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Need menu ideas for tight budget!



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amother


 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 6:51 pm
How can I save on food for yom tov? Having guests and money is really tight now.
Are veggies expensive? Should I do pasta, rice? No fruit?
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out-of-towner




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 7:20 pm
The question is what is your usual menu? If you usually do a roast or the like, then chicken cutlets and ground beef based dishes will be cheaper for mains.

Meatballs can be stretched with breadcrumbs...toast leftover Challah and process in the food processor to save money and use up leftover Challah.

Chicken cutlets can be sliced thinly to make schnitzels.

Pasta and rice dishes can be cheaper.

Carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and zucchinis are a few cheap veggies that I can think of offhand, but shop you local store's sales. Base your menus off of what is on sale and cheap.

Soup is a good filler and a good way to stretch resources. Think beyond chicken soup. The food blog More Quiche Please has lots of ideas for Parve meal fillers which are likely cheaper and filling.
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amother


 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 8:30 pm
Thank you!!
Anyone else? I'm looking mainly for sides.
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black sheep




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 8:33 pm
1. make homemade challah. for six meals, that saves a lot of money.
2. homemade cakes for desert. easy inexpensive ones, like a blondie and a sponge cake
3. buy the least expensive gefilta fish in the freezer section. spice it up when cooking with some sugar and salt and pepper in the water, plus and onion and a carrot.
4. sweet and sour meatballs, serve with rice
5. shnitzle and homemade potato kugel
6. for shabbos a big cholent
7. whichever greens are on sale/ in your fridge for salads, homemade vinagrette
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bookworm10




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 8:35 pm
Cheap Kugels are lukshen kugels, apple kugels, etc. No pie fillings or quiche crusts. Stay away from frozen vegetables, they are a fortune.

I am thinking about stuffed peppers. Peppers, a little bit of chopped meat, and rice and its a main/side.

I do a lot of stir fry because then you get a lot more out of your meat/chicken.
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black sheep




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 8:36 pm
oh I just saw you are looking for sides. I make rice pilaf often because everyone loves it, and it cost pennies. cooked white rice, add fried onions, or slivered almonds and craisins. also roasted potatoes, and homemade potato kugel are inexpensive and delicious. easy greens salads. basically chop up all the vegies you have, add homemade mix of oil, lemon juice, and spices.
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Deep




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 8:37 pm
Shlishkes?
You just need potatoes,flour, a few eggs & breadcrumbs.
It takes time, but you get a special side for next to nothing.
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ra_mom




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 8:38 pm
amother wrote:
Thank you!!
Anyone else? I'm looking mainly for sides.
If you can find a can of pie filling on sale, half of this recipe makes a nice 9" round pie. Or you can use muffin tins and cupcake holders to make individual servings. I like this with cherry pie filling.
http://imamother.com/forum/vie.....rt=20

Carrot muffins.

Sauteed zucchini is delish and can be made in advance, just undercook the zucchini.
http://www.imamother.com/forum.....64015

Sauteed carrots are also delish. Made the same way. You can cut into sticks for a pretty dish.

Onion flowers are pretty and delicious. You can use regular vinegar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItctVq_Rr-U

Tri colored veggie fries (or you can do cubes)
http://imamother.com/forum/vie.....=beet

Hasselback potatoes are gorgeous and delicious, all you need are regular Russet potatoes.

Potato knish kugel is really nice baked in individual tins
http://imamother.com/forum/vie.....art=0

Noodle kugel

Rice topped with sauteed onions and mushrooms

Cabbage and noodles

Orzo with sauteed onions and a cup of the $1 bag frozen peas and carrots

I love tomato salad, cucumber salad, cole slaw, corn salad. And they keep well in the fridge so you can make in advance.

I do a lot of these sides for YT all the time.
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amother


 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 10:26 pm
Thank you so much all of you for these great ideas!
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rachel6543




 
 
    
 

Post Sun, Oct 05 2014, 11:48 pm
If you want a fish dish, salmon patties are cheap, easy to make and also freeze well. One large can (14 oz?) can make 7-8 servings and costs about $3 at trader Jo's or Walmart. For one can, add 2 eggs and about 1 cup bread crumbs (leftover challah is great for this). You can also add chopped veggies. I usually season with some lemon juice and lemon pepper spice mix. Fry on the stove with just a little oil (I use olive oil). You could prob use non stick spray too. Serve with homemade tartar sauce (mayo with chopped pickles) or some other sauce. My guests always like this.

