Feed a family of four for £20 a week challenge

jackel

Hi all - I too bought a "job lot" of Sainsbobs mincemeat. Have been using it all year to make my "chuck it all in" loaf cakes instead of sultanas. Have 4 jars left and then its back to sultanas at 84p.Shall have to buy more this year! jac.xx

Butterfly_Brain

I am making stuffed marrow tonight with a chicken chilli style filling using the left overs from Sunday dinner and a freebie marrow from our neighbour I have costed it out to a zero cost meal because I already have everything in the cupboards to make it :j
Basically it is a marrow with seeds removed filled with diced chicken with cannellini beans, mushrooms, onion and peppers in a HM tomato, garlic and chilli sauce, wrapped in foil and baked in the oven

I have done it with rinsed baked beans when I have run out of cannelllini and it is a lot, lot cheaper

Butterfly_Brain

I made apple fritters last night with ice cream and they were woofed down. Haven't made them in ages and had forgotten how lovely they are.

I make a basic fritter batter using ice cold fizzy water with a dash of vanilla extract in the batter.
Dip peeled and cored apple slices into the batter and deep fry until golden, sprinkle with icing sugar while still hot.
I had some left over so I have open frozen them and I will just heat them through in the oven for 15 mins when I want a quickie dessert.

Nargleblast

Apple fritters sound lovely, just the thing if you have a glut of apples! Definitely one for the recipe files.

Butterfly_Brain

New super six

Cucumber
500g beetroot
spring onions
250g radishes
iceberg lettuce
275g baby plum tomatoes

All at 29p each.................now that is a bargain

[Deleted User]

I still have several tins of the mushy peas left in the cupboard, just reminded me, must see what I can do with them when I come back from my holibobs.

I have a feeling someone posted a curried peas dish on here last year but I can't find it.Any ideas on recipes to use them up will be appreciated.

When I first had my children back in the 1960s I would walk around a mile to the butchers on a Saturday afternoon with the two children in the pram and buy a leg of lamb for 17/6d (85p) and that would be streetched for roast on Sunday.cold with mash and pickle Monday, small curry Tuesday, rissoles Wednesday, by Thursday virtually nothing left but the bone which I put into a big pot with lentils and veg to make a soup with.My housekeeping for myself,OH and two children was £8.10.00 (£8.50p) per week and that covered food,gas meter,all our toiletries ect and the only thing my OH had to pay out on top for was our rent of four guineas a week (£4.20p)

His take home pay on a flat week was around £21.00 so things were quite lean for awhile.We also ran a very small Ford Anglia car so he could get to work and we had days out on Sundays with the kids. But I felt quite well off really as I always had food in the cupboard and fruit on the sideboard.

Never had a credit card as they were unheard of back then,so we had no debt of any sort.

First time we had a debt was in 1971 when we bought our first house for £6.750. and he had moved into management and was on a monthly salary of £112.00 take home and our mortgage was £60.00 per month.

But the firm did pay for our phone and he had a company car which helped no end, but things were still a bit tight at times..Weird to think back on how little money we managed on, yet seemed to eat fairly well.

Things were saved for, and money was very carefully alloted to various things every month. I went back to work in 1973 and my friend June, who lived down the road looked after the two girls who were by then one had started school.

I am still friends with her all these years later and she is one of my oldest friends and we often talk about how we seemed to manage better back then than folk do now.

Maybe our expectations were different people rented a tv instead of buying, and children only had presents on birthdays or Christmas. Clothes had to last and school uniform was carefully looked after and the children didn't have the multitude of things that they have today.

The only phone in the house was the works one(I didn't know many folk who had a phone that I could call anyway :):))We walked everywhere during the week,June and I would go to the local market in Dartford to buy all our fruit and veg for the week.Bulk buying was unheard of, different life back then

joedenise

JackieO - mushy pea curry is a Slimming World recipe. If you google it there are a few variations but basically you just fry off some onions, garlic & peppers until softened, add some curry powder, 1 or 2 tins of mushy peas, tin of baked beans and tin of chopped tomatoes. At this point it doesn't look very pretty (understatement of the year!).

