Can you feed a family of 6 under £30 ??

BitterAndTwisted

Check this site out for some very economical recipes:

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/

Penelope_Penguin

83jlg83 wrote: »

£30 Was a ball park figure just trying to spend as less as possible im throwing lots into paying off debts. Im trying to pay off extra 50 pounds per week so just tightening my belt in the food dept but i thought id come here for some tips on low cost meals etc xx

I work as a debt adviser so applaud what you're trying to do :T please don't cut back on food spending at the expense of your children's health and nutrition, though.

There are lots more ideas in these threads, kindly collated by Pink-winged. I'll add this to one of them later.

Cheapest recipes???

Meal for two for 50p. Suggestions?

The Cheapest Healthy Meal Ever!

Feed 6 for £1.62

Cheapest meal

Your Cheapest Evening Meal.

cheap, easy family meals

apple_mint

Thank you Penelope Penguin, it's good sometimes to go back over the old threads. I've just taken a look at the 'cheap, easy family meals' thread and the first recipe Tuna Melt Potato Wedges sounds delicious. That's lunch sorted for today :-)

Being an early riser I love meandering through the Old Style threads on a Saturday and Sunday morning, writing down the recipes that catch my eye.

Edited: just to say I'll be making the potato wedges from scratch though. I did pick up a thread earlier in the week for homemade frozen chips so I'll think I'll try that to get some pre-made wedges in the freezer.

ceridwen

PasturesNew wrote: »

You seem to be buying a lot of things in Iceland that you could just as easily cook yourself for 1/4 of the price. e.g. wedges £1 - £1 of potatoes to make your own wedges would get you 5-6x as many ... or, make the wedges and still have potatoes left over for other things/meals.

Same with garlic bread. It's just bread and garlic butter, could make a lot more for your £1.50, or make the same amount for half the price.

The pizzas you could probably knock up yourself too, cheaper.[/QUOTE


Thats what I thought.

HUGE sacks of potatoes are available from "little men"/farmers across the country. Price £5-£10 depending on part of country. Think its 28lbs of spuds in them. I've often thought that if a bigger household is "stuck" they could start by buying one of them.

If I was desperate and had to spend a few weeks as cheap as cheap could be - then I would try and find a couple of people to split the cost of a huge sack of potatoes with (mine being a single person household - so I wouldnt be able to get through them before they started sprouting). I would also "bite the bullet" and swop flour temporarily to a "value" white flour and make things like pizzas, pancakes (non-egg variety in my case - as I couldnt afford my free-range eggs on that low a budget - but it IS possible to use at least a little bit of the more old-fashioned type of dried yeast as an egg replacement and make perfectly acceptable pancakes).

kippers

Hi 83jlg83, thanks for your post, you are obviously looking in the right direction to cut your food bill down, however make sure you are all getting enough fruit and veg. Fruit and veg can be expensive so don't forget to go whoopsie shopping if you can and pad out things like spag bog with as much veg as posiible and as cheaply as possible. Don't forget the old tins of fruit for puddings or to add to jellies (value jellies are so cheap) and use as much seasonal fruit & veg as possible as this makes it much cheaper. Don't forget the humble carrot is usually the cheapest veg you can get and is so versatile.

Use 'my supermarket' to see what is cheapest at which supermarket and search the threads on here about cooking things from scratch. garlic bread, pizza, potato wedges can all be made very simply as can tomato pasta, curries, etc

Puddings are a way to make a meal go further and cakes etc can be made very cheaply (especially if you use value flour, value eggs, value jam etc)

Also, try serving bread with your meals to pad it out..cheaper if you make your own (quick if you have a breadmaker-keep an eye on freecycle).

Weezl has a thread somewhere on here that she lives on a small amount each week and it's a real eyeopener.

All the above things posted do take time to adjust to so take it slowly and don't try to do too much in one go. You can reduce your food bill and still eat healthy but it does take some planning and determination to begin with, but after a while it becomes second nature.

One last thing, don't ever be afraid to ask any questions on here as everyone is fab and there is always someone who knows the answer.

