Making Do

[charla]

So it seems that groceries at least in my area are hard to come by. Let's share tips and recipes that help us stretch our pantry items, proteins, and produce but yet still make filling, nutritious meals for our family.

I saw a meme on FB that said that dinner prep was going to be like opening a Chopped basket (from Food Network).

Tonight when I ordered groceries for pick up tomorrow the only meat items I was able to put in my cart were brisket, stew meat, turkey lunch meat, and gf breaded chicken breasts. We shall see if I even get those by tomorrow. I didn't preplan very well for this. I usually only buy fresh meat for each week so don't have any stocked in my freezer. Last week I put a few packages of meat in my freezer for the first time, but have used quite a bit of it this week. I need to figure out how to stretch this stuff. I can't continue to use a whole package of meat for each meal.

[Maedchen]

This lady lived to be almost 100. Before she passed, her grandson filmed her with cooking lessons of Living through the Depression and how they made do with what they had or found.

https://www.youtube.com/user/DepressionCooking

Her stories are so interesting as she shows us how to cook.


Today I went and sat in the car while my gloved and masked daughter went into the Grocery store over in the Jewish part of the big city. (We had checked if the Kosher for Passover items had arrived. I usually go there and fill up on a year's supply of things that are corn free and gluten free and safe for my husband) She was not able to get a year's worth of the 1 item we went for, but almost........(It is $11 a jar on Amazon if I can find it and it was less than $6 at the Publix)

She said the store was pretty bare of the normal items.............mostly boxed things. The produce section was full, but the items pre-cut were cleaned off of the shelves. Of course we knew eggs, milk, meat, paper items and cleaning supplies were gone.

We went to the Whole Foods and she said it was the same way. I had the bright idea to go further into another section of town because the Asian market should be okay...............I gloved up and just walked into the door, other than pork rinds and a few odd items, from what I could see, no produce, no frozen, no rice, no noodles, it looked like a store before they shut down business there was nothing in there to purchase.

I remembered a tiny Indian store and we went there. She had just gotten a shipment, so I was able to get my GF flours...........only 2 small bags of rice flour though......she discussed with me and helped me find some new to us items, but how to prepare that flour for use. I also found dried beans there.........

I have lived through shortages when we lived in GITMO and the barge was late by 3 weeks and the store was almost empty. I have lived with doing without an item until it would arrive 3 months later, but this is like going to stretch us all!

I love the idea.

I learned in GITMO to sub, plain yogurt for sour cream in a recipe, so if you can't find that, but you can find yogurt, use it exactly the same way.

They also help ifyou put a little in your biscuits to help lighten the bread if you don't have another item.

[Mother of Sons]

This is something I’m very good at. It’s not easy and it’s not gourmet but it can be done and we all hate beans.

A few tips...

Rice, bread or potatoes should be the base of every meal so focus on those when you shop. Making bread items is easy and cheap so focus on supplies for that. Bread doesn’t just mean sandwich bread, it’s biscuits, pancakes, dinner rolls, muffins etc.

A lot can be done with eggs.

If you can eat cheese, cheese can turn anything into a meal.

Meat should be cut very small. Smaller than you think. Cut thinly one Chicken breast can feed your family.

Substitute substitute substitute. If your recipe calls for peas, use carrots or whatever you have. It will work.

Be creative. Once I used potatoes instead of taco meat. Turns out it’s a real thing called tacos de papa! I’ve also used chopped walnuts, lentils and beans instead of taco meat.

Tired of Cheerios? Put them in a frying pan with a little butter and cinnamon sugar. Now it’s a new snack. Or butter and savory seasonings.

Add a dessert. Find a few low ingredient cookie or dessert recipes. It helps keep people full and have a treat. Use leftovers for this too. An old biscuit dipped in cinnamon sugar or drizzled with a quick glaze or covered in fruit is dessert

You can make burgers out of a can of beans and a little flour. Drain the beans and then mash with flour a little at a time until it forms kind of a paste. Add lots of seasonings, form into patties, dip in flour (optional) and fry in the pan. Serve on homemade buns. You could crumble leftovers and season for tacos the next day.

You can add anything to a pan of fried diced potatoes and it will be delicious.

[Sparrow]

To make chili go further, I had a can of pumpkin (just pumpkin, not the pie filling).

I've found things like rotissiere chicken are available daily. I chop those up small.

I've made muffins twice, breads, buns...

I've done lots with eggs.

It seems that meat and canned goods are hard to come by here.

We also don't have a lot of stockpile, I can only budget a week at a time and I buy what's on sale, its how I meal plan. Its so hard to meal plan when you don't know what is going to be available!

[Virginia]

Hopefully this isn’t too off topic, but if any of you have farmers markets in your area, I would recommend trying to find a list of vendors and contacting them to see if you can get their produce, eggs, and meat delivered or boxed up for pick up. A lot of our local vendors have an excess of products because all the markets were canceled.


