Cooking meals with LITTLE TO NO MEAT for a family, need your ideas!

Learn to read.

Read what exactly. I bolded what I was responding to? Leatrn how to follow a thread.

I had to color code it for you, sheesh.

Growing up, when we rarely had bologna, itwasthe real Germankind. I would fry that in an iron skillet and eat with peanut butter on real bread,not fake Wonderbread from the grocery. That is a fine redneck lunch.

Ah, I see...misread it as you were veg. My apologizies. 2 Trump rallies and drinking everytime he said 'shot'...makes it all a bit blurry.

Our authentic German bologna is really like Italian mortedella.
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She has no knowledge of cooking lol

She puts the potatoes and onions in at the same time .. and than adds oil .. first of all you have to heat the oil first so the potatoes don’t absorb all the oil

In awe of the knowledge shared here, thank you all for your replies you've given me some fantastic ideas, with surprisingly little trolling

Gold stars for you all

I was raised by my grandparents who were themselves brought up during the depression. They never really changed their ways. And I have your answers OP.

First, you Don't need meat every meal. On the farms before refrigerators there wasn't much meat during the Summer. I was usually served a single slice of bacon for breakfast with some variation of eggs, oatmeal, grits, and fried taters.

Lunch, or dinner down here where I live, and supper were usually identical menus. Dinner leftovers were served up for supper too. Again, in the Summer there wasn't much meat. Beans, field peas, taters, cornbread were centerpieces of meals. Sometimes chicken liver would add a nice touch. Bologna fried up was good. Hot dogs cut up into sour kraut was good too.

But of all the meat chicken reigns supreme. Buy whole chickens. 1 $7 chicken will feed you for 3 days. Day 1 is roast chicken, but don't serve quite all the meat. Save the trimmings and carcass. Day 2 tear the leftover meat up. Most of it is used in a chicken and rice casserole. Day 3 boil the carcass for flavor. Use what tiny amount of chicken you have left in chicken and dumplings.

Bacon fat is religiously saved. It is crucial to making tasty food and in lean times helps provide much needed calories. Add a dollop to green beans or turnip greens. It's nice in corn bread too.

I could go on a long time about eating on the cheap, but I'm tired. Just know that it is a fact that you can feed a family on as little as $5 a day.

Yes!

In American history, most rural Americans ate meat that was preserved and had to last. So that meant smoked hams generally. Otherwise wildgameby trapping and hunting and fishing could be done based on seasonsasteh critters got to mature.

A chicken that wasn't a layer or a brooder (sits on the eggs) gets eaten. You can't eat all your chickens. That goes for ducks,geese and turkeys too. The geese are probable hunted. Goose is a delicious meal that most Americanshave never eaten.

The pig or hog has to mature as does the Black Angus cattle.

Human beings are omnivores based on biochemistry and digestion plus our teeth. We are neither carnivores or vegetarians. Our body clearly is meant to digest foods that are raised as crops or from herds or taken in opportunist fashion from wild edibles.

So rural people once ate frugally as if there wasn't any critter ready tobe harvested in some manner, the family did without.

It totally changed human civilization when food couldbe brined,pickled, dehydrated, made into pemmican, canned, smoked, and finally frozen.

Our ancestors would be shocked at how much postmodern Americans spend of groceries. They would think they all were insane as our ancestors were spendthrifts. Not miserly, but carefully managed what food is grown, located, harvested, and preserved.

A housewife was a very smart lady. That was a FULL TIME JOB. People disrespected that, and now the middle class has been destroyed by satanic globalists.

She could do all that plus sew and knit and be a tailor and made crafts plus be SuperMom and SuperWife.

We need to get her back to save America.

Shoot a deer or a wild Pig. They are everywhere. In season.

What state are you in OP.

Last Edited by Chaz Aldrin on 10/17/2020 10:39 PM

My wife has gone Vegan on me so here are three that I prepare fairly often:

Chopped/smashed avocado on toast, sprinkle heavily with ground black pepper.

Spaghetti with fake sausage.
Get some Beyond Meat hot italian suasage.
Slice it into small rounds - best to do while still slightly frozen then drop them into a cast iron skillet and fry them.
In a large pot pour your sauce, I like Prego.
Put your spaghetti in cold water then turn on the head.
After it's boiling for a few minutes, drain, then add the spaghetti to the sauce to finish cooking. They say it's good to add 1/2 cup of the spaghetti water to the suace.
Then stir in the cooked sausage. Makes a pretty good meal!

