Help! £40 to feed family for the month

laurel7172

My children are picky eaters.

However, they're old enough to understand that money spent on food isn't available to spend on cinema trips, cool clothes and gig tickets. Or indeed Christmas presents.

They don't much like OS food, but they don't whine any more.

DrDaz

It can be a little bland and though the texture is quite like mince the granules are a little smaller.
If you use beef stock to re-hydrate it that will add some flavour to it. Also if you mix a little flour (say a tablespoon of flour to a cup of soya mince) it will thicken it a little.

If you add enough veg (carrot, courgette) and herbs it can make quite a passable spag bol, chilli or cottage pie.

Try mixing it with ordinary mince first off and see if your other half notices.

Chuzzle

My mum has just given me about a kilo of leftover roast lamb shoulder, shredded - from her freezer along with a small lump of dry looking roast pork as well. The pork will probably just about do us one meal but I'd like to make the lamb S-T-R-E-T-C-H to one meal each week for 4 weeks if possible...... what would you guys do with it so that it wasn't too dry?

Unfortunately neither myself or OH will be paid before Xmas so this has got to last until end of the month. Kids are 16 & 11 and they are both well aware of the money situation and as unhappy as they are about the situation they have said they will try not to moan tooooo often Christmas Day is sorted as we are at my uncles so I'm hoping to come home with some leftovers as well. I've also found a couple of tins of fruit lurking in the back of the cupboard mango & orange any ideas what to do with them?

One more thing OH doesn't like "dry" food so I have to do a gravy or sauce for his plate whereas the rest of us aren't too bothered.

purpleivy

some gravy over some lamb, mix with some beans, a fried onion and some spices. Top with mashed potatoes.

But you could do with a bit more stretching for some of the dishes, so how about loaaaads of veg in a value curry sauce. I believe that all the supermarkets do them, though I have only had one before. It was OK.

Mix with other veg and put into pasties. This is something that needs less meat than when you just have it on the plate with veg and spuds.

Nitha

For a sauce I would just make a white stock sauce. A bit of flour added to some chicken stock to thicken. Can you make pastry? Because pies are good for leftover meat. Or make a real shepherds pie with some of the lamb.

Norman_Bean

with our gravy scraps I just keep it for next meal and reheat it in the microwave I just top it up with spud water or splash of vino (guess no good for you this month :kisses3:) when it starts to disappear - it really lasts for ages!!

Also for desperate times at the end of the market there is often quite a bit of fruit and veg left on the floor that I have been known to rescue x found a nice radish on sunday :rotfl:

Good luck - you can do it x

Butterfly_Brain

PasturesNew wrote: »

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.

What a lovely idea :T I for one would gladly help anyone out who really needs it.
Maybe we should start an OS help each other out thread

Butterfly_Brain

I would make sure I had some flour, butter, sugar and eggs in -you can do so much with these (pastry - pies, jam tarts, biscuits and crumbles)
A lot of people would be horrified that I suggest getting a bag of 20 smart price sausages for 99p but needs must and if you slice the sausages one bag will do a quite a lot of meals. Get a bag of frozen chicken pieces - again if you strip off the meat they go a long way.
Make your own bread if you can
But if you are really struggling why not try asking friends and relatives if they could help with a few bits for your store cupboard - I would help if I knew where you were xx

emp_3

ha, i love it, people have already got there before me with the porridge for breakfast ! not sure if that will feel too much like eating gruel tho when you are eating all budget meals

anyways, also, lovefoodhatewaste.com may throw up some extra ways to use any further dross that may be lurking in the very back of your cupboards....

and can you trick your family with certain veggie sausages or quorn mince?

good luck

emma xx

wigglebeena

quorn is blimmin expensive. You probably get more pound for pound with regular mince, liver or even chicken.

when I'm skint I use a tub of Mr S. liver pate to make a shepherds pie: just mash it all up with a fork and add loads of nuked frozen veg/fried value onions and some soy sauce or gravy under the potato crust. (Tip: according to whether you choose the tub or the 'posh' clear/silver pack, you can get exactly the same amount of the same pate for half the price in Mr S.)