Feeding a large family for less.

We are a family of 6 (occasionally 7 when my ex comes over). I work full time. My husband works full time. I love to cook, but I have found over the last 6mo (since our youngest was born) that I have less and less time to do so. I went from made from scratch meals (kid 1), to mostly made from scratch (kid 2), to 4-5 homemade meals (kid 3), to now mostly ordering in and maybe cooking 1-2 meals a week. I haven’t made anything from scratch in over 4 years, which is okay, but with my meals coming in more boxes and bags than I would like, I want more bang for my buck. I feel like I need 2-3 bags/boxes of whatever to make enough to go around. So I’ve slowly started making changes back to old habits, and along the way have discovered some new frugal ways to stretch my groceries. I hope you guys find this helpful!

To start with the old: I like to buy in bulk when I can. I get all my meat in bulk, weigh it out and seal it with my food saver. I have enough meet to last 4-6 weeks. Closer to 6 weeks if I do things that will allow me to use less meat (like shredded chicken for pot pies, casseroles, soups). I also get those ridiculously large onions that are bigger than a softball. I have an onion chopper to dice them up. Then I measure out 1 cup of diced onion, put them in a square, snack sized ziplock baggie and freeze it. I easily walk away with 3+ months worth of ready to cook onions. No need to defrost- just toss them right into whatever you’re cooking. You can also do this is with peppers. The key is really to minimize the juices that occur when cutting to get a good freeze, so use a strained spoon or blot dry before bagging. It can be time consuming, but so worth it in the long run! Also, I add frozen veggies to hamburger helper to make it more filling and healthier (beef stroganoff: add 1/2 cup frozen peas, 1/2 cup frozen corn, and 1/2 cup frozen carrots when you add the pasta and seasoning and let simmer per box instructions).

The new: I have found that mixing those pre-prepared meals with plain ingredients has stretched my dollar a little further. For example, my husband likes shake and bake. I don’t like that it takes 2+ bags to make one meal and it still isn’t enough to generously coat my meats, plus the flavor is meh. I have started adding herb bread crumbs to the chicken shake and bake. Not only does it add more flavor to the box, but it adds volume. I was able to make 5 chicken breasts on 1 bag, and it was a generous amount that I never got from the 1 bag alone. It wasn’t soggy after the egg wash either. Tonight I made shake and bake pork chops. I never really cared for the pork shake and bake (but I make it because majority rules). I always felt like it needed more flavor, so (using the idea steamed from the chicken shake and bake) I took those french onions people use for green bean casserole and crushed them up in a sandwich bag and added it to the mix. It added a nice flavor with extra crunch, as well as added enough to the mix to where I had more than enough for 4 pork chops without it being soggy.

My next thing to try is adding white rice to those premixed Knor rices and see how that goes (it may require some trial and error- but math is math, so I’m expecting it to go well).

It may not be much, but the results have been great! I really just wanted to share with someone who might need some creative ways to stretch their meals! Thanks for reading my poorly written novel. 🙂