Well started home cooking and loosing faith!

oldtractor

try making some sultans scones. dead cheap to make and always better than shop bought.

Phoolgrrrl

My OH was reluctant to give up meat when we (I) started old style, about 6 years ago. Now we have meat about 2 times a week and fish once. Sometimes we do just veg mon - fri.

Fajitas - I put in oregano, paprika, chilli flakes, ground cumin and ground corriander. If you can have a plant of fresh corriander this really adds to the flavour. We do bean chilli as a veggie meal and have it with rice/wraps/wedges, kidney beans/butter beans are cheap, around 30p a tin if you get from home bargains.

Stock - for risotto I wouldn't use a stock cube as the stock really flavours the dish. Stock pot or homemade, which you can do if you are doing rubber chicken.

Meat - bacon pasta counts as a meat meal for us. 'all amaticiana' is spicy bacon pasta but sounds fancier http://italianfood.about.com/od/meatsauces/r/blr1007.htm

We use turkey mince in place of beef mince - £2 for 500g of turkey thigh mince at sainsburys. This does us 3 meals for 2. Think about your portion sizes, this is about 150g for 2 whereas my mum would use the 500g pack for 3 people at one meal.

Sausages are also good to put in pasta or cassarole, we buy on offer and portion up and freeze. 2 chopped up sausages does us for 2 portions.


Def visit an Asian shop, we go once or twice a year to get big bags of spices.

My aunt just got us a planter for herbs so we are going to try and grow our own, we just moved to a house with a garden.

If you can, shop around. We go between Tesco, Sainsburys, iceland, lidl and home bargains for different things. Home bargains is great for tins of stuff, cereal bars, wraps.

We also have standby 'oven dinners', which would just have been a dinner before! For example frozen breaded fish and oven chips or frozen pizza. that way if you really don't feel like cooking you can just throw something in the oven, still cheaper than a takeaway.

It should get easier/cheaper as you go on. Whereas I used to buy diced chicken breast only, now I pick a whole chicken clean, use every scrap of meat and boil up the bones! Good luck!

krlyr

I found homemade versions of ready-made sauces to be bland at first. Remember that the ready-made version will be full of oils, sugars and flavourings so your palate will be used to that. It can help to add more sugar, salt, etc. to your HM version than the recipes call for at first then wean yourself off it. It can help to look at the ingredients on the jars/packets to see what you're missing.
For example, the El Paso Burrito kit contains tomato paste. Tomato puree (looking at Tesco's own tube) is about 20% sugars, plus the slightly tart taste of tomatoes will add to the flavour. The salsa has tomato paste AND added sugar, and both have salt added too.

I find the allrecipes .com/.co.uk website quite good because not only are the recipes tested and rated, but people often add comments to mention minor changes they made to improve the flavour as well. People will have a preference for different flavours but it gives you ideas if you think it's lacking something.

DawnW

Phoolgrrrl wrote: »

My aunt just got us a planter for herbs so we are going to try and grow our own, we just moved to a house with a garden.

It is easy, you can even 'rescue' and repot supermarket herbs

And you don't need a garden, or even a planter - pots on the kitchen windowsill are fine too, so even if you are in a high rise flat you can do this

maman

If your OH is a big meat eater try this

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork-recipes/bone-in-shoulder-roast

It's delicious and pork shoulder is incredibly cheap and there'll be loads of leftovers.

If it's anything like last year, there should be beef joints cheap in supermarkets. Last year it was about £6 a kilo (just checked now £5 in Asda) which was cheaper than many of the cuts like casserole steak. I bought some and cut it into cubes, small joints etc. for the freezer.

Aldi/Lidl sell good gammon joints for £3.99 a kilo. Frankfurters (ok not the healthiest option) are £1 for a pack here and great for a quick meal with pasta and tomato sauce.

Liver's cheap and very tasty if you like that sort of thing.

I find if you cut up sausages into meatball size pieces you can get away with 3 sausages between 2 adults. I do that for sausage casserole with plenty of veg.

When you do your chicken, I'd suggest you stuff the neck (cheapo stuffing mix is fine) as slices and stuffing on the plate or in a sandwich gives plenty of savoury taste without using up too much chicken.

