Low budget food plan... help needed

sazaccount

Hi,

I was wondering if you lovely people are able to help me...

I've been reading the feed a family 4 for £20 and £7 a week threads they are helpful however I have a couple of stumbling blocks...

A bit of back ground over the next couple of months my pay is going to half due to low season, only working weekends (except for half term) to around £180 a fortnight. As you can see from my signature I have a loan and a CC. These payments are manageable however it leaves me with a lot less than I'm used to on the food budge front.

My stumbling blocks are: I don't have a freezer or a hob or oven (well I have a mini oven), I don't have a kitchen.

I have a slow cooker (but end up making enough for a family when there is only me), microwave, George foreman, kettle, toaster and the mini oven. The supermarkets in my area are: Tes*o, sainsb*rys and morr*sons. As you can see as well I have a nectar card which I've been saving the points on for the next couple of months.

I'm not the most organised of people oohh and just thought I don't own a peeler either I've tried planning and writing my shopping list in the past however I always seemed to end up walking out with £40/50 worth of shopping just for me for a week :eek:

Any help would be greatly appreshated:)

Thanks

sazaccount

Frugalsod

I do not bother peeling but just wash the veggies well. I put everything in and it cuts waste and there are plenty of vitamins in the skin of many root vegetables. I do my own bread in my microwave but it is a combination oven. I have the advantage of a freezer so will prepare a chilli sauce and store it in the freezer for the days ahead. You could put the sauce on jacket potatoes, on its own with bread, with rice or pasta.

If you can save some money and get a freezer then that might help a lot. You will then be able to store surplus food and bulk buy and buy clearance items for storing.

Though you could try microwaving porridge for breakfast. It is cheaper than almost all other breakfast cereals.

You could make soups in a microwave. As long as you can boil them in the microwave and have a hand blender you could easily make soups with any leftovers. Hand blenders are cheap. Make meal plans and shop accordingly.

babyshoes

You don't mention a fridge? If you do have one, a slow cooked meal can last several days, if you can put up with eating the same thing a few times in a row. You can make it a bit different each day by adding extras such as spices - for example add some chilli powder and a few beans to bolognese and it becomes a chilli. You can also serve it with different starchy sides, such as potatoes, pasta or rice to make it seem a bit different.

Cous cous is a great easy basic - it doesnt' need any cooking as you just pour on boiling water and cover for a while.

It will be more difficult to eat cheaply without a freezer or proper kitchen, which makes planning more important. For example, if you end up with half a tin of something left over, you will have known in advance that you would have it, and have found & planned a recipe to use it up...

[Deleted User]

how about using up what you have at the moment that you can't keep for any length of time and only buying from day to day or every couple of days at a time.This way you will eat food as it used to be eaten before the advent of fridge's freezers and all the other things that seem to be almost 'vital' to living.My Mum had a tiny kitchen,a very small gas cooker with tiny oven,and only a small hot water gas boiler with a metal arm for hot water in the kitchen, no washing machine,tumble dryer either.She managed to raise three children during and after the war with rationing thrown in for good measure reasonably healthily.She shopped on a day-to-day basis and used up every scrap of food available.She was a fantasic lady who could make a shilling do the work of five :)We ate three meals a day and no snacks inbetween.I don't feel as though I had a deprived childhood as what you don't have you don't miss.Virtually everyone we knew lived in the same way.There were no short cuts or take-aways in the 1940s-50s.Folk bought food to eat within a couple of days.She did have a tin store which was guarded with vigilance as even tinned stuff was hard to come by with rationing.See if you can get a WW2 cook book from the library and see how millions of women coped by make-do-and mend and cooked almost the same way.You can cook lots of stuff in a microwave and if as there is only you to feed it should be even easier.I live alone as I am widowed, and manage fairly comfortably on a budget of £60.00 per month.True I have a f/freezer which helps no end with reduced price stuff that I can pick up from the supermarkets.I no longer eat bread and use crackerbread for an accompaniment.I use laughing cow cheese spread on the crackers so I no longer need to buy butter .I do cook and bake cakes and biscuits(mainly for my grandchildren though)I make quite a lot of soup in the winter as I enjoy that for lunch with some crackers.Soups home made are so easy to cook and I make a large pot on a Sat/Sun morning and once portioned up in some left over pots I have snaffled from my DD who 'buys !!! soup for work it will easily keep in the fridge.If you haven't a fridge a cold window sill will do this weather.My Mum never owned a fridge at all and kept her milk fresh in a bottle standing in a small bucket of cold water.Its a case of adapting what you have and maybe changing your mindset a bit.Until the 1960s few folk had a washing nmachine,fridge andcertainly no microwave at all, yet we all survived :)
Think of your trips to the shops as 'free excercise each day,after all you will have a bit more time on your hands with short time working.haunt the libraies as its often warmer in there than at home and that too will save you cash.take a small note book with you and see what sorts of recipes you can come up with that don't require cooking.Even jelly for pud only needs a hot kettle of water

meg72

Do you have a fridge? what are your living arrangements, I am sort of picturing a bedsit which may not have space for a fridge, in which case it will be more difficult to make suggestions. I see you have a microwave and a toaster so good old beans or scrambled egg on toast come to mind. You could plan baked potato in the microwave to use up beans for another meal.

