Grocery shopping - extreme money saving AND healthy eating????

star2007

Porridge for breakfast, add some of these for extra flavour & nutrition: ground cinnamon; apples that are going not so crisp peeled, cored and sliced; speckly bananas sliced; tesco value mixed dried fruit/ sultanas; honey; syrup; chopped nuts (great for extra protein!)

Homemade flapjacks - 120g marg gently melted, stir in 120g of sugar, add 240g of oats, tbsp of either honey or golden syrup & anything else you want to add eg 1/2 cup of dried fruit/ nuts. Bake for around 25 mins at 200C (less for fan oven).

9p noodles - throw away the sachet - there's more nutrition in the plastic packaging, cook the noodles according to the packet. Meanwhile stirfry some sliced onion, small carrot in julienne sticks, sliced mushroom, sliced pepper, leftover chicken bits from roast, tofu cubes... anything else knocking around in your fridge. Drain the noodles & add to the wok with veg and stir together. Add some soy sauce, sesame oil and a good shake of Thai sweet chilli sauce.

Alternatively, make some satay... mix up a dollop of peanut butter, sweet chilli sauce, crushed garlic clove, finely sliced small knob of ginger, add a little water to mix.

Sprouts - not the Brussels kind (tho' they're good too). Get some beans & seeds from a health food shop, soak overnight in a large jar of water, rinse, drain and cover with muslin. Keep rinsing once or twice a day till ready. Alfalfa will need about 5 days, chick peas about 2 days... after that the tail gets a bit too long & they taste a bit woody. Mung beans are great too.... this is what the supermarkets sell as stirfry beansprouts.
They are good a topping for salads, a garnish for soups, as well as stirfries.

Pearl barley risotto - make in similar way to rice based risotto, gently fry onion & veg till translucent, add the barley & stir for a minute. Add a splash of white wine/ dry sherry/ vermouth to deglaze the pan, then add ladle fulls of hot stock & stir till absorbed & cooked through, about 40 mins.
Pearl barley is about 39p/ 500g in Tesco, arborio rice is about 99p, so it's a big cost saving!

Veggie soups - great for warming winter suppers. Fry an onion, garlic, herbs & maybe some celery as a base, then add your chunky veggies, stock, and simmer till veg are soft - at least 15 - 20 mins. Other good additions - left over meat, chicken carcass cooked down for stock, chick peas, cannellini beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, slightly stale crusty bread cut into cubes.

Bulk out mince with a scoop of red lentils - they cook down to mush in about 20 mins so they're not detectable, but still nutritious and good for protein in their own right.

Other lentils are great - either for veggie or meat dishes. French lentilles vertes are yum in soups and stews.
Tempting recipe ideas:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/15/nigel-slater-bean-lentil-recipes

Chick pea flour can replace eggs in some recipes - mix together 1 cup of chick pea flour, 1 cup of plain flour, pinch of salt, 1 tsp of baking powder, half (soya) milk half water, mix together until you get a Yorkshire pudding batter consistency... I use this for pancakes, coating sliced vegetables then frying, toad in the hole.
I also make a kind of Spanish omelette/ tortilla.... fry some sliced onion and cooked new potatoes till lightly brown, make the batter from just chick pea flour & seasoning (no plain flour or baking powder). Add to the pan and cook on a gentle heat till it's setting, then either flip it over with a plate, or stick the pan under the grill till it's cooked on the top.
You can get chick pea flour in Tesco's in the proper Indian food aisle (normally next to the Polish goods), it's about £2 for 2 kg, so really economical. It's also quite high in protein.
Lentils are cheaper here than in the wholefood section.

Other egg replacers in baking, you can use 1 tbsp soya flour, applesauce, ground flaxseeds, or mashed banana.

Make your own yoghurt, just buy a small tub of plain live yoghurt as your starter, add a spoonful of this to warmed milk... this yoghurt can be used as the starter for your next batch ad infinitum... don't need to buy a starter each time.

Make chapattis to go with curries.... just add water & a pinch of salt to the chapatti flour (or use half plain, half wholemeal), knead & form into golf ball size pieces. Leave for 1/2 hour, then roll out into thin circles and cook in a hot dry frying pan for about a minute each side & brown spots form. If you have a gas cooker, hold with tongs in the flame for a couple of seconds so they go nice & puffy.
1.5 kg of chapatti flour is 99p in my local Tesco.

Make a beeline for the reduced fruit & veg section in the supermarket, and base meals around this. Also try to get to a greengrocer/ market at the end of the day... they often sell off speckling bananas etc for a few pennies.

Plan your meals once a week before shopping, but allow for flexibility e.g. if you see a bag of carrots reduced to 20p, substitute them into a recipe.

Grow a few herbs on the kitchen windowsill.

Homemade bread - just follow the instructions on the pack of flour, or get a library book if feeling more adventurous. I think it saves about 50% on bought bread, and is 500 times tastier!

Use the water (unsalted) drained from potatoes as the liquid for bread baking... it really improves the texture of the dough.

