cheap food substitutes

newlywed

GardenMillie wrote:

I also bulk out mince by adding tinned tomatoes and assorted veg: onions, mushrooms, chopped carrots, peas, chopped courgette, tinned or frozen sweetcorn. Plus it's a really easy way to eat more veg and have less washing up.

I do this too! Always hide veg like parsnips and peas in the lasagna and shepherds pie. The kids eat it then without even blinking and eyelid!!!

I try and add at least 3 veg in, usually more - then if I don't feel like doing a side dish of veg, it doesn't matter as there's still a good dose of it in there!!

I used to use 500g mince for one meal for four of us - until I mastered this trick - OH loves lots of meat but doesn't notice that I've halved it as 500g now does two meals for 4 of us. Will look out for veggie mince to stretch it further as OH will eat veggie if convinced its lower fat and healthier. In fact, might try MATH's trick of adding oats - since I only use the oats for flapjacks and we're meant to be losing some weight!!

overlykeensaver

instead of buying jars of pasta sauce (particularly tomato sauce), I use a tin of tomatoes, onion, garlic, white wine vinegar and a pinch of sugar.

angelavdavis

I break up spaghetti to use in soups instead of buying expensive soup pasta and use powdered milk made up instead of fresh milk in recipes.