Meal for two for 50p. Suggestions?

melanzana

Some lovely stuff in here. Happy days!

BUT.. Can I comment on something please?

The powers that be have INSISTED that we should have five a day fruit and veg.

Now when I were a kid there was no such thing. You got whatever bit of veg was around, and lots of spuds, and an apple if you were lucky. That generation of parents is living well into their 80s and 90s now including my mum.

It has more to do with eating UNPROCESSED foods if you ask me. There were no takeaways apart from the chipper, once a year! Food was bought every day, no fridge or freezer. Real butter, and rendered fat, beef suet, you name it. All of which is a real no no now.

I wonder sometimes about the diktats to eat five F+V a day. That is expensive for many. But those who dictate this maxim do not EVER seem to balance this with caution about eating processed food. Ok maybe now and then. But the five a day is the biggie.

Thre is plenty of vitamins and minerals and fibre in spuds for example, but they are not included!

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Whatcounts.aspx

Anybody comment?

And Happy New Year to all too!

Charlotte49

Thanks so much for this thread. I've spent a while looking through and there are some really great recipes. I'm (hopefully) going off to university in September so I'm making a casual 'recipe book' which is more meal ideas than strict recipes. After realising I'm going to have around £10 a week for food I had such a huge panic but I've calmed down a lot now!

Also thought I'd offer a couple of my favourite recipes. I don't know the exact costing but I'm pretty sure they're around the 50p mark.

Buttery bacon pasta,
Chop 2 rashers of bacon and fry with mushrooms and leeks in butter until they all brown slightly. Add extra butter to make a bit of a sauce. You can also add cream at this point if you like (it's good with or without). Simply mix in with your chosen pasta. This is also really good with a bit of chilli.

Mushroom and broccoli pasta
Cook 1 onion first in oil, then add broccoli and mushrooms (which can be added straight from the freezer). Add one tin of Campbells condensed mushroom soup and 1tsp green pesto. Heat through and mix, adding milk if it looks too thick. Mix with pasta of choice.
This also works well with any leftover chicken or ham.

For dessert I often have tinned fruit cocktail with condensed milk. I've had it since I was tiny, and it literally takes no preparation.

Michelle63x

Both of my children are now at Uni and have to live off a budget so I have taught them some nice cheap, filling and easy recipes. This is one of their favourites. It is a bit more than 50p to make but it last for more than 1 meal very easily so fits into this thread. If you have a blender or stick blender to make some breadcrumbs it helps but you can just tear the bread up by hand if not. The recipe can be adapted to whatever you have to hand (within reason)
Sausage Slice:
Pastry (any will do but puff gives the most impressive result) either buy it on offer in the supermarket. £1 for a block in A++a or 64p for a pkt of shortcrust mix or use any recipe from a website for an easy to make pastry.
Sausage meat - either frozen or on offer sausages. About 8 will do. Again, A***a smartprice is 97p for 20.
About 4 slices of dry bread for breadcrumbs. My son toasts this lightly as its easier to crumble - he doesnt have a blender. use up your oldest hardest bread, crusts are perfect.
1 Egg (not completely necessary, a splash of milk will do)
Take your sausages out of their skins and put in a bowl. Add your breadcrumbs - about half to begin with. Now add whatever else you have lying around. Any chopped onion that needs using up - bung it in.
Any peppers, mushrooms that need using up just chop them up small and put it in your mix. If you like a bit of zing add a dollop of BBQ sauce or some chilli flakes. Hard cheese lurking at the back of the fridge? grate it up and chuck it in. I like to add a splosh of tomato sauce to give a bit more flavour and moistness but you can also add leftover baked beans or just about anything. Experiment and you really cant get this wrong.
Roll out your pastry - make a nice big rectangle. I usually make it about 18" by 10" but I go by the thickness of the pastry when rolled. You want it thick enough to hold the filling but not too thick that your wasting pastry.
Check the moisteness of your filling - add more breadcrumbs if its too wet. Also, the breadcrumbs will bulk it out and make it go further. Wet your hands then put your filling in the middle of the pastry - cover about the middle third of the pastry so you have a third either side of pastry to wrap round your middle. Make sure your filling goes right to the edges of the pastry. Fold one side of the pastry over the filling (stretch it a bit if your a bit short of pastry), now use some milk or egg to brush over this but. Then fold your last half of the pastry over the top and use a fork to press the pastry down and seal it. You have just created a HUGE sausage roll. Turn it over so the join is underneath and cut it in half - this will ensure it cooks evenly in the over and if you have used puff pastry it does increase in size quite a bit. Glaze it all over (brush it) with the rest of the egg or milk and cook in the oven according to the pastry instructions. Its best on a piece of greaseproof paper if you have some but if not dont worry. I also sprinkle some grated cheese over the glazed pastry before it goes in the oven but its not necessary.
This can be eaten warm or cold, cut into slices and serve with anything really. Total cost is about £2 but will make 4 meals easily. I have managed to buy a load of reduced sausagemeat for 30p a time so am using this up out of the freezer which brings the cost down even further.
Enjoy!

