Do budgets and healthy eating go together?

aimme13

well ive just got back with tescos and ive yet again spent £15.......that will last me the week, me a teenager and a 5 year old (with a very healthy appetite). I will top that up with some more milk and a bit of veg at the weekend.......but i spend no more than £20........i dont buy 'value' everything and i think the kids eat far healthier than most there age. So yep definatly can eat very healthy on a budget.......im off to finish my wholewheat sapghetti and mushroom bolognaise :-)

Snich

Hi,
We eat on a budget and it is healthy. We buy a huge bag of vegetables and fruit from the market which comes to about 8quid. Last week this included 3 mangos a pineapple and two punnets of strawberries. This means we drink smoothies for pudding every night! mmmm.
With the veg and some chicken and salmon (when on bogof - or often reduced at fish counter) and mince (not value), we make lots of different meals but always make enough for at least 3 if not 4 portions so that each meal makes two. We don't have a big freezer but it is always full of about 5 different meals for those 'lazy days'.
We do make a lot fresh but I have to admit to some 'jar' cookery... eg sweet and sour (half price =50p) crammed with veg and 2 chicken breasts, actually made 5 portions last night (good size for hungry workers!) when served with home made egg fried rice.

Good luck!
Snich x

hostie

I'm with you on the junk food conspir5acy theory. I'm a would be vegetarian. My OHand I eat pretty much all vegetarian but with a lot of quorn products too. This is SO much cheaper than getting meat. I used to get an organic box of fruit and veg to come every two weeks. I stopped the order when we moved here a couple of months ago and life costs far more now I shop at the supermarket. I will order a new one when I find a local firm that do it. Anyway I found that I was making myself use the veg in the box, that I was actively seeking out new recipes and that I rarely went near a supermarket. When I did, I stocked up on quorn products (being sort of vege) which I used a couple of times a week to stop things getting too boring. I always chopped the leek and the turnip and put them in the freezer so that when I ran out of food I could make tattie soup in 20 mins (if you get an organic box you will ALWAYS have potatoes in the house).

Anyway then I moved house and thought I'd try ASDA. It was AWFUL! They have these enormous shelves so you think that there is lots of choice but the choice is just ASDA brands or their subsiduaries in different disguises. The problem with this is that when you actually look for a healthy product it isn't available. For example I wanted pure fruit juice. There were hundreds of types of fruit juice drinks and only one flavour of pure fruit juice. It was the same with virtually everything. My sister had cancer so I dont like to buy things with aspartamine in them it is believed to cause brain tumors since the body doesn't recognise it and cant break it down. In ASDA virtually everything I picked up had aspartamine, e numbers or preservatives in it. This is not choice - they just make it seem like choice. Slowly as the supermarkets squeeze small producers out of the market there will be less and less real choice and just a choice between their own synthetic products. (aspartamine is far cheaper than sugar)... OK I did watch 1984 last week and maybe I'm getting a bit carried away.
Anti-asda tattie soup:
handful of chopped leek softened in oil if you have it (if not just in water)
1 chopped carrot - more if you like it more red. Blitz some in the liquidizer and add the rest to the pot.
Handful of chopped turnip
a few peeled and roughly chopped potatoes
water
a vegetarian stock cube (one with no e numbers in it preferably)
boil all this together until the taties break slightly when you stick a fork in them
serve or boil.
The traditional Scottish way is to make this in an enormous pot, give some in a tupperware to your mum, daughter, sister or neighbour, stick some in another tupperware for 'emergencies' and eat the rest over a few days. Rotate weekly with v. cheap lentil soup and v. cheap Scotch broth.
: )
rant over : )

Mercuryrising

amosworks wrote:

There have been several studies proving that a diet of mainly protein is a lot more filling than a carb-centric diet.

I don't understand why you think vegetables cost more money. Do you have a garden? Vegetable patch. Do you have a window? Window box. Do you have a bike? Get an allotment.

Stop making problems for yourself and go do something positive for your wallet and your waistline

Well I don't have a garden and I don't like cycling. The window box might seem good though.. I'll look into it more, thanks.

MinnieSpender

amosworks wrote:

Personally I believe there is a huge conspiracy to make junk crap food cheaper than healthy food. Don't ask me why, I'm still figuring that bit out but it has something to do with controlling the population through obesity.

I'll get my coat.