Pressure cooked artichokes. The absolute best way to cook them.
Cut off the tops and bottoms. Pour some Italian salad dressing into the top of the chokes, then seal up the cooker. Let them rock for 10 minutes the turn off the heat and cool the pot down. Serve with a bowl of mayonnaise to dip the leaves as a dip.

I make a 2 lb. roast. What is left after dinner is used to make meat pasties with. I cut up the left over roast & all the leftover potatoes, onions, carrots, beans, etc. I make batch of pie crust but you can buy store bought, roll out the dough in a oval, add the ingredients, top with a spoonful of gravy, fold over, crimp edges together & bake for an hour at 350. Usually ended up with 8 to 12 pasties depending on what's left. They freeze and reheat in the oven well. So the $8 roast plus the $2 worth of veggies has made my DH & myself about 6 or 7 meals. Probably less than $1.50 a plate. And they taste better than any $1.50 burger you can buy.

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At least once a month we had salmon patties. 1 can of salmon can feed an army. Mix it with onions and flour. Fry it up into 3 inch patties.

Deviled eggs were served up a lot on meatless Summer days. Meatless except for that 1 slice of bacon.

I am very much at odds with these posts on here about needing lots of meat and quality over quantity crop. There is a natural flow of things that a human living close to nature will follow and it IS healthy. Again Summer is not much for meat. It spoils quick and butchering amongst heat and insects just isn't cool. Summer is a lean time. But that small amount of bacon and fat, plus a little liver or bologna here and there is enough to provide your fats. That combined with beans gives you all your proteins/amino acids.

Winter time is meat time. It's cold and the body loves the fat.

Spring is when folks usually went hungry if at all because all the stored grains are gone. That's the time for greens. Your body has grown depleted of vegetable provided nutrients over the winter and fast growing cool tolerant greens are the first things ready to harvest in Spring. And how ironic that they are massive providers of the exact nutrients that the body has gone without.

We humans have spent a millenia going through an annual cycle of meat feasting in the winter and then leaning up in spring and summer. We are actually programmed to feast on meat when we can because it's never been readily available all the time. Even hunter gatherers ate more vegetables and grains than meat. Now we have meat all the time and our programming says eat it all. But that is not right.

We should cycle.

You can't afford any prepared food now. Make everything and tit will be fresh and with wholesome ingredients. Everything even tortillas and bread and bagels.

Ain't nothing wrong with pinto beans and rice with a fried egg. That is a delicious meal especially with homemade inexpensive salsa.

See if there are gleaning programs. What happens is a local farmer has food still in the fields but it's a nuisance to harvest it by hand. That is great way to get produce.

Just about everything like ginger ale or gummy candy or swiss muesli can be made at home. So can yogurt and cheese.

Often people who are hunters have freezer burned meat as they meant to eat it all. That would be great for pets.

Make your own chocolate as it tastes like the expensive kind,but you only need three ingredients. It has to be kept refrigerated. Things like that or sugared pecans or biscoti can be Christmas presents.

Make your own perfume and cologne. It's made from essential oil and low cost vodka and water...at a pennies on the dollar.

Make your own pudding. Make a delicious Italian panfortte instead of buying a bad tasting fruitcake. Make custard beverage for holiday times. Most people love it and it's almost forgotten now.

Get a Brita filter instead of buying expensive water.

Buy food in bulk. Share a freezer with your relatiuves in town and buy bulk meat. Date that stuff and rotate it.

If you can afford honey you could make peanut butter and honey sandwiches with soup

Again, absolutely untrue.
Children nowadays are developing type 2 diabetes precisely because of their terrible diets of meat and bread and sugar.
When done correctly, a whole goods plant based diet is THE HEALTHIEST way to eat.

A lot of people are urbanites and so lack pantry space, but you will need to learn to buy in bulk when prices are lower. What you can do is buy or make under the bed containers as they are long and flat and notvery tall. So then you organize them and date everything so nothing gets wasted.

Buying something in bulk like bread flour means freezing it long enough to kill and pantry moth larva, or else you will have an issue later.

Every single day, the crock pot is going to make a soup or stew or yogurt. If you can't afford one, they often are cheap at the Salvation Army. Never buy new thinge like dishes or pots or tools.

You can try haybox cooking which is the old school way before crock pots. You take a laundry basket and line it with an old quilt. You bring your soup to a rolling boil, then transfer it to quilted basket. Cover it up, and the retained heat keeps cooking it. Saves money.

Don don noodles are an inexpensive noodle recipe that you make as a base. Then add whateveryou have to it.

You need to understand essential amino acids. plant proteins are mostly not complete proteins for human beings. That is why you eat lentils and rice, or corn and beans. Together, you get all the essential amino acids.

