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

homegrown_life

just a couple of things I thought of. Not sure how MrA is as I shop at MrS mostly, but 99 times out of 100 the basics loose apples are *much* cheaper than any of the bagged stuff. For example the basics bag is 85p for 650g which is £1.31/kg. The loose are 65p/kg so half the price.

Sometimes loose carrots are better in price too, but have noticed the price of these has varied loads in the past couple of weeks.

Also not sure on the milk quantities. As a family of 4 (2 adults and 2 kids aged 8 &9) who don't actually drink the stuff except in tea we go through 3 x 4pinters a week. That's with using it for cereal and tea mostly. I know everyone will vary with this but like I say my kids don't drink it and we still get through that much!!

Emptynester

I'll try the onion tart without the cheese. There are only 2 of us at the moment so I'll make a half size one (and it'll be less waste if the lack of cheese spoils it).

I'll try to do it tomorrow but if work gets in the way I'll do it asap and report back.

jo1972

Can you add me on your list of testers please?

Came home from shopping tonight and told OH we'd be having an onion tart for tea tomorrow...he said...what's in it? (????!!!!!) Then...what no meat???!!!

Men....tsk *rolleyes*

purpleivy

LilacPixie wrote: »

I have made a quiche type thing before with just onions and egg and some mustard powder. I also add in some diced potatoes that are boiled to just soft for bulk. somtimes alternate white and red onions to look visually pretty (and use up whatever i have)

I personally find the fugalist of meals to be soups. Tomato and balsamic vinager is my current favorite and not all that expensive.

Hiya Weezl, there's a crustless quiche recipe somewhere, it does have flour in it. Would that be cheaper if you use flour without fat?

Have you considered the wraps, refried beans etc option. This is quite nutritious, can be a storecupboard meal. Avocadoes are only 49p at Aldi, dunno about anywhere else, they are good nutritionally, aren't they? I think details of the beans are in your original recipe index.

Onion bhajis are cheap to make. I think gram flour can be used in a cake. I used it half and half with rice flour to do some glutenfree pancakes....or was that white cornmeal? Oh heck, winter brain!

ceridwen

weezl74 wrote: »

Butterly spread, I agree that butter would probably make it prohibitive if we're genuinely persuing subsistence living here, but I do feel that our end product could include some healthy swap suggestions for those who have a few more pence a week to make. We could offer them in order of health benefits, and people could make the choice from there, does that make sense?

Well - thats sorta what I'm planning on personally anyway. I am already mentally substituting:
- my Lurpak type buttery spreads or butter itself for cheaper buttery spreads
- wholemeal flour/pasta for white flour/pasta
- brown rice for white rice
- honey and/or dried fruit for sugar (there is Basics type honey available in Sainsburys - to save on buying the dearer stuff). edit: just checked out price and their Basics honey, for instance, is 68p per jar (20p per 100grams).

So - I think a "dual track" system personally is the way to go:

TRACK 1 - allowing for using white flour products/sugar/etc = a healthier way to eat than just eating standard processed readymeals/snacks/etc. I feel Track 1, of itself, would equal more fresh fruit and less chemicals than a lot of people currently eat and represent a sizeable improvement of itself and save a lot of money on food costs.

TRACK 2 - those who are prepared/able to spend a bit more to ensure healthy eating (with wholemeal instead of white, brown rice instead of white rice, honey and/or dried fruit instead of sugar). The point of Track 2 eating being that (even with these dearer substitutions) this would still be a large cost saving on current way of eating.

So - yep - I think it would be a "best of both worlds"/"swings and roundabouts" type set-up - whereby people could choose or perhaps even "mix and match" a bit according to their own personal circumstances, etc.

Guess I'm bearing in mind here the Slimming WOrld diet in a sorta role model type way. They have the Red Plan and the Green Plan. The Red Plan is more oriented to meat-eaters and the Green Plan is healthier/more oriented to vegetarians and people choose for themselves which of the two Plans they are basically going to follow.

phizzimum

well, we had the onion tart for dinner tonight and the girls were very excited to be testing a recipe for the 50p lady!

