From: wells@athena.cs.uga.edu (Scott Wells)
Newsgroups: rec.food.cooking
Subject: Re: Can a family eat for $20/week?
Date: 16 Oct 92 16:47:59 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <1992Oct13.054802.10423@deeptht.armory.com> nerdette@deeptht.armory.com (Maraya) writes:
>I need ideas/recipes for meals so a family of 4 (2 adults, 2 small 
>children) could eat 21 meals for less than $20.  Let
>'s say that milk and juice have already been purchased, and the
>family
>'s kitchen contains some basics (butter/margarine, beans, rice, some
>pasta, oatmeal, peanut butter).  The children usually refuse to eat
>beans, but would eat peanut butter sandwiches for every meal.  Ideas?


OOf. This is hard. I am a single college student, and I have a hard
time eating on $20 a week. But here goes...

Consider first thing that some meat might make up for the kids not
wanting to eat beans. It can be inexpensive, like ground
turkey, which can be gotten for about a dollar a pound, and sometimes
less. You might fool the kids into eating beans by making chili. A
quarter pound of meat flavors four cups of beans well, but be sure too
add cumin (or a cumin-based chili powder) to give the chili the proper
"Mexican" flavor. Even the chili can be stretched by making chili-mac:
macaroni and chili mixed. Most kids would like it, but the chili need
to be thinner (i.e. more tomato sauce) than usual.  By the way, as a
Southerner, I am partial to black-eyed peas and butterbeans ("Large
California Lima Beans") which, I think, have a better flavor than most
other beans. They produce a gravy, and take less time to cook. Flavor
the black-eyes with chicken boullion and bay leaves instead of pork.

Other ideas: Make pancakes for dinner. Use mashed over-ripe bananas in
the batter. Serve with apple sauce or apple butter instead of butter
and syrop, for better food value.

If you can make breakfast a family affair, serve hot cereal, oven
toast (broiled buttered bread), milk and coffee, which is inexpensive,
filling, and for some reasons (probably due to family memories)
strangely luxurious.

Serve eggs only for dinner. Quiches are inexpensive, easy to make, and
make a good lunch the next day. A freeform recipe: In a partially
baked pie crust (any standard recipe), add a "batter" of three beaten
eggs (in a measuring cup) and milk to bring the total to 1.75 cups,
salt and pepper. Add anything you like, but leftover meat (if any),
leftover vegetables, sliced onion and cheese make this a nice meal. 

Look to the cheap, in-season vegetables and fruits, which ain't going
to be much this time of year. Sweet potatoes, pumpkins, Irish
potatoes, onions, cabbage, apples, carrots are in season, but require
an unbiased mind. One pound of sweet potatoes peeled, mashed with milk
and a little butter makes a nice side vegetable high in vitamin A and
(I think) C.  ** I'll post my sweet potato pie recipe later **  There
are many early American recipes for pumpkin. Iranian and Afgan recipes
too. Most people like scalloped potatoes: slices of raw potato layered
with margarine, chopped onion and a white sauce, baked in a buttered
dish until the potatoes are soft. Also, cut cabbage into thick
shreads, plunge into a big pot of rapidly boiling water for seven or
eight minutes. Retrieve the cabbage, butter and serve. Or mix with
canned tomato soup to make a "cabbage roll"-style dish.

Make lots of soup.

Prepare for Thanksgiving early. Remember that first Thanksgiving:
there wasn't a lot of bounty there either. Leftover turkey feeds a
family cheaply. Turkey, two vegetables, a "local bread" (biscuits or
cornbread here), cranberry sauce and a pie can be had without great
expence.

Two last things: the County Extension Service can offer ideas about
eating on a tight budget. Also, investigate historic (WWII and before)
cookbooks: they often react to the same problmes. War-time cookbooks
(esp. WWII) have good suggestions on how to without  "essentail"
ingredients.

Best of luck.
-- 
Scott Wells                        +  
Internet: wells@athena.cs.uga.edu  + 
University of Georgia		   +
Athens, Georgia, USA               +