Althalusuk

melanzana wrote: »

Some lovely stuff in here. Happy days!

BUT.. Can I comment on something please?

The powers that be have INSISTED that we should have five a day fruit and veg.

Now when I were a kid there was no such thing. You got whatever bit of veg was around, and lots of spuds, and an apple if you were lucky. That generation of parents is living well into their 80s and 90s now including my mum.

It has more to do with eating UNPROCESSED foods if you ask me. There were no takeaways apart from the chipper, once a year! Food was bought every day, no fridge or freezer. Real butter, and rendered fat, beef suet, you name it. All of which is a real no no now.

I wonder sometimes about the diktats to eat five F+V a day. That is expensive for many. But those who dictate this maxim do not EVER seem to balance this with caution about eating processed food. Ok maybe now and then. But the five a day is the biggie.

Thre is plenty of vitamins and minerals and fibre in spuds for example, but they are not included!


Anybody comment?

And Happy New Year to all too!

All this five a day stuff is nonsense to get us to buy more and help farmers, my mother is 89 and still going strong, she never worried about stuff like that she just ate good food that she cooked herself.

Althalusuk

My favourite is very cheap and easy,
250 grams of cheap pasta
1 can of Mackerel fillets in tomato sauce at £1
A few mixed veg (carrots, peas etc)
Mashed potato

Cook the pasta in a big pan and drain the water off
Add the mackerel and mixed veg and mix well
put the mixture into a large dish and spread the mash over the top
Put it under the grill until the top is nicely browned

I get six serving from this which make a good filling meal and costs way less than 50p a time.

Fire_Fox

melanzana wrote: »

Some lovely stuff in here. Happy days!

BUT.. Can I comment on something please?

The powers that be have INSISTED that we should have five a day fruit and veg.

Now when I were a kid there was no such thing. You got whatever bit of veg was around, and lots of spuds, and an apple if you were lucky. That generation of parents is living well into their 80s and 90s now including my mum.

It has more to do with eating UNPROCESSED foods if you ask me. There were no takeaways apart from the chipper, once a year! Food was bought every day, no fridge or freezer. Real butter, and rendered fat, beef suet, you name it. All of which is a real no no now.

I wonder sometimes about the diktats to eat five F+V a day. That is expensive for many. But those who dictate this maxim do not EVER seem to balance this with caution about eating processed food. Ok maybe now and then. But the five a day is the biggie.

Thre is plenty of vitamins and minerals and fibre in spuds for example, but they are not included!

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/5ADAY/Pages/Whatcounts.aspx

Anybody comment?

And Happy New Year to all too!

The full guidelines are actually at least five a day, the research supports closer to the equivalent of nine servings as being linked to reduced risks of a variety of lifestyle health problems. Various other countries do recommend seven to ten portions based on the same body of evidence, we are actually lagging way behind.

It's about far more than vitamins, there are also minerals, fibre, water, antioxidants and other phytonutrients, most are relatively low calorie. Sorry but potatoes do not contain plenty of micronutrients even with the skin included and are certainly not a good source of other phytonutrients. A UK serving of fruit and veg is 80g, see here the amounts of nutrients in 100g, despite that being almost 100 calories (ratio is considered).
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2551/2

Filling up on produce tends to mean eating less of other more calorie dense foods including processed rubbish and you can bet the powers-that-be are well aware of that. The full healthy living guidelines are designed to be manageable as well as improve health outcomes, and the ones that are pushed most are the ones that are believed to be likely give the best all round results. It can often be more effective to encourage people to eat or do more of something than always less of something, with the latter they can feel deprived, bored, nanny state. Arguably it's a more positive message to say DO something than always say DON'T.