Try and eat wholegrains - it may be a few pence more per pack, but refined goods have most of the goodness stripped out, so you're getting really poor value for money in terms of nourishing your body. Likewise don't overcook veggies, to keep in as many vitamins as possible, and eat some veggies raw e.g . a salad of grated carrot, cucumber & beetroot with a drizzle of flavoured oil and a few sesame seeds... adds so much goodness & vibrancy to the meal. :j

bigsmoke

Hi Star2007

(apologies for slightly hi-jacking OP's thread!)

you mention celery for making soup - i love using celery in soups and really think it makes a difference to the flavour, but i always find that i'm left with half a bunch of celery that i end up forcing myself to eat as sticks or, worse, it goes off and goes in the bin

if i sliced the celery up, raw, and froze it in a bag would it be ok to use in future soups? or should i cook it first and then freeze it? and can i just fill a bag and freeze it or do i need to lay it out on a tray? sorry, rather new to this type of thing!

thanks very much for any advice

bs x

thriftlady_2

Fantastic advice Star2007:T:T

Thanks especially for the chickpea flour ideas-I have one of those huge bags of it fromTesco's.

thriftlady_2

bigsmoke wrote: »

if i sliced the celery up, raw, and froze it in a bag would it be ok to use in future soups? or should i cook it first and then freeze it? and can i just fill a bag and freeze it or do i need to lay it out on a tray? sorry, rather new to this type of thing!

Hi Bigsmoke, one thing I do with celery and other veg is this. I use a whole head of celery at a time for this. It is amazingly useful and adds extra veg to your recipe without veg-dodgers noticing;)

I also like to use up floppy celery when making chicken stock or veg stock.

star2007

Hi Bigsmoke,

not sure if you can freeze celery raw, it might go a bit mushy as it thaws... I'd just throw the rest of the celery in the soup/ stew to make a bigger portion and freeze the extras. Or just make up some cream of celery soup.

Hope that helps anyway!

spend_thrift

Frozen peas are actually considered to be better than fresh because they're frozen within such a short time after picking and retain lots of vitamins. Similarly, you could try looking at the frozen section for fruits too. Frozen perishables are usually cheaper than fresh because the wastage is less so the supermarket doesn't need to price high to account for their losses.

As a student I used to buy a couple of apples, small bunch of grapes, couple of oranges, anything that was firm and in season really, and make up a big bowl of fruit salad to last me through the week. Much cheaper than pre-packed and I could choose what I wanted to put in. If you like banana, only add it to the portion of fruit salad you are about to eat, at the very last minute. Banana goes brown and mushy very quickly and will discolour everything in the bowl. Also, a bit of lemon juice on the apple slices stop them from turning too.

Another cheap dieting tip comes from one of the slimming magazines I used to read... it was a 3-day diet where you made 3 bowls of food which you ate over the 3 days. You could eat as much as you liked as long as you only ate what was in the bowls. They were things like bean stews and casseroles. They would be cheap to make and by making them in bulk meant you only had to spend one day in the kitchen.

I used to perceive fresh fruit and veg as expensive, and then I realised how much ready meals cost. Stick to what is in season, and check for discounts and end of the day bargains, and you'll be able to eat healthily for less.

Oooh and cottage cheese is a brilliant diet food. I used to eat tonnes of the stuff! :rotfl:Buy a big pot of plain and then add your own flavours each day for variety, and get a tupperware container to take lunch-sized portions into work each day, so you'll save on packaging as well as the expense of single-serving sized pots!

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

You could treat celery like a cut flower - chop the bottom quarter inch off and stick the bunch in a glass of water in the fridge. I do it with broccoli as well and it really seems to keep them fresher longer.

bigsmoke

ooh, thanks for all the great celery ideas folks! i love the idea of a freezer 'hash' - would save so much time, will definitely give that a go over the weekend.

as for healthy/moneysaving food - i would just re-enforce what people have been saying about pulses and things. now that the cold weather is here i have soup for lunch at work most days and always throw lentils, pearl barley and/or a tin of chick peas or beans in there. things like lentil soup are literally pennies a portion, and so filling as well as giving you a portion of protein (and some pulses etc count as one of your five a day - can't remember which but sure someone on here will know :rotfl:). they can also be made pretty much entirely from storecupboard ingredients too, so no need to 'pop' to the shops at the end of the month, especially if you use frozen veg.

i also find things like soups and stews much easier to use the whole of a vegetable in - for e.g. if i'm putting brocolli in soup i'll also dice up the stalk and people don't really seem to notice, it's still full of vitamins and things!

do be careful to keep a good variety in your diet - if you're cutting down on calories it's particularly important to make sure you still get all your vitamins etc

good luck!

bs x

LegalBlonde

Can I just say you guys are amazing! I have not read all the posts yet but going through them now with a cup of tea while I make my shopping list. Thanks again I am so impressed

LegalBlonde

Wow thanks so much everyone for all the encouragement and ideas. Am raring to go to Tesco now lol! I am going to start out at reduced fruit and veg and fridge bits as a base, then going to go straight to frozen and work my way back - invariably I have a full trolley and I get to the freezer and see cheaper frozen alternatives! And I think you are right about frozen veg etc - I don't know why it is as seen as less fresh/healthy, surely it makes sense that something frozen at source will be fresher??? Hopefully this will put an end to my off veg! Wish me luck will let you know how it goes Thanks again x x x