Feeding a family of just 2 on very limited budgets

Byatt

Lots of wonderful ideas! My now adult daughter was a "fussy eater" so understand. Is it possible to let her choose how much she wants on her plate. I wonder if a plate of food seems overwhelming to her.

moonpixiewitch

my daughter ate nothing but yoghurt for 18months when she was a toddler - she s 22 now ! I remember sitting at the table for 2 or 3 hours at some meal times "waiting" for her to finish . we tried playing "aeroplanes" and all sorts of other daft tricks to try and get her to eat something , to no avail. eventually we contacted the health visitor , who told us - "if all she eats is yoghurt , then let her , she will get bored eventually " - this was the best advice !
try not to worry too much children will not starve themselves , if she is hungry she will eat . try to involve her in the preparation of the food , maybe you cold make your own chicken nuggets ? at least you would know what is in them . another thing we found worked was food she could pick up with her fingers , so tiny carrot sticks, peas , sweetcorn (she used to pick them up one at a time !) . lots of praise for trying new things and please dont be angry with her if she doesnt want to eat , i know its hard because you are worried.
my mum came up with a really neat trick too , only put really small portions on her plate , children are often overwhelmed by the sight of what appears to them to be a mountain of food.
good luck

charlies-aunt

Its a big worry when children won't eat but when I consulted my doctor when DD1 wouldn't eat anything but Petit Filou fromage frais - he just said it was just a phase & that no normal child will starve themselves to death!! not very helpful!. . . but he did say that eating a very restricted variety of foodstuff wouldn't do great harm in the long term and told me not to worry to much.

I tried to encourage her by serving tiny portions of whatever everyone else was eating - cutting veggies up into fun shapes, using fancy little plates etc,etc. I think what helped a lot was that DD1 went to quite a few birthday parties and she would eat and try different things because the other children were eating them

ElleWoods

Hi there, I'm also a single mum on a tight budget. My son is almost 5 and is a pretty good eater now but like most kids, he's had his phases where he wouldn't eat much or would only eat certain things. He still has days where he won't eat much but I don't worry as he's pretty healthy.

Firstly, you are doing the right thing not forcing her. I recall an episode of Supernanny where the parents forced food into their daughter's mouth and she wouldn't eat a thing because of this. Supernanny was horrified and made lots of changes. One thing she did was get them to eat while sat at the table, but you already do that so are halfway there! She also gave the child a set time to eat (say 20 mins) and if she didn't eat her food by then it would be thrown away and the child wouldn't get anything in between meals, which would mean she'd be hungry for her next main meal. She also told the parents to discuss anything other than the food during mealtimes. So they'd talk about going to the park, what they might do at the weekend etc. - but the food wasn't mentioned at all, so as to distract from the fact it was mealtime. She also got them to do things like having a picnic in the park (although the weather at the moment probably won't allow that!). Just some ideas you might want to consider. The episode might be on youtube if you have a look.

My son likes to have a pudding after his meal - yogurt, malt loaf, chocolate mousse, fruit with ice cream etc. - so one thing I do with him if he's not eating his meal is to say 'just eat 3 mouthfuls and you can have your pudding' which usually works a treat. He loves spaghetti as it looks like snakes, apparently (!), and he loves veg and will eat carrots, broccoli, peppers etc raw if I'm preparing them to put in a meal. Maybe you could try your daughter with raw veg? She may prefer the crunchy texture.

Money wise I spend around £35-40 per week on food but have been trying to cut it back to under £30, so I'm going to check out those sites you were recommended. I batch cook things like chili, curry, bolognese, spanish chicken, carbonara and so on, then freeze portions for days when I get home from work late and can't be bothered to cook from scratch. I buy value tins of chopped toms to use as a base for pasta sauces, chili etc. Kids love things like fish fingers and they're often on offer, so she maybe she'd eat them?

carolinemarbles

I'm a SAHM and I'm trying to cut down on the weekly shop too. It includes everything - food, toiletries, nappies - and usually comes to around £65-£70.