Hope i have helped




By the way MrsRogers, your post was brill, it must have taken you a while to work it all out......it's people like you that make this forum the great place it is:T:T:T

knithappens

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/ this is weezl's website and the recipes are cheap and fab and are costed with shopping lists and meal plans.

Shop around as much a s possible. especially for fruit and veg, lidl andAldi are great for fruit and veg, if you cannot find any whoopsied, also Aldi for meat is good keep an eye out for their reductions at weekends, ditch frozen and make fresh, I just made a big batch of stew cheap and chearful, mainly veg with a samll amount of meat for flavour etc. You ahve already had some great suggestions
s

Pitlanepiglet

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

Check this site out for some very economical recipes:

http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk/

I'd second this, it's Weezl's site so linked to the discussion where you found the tuna wedges OP (edited to add, actually it's not I see, but there will be other Weezl threads around)

IMV £30 a week is going to be hard going and is certainly going to involve a lot more home cooking than you do at the moment. How much time do you have? Are you at home or working?

You say that lunch will be a sandwich but you don't then list much in the way of sandwich fillings, how many sandwiches do you need, do the kids get free lunches? You also haven't included any other lunch stuff, I couldn't eat just a sandwich, I'd need fruit, crisps or some sort of other munchie stuff (look for twinks hobnobs on here).

The suggested alternative menu posted (sorry didn't note who it was from) looks really good and should give you some ideas. You'll need to be smart though and ideally take advantage of whoopsies (can you get to your supermarkets in the evenings when they tend to mark down?) and you'll need to do more that is pasta/potato based - I second the "sack of spuds" suggestion. There's only three of us and we've just about finished our first sack of the autumn/winter. We pay £7 a sack so it's really good value - you then need to get good at all things potato based! :rotfl: (rubber chicken would be good too!)

How much are you spending at the moment? I'd take a look at the Grocery Challenge at the top of the page and get going with that, it may need to be baby steps though, you may find you struggle to change your convenience food led eating overnight to a full on OS style of eating.

Good luck x

rachbc

Less processed stuff and smaller amoutns of meat - bulked with veg and lentils

So spag bol would be 3/400g mince (I use stand not extra lean) with tinned toms, carrot, onion and a handful of lentil rather than 750g of mince and a jar of sauce

Buy chops but cut in to strips and use in a stir fry so 3 feeds 6 people rather than 1 each - add carrots, onion, other cheap veg and a handful of nuts for extra protein/ bulk

Sausages in a casserole chopped in chunks with root veg is cheaper and healthier than just sausages

Good luck

hex2

Lovely to see so many helpful posts!

May I suggest that you have a look at the value/basic frozen mixed veg - Mr S is 72p for a kilo - carrot, cauliflower, peas and broccoli so a good mix of colours and variety. My boys love it, and they always ask if they can have it, which is slightly depressing when I grow my own/have a regular veg box delivery.

How much time to do you have/effort are you willing to put in/pleasure do you get out of cooking? You could save more by making things from scratch but if you hate it then you will end up resenting all the work.

Good luck with it.

claret1980

I have recently started cutting back and have discovered our local markets. I can get fruit and veg at a fraction of the price of supermarkets - even Aldi!

There is also a great variety of cuts of meat. My favourites at the moment include ham hock (£1.60 each - soak overnight to de-salt, simmer with carrots, onion, bay leaves and cloves for 2-3 hours, strip the skin and some of the fat off, glaze with a mixture of honey and wholegrain mustard and roast for 30 mins at 200C - gorgeous and you will have left overs after feeding a family of 6) and chicken hearts (98p a pound - fry off with some onion and garlic then braise in oven with tinned tomatoes and bit of stock for 2 hours or so at 160C - serve over mash and cabbage - a pound and a half should be enough for 2 adults and 4 kids as the hearts are really filling - just make sure there is plenty of mash to go with it).

One thing I have started doing, in order to increase our veg intake, is to make mash out of swede and carrots. It's still pretty cheap and loads better nutritionally than plain potato.