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

Sian_the_Green

wyebird wrote: »

I wonder if people, having read this thread, would have changed their minds from the original poll re things that are not negotiable? I think maybe I have...........

Are you the wyebird from my childhood

"Where will it stop?
At the Wyebird stop!"

Kaz2904

Avocet wrote: »

As far as I know, not many recipes are using eggs. You are using 8 eggs in two batches of carrot cake, 4 in two batches of sweetcorn fritters, 4 in two batches of onion tart and 4 in four batches of hash browns.

There were 30 in the box, weren't there? That leaves 10 left to play with, unless you are changing the frequency of these recipes or reintroducing the pork and apple burgers, which were the only other recipe to involve egg. Unless I've got it all horribly wrong...

I find it's best not to play with eggs, thay leave quite a mess when they break .

I hate to say it but I really do think we need to get more meat into the menu. The meal plan as it stood (I can't remember when!) looked good and I think Shirley could have snuck that one past the family. As it stands now I think she'll have a continuous struggle. I'm not even sure she would be able to get there over time IYSWIM?
I'm assuming Shirley works full time and that she serves tea each night to a chorus of howling about not liking the food on offer. If she's a little unsure of it too then her resolve may well crumble.
As is often said when we look at the long haul for debt (or mortgage) repayment, it is a marathon not a sprint. I'm concerned that by making Shirley stick to this meal plan we would add even more stress to her.
My DH seems to see it as a kudos thing, he works to put food on our table. Dried milk is not food and is an economy too far (I'm putting words in his mouth).

My 2 will have dried milk in porridge quite happily, DH and I will have it in coffee if we run out and the shops are shut but nobody in this house will drink it in tea (Bleurgh!)

I'm sorry about that but I think we'd be better off having a slightlly less healthy meal plan (on the assumtion that it would be healthier than their previous diet). I think we would end up doing good for more people rather than more good for fewer people.

PS, I'm hoping to try the onion tart on Friday evening as that's what I have in!

weezl74

Good morning all So I've read what everyone has said. I think I understand where you're all coming from.

Wyebird, I'm intrigued about yours, you said after having read all this you might change your non-negotiable, but you didn't say what to! Do you mind me asking a little more about that? Thanks

I've measured out the amount of skimmed milk we were giving Bob and shirley and I am now suggesting we lose. It honestly only makes 1-2 milky looking cups of tea, and 3 that are just about passable if you're one of those people who has it thin and greyish looking, a bit like a weak earl grey with milk.

This amount of skimmed milk was costing Bob and shirley 12% of their monthly budget :eek:. Milk for tea is a hugely expensive item in the UK. To make just 3-4 decent looking cups of tea for each family member from skimmed milk would mean that those 3-4 cuppas a day would use a quarter of their whole months food.

Tea is nice guys, but it's not that nice, honest! And it makes such a difference to our plan if we try to shunt in the fresh milk! You all like the menu planners so much more when we don't pander to the fresh milk thing... At least I think that's what most people are saying.:o:D

Bob is going to be practically vegan with a tiny bit of bacon eeked out over the whole month and eat some very odd foods indeed and with almost the same breakfast and lunch for a month, in order to have 2 greyish looking cuppas a day?

Seriously? :rotfl:

A thought for all those who have said 'up the budget'. Of course there are lots of people who will use the meal planner but add stuff in. Of course. We all would.

But it's not for us. It's subsistence.

It's because Bob and shirley are crippled with debt and are dying of it and the government won't invest money in subsistence.:mad:

They will continue to promote, subsidise and support an ecomomy based on the principle that if a family are struggling financially and have large debts, then the best thing we will offer them is the opportunity to buy yet more fresh milk, which they will pay 17.5% apr on cos they've run out of the good debt available to them.:(

We could up this budget, we could just come up with some healthyish, frugalish recipes, cost them up and have fun trying.

But we've already done that, and so have loads of people on Old-style. We'd be reinventing the wheel I think. Mark's year long challenge is exactly what we'd end up with. And so why start another one?

I hope I'm not alienating any willing testers, I genuinely thought people were up for testing stuff whether or not they agreed with the ethos.

