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

weezl74

canidothis wrote: »

I did a popcorn experiment this afternoon:
100g dried popcorn yields about 250g of popped corn which gave me 10 x 25g bags (more than enough for a snack or to go with lunch)

The bag of popping corn cost 60p (500g) so using only 100g means

an amazing 0.06pence per bag :T

Sadly not a lot of calcium but Weezl it looks like you are there, am I right?
Well done everyone your efforts make fascinating reading

yay for your popcorn

I think we're there *scratches head*

just need to make some cut backs to accomodate now, hence the sugar free cake suggestions :rotfl:

weezl74

Surely the buttery spread contains calcium?

Fire_Fox

weezl74 wrote: »

Surely the buttery spread contains calcium?

Possibly 0.8g in the buttermilk.

weezl74

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Possibly 0.8g in the buttermilk.

I got it as 17 mg per 100 g based on it's having a 15% buttermilk content, but that's way too high isn't it-ooops....:o

System

weezl74 wrote: »

If the carrot cake goes sugar free how much sugar overall does that save us?

I think BOB does a reduced sugar weetabix loaf as well, will that help me to make some savings?

Also (sorry Lesley) one last one, if we with much sadness lose the chick pea crumble (but we will have it in another veggie version, I promise what does that bring our chick pea usage down to?

Please allow 180g dry weight chick peas for the families hummous, but (and her'e why the crumble's gone, asda have stopped the giant bags now and the dried ones are lots more money 19.7p per 100g.

If the carrot cake is totally sugar-free, you will have 823g of sugar left to play with (working with the same set of recipes as before). Reducing the sugar in the Weetabix Fruit Loaf would obviously save more, but I'd need to know the proportions.

Dropping the chickpea crumble but adding in 180g-of-chickpeas-for-hummus will leave you with 200g of chickpeas. Hard luck about the chick pea pricing -- that seems a bit steep. I pay 78p for 500g Waitrose chick peas via Ocado, so 98p seems quite a price hike. On the bright side, at least they are available! According to mysupermarket, my nearest Asda doesn't sell them dried at all.

Shout when you have updated the recipes, shopping list and menu plan, and I'll update the overall picture.

canidothis

I dont seem to be keeping up how much calcium are you looking for?

weezl74

canidothis wrote: »

I dont seem to be keeping up how much calcium are you looking for?

sorry cani! it's here on a spreadsheet and I think we've cracked it... Although we need firefox/HGL whomever to help us see if we've allowed enough wiggle room for calcium lost to Oxylic acid also being present

Was that all just Greek to you?

xxx

Fire_Fox

weezl74 wrote: »

I got it as 17 mg per 100 g based on it's having a 15% buttermilk content, but that's way too high isn't it-ooops....:o

I am completely lost. Mysupermarket has the spread as 15% buttermilk and Asda as 5% but I am sure I haven't used either of those figures ... I had in my head 28% but where on earth did I get that from???? My brain is fried and I an not making any sense so stick me on ignore overnight ....

It's Asda you butter believe it which is 28%! Donkey. But therefore the Asda spread contains more calcium!!

System

I know that Weezl has her own plans for the menu, but I thought that it was possible that we might end up with the odd, say, 50g chick peas, so I thought I would mention the salad I bought at Marks and Spencer's when we were away last week.

It was billed as a sprouted salad, and consisted of pea shoots, cooked peas and sprouted chick peas with a lemony herby dressing. Well, we can't manage pea shoots, but we can come up with the cooked peas, sprouted chick peas and a version of the dressing, and it occurred to me that it might be a nice way of using up the dregs of the chick peas that might (possibly) be leftover after dealing with other recipes.

I thought I'd try it, anyway, and 50g of chick peas are now soaking overnight in the hope that they start sprouting later in the week. The dressing could be lemon juice, oil and a dribble of pesto. The peas just need cooked. I'll let you know how it turns out -- or indeed if it turns out! :-)

HowlinWolf

Weezl and Avocet - 125g of sugar is perfectly fine in the fruit loaf which would save 65g of sugar per loaf if I remember the original recipe correctly