What did your parents do for Budget Friendly Meals?

[Angdeer]

In our house it was caned soup with way more water than it called for or if we were lucky spaghetti. So sad. Its crazy how much our food bill is every week though.

[PrincessFiona60]

We had mostly casseroles, a whole chicken once a week, lots of soups and stews. All homemade. Dad wold buy a half ham, bone-in, dice it all up and measure into 1 cup portions then freeze it. We had ham, onion and cheese waffles at least once if not twice a week. The ham bone went to bean or split pea soup. Once a week we had a huge dinner salad with one can of tuna for 6 people. Powdered milk for baking and cooking. We gorls tried to make things interesting by looking for different recipes with what we had on hand. Both of my sister now cook "out of the box," and they hate to cook. My brother and I are the only ones to embrace the love of cooking and playing with our food.

[DaveSoMD]

I remeber two specifically.. Hamburger and Beans is one. Brown 1 lb ground beef in a skillet and add 1 can of Campbells Pork and Beans and heat through. I still remember eating that from my Flinstones "log" dish. The other was macaroni and pork chops. Mom would use the left over pork chops from a previous meal, cutting the meat off the bone and then cutting it in bite sized pieces. This was fried to reheat it and then cooked elblow macaroni and Campbell's Tomato Soup were added and heated through.

My Gram is the queen of making meals from nothing/leftovers, being born in 1914 and living through WWII and then raising 3 kids on her own. But she is another topic entirely.

[jcv]

I loved almost everything my mother ever cooked. It wasn't until I was grown that I found out most of it was really cheap - after all, she did have to feed 5 kids.

we often had things like hamburg and gravy over rice, sliced hot dogs and french fries, canned salmon with cubed potatoes and peas in cream sauce, scalloped potatoes and ham, baked macaroni and cheese... the list goes on and on. I miss all that stuff. Some of it I can make but my family won't eat any of it.

[Selkie]

What did your parents do for Budget Friendly Meals?

They had only one child!

[vagriller]

My dad hunted, and our freezer was always full of venison. So much so that when I went to a friends house and had burgers that I asked what the burgers were made of! They said it was just regular beef. Guess I was used to the lean deer and elk burgers. Also my parents grew an enormous garden, canned the extras, raised chickens for eggs. Then they traded eggs for milk with someone at our church that had a dairy. They stocked food (bought on sale) and cooked most everything from scratch.

[JamesS]

Food was something that was never compromised on in my family. We only had one car, didn't go on vacations or have a recreational budget beyond a trip to the movies every couple of weeks...but always had fantastic meals.

[justplainbill]

Spanish rice, spaghetti and meat balls or neck ribs, spaghettii with Pesto Genovese, pot cheese and buttered noodles, lekvar and buttered noodles, pot roast with noodles or mashed potatoes, string bean salad, fried pork chops, fried chicken, fried codfish, fried eggplant, potato soup, bean soup, pea soup, chicken feet soup, scotch broth, tripe stew, boiled tongue in caper sauce, stewed tomatoes, chopped creamed kale or swiss chard, escarole, corned beef and cabbage with boiled potato, frikadellen, goulash, liver & onions, Sicilian pizza, minestrone, creamed lima beans, string beans in sour cream sauce, grated zucchini or cucumbers in sour cream sauce, pickled beets, potato pancakes, apple fritters, stewed peaches, stewed figs, oatmeal, farina, tapioca pudding, chocolate pudding, butterscotch pudding, egg sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches, bologna sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cream cheese and jelly sandwiches.