Help! £40 to feed family for the month

TraceyB_2

Have just spent the last 2 hours reading this wonderful thread.

Well done on completing your month on just over your £20 budget.

I've made loads of notes but have a couple of questions.

I have a slow cooker but am not sure how to do the mince - do you just throw it all in cold? I usually brown my mince off but if it can just go in straight from the plastic - yippee!!

Also, someone mentioned about freezing mushrooms - do you just slice them and freeze them or do you cook them first?

Am about to sit down and do a fortnights meal planner to start with - who cares about the ironing when there's lentils and oats to be planned!!

Well done again mbaz:T :T :j :j

npsmama

I have a slow cooker but am not sure how to do the mince - do you just throw it all in cold? I usually brown my mince off but if it can just go in straight from the plastic - yippee!!

You can throw it in cold but it'll taste better if you brown it first

Also, someone mentioned about freezing mushrooms - do you just slice them and freeze them or do you cook them first?

Just slice and freeze

*lou_lou*

the cheapest toilet paper i've come across is 10 rolls from Lidl for about £1.20: it's recycled so good for the environment and good for the purse!!

*lou_lou*

I recently bought a big bag of frozen white fish from Lidl-you get about 14 large fillets for about £4.00-good to use sparingly in curries and fish pie and lasts for aggggeeeeesssss. Just pop it in some hot water for 2-3 mins then add for last five minutes of cooking

p00

I know you cn freeze fresh milk but can you freeze the milk in cartons?

xxp00

INeedATissue

I know you probably all know this but if you're ordering online don't forget about using cashback sites to save a little extra

My favourite cashback site at the moment is Cashback Kings who offer £5 cashback for your first Tesco shop and also £5 cashback on your first ASDA shop! They also offer £4 cashback for your first shop when you use mySupermarket.

After you've done your first shop at mySupermarket with the cashback site you can carry on using them via ipoints and get 1 ipoint for every £1 you spend.

I hope that's useful to someone

I'm amazed and how £20 could feed a whole family for a month! For lentils and things like that it's sometimes good to go down to your local asian store who will sell larger bags of the product. Don't forget to go to your local market to pick up some excellent deals at the end of the day for fruit and veg. Some advice on potatoes... always store them in the dark away from sunlight and they will last a looooong time. With any root vegetable try to buy them unwashed as that means the skin is still intact which gives the veg protection... remove all the leaves and keep them in a plastic bag in the fridge and they should last you weeks as well

Sorry.. I know this post was all over the place but I was just typing as I was thinking and then not reading things back

jembie

INeedATissue wrote: »

Sorry.. I know this post was all over the place but I was just typing as I was thinking and then not reading things back

No, you gave some very good tips there. Thanks

bella2121

*lou_lou* wrote: »

the cheapest toilet paper i've come across is 10 rolls from Lidl for about £1.20: it's recycled so good for the environment and good for the purse!!

i get morrisons value its 12 rolls for £1.12 and does the job fine! OH use to be an andrex only man but is quite happy now with the value stuff :T

INeedATissue

I actually stayed up until 5am reading the whole of this thread last night.

Just remembered something I saw a couple of weeks ago which will help with cheap nappies so I just rushed on here to post before I totally forget about it. If you go to Cashback Kings and search for Pampers you can click through and order a goodie bag with them which offers you £4 of free pampers coupons, samples and baby advice. Sorry but I don't know how the coupons work out or what the samples are for but hopefully this will help someone

Kerriebaby

well, I was robbed by Mr T yesterday..went to get some curry sauce to try...9p he charged me! daylight robbery it was!

( oh said OMG we are not eating that LOL )