Learning to be frugal with food

115K

JackieO wrote: »

Never ever waste a scap of food if you can help it I don't and my food budget purse has £60.00 per month for me in it and I usually have some cash left over at the end of the month.

Wow, that is brilliant budgeting.:T

RAS

crispycreme wrote: »

CUPBOARDS:
Light brown sugar
Dark brown sugar
Bicarbonate
Mixed spice
Cornflour
Dried yeast
Vanilla essence
Gelatine sachets
Icing sugar
Baking powder
Golden syrup
Plain flour
Self Raising flour
Strong white bread flour
Castor sugar
Cocoa powder

Few potatoes
Onions

2x tins tomatoes
2 eggs
Tinned pineapple
Everyday value curry sauce jar
Marmalade
Selection of jams

Instant noodles
Pasta (penne)
A few Cannelloni tubes
Lasagne sheets
Pearl barley
Arborio rice
Green lentils
Plain rice
Sage & onion stuffing mix

Stock pots (fish, veg, beef & chicken)
Bag'n'season Chicken Biryani packet
Beef & tomato casserole packet mix
Hoisin stir fry sauce
Black bean sauce jar

Lemon juice
Mustard powder
Soy sauce (light & dark)
Tabasco
Lea & Perrins
White wine vinegar
Balsamic vinegar
Oyster sauce
Fish sauce


FRIDGE:
Spread
Ham
Pastrami
1kg Cheddar
5 Bockwurst sausages
Cherry tomatoes


FREEZER:
Spinach
Cabbage
Carrots
Green beans
Diced swede

Chips
Fries
Hash browns
Onion rings
Burger buns
Hotdog rolls
Puff pastry

Breaded scampi
1 'chip shop' style fish
1 Salmon fillet
1White fish fillet
Bacon

OK

1. Penne Cheese with a couple of cherry toms grilled for colour and a vegetable

2. Fish pie with the salmon fillet in white sauce, a little onion and either the puff pastry lid or mashed potato lid. Try to bulk out with some veg.

3. Chips with a "mixed grill" - scampi, fish in batter and onion rings. Plus some roasted cherry toms? and a veg.

4. BB's bockwurst recipe(s)

5. Pasta with bacon and tomato sauce and veggies or use the same with white sauce to make a lasagne.

6. Veggie curry, dhal and rice (you could make a little side with the green beans fried with cumin and a little onion.

Make veggie soup with the frozen swede, a little onion and a potato. Make another from pearl barley and a stockpot.

You have scope to make a pineapple up-side down cake for pud, chocolate and marmalade muffins and some biscuits.

I would vote for a bag of oats for flapjack and a for breakfast porridge.

Set aside the pastrami, ham and some cheese for sarnies in the buns and rolls.

sooty&sweep

Hi
I'd also say think about the amount of gas / electric you're using to cook with.
If you put the oven on try to fill it. We often have a roast on a sunday but I'll try to cook a casserole in there at the same time preprepared for an easy meal during the week.
We often have roast chicken but that does us two meals and soup from the carcass.
Also make friends with a slow cooker a cheap way to cook that uses cheaper ingredients and also means you have a meal ready when you get home.
Jen

RAS

sooty&sweep wrote: »

Hi
I'd also say think about the amount of gas / electric you're using to cook with.
If you put the oven on try to fill it. We often have a roast on a sunday but I'll try to cook a casserole in there at the same time preprepared for an easy meal during the week.
We often have roast chicken but that does us two meals and soup from the carcass.

Agreed.

When the oven is on fill it; roast if having one, casseroles that only need heating late rin the week, flans/quiches, roast vegetables (can be used for pasta sauces and soups if not eaten hot), puddings, cakes, muffins, biscuits etc. Nothing says you have to make soup/curry/rice/pasta dishes on the cooker ring either.

Austin_Allegro

fiftyeighter wrote: »

I can vouch for the lentils in mince, bulks it up no end I also put oats in too. And it's true you can't taste any difference and no one has ever noticed.
You,ll get lots of good help on here. Lots of luck.

True - I actually think mince with oats tastes better! Mix half and half, and add a bit of olive oil and garlic or whatever seasoning you like, knead it all well together and you get a sort of burger meat which is much nicer than mince on its own. You can grill or fry it. I call it 'poor man's steak'.

hex2

Another good website with meal planners and cheap recipes is http://thriftylesley.com/the-recipes/

I find the meal planning the hardest bit so anything someone else has done is great.

skogar

If making a cake I slice it up and wrap individual pieces and freeze immediately. Stops me eating it all. :rotfl:Even if I take a piece out the freezer in the morning it has defrosted by lunchtime. May be helpful if you are doing packed lunches.

The best thing about batch cooking is I always make big batches of pasta sauces and have some frozen in the freezer. Always a quick ready meal available so no excuse for getting a takeaway, saves loads of money.

