£7.00 per week - menu ideas

Soworried

cazmcd2000 wrote: »

Yes. I throw out food.:( I am aware, after reading this thread, what a waste that is. You guys are really making me think. I am going to make a real effort to sort myself out.

Well done :j As soon as you realise you do waste it you will improve. Think how nice a new bag or a night out would be on that money?
Most veg you can just freeze and use as frozen after that.

Pixie_Fairydust

Wow what an amazing thread. It will help me no end :T

Very tight budget here. I'm a veggie so will adapt some of the recipes. I have a teenager to feed who has hollow legs! So its a struggle!

Thanks to all of you who have given up your time to post such brilliant meal plans :j

Pix

[Deleted User]

That Tesco 500gm bacon pack of tiny bits for 74p is brilliant I use it fried crisply, and into a quiche with chopped musrooms and peppers and some finely chopped onion.In fact if I manage to get a really lean pack I will devide it into three and freeze two portions for later.I always fry it to a crisp though as it adds flavour to other meals.With a jacket spud or and omelette or even added to a salad with small squares of crouton bread (HM of course, from bread that's getting a bit stale I cut into squares and bung in my remoska to crisp up)when added to a salad its no different than the stuff you get from the help-yourself bar in a Harvester pub.So many things you can add the crispy bits of bacon to and its so inexpensive, similar to the Bacon lardons that are priced a lot higher in supermarets.

quintwins

I just thought of another tip, butter is a big outlay but if your planing to have toast or sandwichs the soft cheese or cheese spread is nice at 50/57p and can be used as a spread and a filling in one, saving you buying jam or a sandwich filling aswell.

Thanks to whoever posted the link to someone blog doinga menu plan they mentions garlic sausage which is as cheap as value ham but with more meat and nicer, i had never heard of it but i bought a pack yesterday t try i figured at 55p for 12 slices i didn't ahve much to lose, it's lovely and i will be buying it again (but it needs well wrapped my fridge stinks!!

Pee

Just to say I am really glad you have all posted. The reason I read the thread was I was interested to know whether it was possible and I was feeling like it may come to this for me - would if I lost my job in the shorter term potentially - and it has made me feel a lot better to know that it is possible and we would survive. That said, I don't fancy eating it for very long and I should appreciate the fruit and veg that I get in my diet now.

PhGage

This is a 'keep the wolf from the door' eating plan and could only be short term.

We've prepared and eaten all of these dishes this week. The dishes are never going to suit everyone and you'd need to try out some of the dishes when you aren't under pressure because making a mistake when your budget is so tiny is unaffordable.

Shopping list

Asda

Whitworth dried peas 1kg £1.28

Smartprice cooking bacon pieces 500g £0.74

Smartprice peach slices in light syrup 411g £0.29

Smartprice sardines in tomato sauce 120g £0.34 x2 - £0.68

Smartprice plum tomatoes 400g £0.31

Asda tomato puree 142g £0.25

Smartprice long grain rice 1kg £0.40

Smartprice mixed fruit 500g £0.64

KTC superfine gram flour 1kg £1.04

Subtotal = £5.63

Tesco

Beef dripping 500g £0.72

Everyday onions £0.69

Stock cubes 10pack £0.10

Subtotal = £1.51

Total = £7.14 (This can be brought under budget by replacing the beef dripping with Smartprice lard (250g) which is £0.39 but there will be less to carry over to next week and there will be a loss of flavour.)

Breakfast: Breakfast pancakes with dried fruit x5 or x7. Option for x2 breakfasts: flatbreads with bacon spread or congee with crumbled bacon/caramelised onion.

Lunches: pea soup x3; pea dip with flatbread/crackers x2; flatbread with bacon spread x1; rice dressed with bacon spread and sprouted peas.

Dinners:

Sardines with tomato sauce served with panisses/chickpea fries and steamed sprouted peas. x2

Panisses with bacon and tomato sauce, served with steamed sprouted peas or rice and sprouted peas. Or, flatbread pizza with tomato and bacon, served with same accompaniments.

