Weezl's phase 1- recipe testing and frugalisation- come one, come all!

Lesley_Gaye

weezl74 wrote: »

no pref, just interested

did you want to have a look at them? I signed on using lesleygaye and sparkpeopl

Sian_the_Green

weezl74 wrote: »

Feel a bit guilty about the extra food you've bought!:o Sian's storecupboard challenge anyone?:D

xxxx

Don't worry about it! I am going to try the onion marmalade (onion and sugar right? How much sugar am I allowed?) and make some soup for work. My housies will eat eggs if they are out and they never go to waste here, by the time I got in from work yesterday there were 2 batches of biscotti and a load of cupcakes made by them!

One further positive response was that one of the boys I saw today said that normally he has to eat again after he goes to someone's house for dinner and he managed to be full up after my meal!

I am worried about you Weezl, this is all so much for you to be thinking about and I don't want for it to make you stressed

The London trip sounds awesome but scary, may be able to come along... ooh, that would be exciting, train from Sheff not too long

Lesley_Gaye

weezl74 wrote: »

Many many thanks Avocet.

I have been sat reading over your post for a while now, and I'm realising I've probably hit the edge of my skill set here.

I know there are tasks now which your excellent audit have revealed, but I can't get my brain to work out what they are! I feel like I'm on property ladder and I'm trying to project manage the house build myself, and Sarah Beeny is about to show up and say I need to hire a project manager!!!!

Does anyone have that kind of systematic brain which can spot what needs to happen next?

I am one stumped Weezl

Going with what we have, I think the easiest next step would be to
1. see which recipes remain to be allocated from the remaining ingredients
2. allocate the ingredients to said recipes
3. see what that does to the ingredients

we should then have an overall picture of what ingredients are actually needed for the recipes for the month, what is left over and what has been overallocated so requiring more

does that make sense?

Fire_Fox

weezl74 wrote: »

Hiya firefox, gonna reveal my ignorance now, but why does the calcium have to come from dairy? I mean are the govt saying, get it from dairy cos that's easiest for Joe public to include in his normal diet, or are they saying it cos it's dangerous to get it from non-dairy sources? Does my question make any sense, I suspect not :)

There are two answers to that, the technical answer and the real one!! Technical answer is that calcium from dairy is slightly better absorbed and utilised than calcium from plant sources. The caveat to that is excess protein (too much meat) in the diet acidifies the blood and 'robs' calcium to redress the balance.

The real answer: dairy products are an excellent source of calcium, much higher than, say, green veg which is mainly composed of water. A portion of dairy is probably a lot more palatable to Bob and Shirley's teenage children than three portions of broccoli!! :rotfl:

Unless my maths is wrong you need to eat a lot of mineral-rich pulses, vegetables and wholegrains to get your daily intake of calcium but this is exactly what a well-read vegan would eat anyway. :T Also a lot of soya products are fortified with calcium.

Fire_Fox

:j Salt is looking good! :j

1kg cheese = 17g
2kg butter spread = 30g
12 x baked beans = 62.4g :eek:
1 x Corned beef = 6g
6 x pilchards in tomato sauce = 19g
500g cooking bacon = 20g
200g peanuts = 2g
Chicken stock cubes = 48g :eek:
Red pesto = 3g
2 x 48 wheat bisks = 1728g cereal = 13g
4 sage & onion stuffing = 5g

Total from processed foods just 225g; maximum salt intake is 5g per person per day, with 11+ age group same as adults = 3100g over the month. Assuming we are frugal with the bicarbonate of soda and table salt we should come in under the limit. :A

weezl74

Fire_Fox wrote: »

There are two answers to that, the technical answer and the real one!! Technical answer is that calcium from dairy is slightly better absorbed and utilised than calcium from plant sources. The caveat to that is excess protein (too much meat) in the diet acidifies the blood and 'robs' calcium to redress the balance.

The real answer: dairy products are an excellent source of calcium, much higher than, say, green veg which is mainly composed of water. A portion of dairy is probably a lot more palatable to Bob and Shirley's teenage children than three portions of broccoli!! :rotfl:

Unless my maths is wrong you need to eat a lot of mineral-rich pulses, vegetables and wholegrains to get your daily intake of calcium but this is exactly what a well-read vegan would eat anyway. :T Also a lot of soya products are fortified with calcium.

Thank you that's really helpful.

Just as you did with the omegas, are you able to come up with a magic ingredient yielding mega calcium 'bang for it's buck'? She says optimistically .

I was wondering if fortifying the bread with this might help?



also, I noticed that you've put the family down as having 4.5kg flour, but I've got them as having 21 kgs and so I wondered if I've posted an old list somewhere, or maybe breadflour doesn't have the same calcium?

xxx

maltesers_2

weezl74 wrote: »

Many many thanks Avocet.

I have been sat reading over your post for a while now, and I'm realising I've probably hit the edge of my skill set here.

I know there are tasks now which your excellent audit have revealed, but I can't get my brain to work out what they are! I feel like I'm on property ladder and I'm trying to project manage the house build myself, and Sarah Beeny is about to show up and say I need to hire a project manager!!!!

