Feed a family of four for £20 a week challenge

LannieDuck

MoneyMission2015 wrote: »

or the classic 'I haven't got time'. What makes me laugh is people in work who say they haven't got time to get home & cook every night, then proceed to tell me about all the TV they watched the previous evening!

I'm guilty of this, but I also believe it can be genuine. I got very depressed last year on my 2nd mat leave looking after 2 small kiddies and organising (almost all of) a house move. Going back to work this year saved my sanity... but it also made us incredibly busy - I leave the house at 7am each morning, do a full day's work then pick up the kiddies at 5.30. Sort out dinner for them at 6, then bath/bedtime routine and they're in bed by 7.30 (or at least by 8). Quick 15 min tidy-up, then I need to make my sandwiches/lunch for the next day and either I or my OH cooks dinner. I normally try and fit one job in during the evening otherwise nothing ever gets done around the house (e.g. getting budget up to date for the month or finding a local plumber or giving the baby's highchair a good scrub - last night's job was bleaching the bath because baby decided to do a poo in it! :eek:).... and then we collapse in front of the TV for an hour (or read a book or catch up on the internet etc... but it's normally TV :P).

That's my 'mental health hour' where my body and brain can both collapse and wind down before bed. I'm slowly coming out of the stressed / unhappy person I was last year, and ensuring that we have a small amount of quiet time each day while the kids are asleep is a v important part of it.

So, while I do say 'I don't have time' quite a lot at the moment... I also fully admit I watch an hour's TV a night. But I don't think the two are always mutually exclusive

tootallulah

Dear Lannie Duck - you don't have time! Honestly you need that quiet rest time however you choose to use it. Kudos to you on all you do it sounds a huge amount to me.

Butterfly_Brain

We had chicken with home grown potatoes and home grown salad (lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and half of a sliced red pepper today and I still have half of it left (After feeding four adults )
It was a 50% off one from Aldi was £3.59 so it only cost £1.80 :j:j
We had the rest of DD's birthday cake that her BF made her bless him, as dessert

Total cost 17p for half a pepper (pack of three in aldi 95p) 60p's worth of chicken all the rest was home grown so a total of 77p for four :money:
Lunch tomorrow is the rest of the salad with HM potato salad using a couple of spring onions 5p, left over potatoes and carrot 5p with a good 10p dollop of basic mayo and some boiled eggs 7p each =28p

Total cost for lunch 48p

I am going to strip the meat off of the carcass, then we will have chicken hoisin tomorrow night using the rest of the pepper, a few sliced spring onions (29p super six)10p, julienned carrots (10p) a few mushrooms (20p) half of the left over chicken 45p, ¼ of a pack of egg noodles 10p and a hoisin sauce from Aldi 39p
Total cost £ £1.34

For lunch on Tuesday the carcass will be transformed into a chicken noodle soup using the bits of chicken that will be left over from the pie , sweetcorn 10p, a julienned carrot 5p, a couple of spring onions 5p and about a quarter of a pack of egg noodles 10p Total cost 30p

Then I will make a chicken and sweetcorn pie for dinner that night.
HM pastry ( lard 10p, butter 21p, flour 10p = 41p) HM white sauce 20p and a good couple of handfuls of sweetcorn (25p) or use ½ tin of canned that has been drained, approx 45p for chicken.
Total cost £1.46

Total £4.35 for 5 meals for four people or £1.09 each

Not bad from a chicken that only cost £1.80

Feral_Moon

How many people are you feeding with the hoisin chicken and noodles? It sounds like a single portion to me. I would happily eat a whole pack of egg noodles to myself but can adequately stretch it to feed 3-4 people if I add plenty of veggies and meat/fish. So a 1/4 pack would be a snack to me given the limited amount of meat and veg you've added to it.

I roasted a 2kg Aldi chicken yesterday which fed six of us for main meal but have plenty left to try a couple of your recipes above. Thank you :T

Also, how can you eat left over salad? It would be a soggy mess within hours, let alone the next day! I'm sorry but I find what you've written unbelievable for a normal family. E.g. Half a pepper to serve a family a salad for two days? I bought some of those peppers from Aldi last week and I needed to slice TWO of them into a salad which fed FOUR of us in a single meal.

It sounds as though you're living on war rations. Why? Food is cheap these days, no need to limit it to those extents. If people followed your guidelines they'd be paying more for their internet/phone/TV bill every month than they do on food.

Ludicrous! No wonder the NHS bill is soaring with so many malnutritioned people around!

HappyMJ

Feral_Moon wrote: »

How many people are you feeding with the hoisin chicken and noodles? It sounds like a single portion to me. I would happily eat a whole pack of egg noodles to myself but can adequately stretch it to feed 3-4 people if I add plenty of veggies and meat/fish. So a 1/4 pack would be a snack to me given the limited amount of meat and veg you've added to it.

