Help! £40 to feed family for the month

calleyw

UKroseblue wrote: »

Just a note to be very careful when you go 'scrumping' or 'foraging' as some do - people here where i live picked some mushrooms from the botanical gardens while out and about, thinking they'd make a good tasty and cheap meal but one died and another is really ill...I guess if people are putting apples etc outside their houses then they'll be fairly safe but I'm not picking any mushrooms, that's for sure! :eek:

I saw that in my paper yesterday. I was like :eek: glad I don't like mushrooms. Use to kick the living daylights out of puff balls though when I was a kid :rotfl:

Yours


Calley

lollyfin

Hi nickynoo this is a really easy lentil soup, using the red ones,I make that is lovely it makes quite a lot and we call it creamy soup cos if the kids knew it was lentil they would have a fit (never mind they eat lentils loads)
1 onion, 250g lentils, 1 bay leaf, 3 sticks of celery, 3 carrots, 1.5ltrs of stock
rinse lentils, chop veg and cook it for a few minutes until it starts to sweat, add lentils then stock and bay leaf, simmer for 20 -25 mins until lentils disappear, take out bay leaf and liquidise or leave kind of chunky

if you don't fancy soup just rinse and chuck a handful into spag bol, chilli, stew, mince anything liquidy it thickens stuff up and makes it creamy and if you cook them long enough they just disappear and you really cant tell they are in there
hope that helps a bit

discodolly_2

Hi Mbaz!

Just wanted to say I've been well and truly converted by this thread, and can constantly be heard saying "That woman on moneysavingexpert does...":D
I've got my mum, auntie, sister and 5 friends all adding oats and lentils to mince, I also post on another forum and have got many people on there doing it, too!
I really want to thank you all again and let everyone on old style know that your teachings are spreading like wildfire!

maman

Same here in Hampshire Ceridwen, lots of apples outside houses to help yourself, especially in villages. Where are you?

ceridwen

Errr.....in England....but dont want to be more specific than that....as staying a bit incommunicado;)

Must admit I was walking round a nearby village yesterday (where I know a noticeable number of people have apple trees in their gardens) specifically keeping a lookout to checksee - and, nope, absolutely zilch outside gates either for free or for sale.

Did manage to find a lot of bits and bobs to forage for - and found an apple tree sitting there all on its ownsome on a bit of wasteland - so came back with a full bag of food anyways:beer:

Can see - even in my urban area - that theres various fruit trees around and most of the fruit is just being left to rot on the trees - what a waste! You would think these tree owners would be a bit conscious of the fact that its getting steadily more difficult to find food that hasnt got G.M. in/isnt irradiated/etc and - at a minimum - then this food is fresh - whereas, as I understand it, the food in supermarkets is weeks old, maybe even months old (its just been put into cold storage or whatever to prolong its "lifespan" - at who knows what cost to the nutrients in it). That being the case - it would be a really helpful thing to the rest of us if they offered this surplus produce around.

mum_of_4

evie451 wrote: »

This thread is a real inspiration, i thought i was doing well feeding four of us for £200 a month never mind £20!

I am off to get a slow cooker as soon as possible

one thing that has saved me this year is growing my own veg, i have never done anything like it before but you would be surprised how easy it is and i don't have a lot of room either. Its saved me money, but also i don't waste anything if i need potatoes i go and pull one up or i decide what to cook if something or other is ripening. The herbs i got have also been a real boon too and i am doing some preserving as we speak!:j

I started growing my own veg Feb 2007 and to date have saved £1973.56 every so often i check how much stuff would have cost to buy. I could kick myself that i didn't start growing stuff years ago. Our money situation would have been so different.

Get chickens - I have also now got 4 chickens and sell my spare eggs which then covers all the feed, straw etc so now i also get free eggs so the children have egg sandwiches, i make my own cakes, pies etc a lot of egg based meals.

nickynoo08

Thakns lollyfin soup sounds yum will defo give that a go. OH is keeping a close eye on what im making in kitchen to make sure i dont start chuckin lentils in stuff but he's working tomoro so i'll be brave n make a small batch of bolognaise n chuck some in n see how i get on.

Your nearly there mbaz. How does it feel knowing you've almost done it? Do you think this will have changed your shopping and planning habits forever?

Pitlanepiglet

ceridwen wrote: »

Can see - even in my urban area - that theres various fruit trees around and most of the fruit is just being left to rot on the trees - what a waste! You would think these tree owners would be a bit conscious of the fact that its getting steadily more difficult to find food that hasnt got G.M. in/isnt irradiated/etc and - at a minimum - then this food is fresh

I'd be tempted to knock on the door and ask if you can pick some. My old Dad struggles to get apples off his tree as his mobility is poor so it might be the same kind of thing. You might find someone interesting, get a source of free food and help them out as well. They may well hate the idea of the food going to waste but not be able to do much about it. Give it a go...they can only say no...

mummysaver

nickynoo - might be worth cooking up your lentils and freezing them in small portions, these could then be added to meals and would "vanish" quicker than raw ones, oh just thought, if you made up some tomato sauce and hid the lentils in that you could freeze portions and use those in your cooking, then you could just tell your oh that you were adding some toms to whatever you were making! Sneaky, me?!

My dd2 was watching me make curry last night, and as I threw in the yellow split peas she said "do I like those", bless she has learnt that I put all sorts in their food and they don't even know about it!

Re the pre-cooking lentil question yesterday, neither lentils nor split yellow peas need to be pre-cooked before being used, the only advice is not to eat them raw, but I think most of us would draw the line at that anyway, well probably most of us, lol!

mbaz - a slow cooker is fab, but as people have said, look on freecycle, loads of people don't ever use theirs, or try asking around friends and family, often they have them lurking in cupboards cos they don't know what to do with them! Obviously the bigger it is the more you can bulk cook, but this depends on the amount of freezer space that you have.

As for growing things yourself, I'm no expert but even I've managed some stuff for the past couple of years, potatoes are fab, mainly cos they take absolutely no effort! I have a large strawberry patch, because they spread all over the raised bed from last summer, and I thought it had only produced a handful of strawberries this year, until I discovered that the kids and all the other kids in the street had been picking and munching them, oh well, cheaper than them running in and raiding the fridge all the time! I've had quite a lot of apples from my baby apple tree as well, only planted it a couple of years ago, and got it as a bedragled reduced item from the local garden centre, so it's paid for itself already! My leeks seem really hardy and are great, the garlic is easy and no effort, but my onions have been a wash out - the mice got them! I haven't tried that many things but have stuck to the stuff we eat loads of and that didn't require lots of attention, and it has been quite good fun and produced a fair amount of stuff. Oh, salad leaves and herbs are easy and good in containers, as is perpetual spinach.

fallen_angel_shelley

i have just found this thread and wanted to say well done mbaz:T , you are doing really well and only have few more days to go now, keep up the good work. it has given me a few ideas for saving more money on my food bill. has anyone got a recipe for vegi spag bol? i'm also going to buy a bag of red lentils and try the vegi burger recipe that someone posted, they sound yummy.

shelley x