Here’s my hot tip for shopping day …. break up your meat. I buy family sized trays of mince or chicken about $7 each, but I don’t use the whole tray for one meal. I break it up in to two lots and freeze it, doubling my meat for the fortnight, that works out to around $3.50 a family meal. The trick to make meat go further is to try and use equal parts meat to equal parts veggies. That way you don’t do have a heart attack when you are 50 and your shopping bill goes down.
So instead of making spaghetti bolognaise with just mince, pasta sauce and pasta, with the bolognaise part grate a heap of vegies and chuck them in the mix too. You have just made a plain spag bol 50% healthier. The same can be done with lasagne, Sheppard’s pie, taco mince, anything like that. You can add canned lentils as they are brown and blend in to the mix, add grated carrot, zucchini, potato, tomatoes, sweet potato, anything in your fridge.
With the chicken you can use it for a stir-fry, chicken rice, chicken soup, chicken pie, chicken nuggets. The key is with a wet dish, add the same amount of veg as you do meat and you will double your meal. Here is my way I make the now halved mince go even further. Add a can of crushed tomatoes and a can of lentils, trust me know one will know! 
Cook it all up, you can also at this point add any greated veggies. Then this is what it looks like with the extras added, pasta bake.
Then if you have too much that’s fantastic as you can freeze half for a night next week, see Cook Once Eat Twice for more great tips! This is a great tip for big families trying to make every dollar count, helps especially when you are on one income! Happy meal creating.
Renee
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