Heat it all through. You can add some cooked chicken breast at this point if you like, although I prefer to blitz the curry and then add the chicken breast to heat through.

Serve with rice or naan if preferred (or both! - but not if you're doing slimming world).

Denise

tessie_bear

Butterfly_Brain wrote: »

New super six

Cucumber
500g beetroot
spring onions
250g radishes
iceberg lettuce
275g baby plum tomatoes

All at 29p each.................now that is a bargain

couldnt agree more....i got a couple of packs of everything this morning and 4 beetroot as it had a good date...will egt some more i think before the offer changes....jackie o love your post like social history...my dh and i were chatting this morning about people having more backbone in the past...we were pontificating on how people would cope if there was another war..they wouldnt was the conclusion we came to

MoneyMission2015

JackieO wrote: »

I still have several tins of the mushy peas left in the cupboard, just reminded me, must see what I can do with them when I come back from my holibobs.

I have a feeling someone posted a curried peas dish on here last year but I can't find it.Any ideas on recipes to use them up will be appreciated.

When I first had my children back in the 1960s I would walk around a mile to the butchers on a Saturday afternoon with the two children in the pram and buy a leg of lamb for 17/6d (85p) and that would be streetched for roast on Sunday.cold with mash and pickle Monday, small curry Tuesday, rissoles Wednesday, by Thursday virtually nothing left but the bone which I put into a big pot with lentils and veg to make a soup with.My housekeeping for myself,OH and two children was £8.10.00 (£8.50p) per week and that covered food,gas meter,all our toiletries ect and the only thing my OH had to pay out on top for was our rent of four guineas a week (£4.20p)

His take home pay on a flat week was around £21.00 so things were quite lean for awhile.We also ran a very small Ford Anglia car so he could get to work and we had days out on Sundays with the kids. But I felt quite well off really as I always had food in the cupboard and fruit on the sideboard.

Never had a credit card as they were unheard of back then,so we had no debt of any sort.

First time we had a debt was in 1971 when we bought our first house for £6.750. and he had moved into management and was on a monthly salary of £112.00 take home and our mortgage was £60.00 per month.

But the firm did pay for our phone and he had a company car which helped no end, but things were still a bit tight at times..Weird to think back on how little money we managed on, yet seemed to eat fairly well.

Things were saved for, and money was very carefully alloted to various things every month. I went back to work in 1973 and my friend June, who lived down the road looked after the two girls who were by then one had started school.

I am still friends with her all these years later and she is one of my oldest friends and we often talk about how we seemed to manage better back then than folk do now.

Maybe our expectations were different people rented a tv instead of buying, and children only had presents on birthdays or Christmas. Clothes had to last and school uniform was carefully looked after and the children didn't have the multitude of things that they have today.

The only phone in the house was the works one(I didn't know many folk who had a phone that I could call anyway :):))We walked everywhere during the week,June and I would go to the local market in Dartford to buy all our fruit and veg for the week.Bulk buying was unheard of, different life back then

I love this post . Its made me feel very nostalgic. I was born in the 80's & when I look back I also think things have changed so much! As you said, presents were on Birthdays and Christmas, clothes lasted until you grew out of them then were usually handed down between me, my sisters and family friends. We knew almost every family on our street so if my mum had to pop somewhere she would usually just knock on the neighbours door to ask them to watch us while she was out, one TV in the living room, kids TV was only for an hour after school and Saturday mornings. We always ate well and during the summer holidays I remember we would all get the bus to the local park that had an outdoor pool and take a picnic with us.


Everything these days is about convenience. Everybody just seems to be in a constant rush. All I ever hear is 'oh I can't be bothered' 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 thought I watched a lot of TV because I always try to watch Eastenders & more recently Great British Bake Off, but these people seem to spend their whole time at home sat in front of the TV. I genuinely don't have time to cook sometimes which is one of the reasons I have started coming on here more, so I can get ideas for batch cooking etc, but these people I work with wouldn't even contemplate spending a Sunday cooking meals for the rest of the week because apparently the weekend is the only time they get to sit down & do nothing and it would interfere with their downtime.

HippyMum

Lovely post JackieO and so true!

Re the beetroot at Aldi, is it cooked or the raw type?
I love beetroot but like to cook my own