There are some very good sites for using tinned foods if you have a look.

laura_hoggle

Could you check out Freecycle and see if anyone is getting rid of a freezer, or a portable hob (if you have room for it that is!) as they would probably help. You could even ask for a peeler, I've got rid of a lot of kitchen items on there before, and recently acquired some very good quality curtain poles and curtains, so it's worth a look!

I would recommend looking at the blog http://agirlcalledjack.com/ as a lot of her recipes are very cheap, but things tend to be cooked on the hob. She does have a couple of slow cooker things on there though, and a cheap microwave recipe to rival the 'convenience' breakfast porridges!!

sazaccount

Thanks for the suggestions guys,

Yes I forgot to say I do have a fridge I've got a couple of days free from tomorrow so will have a look at my tinned things. I've got a couple of tins of veg. As i don't eat a lot of bread anyway i tend to by the part baked ones.

My new years resolution is to be more organised :rotfl:

Butterfly_Brain

What amount of money do you want to spend, do you have a freezer and what do you like to eat?

PasturesNew

A mini oven is identical to a real oven, just smaller.... so you can still cook the same stuff in it, just less.

I'd look at: Yorkshire puddings filled with mash/sausages, veggies/gravy, wedges/beans. You can make anything into a stew, then top it with dumplings and bake a nice dumpling crust for about 20 minutes. Homemade pizza - you can even keep the pizza base quick/easy with just flour/water. The packets of instant yorkshire mix are a good storecupboard item, costing just 15p you only need one egg and no milk.

Baked potato with vairous fillings. You can start those in the mirowave, then finish in the oven. I'd not buy "baked potatoes", but just buy cheap spuds and pick the biggest out of the bag. The small ones can be used to make cheese/potato pie, beans can be nuked.

Frittata's good and filling - you can bake that in the mini oven. Make it hot, serve it hot - the rest can be eaten cold, or nuked hot again.

You can make lots of things on just toast - get pizza toppings together, then half toast some bread, put the toppings on and shove it back in the mini oven (especially if it's got the grill setting).

If you look online you can find microwave recipes for most meals - so a hob's not essential as there are work rounds.

2 sausages, 2 eggs and 2 slices of toasted bread .... and you can make, then bake, two scotch eggs.

I like to keep a stock of cheapo noodles (15p-20p) - one packet of those, nuked, then toss in half a tin of peas, or half a tin of red kidney beans and nuke for a further minute.

There are tins of meatballs in Lidl for 45p. Half a tin of those and some microwaved rice makes a quick/easy meal.

I make a microwave cheese sauce in about 2 minutes' flat - and you can microwave pasta, or just make it by covering it with boiling water and putting a lid on the dish for 5 minutes, then draining/refilling with water and doing that again until the pasta's soft. That makes mac/cheese.... pick cheese based on price, I always look for extra/mature cheddar at under £5.30/Kg.

The main issue really is - can you really be bothered. I've 2000 ideas of what I COULD cook ..... I mostly CBA

Frugalsod

Pasta can be done in a microwave, just cover with boiling water and nuke for 7 minutes. Then add some sauces.

sazaccount

Hi

Thanks for the suggestions I like the yorkshire pudding idea do u need muffin trays for them or can I just pore it into a tin for a big puddling?

i'm looking at around £15/20 a week for food, which I know some may find really easy, but I can easy spend £40 a week so bit of a change.

Its finding something different to cook, I like things I can either cook quickly/doesn't need a lot of work or can throw into the Slow cooker and leave on while I go to work.

I know it may sound strange but do u have a recipe for stew, my nan used to make an amazing one but when I try I end up with a meat in runny and lots of gravy kind of meal!!!

I'm doing weight watchers (I help at the meeting to get it for free very MSE lol) and there changing the plan which should make it easier to follow

Meal planning for me tomorrow, start of my new years resolution to organise my life... I say this every year and it lasts for around 2 days lol I'm going to sign on as I'm out of my work contract for just over 2 weeks see if there is any temp or mon-friday jobs going.

Thanks again for the suggestions and if you have any others they will be greatly received :-)