3 meals a night for 3 different people!

kiss_me_now9

I totally misread your original post and was very confused as to why your ONE year old son needed a large portion and was cycling around everywhere  I don't have much to add other than I'm in a similar situation, I'm veggie/plant based (waxes and wanes) and OH is an omni. The agreement in our house is if you want meat you buy it. 

Doom_and_Gloom

Yep that would be me YoungBlueEyes.

Honestly we often have different meals. There are too many things my OH will not eat. However there are times that mean it is possible to have something similar.
Yesterday we had pizza. My OH put in a L!do pepperoni one and I used a Bfree base, some tomato puree, sprinkle of mixed herbs, some vegan cheese and topped it with mushrooms, onion, and frozen sweetcorn. This was had with salad as well for me.

Sometimes we have burgers, he makes his own as do I sometimes, and have with home made chips or wedges, again I'll have with salad.

If having a roast the potatoes are done in vegetable oil in one pan with onions and carrots but a small pan will hold parsnips as OH can't stand them. OH will cook his beef on the hob most of the time and finish it in the oven. All the time the oven is on my 'main' item would be cooking. The other vegetables like broccoli, cabbage etc will be done in the streaming function of the pressure cooker. If I want brussel sprouts they have to be cooked in a different way as again OH can't stand them.

My OH has his own slow cooker and will batch cook stews and the like in it. I usually have something similar made in my slowcooker or pressure cooker on those days. To go with it we have mash that OH adds his milk and butter to after we separate the portions, or rice cooked in the rice cooker.

On days we have Bolognese the base is started off as same and then gets split when OH adds his mince to his and I lentils or similar in mine. The pasta gets portioned out at serving.


I don't know what to say really to help. If your dynamic is similar to ours there are few ways to combat the pricing other than batch cooking really. 
From the start of January to the end of October we averaged £8 a day for two people for all food and drink (sans alcohol), cleaning items, toiletry items and the like as well as the chinchillas food, hay, sand, treats and the like.
By my working that means we aren't too dissimilar in our spending really as £12 a day for 3 is £84 a week and as you say you are around £80 odd a week.

My OH eats a lot of sandwiches, including an omelette version he does on the hob, as he eats more than me.
He's not good with portioning breakfast foods like cereal so we now buy the own brand wheat biscuits and he has two of those if he wants that kind of breakfast. It costs us less as he isn't just shaking a huge portion out like he would with the others.
I found correct portion size does help with the budget.

Like you I'm sure we could get our spend down more.
One big thing I can say is to look at what you have in. I know we have plenty in our food cupboards, freezers (yes we have a tall freezer as well as a fridge freezer with two deep pull out freezer draws for just two people) and fridge. Taking inventory and working meal plans around that will help.

theoretica

'Snacks' seem an easy target to me - bread and peanut butter or raw carrots will fill in hunger, are fairly cheap, but not so tasty as to tempt eating for flavour rather than hunger. 

Scrimps

bouicca21 said:

Batch cooking is one solution, but also think through vegan meals that the omnivores will eat.  Something like black bean burgers - the omnivores either eat as is or could add cheese/bacon to their portions.  

I remember when my brothers were teenagers and could eat for the olympics. Plates piled high with carbs!

This is what I was thinking, cheap carbs I always think work well with active young one is potatoes lots and lots of potatoes.

Also when you cook your vegan bolognaise, are you using meat replacement products, if so I would suggest switching to or padding it out with pulses. It you have a pressure cooker you can buy the dried ones and cook the with low energy costs ...lots of food for little cost and very batch cookable

Rosa_Damascena

I'd make a single vegan plant-based meal, such as a curry. You and OH can have an appropriate amount of carbohydrates with it (rice, couscous, bulgar wheat etc) given you would like to lose weigh and DS can max on it.

Siebrie

Maybe you can do a quick search on 'vegetarian sports person' or 'vegetarian cyclist' and see if any articles come up and give you ideas? No need to reinvent the wheel

Toonie

You say everyone has a different cooked breakfast, what sort of things are you cooking? At 11 I was making my own breakfasts and often lunches (when at home). Perhaps the best thing to do is look your meals as separate components that you can assemble to suit everyone's needs/wants. At the very worst I can't imagine why three different meals are needed as presumably your husband and son can have the same thing, just different amounts depending on requirements, or indeed your son could have a starter/pudding and you all eat the same quantities of main meal.

adindas

As stated by the op the purpose of doing cooking herself is to save money. But cooking three different meals for three different people will defeat this purpose. Not to mention your time to cook three different meals and opportunity cost if you could do something more productive earning money instead of cooking.

Is it not cheaper to just buy a pre-prepared meals from the supermarket. I got surprise to see so many pre-prepared meals oven ready with all raw materials have been pre-prepared such as washed, chopped mixed with all of spices on the tin oven ready are available in the supermarket for less than £4. All you need is to just put it in the electric oven for less than 30 minutes and ready. You could put three different meals at the same time. Just watch which one need to be taken out first to ovoid being overcooked.

They are relatively healthy as they do not need preservative to preserve it, it just needs chilled cabinet in the supermarket to keep it longer.

poppy811

Really no need for this.  Just cook one meal and let each person take what they want.  If they want different then they need to buy it for themselves and cook it.  Sorry if this sounds harsh but your dilemma would not have existed in the past

leftatthetrafficlights

poppy811 said:

Really no need for this.  Just cook one meal and let each person take what they want.  If they want different then they need to buy it for themselves and cook it.  Sorry if this sounds harsh but your dilemma would not have existed in the past

Don't think that an 11 year old buying and cooking meals for themselves is really an option! 🤔😂 

I'm vegan, dh is not - we both eat the same vegan meals most of the time, occasionally dh will have something else if he fancies it (generally it's just adding meat to a vegan dish such as pork/chicken/fish to salad or grains at lunchtime) but the majority of dinners are the same food for both of us.

You can do the same with your family - dh and yourself can just eat normal portions and your son can eat the same but more frequently (if he's training he's better to eat more meals rather than larger ones). 

Pulses and grains combined are an excellent source of complete proteins and a vast array of vitamins and minerals- adding a variety of veg means that everyone can get their nutritional needs met. Change dressings and accompanying veg to completely alter the tastes (also means you can cook a load at once to save money and eat different flavours for several days) - repurposing leftovers to make something different (for instance I recently turned vegan meatballs into bolognese then the bolognese into shepherd's pie) also cuts down on costs and time spent cooking 😉