What we are doing:
-lots of beans and rice-based dishes
-eggs (quiche is a big hit, but you do need milk or cream for that)
-Kodiak protein pancake and muffin mixes. I stocked up last week. Then I don’t feel so bad for only serving pancakes to DD for breakfast
-We are doing lots of nut butters: peanut butter on toast or apples is really filling as a snack
-buying protein pasta or the veggie pasta so it has more nutrients and is more filling

[Earthmummy07]

I suck at this right now but need to get better at it.Between my kids allergies and also feeding FIL who will not eat rice, pasta, beans, lentils... You know, all the cheap stuff you usually bulk with, feeding our family at the best of times is a challenge. Now with the empty shelves and the sto es placing limits on how much of something you are allowed to take, it's becoming a serious headache. DH went out for 4 things earlier. And he had to go to 4 different stores to get everything in the correct (safe) brand, in the sufficient amounts to feed our family of 6, plus the bits he was picking up for my disabled mom and brother. 3 packages of something is not enough to feed 8 people for a week

[charla]

I'm finding being gluten free and egg free difficult. It looks like one can't be really picky about brands right now, but some brands just aren't gluten free.

[Maedchen]

Charla, if you can do chickpeas and have those in the can, save the liquid. It can be added to baking products as egg whites. It can be whipped. (There are lots of videos using the liquid faba (I think that is what they call it) It can even be whipped into a topping similar to meringue cookies)

If you do not have the canned for ease, you can soak and rinse and then cook chick peas and save the liquid in the fridge to use.

You can also use flax meal with water as an egg sub in baking..........just note that you will not get the general height you are used to with eggs.

At least it is edible and your taste buds do adjust when you are gluten free.

When I went to the India market, the lady informed me that the gram flour (which I was concerned about) is ground lentils.

You can also find chickpea flour.......if nothing else you could make Falafel that is safe.

You can use the above to make a patty for a sandwich.


She also told me to get water chestnut flour. It is one of their fasting approved foods....... you boil 1 potato and mash it and add water chestnut a little along to make a dough that you press out and can cook in a tiny oil amt to fry similar to a tortilla. Limited ingredients (which I am sure you could do with most any flour and the potato) I prob. would add a tiny pinch of salt just to be okay with my western tastebuds.


Some people may dump the liquids out of canned goods, but that can be drained and used as a soup base starter.


If you have instant potato flakes, I add an egg to the mashed potato and seasoning, I fry those in small patties. (you could add onion or peas......whatever you have that you like the taste of. Add some nutritional yeast for added vitamins.) Sometimes that is all my husband and I have for a meal at night.

I take a 5 oz can of tuna and add 2 heels of bread crumbs, 1 egg, and I add chia, hemp seeds and nutritional yeast and no more than 1/3 cup bisquick/flour............ I make patties and fry those in a small amount of oil (just enough to keep it from sticking) We then make a sandwich or eat it as a meat with veggie side. We make 2 meals off of the patties. So it should cover a family of 4 for 1 meal. (You could do that with tuna if you like tuna patties to make it go further)....... If you can sneak onion or peas or even grated carrot, it adds to the food value.

[Mother of Sons]

if you use an instant pot to cook chicken breasts you can use the leftover liquid for soup. I put a package of breasts in the instant pot for 10 minutes then I put them a couple at a time in the food processor to shred them. I used the liquid to make soup with some chopped up veggies and a little of the shredded chicken. I also added some cut up spaghetti noodles to it. That was all stiff we had already o I considered it a freebie.

Then I used some of the shredded chicken to make meat buns. I made a sauce with ketchup, a little brown sugar and soy sauce and mixed it with the chicken. I made Dough, split it into 4 pieces, flattened it and then stuffed with chicken and baked.

I have two bags of shredded chicken left. I plan to make potatoes with veggies and a little chicken (maybe 1/4-1/2 a bag) and chicken patties (1/2 a bag) this still leaves me with one bag. I can use it for stir fry, salad, tacos, etc. so at least 6 meals from 1 package of chicken.

[mummy2boys]

Thank you for starting the thread Charla and for the great ideas already here.

I know having lots of input from other people of ways to make things stretch further is going to be very important and I feel it helps put my extreme anxiety a little more at ease.

[Soliloquy]

My Walmart had frozen turkeys. I bought two. I'll roast then, cut off the meat into portions and freeze. Then I'll make two batches of bone broth, maybe 3. Turkey bones can be used more than once for broth. I freeze the broth and thaw as needed. We have plenty of fresh veggies in our stores, just no white potatoes. So we can have lots of soups.

I don't really like pork but I bought 8 pork shoulders before this whole thing started because they were on sale for so cheap. I roasted one the other day. We ate some plain the first night. The next night I shredded it with homemade bbq sauce. The next one I'll turn some into Asian rice bowls with veggies and some into pork carnitas.

I also happened to buy a lot of flour before this happened because I needed 5 lb weights for my science class. So I bought a lot of 5 lb bags of flour. That turned out well. I'm back to using my bread machine again. I may make naan there next time we have curry, too.

I'm planting sugar snap peas tomorrow.

[heartofjoy]

Following.

I got some sourdough starter from a friend today. Picked it up on her front porch. I am going to try baking sourdough. I know how to bake yeast bread, but yeast has become hard to find, so this is another way that needs fewer ingredients.

[Mother of Sons]

You don’t need milk for pancakes. Once I was out of milk and used lemonade. They are still my husbands favorite pancakes.

[Laurlor]

Great idea....I’m not good at this so will be coming back to read. Thanks!

[knitlove]

In most cooking you can get by with water instead of milk - it won't be as rich but it generally works.

Growing up my parents made enough so that we just didn't qualify for food stamps. My mom is amazing at making do and making things streatch.

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