I really really did my best to try to stick to the recipe - not something I'm known for.

I had the idea of using less of a stronger cheese if that makes sense. I have some whoopsied parmigiano in the freezer and used 10g of that in the pastry (at it's reduced price it costed 1p! but obviously full price would cost loads more) then I used 10g of cheddar for the filling (17p) I also used less onions (about 600g) So my total pricing for our tart is £1.55.

now the family's verdict: DH and myself both loved it. DD1 (age 11) liked it - she would have liked more cheese (but then she would live on cheese if we let her)she also thought it could do with herbs - not good for a subsistence menu though. DD2 (age 8) found it too oniony - she would have prefered some other veg or potato in there as well. having said that, she's not been feeling well today so her appetite wasn't as huge as it usually is.

We would give this recipe a big thumbs up though. I think it's a good foundation recipe for people to learn as they can vary it according to their taste. a quiche is a great way to use up bits and bobs lurking in the fridge, and people can ring the changes according to what's in season.

aless02

Okay, onion tart has been made and half-ly consumed.

My thoughts:
- you can't really taste the pastry through all the onions, so you can omit the cheese from it and move the mustard from the pastry to the filling, where it has more of an impact on the flavor. Also, I only had SR flour - seems too much faffing to use 2 different kinds?!
- I ran out of onions at just under 600g and it was still fine. It's A LOT of onions.

DH's thoughts:
- yum yum scrummy scrummy *barely audible over scarfing down said tart*

Maybe my DH isn't a very helpful tester . So I would say cutting the cheese down to 60g for the top is perfectly fine for our mythical family, but I wouldn't cut it under that or else you're just eating a dinner of onions TBH. Personally, I felt like it "needed something" so wound up splashing some Worcestershire sauce on my slice in the spirit of Welsh rarebit (it kinda helped...not sure what would've pizazzed up the plethora of onions...or maybe I'm just not an onion tart kinda gal?) - however I blame my non-British roots for this .

eta: cross-posted with phizzi! I guess I'm with her DD2

ceridwen

Thinking on too re some peoples comments on including cleaning materials/toiletries/etc in this - er....NOPE!

I guess some people include these because they are used to throwing supermarket ones in the trolley at the same time as the food - so havent been differentiating out on the costs of them.

But - to me and many others - it would just be too puzzling/all round confusing to have NON food items in a Food Challenge.

Just food (and drink) - pure and simple.

Alison_Funnell

I hope nobody minds but I've attempted the carrot cake using the bottled lime juice as I have no oranges in and DH doesn't like lemons. I used 2 tbsp. 250ml bottle from Mr T is 64p so that is 7.68p for 2 tbsp rounded up to 8p to allow for inaccuracy in measuring for the cake and I suspect plus 4p for the topping as I will only use 1tbsp with a little water for the icing.

I 'm cooking in 2 silicon loaftins so I hope they turn out the 'tins' have been used loads of times with no probles before. But thought loaf size would be easier for portion control ( for me anyway) and I can easily freeze one.

taka

Well both the carrot cake and the onion pie are edible (a miracle for me and my dubious cooking skills ) - infact both were yummy. :T

Onion tart - Lovely but I struggled to cook the onions until dark brown. Mine either a) welded themselves to the bottom of my pan or b) refused to change colour. :rotfl: Anyone got any tips? Not entirely sure I've got the hang of rolling pastry either lol - I made it too thin! It was definitely quite cheesy (especially the pastry) so I think you could maybe loose 10g of cheese from both the topping and pastry without missing it too much.

Carrot cake - I left out half the orange juice (well satsuma juice in my case) as the mix was looking really wet already. I cooked it in a rectangular deep baking tray and got 12 roughly 6x6.5cm pieces (half the recipe amount). It was ready in 40 mins. It tastes fab but is really quite greasy. I had to go wash my hands after eating a piece! I'd definitely make it again but with a fair bit less oil in... 2 slices have rather rapidly disappeared. :whistle: