let there be cake

greenbee

Just fry the halved or quartered radishes very gently in butter till the colour starts to run. Delcious with some nice bread! I will try to look out the details when I get home in case I have forgotten something.

I was thinking about your menu planning... Given that you like to cook, maybe you should start by planning the main ingredient for each meal (e.g. Monday lunch - pasta, Tuesday supper - beef etc) long-term so you know how long your stocks will last (assuming your portion control works!) and then each week go through the remaining unallocated ingredients and put together the detail so you know what to buy for the week, and what, if anything, you might need to restock given the opportunity.

I have a horrible feeling that a spreadsheet might be helpful...

OH has survived the first two days of his first week-long solo holiday with his kids... It'll be interesting to see how it progresses!

TiredIAm

Hi skintfoodie - thanks for posting

Greenbee, will try with the radishes. The closest I get to meal planning is monday leftovers/tuesday mince/etc so I can cope with that. I like spreadsheets, I need to find the office CD so I can put excel on this laptop though which is why my plans to date are on my work laptop which I left at work.

Too much coffee again yesterday, so whilst twitching and admiring the ceiling I read a couple of cookery books. No suprise to those who know my AE but I own a lot of cookery books, despite regularly weeding out those I don't use. Amongst them I have a fair few 'frugal' books, and what stuns me is the sheer amount of meat they use per person (with the notable exception of Shirley Goode), even when they use lentils it is puy rather than the cheaper options. AF had dry puy stupidly cheap a few months ago and I regret not buying them at the time.

Lunch is mushroom soup, I bought a 750g punnet of mrA smart price mushrooms RTC 88p on Thursday and they have been very useful. I look for the ones with flat mushrooms rather than closed/button as they have more flavour IMHO. We have had them on toast, for breakfast and with dinner on Saturday. The sorry last few are currently being turned into a very simple soup.

I have chopped them thinly, peeling a few of the sorrier ones. They are currently sweating in big pan with a little butter with some oil, covered with a sheet of baking paper to keep the steam in. After 20 minutes I will add a spoon full of plain flour and cook it out for a minute. Then a mix of milk and veg stock to make it up into soup. It just wants heating through (simmer NOT boil) for a few minutes and seasoning well. You can blitz it but it turns into grey slush, tastes nice, looks awful. I use milk on purpose as I dont like it and I struggle with enough calcium. My mum used to use powdered milk to make this, and she taught me to make it before I left home. The only two things she taught me to cook - mushroom soup and braised steak!

quintwins

Given how much food you have i think you'll do ok, i'd be saving as much of that £20 incase af have anything good on, and tryinga few whoopsie shops aslong as there not too far away to keep stocks up.

Your soup sounds yummy and nice and cheap.

I'm really tight with meat, an 800g packet of mince does us 3 meals and theres 5 of us, or 2 chicken breasts for the 5 of us or 1 in a pie (ok chicken breasts aren't very mse but we like them so thats all that matters really) yet no-one noticed as i do thinks like sheperds pie, mince pie, chicken pie, chicken in creamy sauce or my cheapest meal is stew i never use more than £1 of beef shin and usually ahve enough for all 5 of us plus a portion for the freezer, if it was up to my hubby.

Since your kids seem to like fingery type food i would suggest going to iceland for chicken nuggets and fishfingers, these work out even cheaper than value ones with higher meat content, we don't eat this kind of thing often but always have some in, or i make my own batterred chicken nuggets, so easy and atleast i know it's 100% chicken breasts also do onions rings in the same oil, then strain it and store it in an old pasta jar til next time, we also do fish but we never buy fish hubby catched it, a day sea fishing is £10 and if i had freezer room we could fill the freezer, most he's ever acually taken home is 26 makrel.

i have another suggestion for your kids and i'm hoping no-one jumps one me, but value frozen sausage rolls are really really nice, ok i know they have hardly any meat but they are less than 2p each and it's the pastry that makes them nice, even my hubby loves them and he grew up feed on m&s food, this is a staple in our freezer for quick meals, along with value pizza (which are bigger than iceland ones for the same money, i know we should make our own but that defeats the point of a quick lazy tea) and value garlic bread (which hubby prefers to any other)

Good luck i have subscribed and will eb following your progress.

TiredIAm

Thanks quintwins. Good thinking on Iceland - I think we have one locally, and a Farmfoods. We will be heading that way some time this week.

We have had the value sausage rolls a few years ago and liked them. I also make my own (hence the puff pastry on my list) because I like cheese ones. I am trying to get some fast food in the freezer so these would make sense.

Chicken risotto for dinner with lots of peas and parmesan. Lovely and very filling. Boys hated it and had chicken nuggets and mixed veg.

The last breast of the chicken (DH ate the drumsticks as a snack!) is in a tub hidden at the back of the fridge for tomorrow. The carcass is in for stock.

Someone has eaten all the cookies!

I had to part with money for an onion for the stock and the risotto. 31p for two, stunned. Must take a trip out this week and buy another big bag.