I have a fussy little madam of 2 to feed and a fussy (although he wouldn't admit it) partner. You can't please all of the people so I end up doing different things most of the time.

I make a quiche every week for my daughter and myself (can't stand the soggy shop bought ones). Eggs and cheese aren't cheap but it makes enough for two big slices for me and four small slices for the little one. We have them with beans or baked potato. Strangely, the only veg the little one will eat at the moment is whatever is on top of the quiche. Oh, and any form of sweetcorn/baby corn.

Pasta is the best meal ever - cheap, easy and most people like it, although not my partner.

Once a week I do a sausage casserole, which is basically just one pack of whatever decent sausages are on offer that week, a bit of veg, a stock cube and a bit of whatever pasta sauce we have open in the fridge. We have that with crusty bread.

I love salmon but that's an occasional treat now. We switched to smoked mackerel and tend to have it in stir fries. Of course, the little one won't touch that. For her I buy nice fish fingers when they are on offer for £1.

I've heard from people who say that baking bread in a breadmaker works out at about 30p a loaf including electricity, but of course there's the outlay of the breadmaker to take into account!

If everyone would eat the same thing I'm sure I could save a fair bit . . .

cha97michelle

I think i must be lucky my two are not that fussy. I am sure having only 18 months between them helps as they always eat together.

I let mine choose their own breakfast (weetabix, porridge, cheerios or toast) and they can also help pick what sandwich filling they have for lunch. (Usually jam, but i try not to worry about that.) I alternate between wraps, bread and buns. I also sometimes do a homemade carrot and lentil soup, which is tasty and they mainly like to eat it to dip bread in it. I can hide extra veg in it, even stuff like broccoli stem which would normally get thrown out. They dip naan bread, garlic bread or soldiers in it.

The main meal is usually my choice from the menu plan, and our rule is you eat as many spoon fulls as your age in order to get a pudding. I know they might not always like the sauce/curry whatever i have made, so i put the sauce separate to the rice, pasta, potatoes or whatever. That way they always have something on the plate quite bland that they can eat. I would also let them have a slice of bread and butter if they really didn't like the main course.

Would something like buying prawn crackers help? Mine love to eat egg fired rice i make with them, putting the food in the cracker and eating with that. It could work for other foods. Particularly good when there is a sauce and the cracker makes a fizzing noise.

My nephew went through a really long phase of eating only beans on toast, but now will eat other things. Apparently i also would only eat chocolate biscuits for a good while as a toddler. I can still get a bit obsessive as an adult. I would happily eat the same thing every day like chilli on a jacket spud. But, i am not fussy really and will at least try everything.

My biggest food problem is they both pinch food off the chopping board quicker than i can prepare it, and it ends up costing more to then chop more for the meal.

It can be frustrating to have to throw good food out when your budget is tight, but try to keep calm and it will work out. I am sure there are a lot of ideas here to try.

GraciesGran

Eldest son refused to eat meat until he was four - roast dinner with a chunk of cheddar never looked particulary appetising. Now the ONLY thing he won't eat is turnip.

As for renaming foods - can you imagine finding out that 'indian greens' is really spinach - fortunately I don't think my 3 were scared for life over that one!!

Its only me, OH and the dog now but I still do a menu plan and stick to it. Old habits die hard.

gillyrah

The poor little thing, I'm sure her association with food has become a bad one beacause of her experiences. Try not to stress at mealtimes, or at least don't let her see. Easy advice to give, not so easy to do I'm sure! She needs to reassociate mealtimes with fun.

Does she like noodles? I buy Asda or Tesco 10p ones, cook them without the flavour in case it's salty, add a tin of sweetcorn and some cream cheese - easy lunch for you both!

Maybe get some cress seeds, then she can grow them herself and if she cuts them, it might make an egg butty seem a lot more interesting. Same with herbs, if you grow them and she can pick them and add them to her food it'll make it loads more fun. Also try sprouting beans. You just need a jar, some old tights and a windowsill. They take a few days and she might enjoy just snacking on them.