Find a gardening mentor. Often an older person is glad to teach a young person. Some are certified master gardeners. Don't be shy as many might give you produce or allow you and your kids to carefully harvest from their tree crops.

Take advantage of every locally available wild edibles like hickory nuts, white clover blossoms, wild chickory, violet leaves, sumac berry tea, etc.

1 lbs of bacon
1 cube of butter
1 bag of frozen sweet corn
1 bag of frozen green beans
New potatoes

Cook bacon, set aside and let cool
After cooking the green beans, drain, add to grease
Add the sweet corn and cooked potatoes
Add the butter, salt and pepper
Stir periodically, simmer in between
When done, crush bacon and stir throughout

Recipe is 400 years old and DELICIOUS

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Cold brew coffee takes 12 hours, but is richer and stronger and saves you money as it requires less coffee. Even a brand like Café Bustelo works fine...and is less expensive.

Now all you have to do is heat up what you wish to consume. It is very convenient...and you can iced coffee any time you desire.

I have never met anyone who disliked pasta shells with whatever cheese you can afford and spinach. Nor carbonara which is comfort food. That is extremely inexpensive.

Home made chicken soup in the crockpot is a fraction of the cost of ready made soup or even canned soup. Dress it up with a wild green salad from the backyard wuth homemade vinegarette, and make dumplings. Dumplings can be made by a smart 10 year old girl. It ain't rocket science. That is a filling meal.

There is no need to be hungry.

Bread that is homemade goes stale fast. But actually 99% of storebought bread is stale too. You don't recognize it as it'smadewith amino acids from feathers. LOOK IT UP!

So to balance that out, make homemade pita bread which is super simple. You make it in a skillet.

You should make,pancakes, bagels, crumpets, biscuits, cornbread, all are easy and inexpensive.

Potatoes go a long way, as does riced cauoiflower. Shredded cabbage can be combined with some ground meat along with tomato sauce and spices to make a hearty meal.

But be sure to get protein in your meals and not too many bad carbs that turn into glucose in the body. When using pasta at least use whole wheat pasta or vegetable based pasta.

Cooking oil is expensive, so manage how you use it by making three things with it. Like you could make doughnuts. Then make fried pies. Then make corn dogs, tempura, then make fried chicken.

Our ancestors did not use it one time. Chicken breading or tempora.comes off, but you made many PLANNED recipes this way.

Homemade corndogs are great. It's making me hungry just writing these posts. Your family willlove if you making all these breadslike doughnuts and fried pies. The latter are so delicious they about make people cry.


It's LESS expensive to cook. Everybody learns as it helps the whole family if they can handle themselves in the kitchen. My youngest daughter cooked an entire complicated Thanksgiving meal before she even dated anyone. That is how it should be.

If you are respectful and friendly to people working in the butcher department, when everyone else is crabby and rude, they will tell you when they put out "short dated meat". The longer meats sits,the higher the bacterial count.

Some meats are tough too and not prefered by customers.

So get a meat hammer, and beat some nontender beef and you make an Italian braciole. That is marvelous. You roll it up so it cooks like a roast. It comes out very tender when it typically would be like shoe leather.
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That is a great meal. Any short dated meat has to be cooked well done.

Stuffed bell peppers, 1 pound ground beef and white rice makes 10 large peppers. Can feed a family for 2 days. Cinnamon, whole peeled tomatoes smashed garlic smashed, black pepper, salt, uncooked rice. Make wet “meatloaf” with all ingredients mixed together. Stuff and put in a couple large soup pots. Fill half way with tomato juice, tiny bit lemon juice, garlic salt, chicken bullion. Cook in oven.

Cabbage soup. Fills you up and makes you poop! Upgrade the family toilet to a 1970's model.

If yourfamily like Indian food, then a vegetarian curry say from lentils with authentic Indian bread is a delicious meal.

Learn about sprouting as it significantly improves the nutrition.

Vietnamese Pho is superb and not expensive.

You can make your own spagetti sauce from scratch when tomatoes are cheap. My family loves bacon spagetti.

Ask where the slab bacon is located. A good grocery makes their own and it is less expensive and a higher quality product than commercial bacon.

Lunch meat is ridiculously expensive and for no valid reason. Debone a cooked chicken and make curry chicken salad or just regular. Thinly slice you own roast beef or crock pot cook it so it falls apart. Or make a pork BBQ that way.

Make falafel (fried chickpea patties) to serve with a creamy cucumber dressing on pita bread.

Make hummus. It's so simple but you need tahini.