Does anyone have that kind of systematic brain which can spot what needs to happen next?

I am one stumped Weezl

Don't worry it's probably just 'pregnancy brain' playing up.

I will summarise where we are as I see it.

Avocet is keeping track of food stocks based on an original shopping list which covers a meal plan but the link in #1 does not work for me.

Avocet says several items are already used up from the shopping list so in theory we are already over budget.

Perhaps it would be better to establish the costs of the meals first. Test and tweak the recipes to get the lowest cost. best value. nutrition and taste to see which can be included in the plan. Start with the simplest first.

1) Decide on the breakfasts first and establish shopping list for these.

2)Plan basic lunches (packed and weekend) cost these and add to shopping list. It may be relevant to consider whether the teenagers are at school and get free school meals or not.

3) The budget left over will determine what is left for snacks and treats and the main meals.

4) The plan in frugalisation should be to meet the lowest cost within the average cost budget. So if eg. breakfast costs 15p each and lunch 20p each this will leave 40 - 45p each for main meal plus snack. Some of the meals may not make it once tried and tested and some might be so frugal that more can be allowed on a few days.

5) Once the main meals have been chosen to meet the budget then the final shopping list can be sorted.

I can't remember whether there was a starting larder food store but perhaps this not really relevant as anything used would have to be replaced anyway.

The budget is the main aspect of the challenge not the shopping list but the list is very useful for pricing purposes.


Hope this helps

weezl74

Fire_Fox wrote: »

:j Salt is looking good! :j

1kg cheese = 17g
2kg butter spread = 30g
12 x baked beans = 62.4g :eek:
1 x Corned beef = 6g
6 x pilchards in tomato sauce = 19g
500g cooking bacon = 20g
200g peanuts = 2g
Chicken stock cubes = 48g :eek:
Red pesto = 3g
2 x 48 wheat bisks = 1728g cereal = 13g
4 sage & onion stuffing = 5g

Total from processed foods just 225g; maximum salt intake is 5g per person per day, with 11+ age group same as adults = 3100g over the month. Assuming we are frugal with the bicarbonate of soda and table salt we should come in under the limit. :A

yay! It's only a 2g saving, but also I rinsed the peanuts before making them into the peanut butter, which probably helps a little?

yay for sian coming to London maybe too:D, and shanks :A

System

weezl74 wrote: »

what needs to happen next?

I am one stumped Weezl

Panic not! Don't be stumped! You're doing really well! :-)

I think that the first thing we need is to work out the basic everyday things. Once we get those into the calculations, we'll be able to work out how much food we have available for the remaining meals.

I would also suggest identifying some "keystone" meals to give some basic structure (your roast dinners, for example, but not just them -- say, three or four meals in each week), then treating everything else as trimmable and modifiable. We can then tweak recipes, change meal frequencies, or incorporate alternative options to fit what is left - a sort of Storecupboard Challenge. There are some obvious things to look at, such as buying only two bags of cauliflower but serving the corresponding cauliflower cheese three times - just dropping one of the cauliflower cheese meals gets rid of that deficit (although, of course, we need to find an substitute meal).

But first, we need to know the basics...

(1) What allowance have you made for milk in tea each day?
(2) What ingredients/quantities are needed for each of the following:

• bread
• porridge
• porridge with raisins
• fish pate
• houmous
• weetabix with milk
• potato wedges
• peanut butter

(3) How many tins of beans per person for beans on toast? And for hash browns with beans?
(4) How many loaves of bread will be made in the month? (total figure, allowing for sandwiches, breakfasts, snacking etc - aim high because bread is cheap and tasty, and teenagers can fill up on it if necessary)
(4) How much buttery spread is needed for each of those loaves (excluding the loaves set aside specifically for sandwiches, which you have explained already have wet-ish fillings)?

Once we know where we stand with the basics, which the family can't do without, we will have a clearer picture of what resources we have for the rest of their meals.

We can then move on to finishing the recipe selection and refinement, for which we will need to identify the ingredients/quantities required for the remaining items on the menu plan (although they can always be swapped for something else):

• finalising of garibaldi biscuits
• finalising of chutney
• mayonnaise (I really doubt if that will be affordable; it is traditionally a luxury item)
• hash browns
• cheese+tomato+bacon pasta
• chilli con carne
• fish pate
• pancakes

And then comes endless tweaking and fiddling until it all works out OK...

Chin up! You're convinced that it is possible to do this, based on your own experience, so it is just a matter of finding the right path through the jungle. We might have to hack about in the undergrowth a bit, but we will get there in the end. And at least we don't have to worry about leeches or catching malaria! :-)

homegrown_life

:T:T:T:T:T:T:T

Just applauding everyone on working so well on this challenge. I'm loving coming on and reading up on everything everyone is doing!

I think I probably agree that costing and working out a list for lunches and breakfasts sounds a good idea. We probably just need to stand back and view from another angle to see how it all fits together?

But, we're all doing so well, thanks to you for setting it all up and running Weezl. It's not a sprint, we'll get there and have fun in the process.