£20 a week OS challenge- you'll be seeing more of me I think!!

black-saturn

Instead of taking a tin of soup to work take a home made soup made in the slow cooker. You can freeze it into individual portions and take it out of the freezer the night before so it's defrosted by the lunchtime. Heres my recipe for soup:

Recipe for lunchtime soup

Take 1 small chicken breast, 1 onion, half a packet of scotch broth mix, handful of mixed herbs, a few frozen peas, one potato peeled and chopped and 1 carrot peeled and chopped. Put all these ingredients in a slow cooker with about 2 pints of boiling water and cook in the slow cooker for about 4 or 5 hours.

When cooked puree and either transfer into individual portions and freeze or transfer to one large container and chill.

exlibris

When cooking in the oven fill it and portion up extra meals for freezing before you plate up. If you use freezer/microwaveable containers you can micro the frozen meals to save using the oven.

Suitable dishes for this are shepherds pie, lasagnes, fish pie, soups, cakes and crumbles. Sorry there must be more but not thinking properly.

This assumes that you have a microwave of course.

skintchick

It's easy on your own I know, but last week's food shop cost me £5.77!!!!

I always bring the month in under £60, and often it's more like £40.

mgardner

skintchick wrote:

It's easy on your own I know, but last week's food shop cost me £5.77!!!!

I always bring the month in under £60, and often it's more like £40.

Much Much easier on your own. You are not under obligation to provide, PROPER food. When I was married my OH would have had a fit if I had suggested cheese sarnie and tomato soup for Sunday lunch, had to be the full roast. but thats exactly what I have just had for lunch and thoroughly enjoyed it, Cos it was what I wanted to have.

skintchick

mgardner wrote:

Much Much easier on your own. You are not under obligation to provide, PROPER food. When I was married my OH would have had a fit if I had suggested cheese sarnie and tomato soup for Sunday lunch, had to be the full roast. but thats exactly what I have just had for lunch and thoroughly enjoyed it, Cos it was what I wanted to have.

EXCUSE ME!!!!!!!

I always eat proper food.

:mad: :mad: :mad:

EDITED cos I have misread what mgardener said - you weren't meaning me I'm told, so SORRY!!! But I do still always eat proper food :cool:

RacyRed

My tip would be to read up on low GI diets.

Basically this enables the food you eat to keep you going for longer, so cutting out the need for snacks and reducing portion sizes.

Buying wholemeal pasta or brown basmati rice etc may seem as if it is more expensive, but you get a lot more out of it. And that is before calculating the health benefts.

Do we have a bit of confusion above? All food is "proper" food, just some people have a traditional idea of what a meal should be, ie Sunday = roast? That was how I read mgardner's post?

Of yeah! And shopping trolleys are priceless! But then I would say that wouldn't I

Hugs to all :heart2:

mah_jong

i always have a a general ideaof whats to eat for the week ahead, I always know what it is the next day. But I am not too rigid and unflexable that I cant adapt to any unexpected bargains!

Just got out tomorrows soup and dinner. And after reading this thread I have also got out a bit of chicken and will make black saturns soup tomorrow!

Also to lynzpower I would suggest keeping on eye on your fridge/veg rack. If you are not using it up quickly enough dont wait till its inedible, use it ! I make soup out of just about every veg. The only one I didn't like much was the parsnip soup after Christmas!

Dont buy fruit and veg, just because its cheap/ on offer, know waht you are going to do with it!! I refused to buy a whole cucumber , for a prawn cocktail. Not over cost reasons but the waste. I knew I wouldn't use more than an inch!!! I couldn't find half a cucumber but at the end of the day, the meal was gorgeous anyway!!!

black-saturn

I've found it much easier to shop online at Tescos with a shopping list. Then even though they charge £3.99 delivery I stick to the list and only get whats on it and it still works out cheaper. I still visit all the supermarkets once a week though to check out the bargains and BOGOFs and reduced stuff. If I'm not going to use it that week i will freeze it for another week.

elona

I love my bread maker - it makes rolls, home made pizza base, fruit loaf, fruit cake and even jam and has saved me a lot of money as well as being great fun to waje up to the smell of freshly baked bread!

I also love the slow cooker as it saves me time and uses less electricity - makes even the cheapest meat and veg tasty and tender.

When I cook soup or curry in the slow cooker overnight DH would eat about a quarter of it at 7a.m.!

squeaky

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