£20pw - Little freezer & eating for one. Help!

edrushuk

Could anyone point me in the right direction.

After a year of ignoring my food spending I need to bring it under control. At the moment, I spend about £40pw on food and bits. I would like to bring it down to about £20 per week on food shopping.
I am not a brill cook but that can change with practice, and I only have a tiny freezer, which normally holds a bag of mix veg, some ice pops and then it is already filled. Not much space for anything else.

Would like to put together a list of healthy tasty meals which will take me away from supermarket pizza's etc.

Thanks for your help

Susanna

Bitsy_Beans

My best advice is to meal plan. That way you only need to buy the stuff for that weeks meals. this avoids the aimless wandering round putting loads of stuff in your trolley without thinking about what you will cook with it.

Have a look at the receipe collection for some ideas for meals. Would a bigger freezer be of more help financially since you can batch cook in bulk and save the exta portions?

slig

I cook just for me, and I don't really use the freezer much at all. My shopping comes to a max of £20 a week, and most weeks it's lower.

Meal planning is definitely the way forward. I sit down at the weekend with my recipe books and work out what I'm going to eat for the coming week. I then make a list, checking the fridge and cupboards to see what I already have (and if there is something I have that needs using up I will work it in to my meal plan), and I pretty much stick to the list when I go shopping.

I try and make a larger portion than I will eat and use the leftovers cold for my lunchbox the following day or two. If you don't have freezer space to batch cook, lots of things will keep in the fridge for a couple of days.

Meal planning and cooking from scratch is really worth doing. When I was a student I used to eat the cheapest ready meals (yuck), eg basics mac & cheese or chips and pizza fingers. Now I have tasty, healthy food every night, and a lunch that I look forward to rather than skip, and I spend the same amount that I used to spend (probably less).

What kind of food do you like, edrushuk? Pizza is really cheap and easy to do yourself. There are some recipes and ideas here including a pizza dough recipe http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pizza-recipes.

juliapenguin

I think this is a really good book for people cooking just for themselves:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Cheap-and-Easy-Vegetarian-Cooking-By-Elliot-Rose_W0QQitemZ320399377733QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Books_Fiction_GL?hash=item4a994a8545&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

I'm not a vegetarian, but most of these recipes are really nice and all of them are suitable for people cooking just for themselves. If you're a real meat-lover, you can add bits of bacon/ham/salami/tuna/whatever, but they're all pretty tasy as they are.

I can't understand why it's out of print - it's definitely my most-used book; even though the recipes are really simple I still flick through it before I write my meal plan and shopping list. The potato hotpot (sliced boiled spuds layered with onions, tomatoes and cheese sauce) is so much tastier than it sounds and so cheap.

Seakay

A second vote for cheap and easy - I'm not a veggie but I use it a lot. It's really good at using seasonal veg and most recipes explain how to adapt them for one or two people.

DrDaz

Hi Susanna,

I'm currently working away from home during the week and cooking
just for me.

Like you I have a small freezer (just an ice box really).
I do manage to freeze a couple of things though. I got
some smallish (500ml I think) shallow food tubs, 4 for £1
from poundworld or pound land. I can fit two or three in the
freezer (2 will stack and slide in).

So I'll tend to make a chilli one day and freeze half, a veg
curry the next and freeze half of that.

I tend to go to tesco after work (around half six) at that time
they are quite often stocking up the reduced to clear shelves
so I can pick up a box of mushrooms, some carrot battons and
some green beans all for 30 - 40p each, or maybe some on the
vine tomatos for about 50p.

At that time they usually have bread on the RTC shelves also
so I can usually get a loaf of bread for the weeks sandwiches
an toast for 30 - 40p. More often than not the bread is the more
"exotic" seeded kind, which I guess doesn't sell as well and
so has to be reduced. That's okay cos I like that kind of bread.

Tesco do a bag of cooking onions (about 8 in the bag) for £1. This
will last me 2 - 3 weeks.

I also visit Aldi and pick up what ever veg and fruit I need from
their 49p range. I did see on TV last night that they now have
somethings like tomatoes at 29p.

They had a nice sliced garlic sausage on last week for 35p I think

A fairly cheap alternative to pizza is to get a pack of part cooked
baguettes from asda or tesco (about 40-50p for a pack of 2), slice
a couple tomatoes, half an onion and a clove of garlic all
quite finely chopped.

Fry these for 10/15 mins until the tomatoes are quite mushy and then
add a little passata or some of the juice saved from a tin of tomatoes
from earlier in the week. Add a teaspoon of dried basil (fresh would
be better but it won't keep while I'm away from the flat and I would
end up throwing it away).

Allow this to simmer for 5 mins or so while the sauce thickens.

While that is happening cook the baguette(s) in the oven until they are
almost ready. Take them out and whack the grill on fairly high.

Then slice the baquette and spread the tomato mix over the cut side of the
bread. Add some ham, mushroom whatever you fancy and grate over some cheese
and maybe a little italian herb mix. Grill until the cheese is bubbling.

P.S the tomato sauce also makes a great base for spag bol, just add to some
browned minced beef (or dried soya mince soaked in beef stock, not to everyone's
taste but quite cheap).

Darran