my budgeting is back to where i started

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Add in side dishes- veggies, salads, fruit, cottage cheese, etc, along

with a light dessert. Don’t buy the dessert ready made, but get like a

package of jello or pudding, and pre-make several “cups” to use as a

snack and as dessert.

Meat doesn’t have to be served at every meal. Add oatmeal to any

hamburger you use for a meal- burgers, hamburger helper, spaghetti,

meatloaf, etc. It takes the flavor of the meat, and you can’t taste it

or even tell it’s there when you are eating the meat.

Plan several “cheap” meals, and buy enough to have 3 or 4 extra “meals”

on hand each month, just in case. Spaghetti is our family’s cheap meal.

We buy a big box of rotini noodles (less messy than spaghetti noodles

with little kids) which makes 2 meals of spaghetti, then 2 jars of

sauce, 2 cans of tomato sauce (small ones), and we have 2 meals for

under $5 total. It goes along ways, and it’s filling.

Add in a can of peas or beans, and a light salad, and it goes a long

ways towards filling a person up.

Shop farmer’s markets, especially this time of year, and stock up on

fresh fruits & veggies that are in season, and thus- cheaper. Right

now, Strawberries are in season (at least here in MI). I pick up a few

packs each week, slice em and mash em, and serve that as dessert.

Grapes are dirt cheap right now for us, too, so again, I grab grapes

and serve those as a light dessert or mid-day snack.

Basically, don’t concentrate so heavily on a main meal that will fill

everyone up or have left overs. Focus more on having side’s that will

fill everyone and compliment the main meal. Left overs are nice, but

can sometimes go to waste, and the main meal often costs much more than

the little sides.

— In Budget101_@yahoogroups.com, “mkroom4trble”

wrote:

>

> I don’t know what i am doing wrong. I had spent all the moneys i had

> for food already. I have food but my meal planning seems to use the

lot

> of it? How do you minimize the amount of the main dishes but still

have

> a complete meal to feed six hungery people. Since my last request we

> had taken in my boysfriends son for two weeks so my food supply is

> less. Please help. This child will not eat bread products. Thanks

>

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