£7.00 per week - menu ideas

Butterfly_Brain

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

really tough! I do the meal plans assuming an empty cupboard other than salt and pepper, and don't include tea/coffee. Was checking a price today and a litre of oil had gone from £1.25 to £1.50, which makes a lot of difference at this level. You can still get it cheaper by buying more, but of course you have to have the funds to be able to do it

I've noticed prices have shifted quite a lot recently

The prices have really risen this year
When we did the original meal plans:

• Instant custard was 6p now 15p +9p more than double the price
• Batter mix from 7p to 19p +12p more than double the price
• Basic tea bags 27p now 37p + 10p
• Stock cubes 10p now 20p = 10p double the price
• Aldi super six hovered between 39p and 59p max

And an awful lot of basics lines have disappeared :mad:
That is a big hit to families that are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and there seem to be more and more of them, food bank use has tripled in the last year thanks to the disgusting class war being waged by this vile government :mad:

mumof2nanof2

Make your own mock duck. 80p for a bag of bread flour. Half a bag makes enough seitan for 4 meals for me and hubby. Packed full of protein.

meg72

mumof2nanof2 wrote: »

Make your own mock duck. 80p for a bag of bread flour. Half a bag makes enough seitan for 4 meals for me and hubby. Packed full of protein.

Sorry don't understand this at all, what is Seitan please, cannot imagine making a meal from just a bag of bread flour.

ash28

meg72 wrote: »

Sorry don't understand this at all, what is Seitan please, cannot imagine making a meal from just a bag of bread flour.

It's wheat gluten.....used as a meat substitute in the same way as tofu, but much higher in protein. Commonly used in Asia as a meat substitute.

I imagine you can make it from bread flour (high gluten).

RAS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_gluten_(food) apparently

craigywv

Lesley_Gaye wrote: »

really tough! I do the meal plans assuming an empty cupboard other than salt and pepper, and don't include tea/coffee. Was checking a price today and a litre of oil had gone from £1.25 to £1.50, which makes a lot of difference at this level. You can still get it cheaper by buying more, but of course you have to have the funds to be able to do it

I've noticed prices have shifted quite a lot recently

my pound shop sells litre of oil for a quid hth:)

cornishchick

Searched and found this..

http://vegetarian.about.com/od/cookingtipstools/ss/HowToSeitan.htm

Butterfly_Brain

mumof2nanof2 wrote: »

Make your own mock duck. 80p for a bag of bread flour. Half a bag makes enough seitan for 4 meals for me and hubby. Packed full of protein.

Not very good if you are wheat intolerant

mumof2nanof2

I will put my recipe for Seitan down and if anyone wants to try it they are more than welcome.

1/2 bag of strong white bread flour
A strong stock of your choice.
I use soy sauce, tomato puree, herbs, an onion, a veg stock cube and any thing else I fancy. This stock seems to give it that mock duck flavour but try different ones. My son makes a chicken flavour stock by adding a dried packet soup to his stock. The choices of flavour are endless but it does need to be strong in flavour.

Method
Mix half a bag of flour with enough water to get a dough. Kneed the dough until it has that elastic feel. Put the dough in a bowl and cover with cold water for between 3 - 8 hours.
Take the dough from the bowl and wash the dough under a running cold tap until the water runs clear. I do it in a metal sieve over a bowl. This takes about 5 minutes.
When ready get as much water and air out of the gluten as possible. Slice the gluten and drop the pieces into boiling stock for 30 minutes.
Once done you can fry, casserole or curry the seitan. It freezes really well if you add some stock to the container. I usually freeze the rest of the stock to use again next time. I prefer the seitan fried as mock duck in crispy pancakes, but it really is down to a matter of taste.

Soworried

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

Not very good if you are wheat intolerant

I just think it sounds awful