Looking for Budget Friendly Meal Ideas

Go to www.Kraft.com and go into the recipe section. I find their recipes really good and not expensive to make.

hi look at tasteof home.com
or kraftfoods.com

Hi, I use the Ladies Home JOurnal (or is it Family Circle,can't remember which one) month long meal planner in the back of their magazine. They have everything, and they use left overs. They have you do all your cooking on Sunday, and the meals are handleble for little ones... No thinking involved on my part. Good luck.

another website i like to use is hillbillyhousewife.com. I kinda pick and choose, but she has a lot of good cheap recipes- many have surprised me how much the kids like them, and she gives lots of cheap ways to make your own "convenience" foods. She uses a lot of cornmeal and beans, which helps out our budget not buying so much meat all the time...

Check out this website: www.angelfoodministries.com. If there's a host site close to you, they may also have more localized info on their site (e.g. www.trinityomaha.com).

Get your own copy of the Rival Crockpot Cookbook and the One Dish Bible. Both are at most Target stores. Another good one is the Whole Foods for Families Cookbook by La Leche League International.

All of these books feature loads of recipes that can stretch a budget, are easy to prepared, and kids will eat.

In the Rival Book, some of our favorites include Corned beef and cabbage, Rueben Casserole (great way to use the left overs from the Corned beef recipe), Crockpot enchilada, Crockpot lasagna, Beef Stroganoff, and Italian Beef and peppers (for sandwiches).

The La Leche League book features great ethnic meals from all around the world including Sauer Braten, Pan Cit, Chow Mein, Spagetti with Itallian sausage, pork chops in apples and more.

Hope this helps.

Hey, I know the feeling. my advise in a nutshell, after spending much time brainstorming, researching, and agonizing over this very topic...

we opened a separate account for food/household. every week, i put $150 in it for the week. i spend most of the money in our family, bc i plan meals, take the kids out and about during the week. i transfer money into "my household" account weekly, and try to stay under. if not, oops, maybe try to make it up next week, etc. my point is i could only start staying within food budget once i started planning meals. i can't believe how much i've saved in groc. bills since i started planning out dinner.

my meal planning advise: (we do eat meat) plan one big meal over the weekend, ours, the Sunday dinner. we would rotate weekends, one chicken, the next ham, the next roast beef. you get the picture. then, we have 1-2 meals throughout the week based on that weekends meat leftovers. i almost always have a soup/stew. i also plan on having at least 2 vegetarian meals per week (beans, potato soup, etc.). and then we have one omellette dinner per week. that about covers the week for us. if my kids don't like it, then they usually eat it for bedtime snack because they are hungry. as long as it is a healthy, fresh meal, i am pretty insistant they eat/or at least try it. it's amazing, over time, my 3 year old has developed a taste for all kinds of veggies etc.

also, i purchased some software called "Cook n'" i believe is the name. it is a recipe organizer/menu planner. it does everything but cook your meal.:) generates grocery lists, approximate cost, etc. also, i did find some neat rice mix recipe ideas on hillbillyhousewif.com personally, i was quite blown away by the web site, a bit extreme, but i liked to take what i wanted away from it, and leave the rest.
good luck. happy cooking

Hi, Krsiti.
I would second the all recipes site.
One of our family favorites right now is a Baked Spaghetti recipe I found on there. a nice twist to an easy dish!

enjoy!

Check out http://www.kraft.com They usually have super easy, inexpensive, kid-friendly recipies! You can make the recipies even less expensive by using the brands on sale or the store brands vs the actual Kraft brands. I get the free magazine and I LOVE IT! My husband and daughter are addicted to the Taco Bake right now. I can send you the recipie if you want.

Since budget friendly means limiting the purchase of prepared foods as much as possible and time is short as a parent, I use my crockpot a ton. You can really stretch a piece of meat or easily make vegetarian meals (even more budget friendly) as well as save time. I found a great thread of yummy crockpot recipes on the mothering.com discussion forums, but I'm sure there are lots of other sources. Look for recipes with 5-7 ingredients at the most.

When my kids were young and money was tight, I would plan meals that leftovers could be used. If I made a pot roast, I would have stew, hot beef sandwiches or cold beef sandwiches for the next meal or two. Spaghetti sauce went into chili by adding a can or two of chili beans or I would put it with a different noodle like Macaroni. When I made a turkey, I would make different dishes with the left over turkey and some soup with the carcas, just make sure you get all the bones out after boiling them. Everything was homemade, I still don't use packaged food much. I would buy the 4 or 5 loaves of frozen bread that comes in a package and bake them up for sandwiches and such. I would have done homemade bread but I really wasn't very good at that.

My daughter was picky but my sons were great about eating anything. My rule was this is dinner, if you don't like it, I hope you like breakfast better. I always had enough different dishes that there wasn't anytime my kids went hungry.

K.,

I love allrecipes.com . It's a free website where people submit their recipes and others rate and review them. (That's the best part because after hundreds of people have perfected the recipe, it is usually pretty darn good.)

You can do lots of different searches; by ingredients, cuisine, time to prepare, budget friendly, vegan, etc. I use them to make dinner almost every night.

Good luck,
S.

My weekly budget is $100.00 for a family of 4(most weeks I spend under). I shop at Pick n' Save. I sit down each Sunday with the coupons and store ad to see what's on sale. I also buy store or genaric brands which are oftentimes made by the same company that makes the orignal. And I will buy the 3lb bags of frozen chicken breast and hamburger and divide it up into smaller portions and freeze it. My oldest won't eat beef except for steak so sometimes we use turkey.
I use foodnetwork.com, allrecipes.com, and copykat.com. I also use Jessica Seinfeld's "Deceptively Delicious" which has great ideas of how to sneak veggies into meals. I use the crockpot at least once a week.
This last week we ate: Sweet and Sour Chicken, crockpot pulled pork sandwiches, easy chicken pot pies, and salmon burgers to name a few things.

Try the recipe forum on mommysavers.com. They have a lot of frugal recipe ideas on there. K. H.

There's a cookbook called "Saving Dinner". The whole book is economically and very budget friendly recipes and amazingly, the ones I have tried, (I don't do most of the cooking here) have been great and easy too.