help with budget friendly food for pre-diabetic aunt with intellectual disability

okies, think the title says it all. i have an aunt (51) who is pre-diabetic (on the cusp if she isnt' careful), has an intellectual disability, and we need to get her eating healthier on a budget (she's on the pension).

essentially, she knows how to cook basic stuff (snags and veg etc) - she lived with my grandparents up until they both passed, and has continued eating the same thing. her vegie intake isn't bad, but she lets herself down with the days she doesn't eat vegies. like, having soup for lunch (from a tin) - not such a bad thing - but she'll add four or five slices of bread with it. she rarely buys decent cuts of meat, more just sausages and things - cos she knows how to cook them. she cooks in too much oil, but given how far away from us she lives (about 30k's from me) i can't "police" her cooking to help her learn alternatives

so, what i need, is some recipes that will be very simple for her, give her variety, healthy, filling meals - and preferably be really budget friendly. i'm spending tomorrow with her cooking up slow cooker meals. we've recently bought her a cooker, and the intention is to get about half a dozen different meals on the go that DH and I regularly cook in our slow cooker (gotta love friends and family that will loan them to us) and show her about cooking in bulk and freezing meals. the aim would then be to encourage her to buy meat and veg for slow cooker every pay day, get half a dozen meals in the freezer, and work from there. so maybe a spag bol this week, braise in a fortnight etc.
and then get her cycling through the frozen stuff every few days and filling in between with healthier alternatives. but, they need to be VERY simple (both ingredients AND instructions) and preferably stuff that can be served with vegies or, in the slow cooker, bulked out with lots of veg so that it's a cheaper alternative for her. tomorrow's cook up will mean her taking a third of everything that we cook to put in her freezer to give her a kick start. we will use the other two thirds for our freezer (well, seeing we're cooking at mum's will leave some for dad!).

suggest away ladies!

oooh, and Col has very basic tastes - nothing with much spice or anything - she just won't eat it.

Our staple is spag bol. What type of bread does she eat? If she is eating white bread only has she tried mulitgrain? Lots of stews would probably be easy for her, just cube whatever you find and throw it in with some water. I think she might also find stir fry pretty easy, and the strips are quite cheap. All she needs is a frypan and plenty of vegies. Does she have much freezer space to buy meat in bulk every few months, like 1/4 of a cow or something?

Soup in the SC!! She will be able to freeze it and defrost and maybe blend to make it smooth? We freeze our pumpkin soup (dairy free ;)) and then defrost it and blend it again to make it smooth again and reheat it gently. I make a huge pot of pumpkin soup or potato soup and freeze kids meals because my kids love soup.

Also if you do spag bol and freeze in meal sizes so all she has to do is make some wholemeal pasta to go with it? You can hide all sorts of veges in it. And she can just put it in some healthy bread for a toasted sandwich if she can't be bothered making the pasta.

Fried rice may be a bit complicated for her.... but if she makes a heap of brown rice or basmati rice (which are both low GI) she can grate veges into a fry pan and add an egg or something, some soy sauce and garlic and the cooked rice and have a healthier meal... We add left over roast chook in ours and some bacon. We also use more spices and stuff, but its easy to make it simply.

thanks ladies

the plan for tomorrow is to have seven slowcookers plus electric frying pan and boiler on the cook top going. yay for info overload. BUT, the main thing is that she can see they have similar vegie bases and it's just the meat and sauce that changes. if we can get her to see how basic the process is, it will help her get motivated!

so, tomorrow, we're making
spag bol (will add pasta when it's almost done and freeze complete meals - one, cos it's easier for DH when he's away, two, so that col doesn't go and add a heap of pasta and end up eating too much)
chicken bolognaise - basically the same as the spag but use chicken cubes and then she can either reheat in the micro or put it in a dish, throw it in the oven topped with light cheese
braised lamb with heaps of veg
braised beef with heaps of veg
chop suey
potato soup
basic mince mix (basis for cottage pie)
couple of lots of vegie soup

and for lunch we're having the cheats version of meat balls - rissoles made heaps smaller, cooked in tom soup, and served with mash!


i guess mybig thing is making sure Col can have lots of ideas so she can budget shop and avoid living on snags and things


ooh, fried rice falls in the too hard basket - tried to teach her that one a few times and she just falls in a heap (or tells porky pies - like that she cooked it, but actually went and bought msg laden chinese at the shop - it's very hard having her live sooooo close to the shops!)

does she like tuna?

easy, cheap, can be quick to make a meal

:

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does she like tuna?

easy, cheap, can be quick to make a meal

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wont touch it!


not that i blame her = not a fan either...

You might have to set her a reminder to take it out of the freezer of a morning so she doesn't forget and head to the shops instead?

Sounds like you've got it all worked out.

Can I just make a suggestion though? (hope i'm not out of line) Dont give her too much potato, they are too high in carbs for a diabetic, she should only have 1 small-medium potato a day. Also portion control her pasta to 1 cup per serve.

pasta is to a minimum (and i use wholemeal so will be encouraging her to do the same)

when i do "mash" it's a combination of white spud, sweet spud and pumpkin, which i'll encourage her to do. she is normally a "snags and mash with peas" kinda girl - lots of white potato - which i know isn't good so trying to change that habit. i hate white mash - gotta have extras in it - so i'm hoping she'll take my lead! everything i cook is very low GI

am also trying to get her to make other small changes - basmatti rice instead of white (i can't do brown rice so i doubt she will), multigrain bread (instead of white). i think if we can get her changing in small increments (like doing this) it won't be such a shock.

Ahh you've got it all sorted. Sorry for being a sticky beak.

She's so lucky to have you! Can you cook me some yummies too? lol.

i'm going to mum's cos it's too hard to cook for me at the moment! at least this way there will be a few of us working together!

Wow talk about organised!

Some quick suggestions for easy options to compliment your SC meals - omelettes, also baked beans on toast are a great fill in meal (without too much toast!).

Mak - no choice but to be organised - my DH lives in a truck so we do a lot of precooking and freezing (usually have three slow cookers on the go when he's home for a weekend every month) - but we had a freezer (or two) FULL of food before Black Saturday (and the fires that hit our town the weekend before) and the power outages meant we lost all of it. this weekend is my opportunity to finally catch us up on all of the cooking and get ourselves ahead again. esp seeing i won't be doing much cooking after Gremlin arrives!

my aunt doesn't consider baked beans a meal (cos my grandparents didn't) so she won't eat them. i've talked to her about omelettes, quiche, scrambled eggs (i've survived on stuff like that while pg cos it's so easy) but she's not a big fan of eggs. i'd love to get her to cook a zuchinni slice with a heap of veg in it and freeze some for alter, but she isn't interested in that kinda thing (fussy wench!)

she was seeing a dietician but wouldn't tell us what they were telling her, but i KNOW it wouldn't be to have takeaway coffee and vanilla slice every few days, so we've decided to take it on ourselves again. fun fun fun

She is really lucky to have people around her that care so much - I had GD so pretty much lived on eggs and tuna with heaps of veges - but sounds like you have a bit more of a challenge on your hands. The dietician I saw was a big fan of beans!!! Some other snacks I used were Diet yoghurt, nuts (almonds especially) and peanut butter or cheese on 9 grain vitaweets. But a bit of a change from vanilla slices....We also made homemade pizzas on pita bread as a quickie also!

Good luck :)

How did the cooking spree go BG?

After reading this thread I think even I may have to get a SC

didn't get it all done - i love my mum, but her and her sister are damn hopeless at large scale stuff - what would take DH and I about 2 hours to get everything on the go took maybe 6 with them dilly dallying around. no matter how much i tried to say "hey, let's do it this way" it just didn't sink in! so i'm heading back to mum's today. i guess the fact that mum said "yeah, i have plenty of room" and then couldn't have more than four slow cookers on the go at once... grrrrrr

i left home at half 8 yesterday morning, got home just on midnight (crashed big time) - told her i'd be back around lunch time today so there goes another half day

BUT - having said that - there was not a single flop out of what we made (and it actually sunk in with my aunt!). yesterday we managed to cook:
potato soup
meatballs
chicken bolognaise
spaghetti bolognaise
braised lamb
braised beef
cottage pie base (will top with mash today and put them in the freezer)

today we're just doing the meal sized portions of all of that and cooking vegie soup and chicken stirfry

am exhausted, but it's not too hard to get these things done and mum's couch is comfy enough for me and Gremlin to have a break (cos Gremlin is kinda over mummy cooking i think!)


next mass cook up is at MY house, MY set up, MY rules - we'll get it all done really quickly!

BG - even though it was slower than your normal pace I would like to say congrats - it is still a fair effort!

It was a super long day for you - hope you were ok today! So glad that it sunk in with your aunt and she enjoys the yummy meals you have prepared together.

ok - final tally for the weekend and then i'm heading home for a much earlier night in bed tonight

potato soup - 7 serves eaten, more left (which mum will keep) - ingredients mum had at home so no cost
meatballs - 5 serves - none for the freezer (was lunch yesterday)
chicken bolognaise - 16 meals for the freezer
spaghetti bolognaise - 6 meals with white sauce as pasta bake, 9 meals for the freezer
braised lamb - 8 meals for the freezer
braised beef - 8 meals for the freezer
cottage pie base (will top with mash today and put them in the freezer) - meal for 4 today, and 4 for the freezer
chicken stirfry - 8 meals for the freezer
vegie soup (pumpkin bought spesh, but everything else was left over veg) - 20 meals for the freezer

now, including buying basics for my aunt's place (gravox, chicken stock powder, beef stock powder, vege stock powder, pepper etc) it cost us around $240 between the three of us



so $240, essentially 88 meals, so under $3 a meal - and three freezers looking a whole lot healthier!

That is a steller effort BG - def will have to look into a SC - I could save myself millions

OMG what a bargain! You are so lovely for doing that.

Fantastic job!!! I am very inspired by your cook-a-thon....also seems like a great plan for the family budget too. I agree with tk1999 - looks like a slow cooker is a must have.

Well done - I hope you can rest up today!

today is a day of rest -- have two letters to post, so will head to the PO later,but apart from that it's feet up allllll day. i've only had three days whole pg when my feet have swelled at all - and two of them were this weekend just been!

doing it the budget friendly way, you could use the slow cooker once or twice a week and make enough for two family meals at a time (for a big family) or, as it is for us, 8 individual ones. what i would suggest is getting the biggest slow cooker you can afford at the time, and, when you're using it, fill it as much as you can! pack out basic things (like spag bol) with finely chopped vegies - makes for a more "rounded" meal - means you don't have to worry about doing veg when you defrost it later on! you can use cheaper cuts of meat and the slow cooking process makes it nice and tender!