Great British Budget Menu-BBC

ska_lover

I thought that exact same thing - about the salmon, Me and OH sat wondering what he was trying to prove with that, other than make the families feel worse.

Definitely with you on the meal planning, its the best thing ive learned in the few years I have been on these boards, saved me so much money, and its actually nice to be organised

Snowy_Owl

I too was gobsmacked about the poor basic knowledge of eating the basic food groups - making sure they had protein, carbs, a little fat (preferably of the good kind) and some vits and minerals!!!!! It was the first time I've actually seen a chef march someone off to a dietician!!

ska_lover

I found the programme shocking, the lack of education that some people have.

The single mother and her daughter both looked unwell, but unsurprising if you are eating microwave burgers and other micro junk on a regular basis. I found them most shocking that the mother had not took it upon herself to learn how to better look after her daughter

Peoples priorities are obviously very different, but there was one family who were living in a large detached house that definitely did not look like local authority housing - this was the family that were treated to a way over budget salmon meal. Maybe I am jumping to conclusions but I think that as it did not look like a local authority property, they are probably either privately renting that huge house, or they own it. They cannot afford to live in that huge house if they are struggling to feed their kids.

debbym

fairtrade wrote: »

alfiesmum wrote: »

I have a Marguerite Patten cook book reprint somewehre, that would be interesting to work out!
QUOTE]

The Patten book is called Feeding the Nation.

The BBC did have a show in the 80s that gave lots of money saving advice and a couple of books were produced that may be of some use, authoured by Shirley Goode,
The Goode Kitchen - deals with family meal planning et.al.
Goode for One - is for the singleton on a budget.
Although the costings are now out of date the ethos behind these books still holds true today.

http://shirleygoode.blogspot.co.uk/ Shirley Goodes blog - she usually has a recipe or two at the end of each post

Snowy_Owl

Can this thread be merged to the thread on the OS board? - About the same programme. Thanks

Butterfly_Brain

RAS wrote: »

I struggled to find the store cupboard file working from the recipe link http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/tv/budgetmenu/gbbmstorecupboard.pdf

Although there is one menu that indicates that these are recipes for 4 people, there is nothing stating that anywhere else (I was hunting).

I would like to see calories per portion listed; I suspect that some of these recipes are relatively light on calories.

On the other hand the idea of using a whole small chicken for one meal only seems less than money saving to me (see rubber chicken)

I like the links to techniques. Just mindful of the comments from one MSEer who was never talk to cook, that when you have no knowledge you need showing a lot of very basic things.

I agree with everything that you have said.
The big problem that I found with the recipes are that they are not what a normal family would eat. I know my lot wouldn't eat a lot of that stuff such as Bean and rice burritto, sweet potato and chickpea curry, pearl barley and butternut squash with sage, or anything with anchovies.
I feed a family of 4 (Including a vegetarian and I have to watch what I eat being a diabetic) on between £35 and £40 a week and have been forced to spend a lot less on tight months, but we eat really well with everything made from scratch.
That has brought up another point, what about people with special dietary needs such as diabetics, those with allergies, coeliacs disease etc?
Then the price of energy has to be factored in, it is a well known fact that people who have to rely on prepay meters are ripped off by the energy companies, so another way of being penalised for being poor :mad::mad::mad:

stephen77

Did not see it, but not surprised. Most people do not have much of idea of what products contain what nutrients and what they need to get there nutritional requirements.

However lots of literature out there is not particularly good either.

redfox

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thriftwizard

ska_lover wrote: »

Peoples priorities are obviously very different, but there was one family who were living in a large detached house that definitely did not look like local authority housing - this was the family that were treated to a way over budget salmon meal. Maybe I am jumping to conclusions but I think that as it did not look like a local authority property, they are probably either privately renting that huge house, or they own it. They cannot afford to live in that huge house if they are struggling to feed their kids.

Ska lover, if I remember correctly, the wife from that family said at the start that they'd had to move to the bigger house because they live with, and care for, her disabled mother. Then it wasn't mentioned again; I assumed that her mother wanted nothing to do with the programme (which is not uncommon) but when the taxpayer was blowing her top about them living in a big house, I thought it was bit unfair not to remind her of that. And it may well be her mother's house, and we know nothing about how they came to be there really.

There was an incident in our street once where one of our neighbours, a keen ornamental gardener, was standing in the road outside our little forest garden (apples, quinces, cherries, plums, & hazelnuts underplanted with berries, currants & herbs) bemoaning how "they" give these big families huge houses, who don't know how to look after them properly & let the whole area down; presumably because there isn't a petunia in sight. I wish I'd known about it at the time because I would have loved to tell him that we own this house, and have worked hard to pay our way, whether in paid employment (OH) or self-employed (me) and that every plant in that little patch is there because it feeds us or helps us in some other way. It just goes to show, though, how some people think in stereotypes - big family automatically equals lazy dole-scrounging good-for-nothings. The same way that landowners call the police when my friend, with her long-haired teenage son, park up in their big converted school bus to tend to her severely disabled ex-serviceman husband's needs... that bus is their only way of getting out together as a family; it cost many thousands to convert (which they paid for themselves) but they still find themselves staring down the barrel of a shotgun just about every time they stop to change his colostomy bag!

Trow

I must have an abnormal family then.

The bean and rice burrito and the sweet potato and chickpea curry were two of the recipes I am most likely to make for my family. Not the pearl barley one though because I don't like barley. kids would eat it though!

But its easy to remove or substitute an ingredient - such ad barley or anchovies - and make a perfectly good meal.

The point about people with allergies - do you really expect a short programme to go into that level of detail? There have been entire series about cooking that have never mentioned those issues.