As others have said, ramen can be bought 4 or 5 packages for a dollar. Just add whatever meat or veggies your family will eat.
An awful lot of tradition recipes are about making a little meat go a long way. Yorkshire pudding, for instance, used to fill up a family before they started on the roast beef. Or any of the things like jambalaya or dirty rice, with bits of meat and veggies in with the filling rice. (Incidentally, we used to get Tony Chacere's version of these in a box. Add turkey sausage, cook for 20 minutes, and you have a not-bad quickie jambalaya.)
If you want it, I can give you my family's recipe for traditional Jewish chicken soup. The full recipe is lots of typing. But the basic ingredients, so you can judge, are 1 entire cut-up chicken, a few carrots, an onion, dill, parsley, and noodles. It takes a couple hours to make. The chicken is pretty tasteless afterward; the one way I've found to eat it that wasn't too bad is to make sate out of it. The marinade adds some flavor.
My version of chili is: brown 1 lb ground beef and a chopped onion, throw in a crockpot. Add a chopped tomato, 1 small can tomato paste, a can or two of diced or stewed tomatoes, some minced garlic, 2 cans black, red, or kidney beans, a can or two of tomato sauce, chili powder and other seasonings to taste (hot sauce, salt, pepper, oregano, rosemary, whatever), and maybe some beer to add extra liquid. Cook on high for maybe 4 hours, or on low for 6. This recipe is versatile enough that I think you could just omit the beans, and if you serve it over rice or spaghetti and with garlic bread it will go a long way.
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An awful lot of tradition recipes are about making a little meat go a long way. Yorkshire pudding, for instance, used to fill up a family before they started on the roast beef. Or any of the things like jambalaya or dirty rice, with bits of meat and veggies in with the filling rice. (Incidentally, we used to get Tony Chacere's version of these in a box. Add turkey sausage, cook for 20 minutes, and you have a not-bad quickie jambalaya.)
If you want it, I can give you my family's recipe for traditional Jewish chicken soup. The full recipe is lots of typing. But the basic ingredients, so you can judge, are 1 entire cut-up chicken, a few carrots, an onion, dill, parsley, and noodles. It takes a couple hours to make. The chicken is pretty tasteless afterward; the one way I've found to eat it that wasn't too bad is to make sate out of it. The marinade adds some flavor.
My version of chili is: brown 1 lb ground beef and a chopped onion, throw in a crockpot. Add a chopped tomato, 1 small can tomato paste, a can or two of diced or stewed tomatoes, some minced garlic, 2 cans black, red, or kidney beans, a can or two of tomato sauce, chili powder and other seasonings to taste (hot sauce, salt, pepper, oregano, rosemary, whatever), and maybe some beer to add extra liquid. Cook on high for maybe 4 hours, or on low for 6. This recipe is versatile enough that I think you could just omit the beans, and if you serve it over rice or spaghetti and with garlic bread it will go a long way.