Suggest healthy and inexpensive meal plans for a family with children

Wantobe

Following on from the other thread about Irish children being overweight etc I was wondering if we could do a thread about a good, healthy menu for children for a week. This would be a family meal, weekly menu so as to use leftovers and so on. I'm the first to admit I have a lot to learn when it comes to nutrition for my children but I try pretty hard and read as much as I can. I'm a working mother of two, OH also works and we cook almost everything from scratch as I'm a coeliac. This would be a sample menu for our week, I'd love some tips on how to improve it. I cook for all four of us. I buy all food in aldi and weekly shopping bill is usually between 100 to 140- can't seem to do it for less but it usually includes a bottle of wine.:o

Breakfast each day is either cereal ( a choice of cheerios, wheetabix or cornflakes), toasted brown bread with egg or with banana. They have a glass of milk or water for breakfast. I have a cappuchino ( homemade with LF milk)

Lunch for the children is either a sandwich ( brown bread) with ham/chicken/nutella( only once a week) or cheese, sometimes a pasta salad or wraps, with a small yoghurt and a banana or other fruit. I want to try other things but haven't gotten round to it yet. Open to suggestions.

The adults either have a homemade sandwich or a salad for lunch we make at home and bring to work.

At Four the children have a small snack- either crackers and cheese, fruit and a yoghurt and sometimes a hot chocolate milk ( nesquik).

My weekly dinner menu would be like:

Sunday- duck breast on the BBQ( we use it all year round) with salad for the adults and some mashed potatoes for the children. They are starting to eat bits of salad too. Also one veg such as frozen peas.

Monday- leftover duck with spaghetti, peas, mushrooms, onions and any other handy veg. Very quick to cook.

Tuesday- Potato and leek soup with buttered bread.

Wednesday- spaghetti bolognese ( I usually make enough for three dinners and freeze two-have spag bol another night the week after and shepherds pie the week after). With celery, carrots and the usual tomato sauce ( I use a weightwatchers recipe).

Thursday- Homemade salmon fishcakes with salad ( made with frozen salmon, spring onions, potatoes and egg to bind, covered in breadcrumbs and sprayed with lf sunflower oil and baked in the oven.

Friday- usually something easy, like fish n chips ( oven chips), fish grilled or on bbq or a pasta dish like asparagus and bacon.

Saturday- Again often a fish dish, like cod nicoise or a fish pie with prawns, cod and salmon, paella or chowder.

Children only have fruit for dessert during the week or cracker and cheese. At weekend they can have an icecream or a yoghurt or homemade cake. We don't keep sweets in the house but if we are out and about at the weekend would buy them some. I like to bake, so would often have homemade scones and cakes and buns at weekend.

Any advice or tips would be great.

Khannie

Sounds like a fairly healthy house. You have a similar spread of food stuffs to us. My wife's a full time mum so we cook all our stuff too. I have specific nutritional requirements like yourself, but only for the love of my sport.

Stuff that we regularly have for dinner:

Spaghetti Bolognese. I'll skip the pasta and have the meat sauce with veg (usually lots of brocolli). I'll bring leftover meat sauce into work or it can be used for lasagna / whatever else.

Much like yourself we'd have one night of "crap". Crap consists of fish fingers, beans and oven chips or something like that. I'll usually have been training on those nights and it's an easy dinner for my wife to make for herself and the kids.

One night we'd do Salmon parcel (details coming), peas, brown rice and parsley sauce. The parcel is just salmon wrapped in tin foil, with some olive oil, smidge of lemon juice and herbs thrown in. Stick in the oven. Job done. Yum.

Chicken stir fry with noodles. Fast and easy. I'll skip the noodles or have a very small amount. Ginger's essential IMO. Other than that, feck in what you like.

Chicken curry: Curry sauce, chicken + whatever veg takes your fancy. We'd do brown rice with it which I'll skip and replace with broccoli and green beans or whatever. Winner for reheating.