Hiddenidenity

Hello sorry not much use at helping but look forward to reading

Sunnygirl_2

Hugs TiredIAm - sorry it's so tough for you at the moment. Hope DH finds work soon. DH took in a few hours bar work in the evenings leading up to Christmas last year to pay off a credit card debt he built up...is that something your DH would consider? At least it would be casual labour so wouldn't be tied to any contract if he got another job quickly? Lots of hotels etc. getting busy with weddings this time of year?

Don't think I've got any advice food wise but I'll keep reading to hopefully pick up a few tips. We seem to be spending far too much on food shopping at the moment. Greenbee's got some good ideas there! : )

chevalier

I take it there is no way to persuade your children to eat what you do? I don't think there is any other way you could pare you food bill to the bone any more any other way....

good luck to OH getting a job, I hope something comes through for you soon
chev

TiredIAm

Hi hiddenidentity, Sunnygirl and Chev

DH is happy to do whatever needs to be done to keep us afloat. Apart from eating bread, which he merely tolerates. The nature of what he does and the industry he works in means that things could change very quickly.

Breakfast was bacon, beans and toast for them (with an egg for DH) and crumpets for me. I was seduced by the countrylife advert!

We went for a walk around a local reservoir this morning (4k) and took coffee/juice with us. Usually we have a beer and lunch in the gastropub, which is lovely but expensive. Today we went home and had cheese and ham toasties with salad. This is when the value bread comes into its own as it is very thinly sliced. We don't have a sandwich toaster so instead cook them in a frying pan, a messier but more satisfying experience. Chefs bonus is the fried crunchy bits of cheese that leak out. The basic ham works out at 6p a slice but puts valuable protein and flavour in. DS2 won't eat them so he had cheese and nuts instead.

We (perhaps foolishly) called into the co-op on the way back. Lots of reduced meat and veg but not impressively so. £1.30 invested in 14 clementines, an iceberg lettuce and some stir fry veg for later.

Dinner will be chicken stir fry with the last onion, the co-op stir fry veg and some of the egg noodles They who must be humoured will simply have egg noodles.

In other news, with the cookies sadly all gone we are down to the last third of the darth vador cake. DS1 has requested jam tarts, and I will also make carrot cake to use up the manky orange.

I try to get the boys to eat as we do and (all joking aside) they are actively praised and encouraged for trying new things. DS2 does not like the texture of meat, and like me is very faddy about what he does eat. I remain grateful that he likes pasta (I don't) - long may this last.

helen_jelly

Well done on staying out of the pub, having a fry up at "our" cafe is the one thing DH and I miss the most!
Your toasted sarnies sound yummy

Helen x

TiredIAm

The jam tarts have all gone, mostly eaten by DS1 and SS. Re-reading Shirley Goode reminded me of the idea of costing everything to the penny before making a decision.

15 jam tarts came in at 29p - 1oz butter (12p), 1oz lard (5p), 4 oz flour (4p) and a quarter of a jar of value mixed fruit jam (8p). 6 value jam tarts in MrT are 50p. Swapping to marg or oil instead of the butter would make them cheaper still. I could work out the cost of the oven being on if I put the electricity monitor thing on.

The chicken stock made me think as well. DH ate the drumsticks, and I had picked every last scrap off the rest of it so the base bird was rather scrappy. It went into my big pan with half an onion (8p), a couple of carrots (10p) and some herbs from the garden. This was on the gas hob for a couple of hours - no idea on the cost of this. The end result was a pint of good quality concentrated stock. Value stock cubes are as little as 10p for ten! I need to bulk buy onions and carrots to keep the price down, and just use it in the things where it makes a real difference to the end taste. I also need to dig out the slow cooker now that I have the room to use it, and use two carcasses rather than the one to make a big batch.

Last night I read the cook book from the hovel in the hills - I thought this would be useful as it is real poverty level stuff but there isn't much that appeals. I also read Francis Bissell Country Cooking. What made me chuckle was that it opens up automatically on 'Lardy Cake' which is the only thing I have made from it. Her attitude to meat is interesting - 4 sausages to feed 4 people, a duck to serve 8, a guinea fowl for 4 for example.

Breakfast today will be toast/cereal for the boys and me. The value bread is great for this, it just isn't that nice for sandwiches so I try to make bread most days if I am not at work. The boys rip through it and it is rare that any is left over. I don't have a bread machine so this is a Kenwood job. I do wonder if the cost of running the oven outweighs the benefits. The maths are simple for the bread itself 500g strong flour (20p - 60p 1.5kg MrA), 1 sachet yeast (2p - Amazon bulk buy silly price months ago), teaspoon of sugar (.5p) and salt. 22.5p for the materials - makes a medium bloomer or 12 rolls. Any rolls left at the end of the day get frozen ready for packed lunches. This was the theory but the reality is they eat them all!

Plans today potentially involve a trip out, carefully avoiding lunchtime and the need for a picnic. We may go past the bulk buy butchers and if so then I am tempted to get mince, sausages and bacon scraps for the freezer.