Meal plan for a large family

garynkirsty

Hi everyone we are new to the board i was wondering if anyone had meals plans for a large family that are easy to do and cheap.
we are a family of 11 soon to be 12 we have 9 children ages from 17 down to 1 any ideas would be fab.
ideas for breakfasts,lunch,dinner and snacks
thanks ever so much it would be a great help as our shopping bills are mad and i'd like us all to eat a bt more healthy x

cutestkids

Hi

There are so many possibilities, can you give an idea of what your family like to eat, any real dislikes etc.

A good starting point for breakfast is porridge if everyone had it you could save a fortune as you can buy a large bag of porridge oats for about 80p in most of the large supermarkets.

Lunches ideally would be Hm soups with bread, do you have a breadmaker as this could save you loads as well.

Dinners a bit more difficult as I said if you can say what sort of things you all like then you will get lots of ideas from people on here.

garynkirsty

thankyou for the reply and soe ideas my children aren't too bad they usually give anything a go so any ideas would be great would love to see some complete plans including breakfasts,lunches,dinners and snacks x

pigpen

Homemade cakes, biscuits as snacks..

approved foods have been a godsend, Lidl/Aldi are cheap as chips.

My food bill is about £600-700 a month depending on what we need and holidays etc.

Loads of bread and milk.. our breadmaker couldn't keep up but I make dough and do rolls which they love.

I always have loads of fruit in for snacks too.

Meals.. corned beef hash, casseroles, great hunks of meat.. I use 2 chickens/gammon for 1 meal and freeze what doesn't get used and every so often we have 'leftover night' We have meatballs and spaghetti, lasagne, savoury mince with mash.. everything is bulked out with grated veg or lentils and comes with salad and bread.

Huge sacks of potatoes are great.. mine love jackets with dishes of beans, cheese and tuna they can help themselves from. and bread & butter/garlic bread/bread for dipping with every meal..

Asian/chinese supermarkets are superb for huge sacks of rice, pasta, flour, onions etc.. and so much cheaper too!

We have about 15 different types of cereal in for breakfasts but quite often they will have them for lunch or supper too!

BitterAndTwisted

You could do worse than visit the cheap-family-recipes.org website but you'd probably need to make double or treble the amounts in their recipes.

Without knowing your family, their likes and dislikes or your cooking-skills it would be very difficult to do a complete menu-plan.

What you could do for a fortnight or so is to keep all of your shopping receipts and examine very closely indeed every penny you spend on snacks, treats, soft drinks and other non-essentials. These can cost almost as much as the proper food in some households.

SpikyHedgehog

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

You could do worse than visit the cheap-family-recipes.org website but you'd probably need to make double or treble the amounts in their recipes.

Without knowing your family, their likes and dislikes or your cooking-skills it would be very difficult to do a complete menu-plan.

What you could do for a fortnight or so is to keep all of your shopping receipts and examine very closely indeed every penny you spend on snacks, treats, soft drinks and other non-essentials. These can cost almost as much as the proper food in some households.

There's only 3 of us, but I've used Cheap Family Recipes, & think you'd find the bread especially useful as you do a big batch of 4 or 5 loaves at a time. The recipes are & use ordinary ingredients & my boys (16 & 9) can follow them on their own with varying degrees of support.