In terms of leftovers, I'd usually just bring them in to work for my lunch. If there isn't enough veg left over I'll pick up some in lidls (they do a microwaveable veg mix for 1.50). I had that today with spag bol sauce for lunch. Win.

One thing that's worth considering are oat pancakes for breakfast. We'd eat them a LOT (most mornings). The kids love them and they're a good way to start the day. Have a search in the fitness forum for the recipe (or if you're having trouble, shout and I'll dig it out).

edit: We'll usually do one roast a week. I love roast beef. I could eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner. It's surprisingly cheap if you head to your local butchers. I find that round roast at the butchers is nice (and cheap). Not so with round roast from the supermarket for whatever reason. Rib roast is nicer / more tender but harder to carve and more expensive.

EileenG

It doesn't look like you are doing badly at all. There are a lot of children round here who seem to live on chocolate biscuits, coco pops and takeaway.

You might offer porridge in the morning rather than cereal, especially now that it's getting colder. Cheaper, warmer and more nutritious. You might drop the Cheerios, they have a lot of sugar.

If it's a school lunch, you don't have a lot of leeway with the children, as it has to be something that keeps in a warm classroom, can be eaten quickly and won't mess up their bag. Sandwiches are popular for a reason. If I have leftover rice, I made a tuna, sweetcorn and rice salad, and usually put olive oil or even fish oil on it.

For adults, chop up some veg (cabbage, celery, fennel, broccoli) so it's small, add some interesting salad dressing and eat with tinned fish.

Your dinners look fine, lots of homemade stuff with food in season. Just make sure there is a protein source in there.

Wantobe

Thanks Khannie and EileenG. Some great ideas there. I really like the salmon parcel with rice idea. If I'm ever near marks n spencer I pick up microwaveable brown rice as it can be really handy for a quick but healthy meal so that would be ideal with it. I must google parsley sauce, sounds nice and we have our own little herb garden. The oat pancakes sound like a winner for weekends too. Definitely going to look for that recipe. Have to pass on the roast beef though, eurgh, not keen at all. I'm more of a fish lover, could eat that morning day and night. Well, maybe not morning. We would buy the matured Angus striploin steaks once a fortnight too, I do love a bit of steak, but it's two steaks between the four of us, delicious on the BBQ with just a bit of pepper. I try to be adventurous with salads too, so would often have all sorts thrown in there- my latest fad is a few pecan nuts, cause my husband has high cholesterol ( genetic).

Oops about the Cheerios- that'll be the last box of that I buy. Have tried selling porridge before but to no avail, but will try again.

Thanks for the tips/

Acoshla

Hiya,

Instead of buying the microwaveable brown rice in Marks and Spencer try picking an evening when you have some time, boil up a pick batch of regular brown rice, then divide it into portions in something like the plastic containers you get at salad bars in supermarkets and pop in freezer, it only takes a few minutes to thaw it out, it's cheaper than the pre cooked stuff and just feels healthier

If you have porridge for breakfast you could try cutting up some prunes pretty small and mixing it through, makes it nice and sweet and gooey, might encourage kids to eat it a bit more.

jdivision

For porridge, frozen berries and into the microwave are good and then throw some seeds on afterwards. I do use honey the odd time. cinammon and stewed apple could be good too. An alternative is to soak the oats overnight in quality apple juice, somebody here put it up before and it tastes good

lindaxxx

Hello parents...I am a 3rd year student studying business in college. I have been asked to conduct a business for one of my modules(as part of my final year project) with 3 other people and its under the heading " healthy eating for children". This subject is so important for many families out there and with the current economic climate I know its hard for parents to afford proper meals as well as keeping a roof over your heads. For this module we have decided to come up with a business (not realistically) that supplys children with healthy foods to their schools. We would be delivering these meals to the students in primary schools.We were thinking of running a prepay option for the term perhaps.The food would be made on our permises in balbriggan and delivered to the children for their lunch time. Our business has to be real on paper so i would like to ask any parents out there could they leave me their feedback as to what they think of our idea.Could you see yourself giving your child money to buy a healthy lunch? I would really appreciate this. Thank you so much