me and dh and ds need desperate food shopping help

Boodle

I would suggest you have a peep at Mbaz's thread on feeding her family for £20 over the month, as well as the meal planning threads for ideas. Porridge or toast (I find SP wholemeal adequate for toast) are both economical breakfasts. For lunch, a soup filled with pulses (I may be wrong, but seem to remember it was around 20p for a bag of dried marrowfats...) potatoes, carrots and onions is very yummy and filling. The pasta salads mentioned by another poster is a great cheap idea - try tinned mackerel (cheaper than tuna) and sweetcorn, or just sweetcorn and grated carrot with mayo is yummy. Value fruit (fresh and dried) can be cheap and help fill you up after breakfast and lunch. If you like to have something else to keep you going through the day, try flapjacks (I melt 50g butter and 50g sugar, then mix in 200g oats and some dried fruit and nuts - bake at 190C for 20 minutes then leave to cool in the tin.)

Good luck

notenoughcash

Hello and good luck!! You have some great advice already but I'll put a tad more on here for you. Once you get used to it you won't even have to think about living on a budget, and even when your circumstances change you will still stick to it and the extra cash can go to a holiday or other treat. And if you can, buy a slow cooker, they're ace!

Just as an example, this is what we're eating this week:

I buy sacks of potatoes from the farm (£4.50 & lasts us a couple of months)
Grow my own onions and some other bits of veg and ALWAYS go straight to whoopsies when I'm shopping.

So yesterday was a whoopsied free range chicken (£2.45) for sunday roast with potatoes from sack and a few peas and carrots.

I used some of the chicken and extra veg to make a pie for today topped with HM pastry and served with mash.

Tomorrow will be slow cooker chicken & veg soup & HM crusty bread

Wednesday I will make a big batch of bolognaise sauce (with only a little meat but bulked up with red lentils) and serve half with spaghetti.

Thursday other half of bolognaise as red sauce in lasagne & HM garlic bread.

Friday HM fish, chips & peas.

I make my own bread and all tinned stuff is value. Breakfasts porridge, cereal or toast and lunch sandwiches with left over meat or value tuna.

Hope this helps some!

top_drawer_2

hi again!

I've been and done my shopping, managed to spend nearly £40 so it had better last a long time .... and I somehow managed to forget to buy tea bags and came home with cling film instead of foil!!

Anyway, so fair i've cooked off loads of kidney beans and butter beans and frozen them. Then I have grated a huge chunk of cheese and put it in the freezer. I have split loads of meat to make it go in my freezer conpartment (I live in a shared house) and bagged and labelled it all up. Then I have used some of the turkey pieces I already had and put them with my jar of tikka curry sauce which I bought today from Aldi..... I've also added some porridege oats to this just to have a go at it ....

Any more ideas of what I can do to the curry to make it more mse or healthly??

Thanks

Jen

Patchwork_Quilt

Always put veg in a curry. Almost anything goes and it makes it look more interesting. Fry off an onion in a tiny bit of oil first, then add diced carrot or whatever you have to hand. Brown the meat with the veg then tip in the curry sauce and cook slowly.

A tip from a friend of mine is to wash out the curry jar with a bit of warm water from the kettle after you have tipped most of it into your pan. It helps get the last bit of sauce off the glass and it gives you an extra bit of juice.

falady

this is a great thread and i've picked up some new ideas - thank you

pickle

Pasta and potatoes are cheap. I also like to keep a ready supply of flour so I can make scones or pizza dough. I also buy a big bag of potatos from the farm shop which works out cheaper.

Cheap meals:

Ham and tomato pasta - Fry onion, garlic, ham and add tin toms and herbs
Pizza - ham or pepperoni, sliced peppers, mushrooms etc
Tuna Cakes
Spag Bol - stretch it by adding a handful of grated carrot and lentils. Freeze what's left for next time.
Cottage Pie - add kidney beans and various veges to stretch further. I often get two meals out of one small packet of mince.

I like to freeze sliced peppers and mushrooms for cooking. Also you can buy bulk ham and then divide and freeze as required.

Make your own laundry gloop and handwash too. Stardrops and bleach (for stubborn bits).

katholicos

Last week i got a 3 for £10 deal from Tesco. 2 Medium sized chicken and a large pack of pork loin sliced.

With the 2 chickens:

i cut the breast off both chickens = 2 meals for my family of 3 (me and two ravenous teens)

then i cut the leg and thighs off in one piece = 4 pieces mean i can make 2 meals if i use 2 per meal (for curry etc)

Then i put the wings and both bird frames in a large saucepan, covered it with boiling water, added herbs, salt and pepper and simmered it for at least 1.5 hours to make a wonderful tasty stock which will make a soup with a few veggies and potatoes added to it.

