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

Jevvers

Hi Legal Blonde, I have been thinking about this quite a bit today!

Seasonality makes a huge difference to price so you can pick up winter veg pretty cheap at the mo and plan to do different things with it. We're on a sweet potato fest at the mo and I'm also planning a couple of meals featuring cauliflower after we got one for 50p in Asda at the weekend.

Star2007 has given fantastic advice (I shall be following lots of it myself now!) and I haven't much else to add except that I experimented with making a carrot and lentil soup for lunch today and it turned out really well (and was cheap and easy) so here's the recipe if you fancy it.

Three or four small-medium carrots
Half a med onion or one small one
One stick of celery
Slice all the ingredients and sweat in a little olive oil
When the onions are soft, cover with water (I used warm water from the kettle to speed things up) and a couple of handfuls of red lentils.
Bring to the boil then simmer gently for 20 mins or so until everything is soft.
Whizz with a blender, add s&p and some chopped parsley & serve.
That made enough for DH and me for a light lunch but could be scaled up easily.

Good luck and congrats on your success so far :j

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Sometimes, a simple change in cooking methods results in a cheap junk food becoming rather nice. I present exhibit A:

1 red onion, chopped and softened in a tiny bit of olive oil. Chuck in tin of ratatouille and leave, poss with 1tsp sugar. While that's turning into red lava, put some frozen IKEA meatballs in a steamer. Ignore all references to baking or frying, and just steam them until hot through. All the fat drips into the steamer water, so you can't be eating it. Knock up some angelhair pasta (3 mins). Sprinkle some ready grated cheddar (kept in the freezer so you use less) on top.

Pasta, ratatouille sauce, relatively low fat meatballs.

Cost - pasta say 25p, ratatouille 70p, onion 10p, sugar free from IKEA cafe, quarter bag of IKEA meatballs (about £1 depending on whether they're on offer or not), cheese (can't be more than 5p)

OK, it's probably more expensive than some OS meals, but sometimes, all you want to do is open a tin and take something out of a packet.

DDs have been silent since they were given it. Always a mark of approval.

zzzLazyDaisy

Bulk out mince with loads of grated carrots and onions (the carrots disappear into the mince)

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Grated courgette is great for bulking out mince - if you forget to add the meat, very few people notice (and then you have 2 meals instead of one)

GavB79

When you batch cook soup and freeze it, can it be re-heated on the hob from frozen or should it defrost first? I don't use a microwave btw.

zzzLazyDaisy

Its fine to heat it on the hob from frozen on a low light.

Its probably better to pull it out the freezer the night before and let it defrost in the fridge, but its not often that I remember to do that :rolleyes:

laurel7172

bigsmoke wrote: »

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

When I'm left with celery I chop it and soften it in a bit of olive oil, then put an ingredient sized portion into freezer bags ready to be pulled out when needed. Seems to work.