Phoolgrrrl

DawnW wrote: »

It is easy, you can even 'rescue' and repot supermarket herbs

And you don't need a garden, or even a planter - pots on the kitchen windowsill are fine too, so even if you are in a high rise flat you can do this

We tried window boxes in our last place but they kept getting bugs, I think because we were next to the railway. We have a reduced parsley plant in the kitchen, it has lasted about a year!

Planning on tubs of courgettes etc. too.

valk_scot

SandA wrote: »

Thank you for all the responses so quickly.

I try and negotiate less meat with OH but he refuses, REFUSES to eat meals without meat in them every night. Hes grown up thinking its normal to have meat with every single meal.

So what does he do if you put a vegetarian meal in front of him? Throw a tantrum on the carpet? Throw it at you? Go out and kill next door's pet rabbit? I'm always of the opinion that s/he who plans, shops for and cooks the meals also writes the menu especially when there's a tight budget to be kept to. Of course it's best to keep individual preferences in mind but a preference is a preference, not an absolute. If there's four of you in a family there's four sets of preferences after all, not just one!

Anyway, there are more forms of meat than chicken breast and steak and burgers. Mince, stewing meat and offal are cheaper than lumps of prime muscle meat, stews etc can be padded out. It's unhealthy to be eating red meat every day anyway, especially in large portions by which I mean more than 4oz per meal. So if you have to provide meat at every meal then cut the portion size down to use it as a flavouring rather than the main event, or make a vegetarian meal and grill him a sausage or burger on the side. No point in you all eating in an unhealthy way after all just to suit his tastes.

marmiterulesok

valk_scot wrote: »

So what does he do if you put a vegetarian meal in front of him? Throw a tantrum on the carpet? Throw it at you? Go out and kill next door's pet rabbit? I'm always of the opinion that s/he who plans, shops for and cooks the meals also writes the menu especially when there's a tight budget to be kept to. Of course it's best to keep individual preferences in mind but a preference is a preference, not an absolute. If there's four of you in a family there's four sets of preferences after all, not just one!

Anyway, there are more forms of meat than chicken breast and steak and burgers. Mince, stewing meat and offal are cheaper than lumps of prime muscle meat, stews etc can be padded out. It's unhealthy to be eating red meat every day anyway, especially in large portions by which I mean more than 4oz per meal. So if you have to provide meat at every meal then cut the portion size down to use it as a flavouring rather than the main event, or make a vegetarian meal and grill him a sausage or burger on the side. No point in you all eating in an unhealthy way after all just to suit his tastes.

I agree with all of the above valk_scot !

There is absolutely no need to eat meat every day.It's only in the last few decades that this has become the 'norm' and it's quite ridiculous.It's not healthy either to eat meat every day.

Tell your husband that he has to compromise.

I also suggest getting your herbs and spices at an Indian shop.You can buy large quantities for next to nothing.You can also get dried lentils and pulses at very competive prices.

ash28

If I make a bolognese sauce, I make enough to be able to make a lasagne another time. Lasagne is a favourite here - easy to make and tasty. A bit of salad and garlic bread is nice too - but not necessary.

I always have mince in the freezer - it's very versatile - mince and dumplings, bolognese, lasagne, mince and onion pie, shepherds pie, chilli con carne, enchiladas, meatloaf, burgers, meatballs, tacos, etc.

rosie383

I've started to buy chicken mince and use that a lot. Beef is more expensive, I don't like lamb, and the chicken is healthier.
I don't menu plan as much as I should, but have done it the past few weeks and shopped accordingly.
Have a look round charity shops and pick up a couple of recipe books. For getting the proper flavour, I find that if I follow a Jamie Oliver or Hairy Bikers' recipe, I get great flavour and different to what I am used to.
I'm another who has cut waaaay down on meat but my dh is happy with this as he has seen his uncles die of heart attacks and his Mum's heart is in a bad way too. If I buy 1kg of mince, I will divide it into 3 or 4 portions and will get a meal for 4 from each portion. So, 1kg will give maybe 12 meals,bulked out with pulses or other proteins.

Also, don't expect to turn into a great cook overnight. You will have failures, so have packets of pasta, jacket spuds around and never let on if it doesn't work! Gravy will cover up a multitude of sins, and custard has turned many a failed cake into a great tasting pudding!!