Help! £40 to feed family for the month

tessie_bear

good luck...re the yellow stickered stuff...could u pop in to asda after work and u may pick some stuff up

PasturesNew

People without money should put their town name in their profile ... I'm moving house and have no idea where to give my spare tins/etc away to. ... and there's probably loads of people with a can or two of stuff in their cupboard they have NO idea how they'll ever get round to doing something with it.

PasturesNew

Chuzzle wrote: »

My lot won't consider a veg meal as a meal it has to be meat of some sort. They get nasty if I give them the same thing twice in a row. And they're not keen on ready meals either, so it all has to be home cooked.

They're going to be very hungry this month ... what a shame for them.

We never used to have meat every meal when I was growing up. Egg curry was favourite, cheese and potato pie another, beans on toast. Sandwiches were jam or tomato.

kezlou

Hi thats was and still is me, its hard but you can do it.
If possible go round the supermarkets and get loads of reduced (yellow stickered) foods. Buy reduced bread and freeze it, it takes the same as ordinary when defrosted.
DONT buy rashers of bacon they are a total waste of money, instead i would recommend buying cooking bacon. Cooking bacon is basically off cuts from the rashers for about £1.95 (Sainsburys value price). I use it in pasta dishes, quiches, etc and its really good value.
If you can buy a chicken roast it, strip it completely, separate the cooked chicken into bags and freeze it for another days. Use the chicken carcass for stock, this can then be used for risottos, soups etc
Another tip DONT buy risotto rice just use ordinary rice there's no real difference and tastes the same.If your using cheese buy mature instead of mild as it will last longer.
Buy a sack of potatoes (about £5.00 for 25kg) and bulk out meals with lentils. To mimic the taste of meat in a veggie dish just use beef stocks and if you have any marmite, brown sauce is good as well. Get a tray of eggs (36 for £1.70 from cornershop(free range bonus), use them for omelletes, quiches, cakes etc
Search for Asain food stores they are extremely cheap for eggs,rice, lentils etc and big packs for 2/3 cheaper than supermarkets. Oh and another thing check out weekly deals at Lidl and Aldi they are god send for me and local markets normally later on in the day they reduce the food to pennies to get rid of it.

It can be done but it does take a lot of time to preplan.Good luck with it and if you need any help, someone to whinge at just pm me x

ERICS_MUM

PasturesNew wrote: »

They're going to be very hungry this month ... what a shame for them.

We never used to have meat every meal when I was growing up. Egg curry was favourite, cheese and potato pie another, beans on toast. Sandwiches were jam or tomato.

Apart from the egg curry, this is how mum fed us too, in the late 50's and 60's, especially just before pay day. Didn't do us any harm and we all grew up learning not to waste food. Mum used to get all 3 of us kids involved in chopping up onions, mixing pastry, peeling spuds etc so we never even thought of turning up our noses at the food.

I'm also a big fan of own-brand basics for things such as rice, pasta, cornflakes, tea bags, instant coffee etc.

Mince can be used in all sorts of ways - shepherds pie, chilli, meat balls, spag bol, served with baked pots, etc. Put in lots of finely chopped carrots, turnips etc to pad it out a bit. Make a big pot of stew with loads of potatoes, veg and some meat such as neck of lamb. Add lentils to thicken it up. Rice pudding is cheap to make.

Good luck, it won't be easy but WELL DONE for giving it a go.

Linda :T

tara747

I agree with those who say that the family (inc kids) should bear with you during this time, Chuzzle. Are they old enough to understand if you tell them that money is a little tight right now?

There are lots of wonderful veggie meals around and it would help you out enormously if they would give you some support in eating veggie at least some of the time.

I won't post any recipes as Weezl's thread, the rubber chicken thread(s) and the general OS recipe collection should see you right - I will try to dig out links for all of them and post them here.

Good luck and let us know how you get on xoxo

tara747

Rubber chicken explanation:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=27075431&highlight=rubber+chicken#post27075431

tara747

How to stretch a tenner:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=2113225&highlight=feed+month

tara747

Feeding a family on £20 for the month (this was hard to find but I knew it existed!!!):

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1129333

triticale

For the meat element, one huge rubber chicken, stripped to within an inch of it's life and stock made from carcass. Freeze meat and use as and when.

Fried rice can be really filling using not too much chicken, add peas, sweetcorn, onion, chopped value ham etc. Season with just soy or if you all don't mind a little kick, it's awesome with a hefty pinch of chilli powder, or even better some chopped hot green chillies (I get a huge handful for <10p at an asian grocers). Just boil a big pan of rice, a minute or two under the cooking time. Cool/dry it on a big chopping board, it needs to be dryer to fry properly. You can also freeze boiled/cooled rice to fry another day.

Make up a HUGE batch of savoury mince (don't ASDA do value mince for 99p a lb?), draining excess fat away, bulk with pulses/pearl barley. Freeze in portions and it can be transformed into chilli, bolognese, stew etc. Bulk meals out with cheap carbs (value bread, value pasta, spuds).

Porridge for breakfast (good job it's winter!) made with basic oats. Add dried/tinned fruit if needed.

The HM soup as a starter idea above is a great one.

I'd have as much in freezer batch-cooked as poss, so I knew how much meat I had left for meals.

Hot puddings are good to fill bellies to the brim, tinned peaches (20-odd p) with HM crumble topping and lashings of 9p custard is a favourite.

Lunches - value tuna is good for sandwich filler, bulk with sweetcorn etc. Bananas help with filling up at lunch, as well as helping with 5 a day. HM soup is also a great lunch. Make filling ones with pasta, spuds or pulses/pearl barley in.

9p noodles defo have their place in both snacks and meals.

Do a costing for every ingredient before you buy a thing.

That's just how I'd approach it, there is a wealth of wisdom in the indexed areas on here.

And good luck!!