For a side dish, you can also make veggie patties. Good side dish for vegetarians. Sorry, don't have exact ingredients and amounts. A great way to use up leftover mashed potatoes. Add sauted shredded carrot, onion, chopped bell pepper, some spinach. Mix with egg and matzah meal. Add seasoning to taste like salt, pepper, garlic. Fry in a little olive on stove a few min each side then bake in oven 10-15 min. You can serve with applesauce or a different dip. This freezes well too.

Other cheap side dishes: boiled eggs, egg salad, deviled eggs, mini carrot muffins, sweet potato pie, apple kugel, potato kugel, mashed potatos, rice, carrot soup, matzah ball soup.

I was at a friends house recently for shabbat lunch and she made an elegant, but cheaper lunch by making chicken kabobs. Each skewer had 2-3 small pieces chicken breast and several pieces of veggies. Great way to portion out food, but serve elegantly and healthy.
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amother


 

Post Mon, Oct 06 2014, 12:41 am
Great ideas, thank you!!
Please keep them coming!
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seeker




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Oct 06 2014, 1:15 am
Veggies in general are not necessarily cheap; what you need to do is go to the store and see what's cheap and then plan your menu around that, instead of thinking of what you want to make and overspending on ingredients. If they are available, look at sale flyers to see where you can get the most of what you want. My target price for veggies in general is around $1/lb but you have to know which are usually more/less. For example, colored peppers can be expensive but if I see them for $1.49/lb I'll buy a whole bunch and they can dress up a range of dishes.

Vegetables that are usually inexpensive or often on sale include: Various kinds of squashes (try to get to know your squashes... some are very different than others so they can be totally different dishes), yams, most stores will have at least one variety of tomato on sale at a given time, carrots. Get a big bag of onions and garlic, need not be any special variety, they make everything taste better.

I like to serve a lot of vegetables, I'll pick from one of these basic ideas and use what I have in it:
- Salad (I check my own lettuce, much cheaper and much better taste)
- Roast (cube/slice veggies, toss with olive oil and spices of choice, bake on high temp. Can be infinite flavors depending which veg/spices)
- Fry (sautee onions and garlic and vegetables of choice. need not be oily.)
- Grill (I just got a grill pan, still learning on this one but it's going great!)
- I'm not big on kugels but that's always an option
- Same for soup (sautee onions and garlic, add veg of choice, cover with water, simmer until all soft, blend with immersion blender - before YT of course)

Potatoes are usually cheap and a great filler. I stay away from them because they give me stomachaches but I am one of the only weirdos I know with that problem. To most people they are tasty and go well with everything.

Serve everything with a filler that makes people fuller so you aren't serving as much of your more expensive items. Brown rice, pasta, etc.

Meat I stock up on whatever the store has on sale. Besides a little ground beef and Shabbos chicken, I do meat very rarely - basically just for yomtov, and even that we get invited out a lot - so I don't know what good prices are, but for example I did a big pre-yom-tov Brooklyn haul and bought some deckel at Glatt Mart for something like $7 or $8/lb which sounded good to me because other meats were at least $12. So, still not super cheap compared to, say, canned tuna, but it's for yom tov and we don't eat that much of it - with all my rice and veggies and challah and dips and everything figure a few slices of meat per person? And the little kids probably won't touch it anyway.

Chicken is cheaper than chicken cutlets and easy to prepare in a nice presentation. Unless you find chicken cutlets on sale maybe, then they're good because they portion more easily and you don't end up with as much waste.

Some people think of ground beef as hamburger meat but it feels very yomtovdik to us. You can make meatballs in a special sauce, or roll it up in strips of eggplant or lasagna noodles, or layer it with something - elegant presentations upgrade the whole thing.
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amother


 

Post Mon, Oct 06 2014, 1:24 am
Thanks seeker! All great ideas, I'll def try some of them!!
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seeker




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Oct 06 2014, 1:50 am
Oh, and my number one piece of budget advice is to use what you have. It's unlikely anyone will go hungry. Go shopping with a list, buy produce on sale, and once you get home don't go shopping again! If you're missing an ingredient, use a different recipe or just leave it out (depending what it is - this doesn't work well in cake or if it's a key ingredient but most dressings/sauces/salads/etc can take omissions or substitutions pretty well) And if your DH is like mine then definitely don't send him to the store either!
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