Everything of note has one feature that makes it just a little bit different. Subsistence is our special feature.

mark55man

morning weezl. I hear from reliable sources that you are interested in the male perspective on some debates - what men eat and don't.

if I can help I will - but have a lot of catching up to do !! so anything you want to ask feel free I will try and keep up - but starting Friday - I have a long day today

looks like you have given me a whole load of things to try just as the kitchen is about to be decommissioned (=ripped from the wall) - so actual tasting may also have to wait a bit

keep up the good work -
for and on behalf of
BOB and SHIRLEY

homegrown_life

quicky from me today weezl as I have a busy day here today. I think you should drop the tea bags and any associated milk from the budget altogether. It's a meal plan and if people want to drink tea on top of it then maybe we should say that they need to fund that seperately. I know I'd *never* get away with serving the basics Tea so would have to budget more anyway. If you make it clear that any milk provided is not enough to use for drinks too then people will know and can add more accordingly.

Although I suppose this might not help with the calcium huh?

HowlinWolf

Weezl, I don't know about everyone else but the vision I have in my head of your final plan is like one of those books we had as kids with pictures of people in split into four sections and you could change the person by flipping over the page and changing one of the sections.

You provide a healthy, subsistence menu for people who are in a desperate situation.

For people who are less desperate, less willing to compromise or just fancy spending an extra tenner one month for a bit of a change as their debt reduces they can flip over a section and add into their basic menu plan.

I think we have collected enough recipes and ideas in this thread so far to make lots of flip over sections that could give the Shirl's, Bob's, die hard meat eaters etc plenty of options. I hope we continue to do so.

aless02

again - what's wrong with UHT milk?? I see that as a lovely halfway compromise between fresh & powdered. At 49p/L, it would take up far less of the budget AND doesn't need freezer space. I think you should axe fresh milk entirely, use UHT for the cooking needs & not include drinks at all in the menu. People are soooo choosy about their tea/coffee brand that it's near impossible to realistically put one on a planner that even a majority of people will go along with.

Maybe Bob can have the remnants of the evap milk tin in his tea? I don't even know if this would work! Or he could ultra budgety like me and not drink milk at all in his tea. But then again I'm the weird American

weezl74

aless02 wrote: »

again - what's wrong with UHT milk?? I see that as a lovely halfway compromise between fresh & powdered. At 49p/L, it would take up far less of the budget AND doesn't need freezer space. I think you should axe fresh milk entirely, use UHT for the cooking needs & not include drinks at all in the menu. People are soooo choosy about their tea/coffee brand that it's near impossible to realistically put one on a planner that even a majority of people will go along with.

Maybe Bob can have the remnants of the evap milk tin in his tea? I don't even know if this would work! Or he could ultra budgety like me and not drink milk at all in his tea. But then again I'm the weird American

Have axed the evap milk Aless, sorry!:D

How's Finn ?

Would UHT in 4 cuppas a day offset almost meatlessness?

I'm honestly not sure it would for Bob and Shirley as I'm now coming to understand things.... But maybe I'm wrong!

aless02

weezl74 wrote: »

Would UHT in 4 cuppas a day offset almost meatlessness?

I'm honestly not sure it would for Bob and Shirley as I'm now coming to understand things.... But maybe I'm wrong!

Probably not - sorry I didn't explain fully - I still agree that axing milk-for-tea quota is the right way to go, but UHT could be presented as a budget-friendly alternative in the notes section AND you can still use it for your cooking needs, thus freeing up a tiny bit more of the £100.

Finn's great; the PT miss you! I told them you were busy saving the world :rotfl:.

Allegra

weezl74 wrote: »

me too :rotfl:

Can you give me any approx. idea of quantities for 4 people Allegra, sorry if that's a faff, don't worry

No faff at all - it's just that I am "blessed" with the exact opposite of your mathematical brain (which is why I follow people like you, FireFox, Avocet and the gang in hope that you will all do the hard work for me so I can concentrate on slapping things about and praying they turn into an edible meal) and I tend to do everything "by eye". But I know that for a "cheatbornara" for two I will make up 1/2 pint of skimmed powdered milk for the roux, so for 4, I would estimate 2 onions, 2 slices of ham/bacon chopped up small, 2 tpsb butter or marge, 2 tbsp flour, and 1pt milk.

And copious amounts of parsley on top We really need to get Shirl to hurry up with growing her own herbs...

Continuing along this tangent - I am a novice gardener - last summer was the first time I actually seriously tried to grow enough vegetables to see us through the summer at least, and inspired by what I learned from you guys on MSE, I even tried to be, you know, mathematical about it - so I painstakingly recorded all my expenses, yields, current prices of the veg in question and the like, to see which crops are most worth the bother.

The biggest shock, to me, was how much I have saved by growing herbs. Just the quantities I would buy in the course of a year before I started growing them would have cost me £82.16 - and since I started growing them I must have at least doubled the usage because they are always there and they are free - so that's over £160 return on a £2 investment in just a year !!!