Rice and peas dressed with bacon 2 ways. x2

Pea fritters or patties in chickpea batter (like pakora), served with crumbled bacon, onion gravy/or bacon and onion with sprouted pea salad and rice (might be dressed with the bacon and onion). x2

I'll post the recipes separately (with approx. costings): I've included links to recipes on which I based mine. It would be possible to tweak this menu: eg, Tesco value sausages or value garlic sausage would be cheaper than the sardines but we like fish and it makes a change from the bacon.

Soworried

Fantastic post PhGage.

PennyGrabber

Thanks PhGage! It's always useful to see other options. I tried a menu the other day, but it ended up being over £10! Rest assured, I shall keep trying until I can manage it!

Soworried

PennyGrabber wrote: »

Thanks PhGage! It's always useful to see other options. I tried a menu the other day, but it ended up being over £10! Rest assured, I shall keep trying until I can manage it!

I would love you to post it PG, it will still help myself and many more people. :j

PhGage

This is related to bacon jam but the ingredients are so different that it's not that similar. Bacon jam usually has streaky bacon, maple syrup, brown sugar and cider/wine vinegar as well as spices: I couldn't afford any of this on the £7 budget challenge so came up with this. (The sugar from the peaches and syrup helps to preserve the spread in the absence of the usual sugar and vinegar.)

Ingredients

2 small onions
Cooking fat/oil (beef dripping in my budget shopping list)
250g cooking bacon (finely diced)
411g Smartprice sliced peaches in light syrup

Method

Peel and finely chop the onions. Fry in the fat/oil/dripping until translucent.

Remove the onions from the pan, leaving fat behind. Fry the finely diced cooking bacon until brown, crisp and smelling savoury. (I tend to fry the onion first then the bacon because sometimes there isn't that much fat on the cooking bacon: if there's enough fat on your bacon, then cook the bacon first, remove from the pan, fry the onion in the bacon fat and then continue as below.) If there isn't enough fat in the pan, I tend to add enough water to half cover the bacon to encourage the fat to melt and continue cooking and occasionally stirring until the water is driven off and the bacon starts to colour crisp.

There will be a brown/golden crust on the bottom of the pan, push the bacon to one side and pour in the syrup. Use the peach syrup to scrape up the savoury crust and dissolve it.

Add the onions back to the pan. Cook for 40-60 minutes or until you can draw a wooden spoon through the mix and the line fills back in slowly. As the mix starts to thicken and looks near the end of the cooking time, roughly chop and add the peach slices.

Grind/process/finely chop the mix into a spread and store it in a jar in the fridge. The fat and sugar preserves it for more than a week.

How to use it

For the £7 budget, the spread adds a surprising amount of savoury flavour from quite a small amount.

The spread is good on panisses, flatbreads and crackers.

In the absence of herbs and spices to add to the dried peas for the soup and fritters, it is good to add a 5-10ml of the spread to a portion of pea soup or congee to flavour it.

The spread is a good way to dress hot rice and peas (it melts the spread) and can be used to dress a rice salad or the peas that have been prepared for fritters.

The bacon spread can be used to flavour a tomato sauce or gravy if it's added just before the end.

The wolf from the door version of ris e bisi stirs in bacon spread just before the end and then adds a little bit of crumbled bacon. (There's no garlic/mustard or cheese in this simplified version: rice and peas dressed with bacon 2 ways.)

In general this works well as a spread on crackers. If you have baked beans, then stir some of this in before serving or spread it on toast. If you stir the spread into baked beans and top with mashed potato and bake until browning, this makes a tasty meal. If you're not keeping the wolf from the door and have eggs, then it makes a good egg and bacon sandwich filling, or is a way of making bacon go further if you serve it with fried/poached egg instead of a slice of bacon.

If you've more money, or have sugar/vinegar/maple syrup and some spices, then search for a recipe for bacon jam that you like and try that

Costings

2/12 everyday onions approx 12p
half pack cooking bacon 37p
smart price peaches 29p
Less then 50g of dripping (if used) approx. 7p

Approx. total for bacon spread = 85p

The recipe, as above, makes between 450-520g spread (depending on: how finely you chop/grind/process the final mix; size of onions; water content of bacon etc.). We add from 1-2 tsps of spread to soup to flavour it.