And also through dumbing down, I think. Junk crap food has fewer nutrients hence causing the brain to seize up.

Any room in that coat?

lynzpower

Ive always struggled with the enviromental side of bagged salads so rarely buy them, Ive got some rocket seeds from lidls just starting off in a terracotta in wilkos 70p compost. Just started sprouting this week, with a touch of luck I should save myself somewhere in the region of £40 over the summer. Ive sprouted my beansprouts too in a jar mainly through being n green, but its perfect cos ytou eat them when they are dead on ready, not slightly slimy. it costs the same for a bag of mung beans to make them which will make 20 servings, instead of the 2 youd get in a supermarket bag.

Still on the hunt for an organic delivery service for veg & meat that will do evenings for me, but alas no joy as yet!!

Annie_Fanny

Another topic close to my heart!

As Sickofhavingnomoney said "I would have no clue on how to make a stew or casserole from scratch but am now trying to learn!" I find this really really shocking. Please don't think I am having a go at anyone as I'm not! I just can't believe that people believe that they can't cook. I think there is definately a fear of cooking - that you will mess it up or it will taste horrible or something. I think of cooking as a skill and I guess some people just never learnt how to do it. I guess I also think there are some conspiracies floating around as Amosworks said. I just think of all the people who can't cook or don't know how to grow there own vegetables - what would happen if there was a disaster? Would they wait to be 'helped' by the government or begin cultivating your own garden (if you have one!) to grow your own food? I just think of all the people out there who wouldn't know what a courgette was if it bit them on the a*se or have never seen a Kiwi fruit before, (this has happened to me - a privately educated guy from Surrey in his late twenties genuinely did not know what a Kiwi fruit was!)

I guess i am ignorant of others ignorance if you see what I mean? To me cooking meals from scratch is just totally normal and not unusual. Not that I am an angel by any means - I eat supermarket pasta parcels etc! Living in a shared house about 5 years ago with 6 others. I was the only one who cooked from scratch, the others always commented on this fact "How can you be bothered?" or "Smells nice!" etc. They all ate takeaways, frozen meals, microwave meals etc.

Anyway glad I got that off my chest!

I guess my advice for people who are scared of cooking is to just give it a go. Start of with something nice and easy and work your way up. Sickofhavingnomoney you will soon learn that cooking a stew or casserole is super easy - they are really hard to mess up - although I have left one on a low heat all night and burnt the pot (oops!) but the stew still tasted good!

Floss

Not sure where you live, Amosworks, but have you tried to get an allotment recently? they're like gold dust in the leafy Cheshire suburbs.

Student cookbooks are good, they educate as well as give you great cheap food by telling you what is in season & when so you can eat seasonally & shop locally (that keeps food miles down too).

Farmers markets are good - cheap local very fresh produce & if you don't know what it is or what to do with it, someone will help you out! These are a lot more common now that more people want good-value tasty food.

other budget ideas - visit the reduced fridge in your local supermarket, check out your local Aldi/Lidl/Netto, try shopping in your local market, bake your own bread cakes & biscuits, cheap meat cooked for hours = scrummy stews
my best buy is a piece of belly pork, score the skin, pour boiling water on it to shrink it, rub some salt on, then roast ontop of 2 halved onions & 2 halved cooking apples for about 2.5 hours on gas 2-3. Its gorgeous, you get crackling & a nearly-made sauce to go with it!

dinkylou

Annie_Fanny wrote:

Another topic close to my heart!

I just think of all the people out there who wouldn't know what a courgette was if it bit them on the a*se or have never seen a Kiwi fruit before, (this has happened to me - a privately educated guy from Surrey in his late twenties genuinely did not know what a Kiwi fruit was!)

/QUOTE]


Completely agree Annie Fanny.

I was in Tescos the other day and some advocados were in my basket (hardy exotic really) The girl on the til (early 20's- not much younger than me) picked it up and shouted 'oooh i ve never eaten those before, what do they taste like? I cringed and tried to explain and then she shouted over to the next til assistant if she had as well. She then also said 'ooh no' quite loudly.

I felt embarressed for them but could nt believe that they had never tasted advocado before, not once.

Hope this doesnt make me sound snobby, but it just made me laugh! Sad really.

winkle1

i eat well and on a budget. its all about being organised.

you need to buy meat in bulk and then freeze in portions, and then defrost the day you want to cook them.