Frugal Food My Kids Will Eat

I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately. It’s not because I’m hungry, although there is that. Nor is it because I’ve been obsessing about all the delicious goodies I’m going to eat on our upcoming  meals. At home. From scratch.vacation. It’s because, over the past 23 days, I’ve planned, prepped, prepared, served and cleaned up after 69 different and separate meals.

I’ll pause for your applause now.

That’s a lot of food! And thinking of frugal, balanced and most importantly kid friendly meals isn’t easy, especially since I don’t really want to eat macaroni and cheese every day.* So I thought I’d share a few of the meals that I’ve served my children lately… and they ate.

• Spinach and Tofu in Peanut Sauce with Rice. The key to this is making sure the peanut/soy sauce flavors overwhelm the spinach flavor. The tofu is so bland that most kids won’t notice it. Luckily they’re not opposed to food with colors, and will eat anything with rice.
• Pasta with Roasted Red Peppers and Carrots. I started this by accident, by chopping up some carrots and putting them on to boil while waiting for inspiration to strike. I roasted some red peppers in olive oil, and mixed the carrots and peppers with some whole wheat fusili. Toss with a little parmesan or goat cheese. The boys (including my husband) scarfed it up and asked for more.
• Chicken and White Bean Chili. Remember the leftover chicken? I do this same trick every week. This week I used some broth, about half the leftover chicken, some leftover white beans and a can each of tomatoes and corn.

There you have it.

Three easy meals that fed our family of four (I’m not counting the breastfed baby obviously) easily, with leftovers for my husband for lunch. Each meal cost less than €5 to make, so each serving comes in at less than €1.

*Actually, I love macaroni and cheese. But the French being the culinary challenged people they are, they don’t appreciate its wonders. I have to have it imported- my father buys Costco quantities and ships it- and it’s too precious to eat daily.