I roasted a 2kg Aldi chicken yesterday which fed six of us for main meal but have plenty left to try a couple of your recipes above. Thank you :T

Also, how can you eat left over salad? It would be a soggy mess within hours, let alone the next day! I'm sorry but I find what you've written unbelievable for a normal family. E.g. Half a pepper to serve a family a salad for two days? I bought some of those peppers from Aldi last week and I needed to slice TWO of them into a salad which fed FOUR of us in a single meal.

It sounds as though you're living on war rations. Why? Food is cheap these days, no need to limit it to those extents. If people followed your guidelines they'd be paying more for their internet/phone/TV bill every month than they do on food.

Ludicrous! No wonder the NHS bill is soaring with so many malnutritioned people around!

As it says....4 Adults.

[Deleted User]

B/B I think you make excellant use of all of your ingrediants.I too streetch and extend meals,Yesterday evening we had a large chicken for dinner,there are three children and five adults ( the children are 11,14,&15) and are boys so they eat like young racehorses :)We had chicken,roast potatos,broccoli,carrots,yorkshire puddings and gravy,There is almost half the chicken left so that will be curried for dinner tonight,Chicken cost £4.85,with the curry we will have some mexican wedges and rice and some naan bread .any left over chicken scraps will go to the two dogs. so for our £4.85 clucker we will get 16 meals without a problem.Lunchtimes ,as we are on holiday we are having things like a big bowl of salad bits and pieces, some sliced ham,rolls,crackers and cheese followed by fruit.None of us have gone hungry and the salad bowl gets filled with sliced and diced tomato,cucumber,shredded lettuce diced beetroot,some crutons DD made from stale bread in the oven, we have a stack of different relishes
to add to this and a couple of diced up hard boiled eggs in mayo in a side dish, we can feed our large family very well on very little.No one goes hungry,The boys usually finish off with some fruit or a yoghurt.None of us are malnourished in any way.I think you chicken meals sound brilliant.Its often not so much about quantities but about flavours when cooking and a good flavour goes an awful long way.I grew up with war-time rations and few people weremalnourished then either,lots of stodgy stuff though and food is far nicer now with the addition of herbs and spices

Caterina

Wartime rations made people healthier rather than malnourished. See the many articles about this topic, just one here below:

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2001/jan/14/life1.lifemagazine5

Feral_Moon

HappyMJ wrote: »

As it says....4 Adults.

So, you're telling me half a pepper, a couple of spring onions, a few mushrooms and 1/4 pack of noodles can adequately feed FOUR adults? Sorry, but that's completely unrealistic.

Butterfly_Brain

Feral Moon, we are nowhere near malnourished and I take offence at your post.

Salad keeps well in the fridge if you put some kitchen roll on top and cover with cling film, I have being doing this for 30 years.

A portion of meat is the size of a pack of playing cards, you do not need to use a whole chicken in one sitting!

This was a large chicken, I usually only buy a small Aldi one but I can still eke three meals out of that.

My family are not too keen on peppers so I slice them thinly, hence they go a long way, I only use them to give a bit of a crunch. They always have plenty of home grown vegetables on their plates which keeps costs low.

So far I have had 15lbs of runner beans from my plants and they are in the freezer, apart from things like lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, spring onions and potatoes I also grow cauliflower, brocolli, kale, brussel sprouts, rhubarb (4 bushes) apples (5 trees) raspberries, strawberries and loganberries, our neighbours send us plums, marrows and figs, we send them apples, runner beans, lettuce, cucumbers etc.
We live in a rural location so blackberries are abundant, not quite ready yet, but give it a couple of weeks and we will go foraging. I also like to get sloes, filberts, beech nuts,rose hips wild pears, damsons, walnuts, and chestnuts we also have pear trees and lots of cherry trees that the council planted many years ago. Too many people ignore natures kitchen and more fool them.

We eat well and do not go hungry, I make my own bread either in the bread machine (I can't do it by hand any more because of arthritis) or I make a no knead one.

Malnourishment means not enough vitamins and minerals, not the amount of food that you eat.

The rise in obesity is due to larger portions than is necessary and the poison in processed foods.

There is nothing wrong with a wartime diet, it kept our men fighting and people sustained during the hard working war years, there were manual labourers who ate half of what we do today.

As for the soup, it is for lunch not dinner with hm bread and it is plenty to keep us going.

Butterfly_Brain

I have a few apples that are looking a bit jaded so DH will have his favourite apple fritters tonight for dessert, so cheap and easy to make