The fats you list are technically processed foods, they don't come off the animal like that. It's fine to eat as much of those fats as our grandparents, if you do as much physical activity as previous generations and maintain a healthy weight/ body fat percentage as they more often did and don't combine it with a modern UK diet. But as a nation we aren't, not by a country mile.

As a nation waste far more money on meat and processed foods than we need to, relatively few are too broke to hit five a day they just don't make the cheapest choices ... Yes I know I am preaching to the choir, but the official guidelines are aimed at our increasingly fat and sick general population not Old Stylers eating real food.

Previous generation may not have been consistently eating vegetables but they were eating far more whole carbs, organ meats, seafood and other foods that many would turn their noses up at these days. The eat more fish message doesn't work and I can't honestly see them being successful with an eat offal twice a week message either! We are still at a UK average of one third of a serving per person per week of oily fish, I think I read the other day offal eating is up in the recession with a quarter of people eating it at least once a month.

Whilst we are suffering with one form of malnutrition (obesity) previous generations had the same or others - plenty of wealthy folks eating too much rich food got gout and diabetes, plenty of poorer people like my paternal grandmother and all her siblings had stunted growth. Other deficiencies like rickets was not that uncommon in children, osteoporosis is too often seen in older ladies. My seventy something aunt was diagnosed type 2 diabetic in her fifties - potatoes are one of her very favourite things, she's always cooked from scratch but used to drink rather too much red wine. Those who make it to old age are the ones who survived those high risk early years unlike my mother's twin, to some extent it's survival of the fittest.

mcculloch29

Just a quick mention that whilst it's certainly true that some very poor people are obese, research generally doesn't bear the 'the majority of obese people are the poor on poor diets' theory out.
You've made some excellent points, Fire Fox.
In my nearest large town we have a fantastic discount greengrocers with amazing prices - a bag of half a dozen apples for 50p, satsumas ditto, a massive bag of grapes ditto, carrots at 29p a bag, a huge 5kg bag of onions for £1.50...
I was in there on Friday stocking up, and the vast majority of my fellow shoppers were either pensioners or in their 50s, like me. We do need to show that fresh food can be affordable, is a good choice and that five a day is realistic.

Re. 'we didn't have this 5 a day nonsense years ago.'
I definitely had 5 a day as a child and we were on a very restricted budget. My Mum used to go to the fruit market in the centre of Cardiff once a week and stagger home with a huge bag of fruit and veg, plus we had a pricier, but decent, local greengrocer. Mum was a nurse, and knew instictively that a diet of fresh foods was best.

Uniscots97

As pennies have been extremely tight lately I resurrected a favourite of mine from my Its called cheats stew.

For 2 people you need:-

2 large carrots
1 onion
1 beef stock cube
1/2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp self raising flour
pinch salt
pinch mixed herbs
water

chop the carrots and onions into bite sized pieces, place in a large pot with boiling water. Turn the heat up and once the water starts to boil again turn the heat down (to simmer) and add the stock cube. Stir well and leave to simmer. In a bowl, combine the flour and butter, rubbing them together, add the pinch of salt and herbs and mix well. Add a tiny bit of water and work it through. You want to end up with a nice dough. Once you have that, separate it into 4 portions and roll them into balls and place them in the pot with the beef stock and veg. Leave these dumplings to simmer. In about 30-40 mins your dumplings should be ready and spoon them in to a bowl (2 per person) and cover with the veg and (now thickened) stock and serve. If you like really thick gravy you can add some gravy granules about 5 minutes before you add the dumplings. This is a cheap recipe but very filling and warming and comes in under 50p.

Uniscots97

my post should have read from my student days!

sas79

summersnearlyhere wrote: »

One of our favourites is Cheese and Onion Pie! When I'm really in the mood to cook I get loads of ingredients and make as much as I can and freeze it.

I now make a huge batch of pastry and prepare as many as I can, cook them and freeze what's left just to warm up for quick teas when I'm working.

sorry silly question do you freeze after cooking or before? I'm not great at cooking & live alone so need all the help I can get & anything I can make in advance as I work shifts