous cous for hubby), use some for chilli which could go on jackets, those that don't like spicy ould have cheese and beans.
A good idea I think to have the family conference and ask everyone what there favourite dinners are, then you can sit and think how you can arrange them so that everyone gets what they like at the best convenience for you.
I must admit that i don't like saying 'if they're hungry they will eat what you give them'. If you are going to bother feeding them you might as well be giving them something they are going to enjoy eating!

aliasojo

RAS wrote: »

It usually covers accidental damge but not lack of maintenance?

Lol...it's not actually anything to do with maintenance...it's 'wear and tear'.

Will need to give the pizza thing a go, I've never done a hm one before.

misskool

Can you convince DS's to help out with the cooking?

Otherwise, the usual rules of batch cooking what they like, freezing individual portions and then everyone gets their own defrosted meal at dinner time.

I know the feeling, we're doing the house at the moment and we have no kitchen

Patchwork_Quilt

I like the idea of having a conference and coming up with a number of meals that everyone likes. Could you maybe have a meal plan? I used to have a plan that covered Monday to Friday for four weeks and then we would start again. Three weeks might be enough and they could fend for themselves on weekends.

Good luck. Doing up a house is stressful. Take care

bunny_too

Hi, i make bread most days , have just found a great quick recipe posted by Thriftlady. You put flour, yeast, salt, sugar, and liquid all in together. Knead for 5mins and then leave for 2 hours. Makes pizza base,rolls,loaf etc. I can't cut and paste, but you could pm thriftlady. Good luck with the roof.x:money:

aliasojo

misskool wrote: »

Can you convince DS's to help out with the cooking?

Otherwise, the usual rules of batch cooking what they like, freezing individual portions and then everyone gets their own defrosted meal at dinner time.

I know the feeling, we're doing the house at the moment and we have no kitchen

I think the batch cooking thing is a good way to go, at least then I dont have to worry about set meal times either and everyone can please themselves for the time being. I'll need to try to be organised and set a day aside.

As for the cooking help.... one son works long shifts in a physical job and the other has disibilities and would be a danger with anything other than oven chips. OH does a lot of the cooking though so that's always good.

Aril

I don't make my own pizza bases as I am not at home a great deal. I buy pitta breads and then make a quick tomato sauce with ketchup/puree and herbs and spread that over. We then add toppings and mozarella or Edam. I cover the other pitta breads with garlic butter if I'm feeling naughty:D and then stick them all in the oven to cook. You could use French sticks cut up for bases if you preferred.
Aril

valk_scot

If you're going to attempt to get a refurbishment grant don't hold your breath. It took three years for our application to work up to the top of the pile and the only reason it didn't take longer was that a piece of our masonary started flaking chunks into the street and we got a dangerous building notice slapped on us. (Quite rightly, but it did flag up the Council's attention.) After that it took another year to get the works actually rolling. It got to the point where every time it started raining my daughter, who wasn't even at school back then, would get out of bed at night and put her waste paper bin under the leak in her bedroom ceiling.

When we had the works in progess (I spent five months either DIY-ing, moving furniture, cleaning up after workmen or sitting in a Council planning office because we had a BIG refurbish) I would give myself one hour every morning after taking the kids to school to get the house basics done and set up some sort of meal for the night. After that it was all systems go till school pick-up. At night I would prep veg or weigh out the ingredients for the breadmaker or whatever so I really didn't need to do much cooking during a busy day. At weekends I would batch cook. I had a two week menu plan that I'd worked out for speed and efficiency and I just recycled that over and over again. Might work for you too during the worst of the DIY and roof repairs? Just don't do what I did and have the kitchen and central heating redone after the exterior shell was finished!:eek: