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Need ideas for meals that will last a few days

Posted: Mar 26, 2016

I'm looking for some ideas for meals that will last a few days (just DH and me). I've made chicken soup (last 4 nights) for 2 weeks in a row. Now I'm looking for some other ideas.

I'm on a very limited budget, so can't do half the stuff that keeps popping up when I search. Also, my oven is broke so cannot bake anything. I do have a crockpot and a rice cooker.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

;

Crockpot - Anonymous

[ In Reply To ..]
You can do spaghetti and meatballs, a pot of beans, chicken and dumplings, pot roast, split pea soup, beef stew, the possibilities are limitless when it comes to crock pot dishes, try Googling "enonomical crockpot meals." I have a crock pot sweet and sour chicken recipe that is good and you can serve rice on the side. What about a main dish salad? There are a lot of things you can do.

freezer - pushpin

[ In Reply To ..]
Don't forget that you can freeze your large meals. I usually store them in several small containers so they're good for more than one leftover meal. Either pop them into the fridge the night before to thaw or thaw them in the microwave.

Crockpot lentil soup - wordie

[ In Reply To ..]
If you like lentils, I often make a very quick and easy crockpot lentil soup with potatoes, carrots, celery, half a small can of tomato sauce, and a teaspoon of mild Patak's paste, and some chicken or vegetable broth. It freezes very well, and I often have several containers of it to freeze afterwards. It's quite cheap to make. The jar of Patak's curry paste is about $5-7 and lasts a very long time, as you only need about a tablespoon for a whole crockpot soup.

Addendum to lentil soup ingredients - wordie

[ In Reply To ..]
I forgot to mention that I also saute onions and garlic in olive oil to add to the crockpot lentil soup, before getting the crock going. The soup tastes much better and richer, if you saute at least these two ingredients separately first before adding them, and it doesn't hurt to saute the carrots and celery first, too, if desired.

Do you like pea soup? We love it and I make (sm) - Cook

[ In Reply To ..]
a big pot and eat it for a few days. If you don't have any ham to add to it, for flavor, you can always add a few cut up potatoes to stretch it further. :))

Skillet Dishes - see msg

[ In Reply To ..]
Sometimes, the skillet will work just as if you used an oven. If you like Italian, you can bread up some chicken cutlets--dip in egg before using breadcrumbs. Sautee them in a skillet until brown cooked through. Remove and drain oil. Place some spaghetti sauce in the pan, add the chicken back in, then top with mozzarella and place a lid on the skillet until sauce is bubbly and cheese is melted.

I'm all for lentil soup and pea soup. You can throw anything into the lentil soup.

I'm also all for freezing in single-portion containers. You don't have to eat what you make all at once---you can mix it up a bit. I like to make stuff on a day off and then just freeze it in single/double size portions and I'm set to go for the entire work week.

big cheap meals - same boat

[ In Reply To ..]
I've been doing the same thing for years. Some of my favorites are ham or smoked sausage (cheap)/cabbage/onion carrot/potato soup (adding a beer makes it awesome, beef stew, ground meat and vegetable soup, meat loaf (lots of ww bread), split pea or bean soup (more of that bulk sausage or ham), homemade hummus and falafel (cheap, wildly nutritious, and garbanzo beans are a powerful depression buster), and any kind of homemade bread you can manage in a skillet or crock pot. Eggs, eggs, and more eggs. Parsley, onions, lettuce all easy to grow.

dinner! - sue

[ In Reply To ..]
Buy some McCormick Chili Mix, you can make chili using either ground beef or adding a couple of different types of beans (kidney beans, black beans, chick peas)and making it totally vegetarian. With leftovers you can make nachos, chili dogs, taco salad, tacos, and also leftover chili freezes really well. The mix costs about a dollar...no mixing, no measuring, no having to buy a bunch of spices. Just an 8 oz can of tomato sauce and the mix. Another really quick and good thing to make is tortellini or ravioli with alfredo sauce. Get a bag of frozen tortellini or ravioli and a jar of prepared alfredo sauce (it is usually with the jarred spaghetti sauces). Costs about 1.50. Portion out only what you need of the frozen ravioli or tortellini, and use only what you need of the alfredo sauce. Sprinkle grated parmesan cheese and pepper over it, it looks much more expensive and labor-intensive than it actually is, but who needs to know, right? Serve with bread and salad. Also, later in the week, dice and boil some potatoes, put them in a small casserole pan, take the rest of the jar of the alfredo sauce and maybe add a little bit of milk and some cheese and mix all together to make a sauce, pour the sauce over the potatoes in the casserole dish, put breadcrumbs over that and put in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes or so. Voila!!! Cheesy alfredo potatoes, and nobody needs to know that it was as easy as pouring jarred sauce over some boiled potatoes!!! Serve alongside of pretty much any kind of meat (like a hamsteak or some chicken).

Ideas. - Backwoods Typist

[ In Reply To ..]
One of my fav cookbooks is Gooseberry Patch's Super Quick Slow Cooking Lots of recipes with just a few ingredients. My fav is the creamy Italian chicken. You can make extra and freeze it. It can be served with rice, noodles or stuffing.

Another thing I like to make is chili. I use just hamburger when I make mine, but you could use bulk sausage. Sauer's makes a good spice packet unless you season it from scratch. I make large pots of this and freeze it in portions. You can add beans into it, like kidney beans or of your choice, to make it go a bit further.

A big pot of beans works well too. If you fix them from dry, soak for a few hours or overnight before cooking them. My favorite are cranberry beans, also known by some as October beans. Good alternative to the classic pinto bean. Beans are chock full of protein (plant based) and fiber. When cooking, add a teaspoon or so of lemon juice and that should help eliminate some of the gaseous side effects. It does not affect the flavor at all.

Skillet meals are also a good alternative. Some casseroles are crock-pot friendly and most freeze well. Meatloaf can also be cooked in a crock-pot, freezes well and is wonderful left over. It can be converted into tomorrow night's tacos, spaghetti sauce, or even sloppy joes.

Check out the frozen veggie section and pick your favorites. Green Giant has microwavable veggies in sauce (can boil packet in water too) that are pretty good, and if you catch them on sale, you can really stock up on them. These are also not a whole lot of calories even with butter/cheese sauce, and there is a pretty good variety of them to choose from.

Potatoes and sweet potatoes can be baked in a crock-pot, though I know this is a one-night thing. Just thought I would throw that in there for thought.

Freezing any of the above in one-night portions for you and hubs and switching it up night to night can help you live on your budget, but have variety too. Hope this helps.

Chicken cacciatore is great in a crockpot. Advise sm - nmx

[ In Reply To ..]
using boneless chicken breasts/thighs as bones will separate from the meat and you'll have a mess. Cook chicken by itself in the tomato sauce, and then add the mushrooms (fresh hold up the best) and sliced green peppers (onions optional) halfway through cooking. I freeze mine in individual servings in plastic freezer bags so I'm not eating the same thing 2-3 nights in a row. Enjoy!

Your Crock Pot is Your Best Friend - WhenItComesToSaving

[ In Reply To ..]
For instance, today, for Easter Sunday, I put a small pork shoulder in my crock pot on a huge bed of collard greens, slathered it with raspberry jam and whole milled mustard and a pinch of allspice. Let it go on low for 8 hours and Voila, a meal for a week along with your choice of potato, rice or favorite pasta dish. These meals are delicious, nutritious and save you a bundle. Now that most groceries carry wonderful greens, a great way to get collards as well as kale into your diet. The whole meal cost me about $8.00 to buy but I will be eating it for a week. Do the math.

Southern to the end and could never have - my collards anywhere close to jam

[ In Reply To ..]
My husband usually buys and fixes our collards. He uses ham hocks, cooks those for some time until they are tender before putting the greens in. He usually just a touch of olive oil and the greens are to die for. I once had someone to try and put onions in them, yuk and that doubly goes for anyone putting any sugar in the greens. Some do here in the south just like they want to put sugar in cornbread, double yuk.

Something wrong with beans and rice or any bean/lentil plus any grain/pasta? - Heloise

[ In Reply To ..]
Some variation on that is the standby for those with small food budgets all around the world.

I have a bunch of precooked and then dehydrated beans that cook up in 15 minutes. (You can make your own in big batches with a pressure cooker and dehydrator, or you can buy them that way.) Add boil-in-bag (or in my case, boil in giant tea ball because I don't like cooking in plastic) polenta/corn grits, barley groats, buckwheat, millet, cracked wheat, couscous, brown rice, or quinoa or go with tortillas, chapatis, or pasta. Use any sauce of your choice--Latino, Italian, Indian, Thai, whatever and add some handfuls of veggies in the pot with the beans/lentils or grain or quickly steam/grill/saute them as a separate side. If I choose one of the longer-cooking grains, it may take 30 minutes to get dinner on the table from when I start boiling water in the tea kettle. If I go with a shorter-cooking one, it takes 15--and most of that time, I don't have to pay any attention to any of it. Most I usually dirty is 2 pots. As the budget permits, you can vary things with a bit of cheese, some bacalao or other fish, bean curd, some peanuts or cashews, or a small amount of poultry or meat in the sauce--just a couple of ounces added per serving will do it.

Yesterday I skipped the beans and made a big Peruvian-style spicy potato and peanut stew with half a pound of pork that will feed me for 4 or 5 nights served over polenta or quinoa. It's a poor woman's carapulcra with more potatoes and cheap chopped peanuts bought in bulk, less pork, and skip the port wine. I had some green beans and carrots with it last night and broccoli, red peppers, and onions tonight. Have to see what I feel like tomorrow.

Here's a recipe I used earlier last week over brown rice, using quick-cooking cracked yellow peas, dried sweet potatoes, and coconut milk powder out of the pantry:
2 Tbsp. ghee or unsalted butter
1 small red onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 tsp. each sea salt and pepper
2 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger
1 tsp. turmeric
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. curry powder
1 cup dried sweet potato cubes
2 cups chopped kale
1-1/2 c cracked yellow split peas,
4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup orange juice
freeze-dried cilantro leaves and ground black sesame for garnish

Split peas boiled in bag/ball in the stock with just the sweet potatoes added to it (which take longer to cook) so I didn't have to tend and stir them, then threw everything else in and let it simmer, mashed the peas and returned to the pot, and gave a few stirs. Meanwhile the brown rice was boiled up in another pot, and dinner was served.

Thank you all for your suggestions. - Bad cook

[ In Reply To ..]
You all sound like great cooks. I've got lentils, navy beans and split peas, so going to make pots of beans at different times.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

Another suggestion for cooking - nn

[ In Reply To ..]
I have a TFAL Opti-Grill. This or a George Foreman grill would be another alternative. What I like about the Opti-Grill is the fact that it has different settings for chicken, pork, beef etc and you can also monitor the "doness" of the meat, so if you want a steak medium, it is color coded and will beep when it gets to that degree of doneness. I absolutely love mine and VERY rarely use my oven since I live in FL!

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