Chicken stock would also be great for making a risotto - I see you have some risotto rice. We buy a whole chicken. Portion it up, wrap each of the portions individually and freeze. The carcas is used for stock. We get at least 4 meals for 2 people out of the chicken. 1 breast or leg per meal for 2 people. Plus whatever we make with the stock. Baked pancakes are good for only using a small amount of chicken. Add a bit of smoked bacon for added flavour and use plenty of mushrooms. Baked and covered in bechamel sauce they'll never know.

gayleygoo

Austin_Allegro wrote: »

True - I actually think mince with oats tastes better! Mix half and half, and add a bit of olive oil and garlic or whatever seasoning you like, knead it all well together and you get a sort of burger meat which is much nicer than mince on its own. You can grill or fry it. I call it 'poor man's steak'.

I never thought of using oats in HM burgers, sounds good! Although caution with the oats, there was a thread on here not so long ago where oats mixed with mince and tinned tomatoes made a orange gloopy porridge, that the cook did not want to eat!

Mrs_Cheshire

Some great ideas here, we've been on a tight budget for a few months now, needing to reduce our outgoings and sort out the debt. I've been spending between £40 -£60 per week for 4 (2 adults and 2 children 4 and 2 yrs old). They both love fresh fruit and can eat 3 portions each a day!
I buy meat mostly from Morrisons as they have the cheaper cuts and I keep an eye on the reduced counter. I managed to buy enough meat for probably 20 meals for about £30 including some huge steaks! They also had lean minced steak reduced a few weeks ago £2.49 for a 675g pack. I divided it into 2 and froze the mince.
I would look into farmfoods too, if you join on the website you get vouchers e-mailed to you. I bought loads of frozen veg 3 bags for £2 last time I went. also frozen chicken breast 3 1kg bags for £10.

I always buy the value pasta 29p for 500g and rice 40p for 1kg.

I meal plan weekly using a list of freezer foods I've got, so I usually don't have to buy much meat although if I see a great reduction like 70% off I'll buy it and freeze it. We try to have at least 1 if not 2 vegetarian main meals a week.

Make sure you check out the cheaper branded milk, in major supermarkets it costs about £1 for a 4pint/2litre bottle. Grate cheese to make it go further. Tinned rice pudding if you don't have time to make your own is about 15p and will feed the 4 of us with a cheap tin of fruit!

Would definitely second the make your own flapjacks, I add a handful of raisins or some chopped up dried apricots to mine.

poorly_scammo

Hello folks. Not been on this board in a long time.

Here are my tips:

• Soup before a main course is an excellent idea. Not only does it give you another flavour combo to stimulate your palette (more on that below), cheap veg soups with ingredients such as pulses help fill you up so that you’re not as hungry for the main course which will probably be that bit more expensive.

• I find that the spicier the food, the fuller I feel after eating a smaller amount of it IYSWIM. If a meal is bland in flavour, then I find I eat more of it but the opposite applies to spicy meals. Obviously I’m not suggesting that you make every meal so hot that you cannot taste the food, but you’d be surprised at how much you eat of something bland compared to something hotter.

• Consider buying a slow cooker if you haven’t got one already. They don’t need to be fancy, expensive models and they’re brilliant for extracting maximum flavour from cheap cuts of meat such as beef shin which need long slow cooking. Using a slow cooker also helps with energy bills as they use less of it than bunging the meal in the oven for a few hours.

• Meal plan. It has saved me a fortune. By planning what to have on different days means you don’t wander round the supermarket grabbing whatever’s on offer and leaving it in the fridge to go off. You go to the shops for what you have on your list and buy nothing else (unless it’s in the yellow sticker section possibly!) There are meal planners on here to help.

• Go down a brand – so instead of Heinz beans, buy the shop’s own brand etc.

• Bulk meals at each stage of cooking out to go further. Here’s an example for chilli con carne. It’s not a recipe but it’ll give you some ideas. We’ll call the usual method ‘usual’ and the thrifty method ‘thrifty’.
• Usual – fry onions and garlic. Thrifty – gather together other root veg such as carrot, cut up finely and fry off with the onions to soften before adding the mince.

• Usual – erm, let’s say a recipe states 1kg of mince (which is a helluva lot to begin with!) Thrifty – Given that you’ve bulked out above with the root veg you can either a) use less mince, b)use the same amount of mince and end up with a larger amount of the meal.

• Usual – add 1 tin of kidney beans. Thrifty – add two tins or buy dried kidney beans which are cheaper and pre-cook before adding to the meat mixture. Add other tinned veg here like sweetcorn, peas etc. Example: I found a tin of broad beans at the back of the cupboard that OH had bought in a moment of madness (!) and never used. These went in.

• Usual – Let’s say the recipe stipulates 1 spoonfull of chilli powder. Thrifty – add more if you don’t mind it hotter. See above regarding my spicy food theory.

• Finally – Have it with something to fill you up. If you like it, have brown rice. It’s chewier than white, has more fibre and helps keep me fuller for longer.

Hope these tips help OP.

Scammo