Economy Gastronomy - new budget cookery programme; BBC

Penelope_Penguin

Austin_Allegro wrote: »

When I first saw those 'feed your family for a fiver' adverts I thought, a fiver for a week's shopping - that's quite good going! Then I realised it was just for one meal!

You're misunderstanding the FYFFAF campaign. The Fiver was to buy all the ingredients. For instance, I've just made pastry. I'd price the recipe based on the exact wuantities of ingredients, as I have them all in and will use them again. This campaign assumed that people have nothing in their cupboards, so would budget for a whole bag of flour, 250g butter and 250g lard. The cook would be left with some over, so the next meal would be cheaper

The fiver is the maximum outlay for the meal for 4, which seems fair to me

Penny. x

Scarlett25

The BBC website has posted more details about it -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m2790

Butterfly_Brain

I have just made sausage toad with new potatoes, broccoli, carrots and gravy cost: £1.10
4 smart price sausages sliced =20p
Batter = 10p
Onion = 5p
Half bag new pots 25p
Broccoli from freezer = 45p
Carrots from Garden = Freeeebie
gravy 5p (bisto)

Plenty for the four of us!

yellowmonkey

spendaholic wrote: »

According to What's on TV, it's a new series.

Sky + it and came up with series link so must be. On for an hour so looking forward to it

ym

thriftlady_2

I think the idea of the programme is to show how to create gourmet type meals with less money rather than cheapo sausages with gravy granules.

This is what it says about the book on amazon

Top chefs Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merrett not only show us how to cut our food bills in half, but how we can eat like royalty at the same time. Economy Gastronomy is about planning ahead, shopping well, spending less and using ingredients ingeniously to create flavour-packed food every day. The 100 delicious recipes cover breakfasts and lunches, snacks and treats, with chapters to show you how to achieve expensive-looking meals without spending a fortune so you can entertain in style and make something from nothing. Detailed recipes reveal versatile skills you can use in a range of recipes. Form meal planning to seasonal shopping, from loving leftovers to store-cupboard basics, the economy gastronomy system combines traditional skills with restaurant flair.

Cheapskate

Got next week's Radio Times today & it will be a series, in 6 parts. The blurb in the "Today's Choices" for next Wednesday says:

"It's a cracking title for a cookery show and a simple premise: "Eat better for less". What could be more timely? The idea is that brisk chefs Allegra McEvedy and Paul Merrett talk us through ways to save money on weekly shoppong budgets while making sure we still eat like kings.
They use the England family from Derby as guinea pigs. The Englands spend £220 a week on food, a chunk of it on ready meals and takeaways. No, no, no, say the chefs, tossing the takeaway menus in the bin and preaching the delights of navarin of lamb and bran muffins. The results look delicious, but Merrett lost me when he implied people might have baby turnips knocking around in the fridge. Not often, Paul."

Yes, they really do spend this amount a WEEK - guess I won't be learning anything new! :rotfl: Might be interesting, anyway, just to pick up any new recipes, but I suspect that the best of you out there could do far better! Why don't we watch it, tell each other if/how we could do better/cheaper & stick the results in abook ourselves?!! :rotfl:

BBC2, 8 p.m. next Wednesday for the first one by the way.
A xo

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Hope it isn't, but expect it will be pretty much 'look at these stupid poor people who buy burgers all the time' and 'look at these busy middle class people who buy waitrose ready meals all the time'.

From what I've seen on other shows, Allegra is a good chef, and she tends to make things with vast amounts of vegetables and pulses, but I don't have a great deal of faith in the production companies that tend to do these programmes. I got a sense of 'people are stupid' from Anjum Anand's cooking programme (which I am sure was not her intention), and if this is going to be either like that or a rehash of the beat the takeaway programme (which also showed people as being unpleasant, stupid or both), I will be sorely disappointed.

misskool

£220 a week :eek:

[Deleted User]

What would be a better idea for a programme would be to get some of the great little money-streeeetchers on this site to do a pilot to show folk how it really is easy and cheap to cook from scratch.
With all these 'posh' cooks telling folk how to save money there never seems to be an 'ordinary person ' cooking. I'm sure there are some brilliant folk on here who could knock spots off the 'so-called experts'

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

£220 a week? Knocked down to £110 a week? Good grief, if I spent £15 a day on food, I'd be the size of Milton Keynes...

How about a new idea - they have to keep to a budget consistent with being on benefits? Oh, and everything has to be sourced and bought within a 3 mile radius, as that is about the only distance most disabled, elderly or poor people can travel. And it has to be brought back on a bus. So no giant sacks of onions or bulk buy meat, as you can't carry it.

And it has to meet the government recommendations for healthy eating. And the school rules regarding healthy food, nut free rules and acceptable nutritional guidelines. And has to be done in a kitchen measuring 240cm X 200 cm with no storage space for food, tools or fancy equipment. All cooking equipment has to be value range - knives, pots, everything.

Then there would be some degree of reality to it.