Butter beans can be blended and hidden in things and don't have a very strong taste. Baked beans are the cheapest things ever and on toast they contain all the amino acids available. Hope this helps! Good luck. My little one's only 8 months so I might be coming to you for help in the future!

Gizasmum

Don't have any kids myself but was the eldest of four and was a substitute mum on many occasions when growing up as my mum worked a twilight shift when she needed extra money. My youngest brother was really fussy when he was young and is still a bit fussy (at 39) re veg. His son would only eat custard until he was two. Both of them are now big strapping lads.

When money was tight my mum made us eggy bread and called it French Toast. We were very impressed with this name and ate it all up so that we could boast to our friends that we had eaten 'posh foreign' food. It is a good filling lunch.

My mum is not a great cook but she taught me how to a make all the basics, including her great standby - soup. When all else failed we would get a big bowl of lentil soup with the ham from it on a plate with a pile of boiled potatoes. I am a very keen cook and always feel sorry for anyone who can't make soup and just opens a can. I love soup and always have it in single and double portions in the freezer. I buy beef bones from Morrisons (at about £1 and half the price of the boiling beef I used to buy). I make 'bung it' soup, i.e. whatever I have gets bunged in, LOL.

My husband is also a good cook and he made lentil & tomato soup this week using a piece of ham hough, although ribs might be cheaper and you can also ask the butcher for bacon offcut which will be cheaper still (or use ham stock cubes if you are really skint), lentils, some onion & leek (grow our own leek then chop it and freeze it for over the winter when it's expensive), potato, turnip, carrot, tin of chopped tomatoes and 6 pints of water.

Bring the water, bones & lentils (or pulses - sometimes use yellow or green split peas or all three) to the boil and let it bubble for 1/2 hour. This gives a chance for the lentils to break down. Adding the veg. Bring back to the boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for about 2 1/2 hours, adding more water as necessary. Remove the meat,chop and add back in to the soup, or if pieces of meat are large enough you can have them in a sandwich. Once the soup is ready or has rested it can get quite thick so I just add boiling water to thin it down a little (by the ladlefull so as to not overdo it).

We each had a large bowl of that soup on Sat and Sun, lunch on Monday and 6 portions went in the freezer. So 12 portions cost about 30p each.

Everytime I make soup some always goes in the freezer so eventually I can have a nice selection to choose from. You can puree the soup with a handblender and you wee one will be none the wiser. Personally I prefer to take half the lumps out, puree what's left, then add the lumps back in.

Oh, and before I forget, you can grow your potatoes in old compost bags standing upright. You don't need buckets or bins.

madmoneysavingmum

My three have all gone through fussy phases (and mostly come out the other side) and there are lots of ideas in this thread that worked for us. A couple of others we use are:
I chop mushrooms finely in the processor and add, with grated veg (often carrots and courgettes) and a handful of lentils, to all mince-based dishes (eg lasagna, spag bol, cottage pie, shepherd's pie, chilli) - I get about 4 adult and 6 children's portions out of each 400g of mince, more for lasagna or chilli. DD1 won't eat mushrooms or courgettes if she can see them, but eats all these meals and asks for more. She is not big on meat, either so this is great as she is getting veg and protein! Also, by using whatever veg are cheap and mushrooms on offer or cheap, plus lentils to bulk out the meat these are pretty cheap meals with the meat going a very long way.
Secondly, if they try their dinner and won't eat it, and it is close to bed time, there is no pudding but I will let them have bread and butter and a banana, so they will sleep rather than lie awake hungry.
Thirdly, we have a lot of meals with odd names eg 'Sportacus soup', 'Buzz Lightyear Stew', 'Charlie and Lola's Moonsquirter pasta' named after book/TV characters which are favourites. DD1 is much more interested in these than vegetable soup, stew and dumplings and tomato pasta.

Good luck!

MMSM