February grocery challenge

spidystrider

Hi crana,
It's great to have another veggie around for advice. I do think leaving the ready made meals off my shopping list would make a big difference to my shopping bill. I will definately start looking at some recipes which is what I had always planned to do. Unfortunately, like so many other things I plan to do, I never seem to get round to it. I am determined that tomorrow I will spend some time looking at the websites that have already been mentioned. I would be grateful for any recipe ideas and I will start posting what I make and how much it has cost me. Hopefully then I can start to make some progress and get my bills down. Thanks for all the info so far, I really am grateful.

crana999

Two quick recipes: (these are adapted for my no-frying restriction!)

Vegetarian Chilli
Dump a tin of chopped tomatoes, a tin of sweetcorn, and either a tin of kidney beans or dried kidney beans soaked and cooked, into a saucepan. Add about 1/2 teaspoon each dried coriander and cumin, some garlic if you have it (of any form! fresh, chopped, paste, dried, whatever), and some chilli of any form (powder, fresh.. I normally just use hot sauce)

Boil until beans are tender. Serve with rice and melted cheese (mm!)

Root veg & barley casserole
Add any combination of chopped up potatoes (scrubbed but skin on), carrots, parsnips, swede, turnips, onion, cabbage (white seems to work better), leeks to a pan. Add about a handful of pearl barley and stock (I make mine with a stock cube..) to cover to about an inch - 2 inches above all the veg. Boil till barley/veg are tender (add more water if needed). You can make this without the barley if you don't have any.

Moroccan chickpeas
Put 1 chopped onion, 1 tin chickpeas (or soaked & cooked dried ones), 1 tin chopped tomatoes in a pan with 1 level teaspoon cumin, 1 lvl tspoon coriander, about 1/3 level teaspoon tumeric powder, some chilli as above. Add some chopped spinach or cabbage near the end if you have any handy - add earlier for cabbage and later for spinach. Cook until tender.

Serve with rice or bread (naan, pitta etc) and dollop of yogurt if you have any. also good cold in pittas

These are all very easy to make - mainly chuck stuff in a pan and check on it now and then - and keep well in the fridge for a few days, although you shouldn't keep rice longer than 48 hours I think.

halloweenqueen_2

Ready, steady - we're off

Trow

If you have a 'no-fry' restriction have you ever sauted your onion etc in water or red wine? It helps soften it up nicely so you don't end up with what my other half would consider undercooked onion (he had an incident once with french onion soup and now all onion has to be very well cooked)

chrisico

Hi, having been a veggie for 25 years and brought up 3 strapping girls I am quite familiar with cheap veggie meals !!
Our favourites are mini toads - mix up a yorkshire pudding batter ( 1 egg, 4oz plain flour, 1/2 pint milk, sorry if you already know this ), put about a 1/4 veggie sausage ,uncooked , into a each section of a pattie tin (the sort you make cakes in) with a bit of oil. Heat in the oven until really hot, add batter and cook for about 20 mins. Serve with roast pts, veg and gravy.

If you are really cheap like me,save about half the batter and next day make about 6 thin pancakes and stuff with veg
pulses what ever you have ,cover with cheese sauce and bread crumbs and bake.

Cook some lentils until dry,season ,add a packet of stuffing mix ,cheap sage and onion is good, 1 egg and and water.Leave to stiffen up, make into burger shapes and fry.

Hope these help

Galtizz

Spidy, how about when you are having a 'good' week and are doing well cooking from scratch make at least double and freeze in portion sizes. That way when you are having a 'bad' week you'll have homemade ready meals in the freezer just waiting to be defrosted.

aliasojo

Read this thread for the first time today, it's very interesting.

I could really do with spending less (a lot less) on shopping but not sure about the 'value' range bit.

I would quite happily buy value cleaning stuff etc but the value food items worries me a bit. Value mince for instance is bound to be less meat and more fat, so is less healthier. Same for orange squash....cheaper but more sugar/e numbers?

We have to keep a close eye on what food we buy because of cholesterol problems with my eldest. He comes from a line of folk who have all got clinically diagnosed cholesterol probs (his uncle died aged 34 from a heart attack), so we have to buy with more healthy in mind rather than cheap unfortunately. I've yet to find a healthy AND cheap option, lol.

Mind you, I'm sure there's plenty of room for cutting out some of the rubbish the rest of us eat, so next shopping day, I'm going to be more concientious.

A huge chunk of our monthly income goes on our shopping bill, we could really be doing with cutting back.

I liked Judi's idea of refilling hubby's shower gel with cheapo stuff, I would have the same problem so I'm going to try that.

Galtizz

I shop at Lidl and they don't have a value range as such. For me the challenge is more about thinking about what I'm buying. Instead of wandering around and thinking; yeah we could have that one night, I make out a menu plan before I go and think about the week, for example, no point in planning to cook a roast dinner on a Wednesday if you finish work at 6 and need to go out at 7.
Once I have decided what I'm cooking for dinner, what we are having for lunch and breakfast I check my cupboards to see what I've already got and what I need, then make a list out based on that. I then go shopping and stick ridgedly to the list.

It's also about thinking what is OK to buy cheap and where I can get the best value for money, for example; Lidl is cheaper for fruit and veg than Asda (the market is even cheaper but I don't get there very often). My butcher is cheaper than both of them for meat. I don't think there is any difference between Tesco's finest pasta and Lidl's big value pack.
It's about what is best for you and how you can save money. Some people go shopping and buy everything that is on special offer and then come back and plan the meals around that. I can't trust myself not to buy junk I don't need so I plan first.

Try doing the store cupboard challenge first, this made me realise how much stuff I bought that I didn't need that just collected dust in the cupboard. This opened my eyes to what I needed to do to save money on shopping.

Good luck

culpepper

spidystrider wrote:

I do find cooking with Quorn mince really difficult and always find it tastes like rubber bands ( not that I've ate any rubber bands ). I find that ready made veggie mince dishes taste great, so it must be something I'm doing wrong.

Spidy Im not a veggi but we used to cook with soya mince a lot when the kids were younger and it depends which order you do things,how it tastes.
I used to cook onions for bolognaise and if you put the soya with it,it tastes of onions.So I used to cook it in a little water with bovril first and add it later,that way it took on the taste of the bovril instead.Dont know if quorn is the same?

fazer6

I was also not sure about some of the value range so I got some of the Asda value pasta. There's no risk because they have the 200% satisfaction guarantee. I've also started going to Aldi for things like tinned/chopped tomatoes, they're 17p a can, but tesco own brand stuff is 35p. Used them for the first time last week in a stew in the slow cooker and didn't notice a difference. I also won't buy value mince because I worry that you just get more fat. Get the normal meat and pad it out with lentils and grated carrot, it's better for you this way too.

I have planned most meals for the next few weeks using up what I have in. Now my shopping list only contains items I need for the next week. I also plan one really cheap meal a week, like omlette or jacket potatoes and also plan to completely use up all my leftovers. I try and do a roast on a sunday and the leftovers get used up in sandwiches during the week and what's left goes into a stew on Friday. I also always do a few more roast potatoes than I need and freeze a couple, I've now got a big freezer bag of them which stops me buying wedges for lazy days. Yorkshire puddings also freeze really well too, I put them into the grill from frozen when I've something else in the oven and they reheat with the heat from the oven. If you have stuffing with a roast then you don't eat as much meat so more is leftover for the next meal too.

Oh and spidy have you ever tried making your own pizza? The cost is half a supermarket pizza, you get twice as much and it tastes so much better. Also a cooking course won't teach you as much info as you can get here for free.