From the article: Making Cheap, Low Fat Meals
Quite often, good nutrition goes out the window when money is tight. Instead of defaulting to a dollar menu at the local fast food joint, or living off boxed mac and cheese, use some of your pantry basics to create some great low-fat meals. Share Your Tips
Breakfast for dinner
- Having waffles or pancakes and eggs for dinner once a week helps keep the food cost down.
- —Guest bitsybet
nutty buddys
- Choc Graham crazy with smooth low fat peanut butter...tastes like a nutty buddy. Costs nothing and a low fat treat!
- —Guest ceesebo
Cheap Meals
- We like Tuna Pasta - fry chopped onions and garlic, add mushrooms if you like. Add a tin of tuna to some cooked pasta and add in the onion mix and a tub of low fat creme fraich. Heat but don't boil - nice! Also a quick favourite of mine if I've got to dash out is soup and cheese on toast at the side - great!
- —Booboo54
saving time
- i cook ground meats such as chicken , pork and beef then freeze it in 1 lb packages, then i can make a quick meal ofchili , spaghetti or a casserole for when i am short of time!!!!
- —meme1945
Plan Ahead
- By evening I don't feel like doing a lot of work, so I like to have something on hand that's easy to fix as well as healthy. One thing that works well is to prepare in advance 2 or more cups of brown rice (easy in a rice cooker) and add sautéed onion, celery and carrots. At dinnertime, I can just spoon the mixture into hollowed out green peppers, tomatoes, or zucchini, top with a little panko, and bake. stir-fried rice, burrito stuffing with beans etc. Instead of cheese, I put a little panko on the stuffed vegetables. Other uses for the mixture are stir-fried rice and burritos.
- —Guest Barbara
Egg Noodles and Cream of Chicken Soup
- My mother was a single parent raising four children on a waitress budget. She would cook a bag of egg noodles and then mix a a can of cream of chicken soup into it, and stewed chicken when we had it. We ate it up. Now you can buy (which I do) reduced fat soups and canned chicken, and it is still a hit with my family. Serve a salad as a side dish.
- —Guest Elaine
Dont skip produce
- A lot of people leave out the fruits and vegetables when they are trying to feed their fam on very little money because produce at the market can be pricey. What i do is always buy in season and before I buy I get fruit from friends and neighbors with fruit trees. You'd be surprised how many people are more than willing for you too pick all of their unwanted fruit. Also, to be appreciative you can rake up the dead fruit and leaves for them. Its sad that their are people in our country that are going hungry and people have fruit rotting in their backyards. So, PLEASE if you are one of those people offer it to your neighbors friends or or even the local church probably has a group of teens that would pick it all and give it away free of charge. May the lord Jesus Christ bless you and keep you. Dont worry.
- —Guest Eva
Quick Tomato Salad
- Ingredients: 1 tomato 1/2 teaspoon of Olive Oil Salt & Pepper to taste Preparation: -Dice tomato -Add olive oil -Add salt and pepper to taste It's ridiculously easy, tasty, and cheap and you can always toss in things like tuna, chicken, ground beef (etc). Or adding onion, garlic, peppers, and sometimes I throw a tiny squirt of salad dressing in it. Guacamole is also great.
- —Guest Julie
good quick nutrition
- I have been doing mushroom omelets with low fat cheese. I use one egg and egg whites and a load of shrooms with low fat cheese. Its de-lish!
- —Guest Tbone
Cookies
- My biggest problems with trying to lose weight are the sweets, Ice cream, cookies, candy you name it I cant resist it. But what I have started doing is I don't buy packages of cookies, I always buy cookie doe so i have to use my time and emery to eat some cookies, I also can limit the amount of cookies I eat instead of plopping down in the couch and eating the bag, I cook 2 or 3 Cooke's and Enjoy the worm fresh backed Cooke's. I also have a problem with ice cream, #1 rule NO ICE CREAM IN THE HOUSE if I want ice cream I have to go out and get it. and when I do I only get a small ice cream cone. What i'v learned about candy is there is always candy around so i don't eat it unless its free. that's my tip for these people like me with a permanent sweet tooth.lol
- —Guest Monique
Save money in the kitchen
- Some of my money-saving tehniques are: 1. Make your own yogurt: add 1/4 cup dry milk to 4 cups milk; heat to 185, cool to about 110, add to 1/4 cup lowfat of whole milk yogurt, cover with plastic wrap, poke hole in plastic with fork and inoculate in a warm place (an oven that is still warm from baking) overnight; this yogurt keeps for 2 weeks. 2. use dry herbs instead of fresh in cooked dishes 3. base your diet on whole grains and vegetables (esp. root and leafy vegetables) 4. bake in bulk to conserve energy 5. make stock from bones 6. drink only water, milk, tea, and 4-6 oz. diluted juice/day
- —Guest Katya
Do batch cooking, freeze and save
- Same time, money and headaches by cooking and freezing meals ahead, e.g., lentil and bean soups, chilis, stews, casseroles that freeze well. If your family eats cookies, bake a double recipe and freeze half - keeps them out of the grip of the cookie monsters for a while!
- —Lesley007
Jasmine
- I have a slow cooker (5 kilo) which I cook in fairly regularly, and when I do I cook large size foods often doubling a recipe and then I freeze meal sizes so that when I need them I can take them out of the freezer and re heat in the microwave.
- —Guest Jasmine
Delicious inexpensive food
- 2 containers of canned chili over cooked pasta, Follow cooking directions, add shredded chese and combine and cook.
- —Guest pebles43751
Stretching Food Budget
- We are retired & constantly searching for ways to stretch budget $. We get ham; usually whole or butt half for .99lb, like this week for Easter. Leftovers are good for at least 6 to 8 entrees and numerous sandwiches for lunch, etc.. Leftover ham is great for split pea/ham, navy bean soups and mac & cheese -w- ham cassorole! One ham will really stretch $! Thanks: Eric
- —Guest Eric G. Arentz, Sr.
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