With the large pack of pork loin i could easily have made 2 meals, but got confused and used it all in one casserole that i now have in my slow cooker simmering away for tea time.

My advice would be to make things with beef mince. I buy 2 packs for £4.50 or £5, but i open both packs at home (of course. LOL!) and then i make 3 lots of meat for it (we don't need to use a whole pack of meat just because that is how we buy it!).

That means there is a meat base for 3 meals and it costs only £1.50.

There is so much you can do with this. Make cottage pie (add veggies and gravy and onions and cover with mash, make chilli (add some chilli powder and onions and a tin of tomotoes and serve with rice or bread rolls, make bolognese, mince, onions, garlic is optional, tin of toms, tom puree if you have any (or a squirt of ketchup), a few dried herbs if you have any, and serve with pasta which can be as cheap as 50p a pack.

That is a very basic three meals and you only have to find 4 more. Ideas for those could be simple things like jacket potatoes and salad, or jacket potatoes and grated cheese n beans...or home made chips and pizza (unless they are cheaper to buy frozen). Vegetable curry is another good one. Meat doesn't have to be served at every meal, i think that is important to remember.

I also make my own meatballs, they are so easy, i use a pack of pork mince and a pack of beef mince, i add egg, breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, garlic and mix it all up. then i put some olive oil on my hands and roll 30 balls of meat. I usually bag them up in 10's so the teens get 4 each and i have the other 2.

I now how hard it is to live on a budget, but there are ways of stretching a pound that allow you and yours to still eat well.

oh and something else, i make my own pancakes (dropped scones) for the kids breakfasts....it's just flour, sugar, milk and a pinch of salt. You can make a batch up and freeze them!

Hope this helps

griffam

My kids have real sweet tooth appetite. I always have some scone mix made up in the fridge. I can quickly make some yummy hot scones...have a combo microwave or else I pop the in oven when it is on. Use up leftover stale bread to make bread and butter pudding.
Gone are those expensive nasty bags of crisps and we all love pop corn. Either with a sprinkling of salt or if feeling sweet melt a little syrup and a knob of butter for nice sticky sweet style.

chickalicious

hi i am new here but i regularly feed 7 (2 are only babies of 9mths so don't cost much , not including milk ) people for around £50 a week sometimes less. i have found the easiest way of doing this is to either meal plan each week or put all your cash together and have a rough idea of what you want. i find the best way is to decide how much veg i want for the month, both frozen and fresh and then decide on how much meat etc. bread milk and flour for bread or baking is also a constant cost for me and is the same every month. Then with whatever you have left you can buy your meat or fish.

But i have a recipe that feeds us for about 2 days and costs no more than £2.50

sweet potatoe and squash soup
oil
1 onion diced
2/3 garlic cloves crushed
1- 2tsp Garam masalla
1 litre veg stock
1 medium sized butternut squash peeled & cubed
4/5 sweet potatoes. peeled & cubed
salt & pepper to taste

1)heat oil add onion & garlic and cook till soft add garam massallla and cook for a couple more mins.
2) add potatoe & squash and cook for a further 2 mins
3) add salt , pepper and veg stock and bring to boil add more water if not enough, then reduce to a simmer and cook till veg is soft.
4) when cooked leave to cool a little and blend in a blender, this can be served hot or cold and if it is too thick just add more water.
Serve with freshly made wholemeal rolls.

this also freezes well. as your a family of 3 you could probably half the ammount of squash and potatoes. Its gook for making when the big shops have their sweet pots & squash on sale for a quid each and then freeze, or if you live near a market like i do then you get double the ammount for the same price.

seabright

We have a family favourite dish - bone soup. We always eat it on Boxing Day, but also when we have a carcass too.

Basically you stick the chicken carcass in the slowcooker/casserole dish with whatever veg got leftover too, stick in a couple of stock cubes in water, and let it cook. When cooked enough (when meat falling off bones) remove bones and whiz it in the blender (if you like smooth soups). Yummy and free.

If you make desserts a lot I'd suggest using dried milk - cheap and you can't taste the difference in cooked dishes.

If you like Chinese/Indian/Thai food its worth a trip to a specialist shop. I love the Wing Yip supermarket in Croydon. It's a hour from me, but I only go about once a year and the prices are fabulous and the quality great. One tip though, don't make the mistake of going the day before Chinese New Year!