cheap/ healthy snacks

cooking-mama

Ive never looked at Approved food site,I thought this was for special diet foods..Gluten free,diabetic foods etc..im off now to check it out thanks,altho i dont buy crisps biscuits etc regular i do spend a small fortune on things like special K cereal bars,Alpen,..cheaper own brands are often too high in sugar.

weezl74

horsechestnut wrote: »

500g of lean minced beef should feed 4 adults. This is the base to start from; if you want volume then by all means bulk it out with plenty of vegetables.

Good point about protein.

From a raising protein levels perspective, it makes more sense to reduce the mince and bulk with lentils, since 100g uncooked lean beef mince is 20.8g protein per 100g whereas 100g uncooked lentils are 23.8g protein per 100g (it's also cheaper)

lostinrates

horsechestnut wrote: »

When my daughter was a teenager I kept her going with chunky homemade soups

This is also what my mother did, not necessarily chunky soup, but soup all the same, always a vegetable soup of some sort that was ''free food'' if I was hungry before she or my father was home from work. In the summer it was gazpacho....which is something I still do now, make up a jug of gazpacho, keep it in the fridge and have a cupful in the afternoon or for lunch or both.

Katie-Kat-Kins

I don't think they are having enough lunch and that is why they are all coming home starving and needing their dinner so early. Then of course they need supper too.

Supper is a bad habit to get into really, so I'd try to drop the evening meal back and increase what they take for pack up. You could also try offering a small snack when they get in to tide them over for dinner, something like a couple of oatcakes with some cheese spread, a slice of toast, or rich tea biscuits. Cuppa soups are a good snack that makes you feel like you've eaten but is cheap and doesn't contain much fat or sugar.

Having beans on toast after they have had dinner is excessive. Those supper type things should be for nights when they haven't had a proper dinner. To be honest even a meat sandwich is too much for supper. I bet some of it is eating due to habit/boredom and it will be a bad habit for later life. I know you don't want to make food an issue for teenage girls but you also don't want them to get into the habit of eating four meals a day as they will find this hard to break when they are older.

I would increase their lunch, especially the protein content. Make dinner later, if they are hungry when they get in make them drink a big glass of water and wait fifteen minutes (send them off to get changed, or start their homework or tidy up so they aren't thinking of their stomachs). If they are still hungry then have some small snacks available - they mustn't spoil their appetite before dinner. Being a bit hungry for an hour won't do them any harm. In fact it will do them good learning to recognise feelings of hunger.

I would tell the family what you plan to do and make it a budget thing, that will also be healthy (if you or their Dad could do with watching your weight you could mention this too). I appreciate you don't want to make food an issue with your girls, but I wish I'd got into better habits when I was young and could eat anything!

Alison_Funnell

This is how we worked it with our once ravenous now 21 year old.

Breakfasts - must be eaten daily, cereal and milk, or toast and p.butter.

Lunch - sandwiches (upto four slices of w/meal bread depending on her age and hunger at the time) filled with grated cheese, egg, ham, chicken,bean pate or similar and flapjack, bread pudding (or other homemade cake like) always with dried fruit in. We gave up with fresh fruit and veg in packed lunches as they tended to wilt, get bruised or left in the box.

Dinner - what ever we had, so protein (tvp, meat, beans) carbs (pasta, rice, spuds) and 3 veg (min) plus fresh fruit or cooked fruit pudding.

Drinks - squash, squash and carbonated water (shop or sodastream), tea, water, milk.

There was never much need for snacks - granted it was quite a carb heavy diet, but we found it worked, was reasonably priced and seemed to get the minimum in. This was before the 5 a day campaign, Weezl & Co's fantastic diet site and all the help here. It was very much how I was fed as a child.

Any snacks if needed were toast, slice of bread or 2 biscuits and a drink.

I wonder why they need snacks - we found that it's a lot of 'so and so has blah blah all the time at home' and packaging/advertising (they see the ads everywhere), reason why not, cost, environment, health etc. with them ( what ever your reasons). We found that helped but it does take time to completely be accepted.

Good luck to all with hungry mouths.

Allegra

First, keep a breakfast/snack/lunch diary for a week or two - note everything that is eaten, then work out how much it costs. Then compare the current cost against what you want it to be, and make changes accordingly. So, if the kids have to have fruit, you can check if there are cheaper options you could swap them for. Would they have, say, carrot sticks and houmus instead ? A carrot is far cheaper than a satsuma, yet just as healthy. Would they have dried raisins (perhaps hidden in a flapjack) instead of grapes ? Etc.

Instead of cold meat, tuna and cheese, perhaps you could introduce some home-made pulse or nut based dips and pates, such as houmus, lentil pate, peanut or walnut butter ? And oat-based home-made snacks are usually quite popular with kids and teens - Twinks hobnobs is of course an MSE classic, but if you are, like me, in the minority and not really keen, flapjacks are made using pretty much the same ingredients, plus you can chuck lots of dried fruit, nuts and seeds in. Also scones, muffins, pancakes....

In fact, why don't you take a look at Weezl's website ? www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk - it gives you a very clear idea hoe to plan for all the meals plus snacks, as well as the recipes for masses of frugal treats

PasturesNew

When I was growing up, we didn't have this "snacks" culture. We had two meals/day, school dinners or lunch in the middle of the day - and then an evening meal about 6pm. Occasionally, but rarely, in the winter we might have a tin of soup and some toast between the four of us.

Maybe the snack culture's made you think it's the norm; if we'd been moaning we were hungry before it was a meal-time we'd have been told to make a jam sandwich, or usually just to wait until meal time.

Alternatively, you could have snacks "for sale" and give the kids £1/week to buy snacks from you.... or they can choose free toast.

Also, maybe your evening meals are expensive/main meals. A lot of ours were egg/chips, or a mince casserole, or stew/dumplings. And we never had dessert.

PasturesNew

Allegra wrote: »

In fact, why don't you take a look at Weezl's website ? www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk - it gives you a very clear idea hoe to plan for all the meals plus snacks, as well as the recipes for masses of frugal treats

I checked that once, to see how it was put together/worked/what was in it .... couldn't use it in this house because most of it relies on cooking with things that nobody likes

Vaila

For us,snacks tend to be lentil daal,hummus with ryvita,crackers etc or vegetable soup and fruit


i think people have to stop thinking that snacks have to be things like crisps and chocolate and have more filling main meals instead

monicaj

We had become "snackers" and I found we were spending an obscene amount on snacks, but we were also wasting food because:

a) everyone was snacked up, therefore an evening meal was often abandoned or certainly not appreciated

b) the food for the planned meals was wasted

I now budget £4.50 per week (from £69.00 total) for fruit and "snacks" which are healthy i.e. dried fruit and nuts, cereal bars, yoghurts, hm hummous, and once they are gone they are gone !! I do feel a bit like the food police in our house, but having more than halved our grocery spend and having no waste and a healthy diet, it is certainly worth it. The strange thing is, that everyone has got used to not looking in the fridge, cupboards for snacks, because they know they aint there !! and everyone appreciates my cooking so much more :T

Hope this helps