£50 to feed two adults till Sept 27th

bramble1

EstherH wrote: »

If you have a £10 off £50 spend and pay £5 for delivery then you have still saved £5 on the same shop instore, so that may be a good idea especially as you don't get tempted by extras. On the other hand, there may be a chance of whoopsies if you go instore. They never seem to have much at my local supermarkets. Feel quite jealous of others on OS site who seem to get loads.

Another pudding idea is microwave sponge:

4oz marg
4oz sugar - I always use normal not castor which is more expensive
4oz s.r. flour - just use basic/value
1 egg
a little milk and few drops of vanilla essence if you have it, doesn't matter if not.

Beat marg and sugar and add egg and then flour. If you have a food processor just bung it all in together.
Add a little milk to make to a 'soft dropping consistency' as my old cookery teacher used to say.
Add vanilla essence

Put a little jam in the bottom of a pudding bowl or pyrex dish
Pour cake mixture on top

Cover loosely with cling film.

Cook in micro wave for approx 4 mins. You may have to experiment a little with timing. Try 31/2 mins and then check with skewer to see if cooked, try another 30 secs if mixture sticks to skewer etc.

Sorry instructions not very clear but it is so very easy and quick to make and really cheap.

thanks for the recipe, looks good, and OH always goes 'whats for pudding' (if i buy a pudding especially he won't eat it!) would be perfect for those days.

I'm looking on the tescos site and struggling to be honest. I think i'll stick to shopping in store!

Aesop

bramble1 wrote: »

thanks for the recipe, looks good, and OH always goes 'whats for pudding' (if i buy a pudding especially he won't eat it!) would be perfect for those days.

I'm looking on the tescos site and struggling to be honest. I think i'll stick to shopping in store!

For a one off, it may be good to shop online. Although Tescos tend to have hidden gems... they have their offers which are clearly visible and then when you are viewing the "shelves" directly, you will find better offers that aren't on their visible offers - shrugs shoulders.

I know the other week they were offering a large bag of white potatoes for 76p. You could maybe stock up on tinned stuff too for the store cupboard? Some of the basics stuff is palatable.

I always try to go for bogof offers, that makes your shopping go a lot further. But you need to buy stuff that is relevant and that will help you with food stuff for the month.

bramble1

right got a £10 off voucher through the door so going to tescos today to do a shop wish me luck! lets see how far i can get!

jackieglasgow

Go to mysuperarket first and do a shopping list and take it with you, I always find this helps when the budget is down to its bare bones.

valk_scot

bramble1 wrote: »

OH doesn't eat breakfast because he's out the door at 5:30!

He really shouldn't be doing that given that he's doing so much physical work. Even a better and more nutritious lunch won't help him if he hasn't eaten from say 8pm at night till lunchtime the next day. Does he have a cup of tea or coffee in the morning? If so leave him something cold to eat in the fridge...slice of frittata (eggs again!) with potato and peas, another sandwich, a couple of pieces of flapjack, banana and yoghurt. If he can't face eating quite that early pack it up for him the same as lunch and he can eat it at 8am or something on the hoof.

My other suggestion for lunch treats that could also be eaten at breakfast? Scones...fruit, plain with a smear of jam, cheese. Banana bread to use up speckly bananas, or banana muffins. Muffins or fruit bread in general. Drop scones...what you call pancakes in England? (Eggs again!)

Others? Cheese sticks using left over pastry cuttings, jam tarts, tray bake jam tart with coconut sprinkled over, mini quiches made in bun tins with egg + snips of bacon/spoon of baked beans/snips of ham/tomato in them (my mum used to make these for my school packed lunches!), any sort of mini cornish pasty type thing using a spoonful of anything left over from last night's dinner...mince, stew, curry even!

If you're making bread dough make some extra mini pizzas about the size of a saucer with tomato puree or even ketchup on top, some grated cheese leftovers and anything handy for extra flavour...bacon or ham again, finely sliced onion, a few flakes of tuna fish.

Btw, bread? Got a food processer or mixer? I've got an ancient Kenwood Chef that I inherited from an elderly relative and it's the best thing out there for kneading double quantities of dough and the bread it makes is x5 better than most breadmaker bread. It's great for all sorts of baking etc too. It's worth looking out for one of these second hand or even just see if you can borrow one for a while....I would imagine in a farming community with a tradition of home baking there might be someone with an unused older model tucked into a cupboard somewhere. A second hand one would cost the same as a cheap breadmaker and be far more versatile.

valk_scot

bramble1 wrote: »

right got a £10 off voucher through the door so going to tescos today to do a shop wish me luck! lets see how far i can get!

Tesco are currently doing their biggest bags of pasta for £2 reduced from £3.69(?). You'd get a few meals from one of these especially if you also pick up a few tins of Value tomatoes. And you can make cold pasta salad for that lunchbox. ;-)

Chaos_Monkey

Some great ideas on here already, but (I think) no-one's mentioned meal planning - that's saved us an absolute fortune. I plan ours per week, but could no doubt be done over longer periods. Meal planning helps me with writing my shopping list, and sticking to it!

Good luck

Mrs_Beatson

Firstly good luck to the OP, be sure to let us know how you get on.

As always with this site, there are already some great ideas coming your way and I'm not sure I have much to add.

One idea I had was, as you own a slow cooker, could you make porridge in it the night before, so that OH can eat it before he leaves at 5.30am? It's SOOO filling (rib sticking, my mum calls it!!) and if he's full up for longer he may not need so many of the snacks he has for lunch.

I have to agree with a previous poster that you MUST meal plan.
Work out what you have in the cupboard and what you need to buy to make complete meals from it.

I also agree that if you are talented enough to be able to make your own bread, do so! ( I can't do it for some reason!!) You can make a smaller dinner (in the slow cooker?) but fill up with HM bread.

Also do, do go foraging! I took the kids blackberrying the other day and we found enough for me to make a crumble. Crumble mix is cheap & easy if you have flour, marg & sugar in the cupboard. Thats all they had for lunch and they ALL said they were full! (A miracle by anyone's standards!!:rotfl:)

Soup is a great idea for OH's lunch, especially if you can find some "whoopsied" vegetables and with a couple of slices of your HM bread.


I really hope things go ok for you, a lot of us have been in the postition that you have. Personally I found that once I'd got through the bad time , I had actually changed my way of thinking and now I bake and cook from scratch a lot more than I used to. Being skint makes you realise how much cheaper you can make it yourself IYSWIM.

Hope this helps a bit,

Mrs B xx

LizzieB

Hi Bramble1, does your DH like malt loaf? I bake a really simple one regularly for my DH's breakfast as he has had to dramatically cut his meat down but does need to be topped up on his vitamin B. I use malt extract :beer: in it which makes it rich and filling. Also, adding a handful of dried fruit adds to the 5 a day!

Good luck to all

LizzieB

Aureol - I bought a MEGA MASSIVE bag of whoopsied spuds from Mr. A about 4 weeks ago for 40p and kept them in one of those shallow fruit/veg cardboard boxes in the very bottom of my wardrobe However, I only had to throw two of them out when I finished them off yesterday. They were as green as my though.......!