If she hasn't, she should look into eliminating
FODMAP foods and slowly reintroduce to see what causes her the most problems. For example, the 'low carb' pasta may have other ingredients that are actually not beneficial to her UC condition. She could try zucchini 'noodles' or spaghetti squash instead. Same goes for pasta sauce, plus there's potentially a lot of sodium in those. You can make your own with sauteed and pureed bell peppers and canned diced tomatoes, adding your own seasonings. An elimination diet would help inform her choices
and make label reading much easier because these processed options might be sabotaging her other issues.
If typical salad ingredients give her issues, rethink what a 'salad' is. We steam or roast greens and root veggies and toss them with some fresh chopped veggies for crunch, homemade vinaigrette, and sometimes chopped olives or nuts/seeds.
As far as grocery budget, I'd also work toward cutting or eliminating boxed/processed stuff as much as possible. Whole foods are always better, especially for teaching your daughter healthy habits. Don't get me wrong, we eat the occasional frozen pizza or have mac & cheese with homemade chili. With three kids, there's always a box of graham crackers for snacks, but they mostly snack on fruit, veggies & hummus, cheese sticks, or nuts. Buy an extra loaf of bread for sandwiches and stick it straight in the freezer. Day before you need it, move it to the refrigerator and you won't have to worry about mold OR going back to the store for one thing that turns into 12.
You can also look at portions or filling in with other things to stretch meat further. A 'meat' entree might typically be 1/4# but ground beef mixed with other stuff usually works out to 1/8# per person or better, meaning your pasta sauce or taco meat could be for two dinners instead of one. For pasta sauce I use meat, tomatoes, peppers, a little chopped kale or spinach, chopped mushrooms, and even a little chopped/shredded carrot to balance out the tomato acidity. For taco meat it's meat with peppers, tomatoes/salsa, and sometimes sweet potatoes. Then I add fresh sliced peppers on top of the tacos, also.
We add beans and onions but those might give her UC issues. The point is, the better and more interesting the flavors, the smaller the portions can be without feeling cheated. Not tiny, just stretched a little further. I often eat leftovers for lunch the next day and we frequently take leftover taco mix and add beans/tomatoes and maybe corn to make taco soup or chili. As for pasta... we typically make 1/3 to 1/2 box for a meal and still have leftovers that I can reheat with a bit of sauce for the next day's lunch. So if the box says 8 servings, we're getting 10 or 15.
I read a lot about nutrition and cooking methods and it's taken time for me to figure some things out, so I'm just passing along what I've learned. We spend some money on food with 5 of us now, not including Amazon Subscribe & Save for toiletries and paper products and some bulk snacks, but there was a time when the budget was $40 for two of us and I carried a calculator.
I will..."
