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

mcculloch29

Feeling experimental, I thought I'd use reduced to clear chestnut mushrooms (10p!) and organic pears (15p!) in my bacon, apple and onion fry-up.

These helped to make four decent sized portions for a total cost of £1.75. The bacon was 99p and value range apples and onions took up the 50p difference.

It still tasted great with the additions. I've also thought of using this as the base of a savoury crumble or scone - topped pie.

At the risk of stating the totally obvious, the key to so many of these recipes is that meat, the most expensive ingredient, is not served in the piece as chops, joints, fillets or steaks but diced and mixed with other ingredients, creating a dish rather than just cooking items to be placed on a plate.

83jlg83

again thanks for the amazing tips on this thread im going to try out your ideas and i will update you guys xx

she_who_can_not_cook

My fav lady would be HILLbilly house wife very cheap meal plans she has if you are ok converting the us weights

Sunflower1227

check out this site

http://www.netmums.com/food/Cooking_on_a_Budget.266/

83jlg83

well had some success today asda shopping £20 iceland £7 and my meats at £10 so this weeks total is at £37 ! so i am going to aim for feeding a family of 6 for 40 per week ... today i discovered jars of smartprice curry at 9p !! wow

alandbailey

Speaking as a divorced man of 67 who was left with very little after divorce, I check in the supermarkets for reduced price goods and either freeze them or eat them within 2 days. Today I bought 3 large roasted chickens from Tesco @ £2.25 each, stripped 2 of them, boiled the carcasses for stock, strained the stock to reduce the fat, added 225gm mixed soup lentils and 200gm pearl barley. After almost 2 hours, I made a lot of herby dumplings, put them on top , fitted the stockpot lid and simmered for about 40 mins. This will give me 2 meals a day for 3 - 5 days. I use paprika, salt, fresh ground pepper, garlic, celery seed, dried herbs etc. Half will be frozen as the same meal gets boring after 2 days. Apart from gas, the cost was well under £6. You can also adapt this for the Xmas turkey leftovers. I do this about every 3-4 weeks.:)

joolsybools

Not read the whole thread (sorry) but you might want to consider investing in a slow cooker (or asking Santy!). You can get them for £10 in Argos. That way you can cook cheaper cuts of meat and bulk up with veggies, lentils etc. There are loads of recipes and advice on this site and on the net in general. This blog in particular might whet your appetite:

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/ (US site, you can convert US measurements to UK by googling them)

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/4207490/Trail/searchtext%3ESLOW+COOKER.htm Argos £10 slowcooker

janeawej

Slow cookers are great, fab for cooking cheap cuts, cheap to run and I would advise getting the largest one you can afford as then you can make a batch and freeze food or use it for 2 days running, eg I do a mince dish, quite plain with tomatoes, garlic, onions etc, then after cooking take half ut then add maybe beans to the remaining half for chilli that night and the next night we could have spag bol or cottage pie by adding the appropriate herbs etc, curried mince is actually very very nice too if you want cheap meaty curry (my mum was a wiz with mince I grew up eating it at least 3-4 times a week!) Also dont use gravy granules, not only do they have lots of chemicals in them but you can make a lovely gravy with meat juices, flour vegetable water or a stock cube for virtually free!

costaerer

me and OH have been working out our budget and we are spending way over hence credit cards building up.

£30 a week is the maximum we can spend on food/drink/going out etc every week.

my husband actually works at night in a small take away so in theory he doesnt need dinner, but he hates the food there so i like to make him dinner for when he comes in after work.

when hes in uni he takes sandwiches with him and probs once a fortnight, if that he buys a jacket potato for about £2.

other than that im doing slimming world so 'trying' to cut sugars and carbs!! my OH is a 'carb !!!!!' and could easily eat a whole packet of pasta at a meal yet still has a 30inch waist!!:mad::mad:

in theory i can get food from my husbands work if i want but im also sick of it and alot of it is fried or cheesy!! the only sort of healthy things is oven cooked salmon.....

my weekness is buying rubbish for the house to give to my OH as hes so skinny! i feel he needs the calories and he hates eating so i buy chocolate, crisps etc to hope he eats them when he doesnt eat proper meals.

but i need to stop this as it costs up to £10 a week!!
looking for some menu ideas/shopping plans/low cal/high carb sort of meals that are freezable!

also, as i only have £120 a month for food, i thought i could do one big shop at beginning of month-buy all meat, frozen, tinned, milk (frozen), snacks in one go and spend say £80 and then nip to lidl down the road once a week for fruit and veg and spend about £10.

or

is it better to just go weekly and spend £30. i think this will be harder and ill end up overspending!!

thanks in advance!!:T

Jacey53

I can't advise on how you should shop - I think different people find it works best in different ways, but there is a recipe on the forum for Twinks' hobnobs, which would be a healthy but filling (and tasty) snack for your OH.