Feeding one on a realistic... with no freezer!

NumbBears

Hello MSE,
I am heamouriging money on food, and not particularly healthy meals either. My problem is that I have very little storage and no 'stock' to speak of. I also have no freezer, which makes batch cooking difficult.

If you were living alone, realistically what budget could you live on? (With the above parameters) I live in a city and it can be so expensive.

& any ideas/recipes/hints are most welcome!!

AnnieO1234

Go search out agirlcalledjack! Honestly she served her and her small boy on £10 a week building up a store cupboard, sharing tips and recipes online at the same time.

You don't necessarily need a freezer to batch cook or indeed need to batch cook. Provided you have a fridge and don't mind eating the same meal twice a week, or indeed doing a basic say mince and tomato base that is then spiced up individually for chilli, pasta etc.

Yellow stickers, value lines, Aldi, lidl, b&m are your friends. As is mysupermarket.co.uk to check best prices. Make sure to sign up for things like the My Waitrose card and use it every time. Keep an eye out on here for the various offers of £x off a £x spend at various stores in the papers. Also keep an eye on the flyers that come through your door.

You'll struggle for frozen veg obviously, but buying veg in season and that's uk grown is usually cheap. You can used tinned veg too which varying success. Tinned potatoes have a special place in my heart for casseroles and Bombay potatoes, salads etc. They're dirt cheap, half a can will keep I the fridge too quite easily.

Don't be afraid of down branding, going to different stores etc, living in a city from what I've seen on MSE should make things easier for you as you will have access to a lot of choice.

Consider making your own bread, pizza etc. Again dirt cheap to do, but for a higher quality than you could buy done.

Start building a herb and spice collection, and experimenting with flavours. It's surprising how many meals have a similar basis but that can be changed totally with a little difference in flavouring.

For me, realistically (not that I did at the time) I could imagine getting my budget down on my own to around £60 a month allowing for the occasional coffee or treat included.


Make sure to take your own lunches to work and on trips out too.

Xx

SailorSam

At least living in the city you'll have easy access to shops have you ?
The freezer must be the one most important thing in the kitchen, if you've got a fridge it helps.
I think i'd be looking to use lots of lentils which will keep, eggs are good, tins especially tomatoes, rice and pasta. A packet of sausage 'cos they can go in a curry, casserole or just eaten as they are. If you;ve got a slowcooker it means using it almost every day rather than doing big batches.

Frugalsod

If you have a fridge then you can use that but work on the principle of shopping little and often. You could do a lot of YS items and build a meal around what you find in there. One thing that I make is a curry from paste and a tin of chopped tomatoes and a chicken breast chopped up. You can get two or three meals out of that, so keep in fridge and eat as within a week. I use 2L pyrex jugs to make it in.

Work out what things you like and if they have common ingredients, so that you can use them for a number of meals. A bit of planning and you can get a list of basics that you should try and collect and build up a basic stock.

mcculloch29

Some good advice there. I have a good discount freezer shop locally and quite a few non-frozen products from there form the basis of meals. Cooking bacon is one. I love it in bacon, apple and onion fry-up (all three fried together) and in bacon, onion and potato hotpot (finely slice onions and potatoes, layer in deep dish with bacon, pour over cheese sauce and bake slowly until all is soft.)

Smoked mackerel fillets can be used for kedgeree, fish pie, mixed through pasta or just as it is.

A!di sell a very good smoked sausage which can be kept in the cupboard as it's in sealed plastic. I use this in risottos a lot - Aldi's 99p packet risotto is great for when you don't want to make one from scratch. With the addition of the sausage you will get two meals out of it.
Tinned flaked or chunky tuna is something else that doesn't need a freezer.
Tinned macaroni cheese is one of my Guilty Pleasures, ages since I've had some.

Corned beef will make a hash or a nice savoury pie mixed with onion and bulked out with mashed potato. This features heavily in party buffets in this neck of the woods!

A good old fashioned stew can be transformed with some curry powder and home made curry sauce into a lively portion of curry.
I've just realised that I didn't have a freezer until I'd been married for about 7 years and I managed fine. I now have two, but it is possible to manage without one!

RAS

Hi

Can you define "very little storage" and advise whether you have a fridge? Or are you flatsharing? if you have a fridge does it have a freezer section?

Cooker, microwave, slow cooker, mini-oven, toaster, sandwich maker?

If you search out GreyQueen, you will find that storage space can be found for tins and jars, in roll out containers under beds, behind sofas etc.

Cooking for one on a very limited budget can be monotonous if you are not careful but with a fridge you can keep things for two or three days.

Try to find a proper market where you can buy fresh veggies in small portions or a supermarket where you can buy seasonal veggies by weight. Trying to use up a kilo of cheap carrots is a nightmare; ultimately it may be better to pay more per kilo and only buy what you will use.

Also think about meals that can be transformed.

Roast some veggies with a piece of chicken or other meat. Next day whizz up the veggies with some stock (stock cube is fine) and you have a tasty soup to take for lunch the day after.

Good stores

Tinned tomaotoes or passata in packs. Budget small tins of sweetcorn. A tin or 2 of mushy peas - for mushy peas soup. Tinned tuna - for sarnies, pasta sauce, tonno e faglio, fish cakes etc. Tinned beans - Morereasons sometimes do them 3 for £1 and include chickpeas, black eye peas and haricots at that price. A small tin or two of corned beef. Pasta is still under 40p in the value ranges and if you hunt there are cheap three minute noodles still.

Toonie

Stock or store cupboards need to be built up over time. What you need to do is meal plan and buy fresh.

Also being a single person living in a city I find it very cheap to eat. I do have a freezer, which I find useful, however when my fridge freezer died just over a year ago I went three weeks without either (well...ended up buying a mini fridge to keep milk cold). I found I spent around the same amount of money. Yes, meals tend to get a bit repetitive and it's only manageable if you don't mind eating the same thing a couple days running, but it is easily doable.

My grocery budget is around £15-20 a week (and that is being lavish and having meat most evenings) with most of that being spent on tinned/packet items. I always have a stock of lentils, barley, couscous, bulghur wheat, vermicelli and noodles in the cupboard. This alongside side tinned tomatoes, tinned beans and vegetables can make a lot of nutritious, cheap meals.

My store cupboard is still being built up after two years and I don't think that ever stops. Finding cheap sources of cupboard essentials is the best way to maximise your budget, as an example my local off licence sell massive bags of bay leaves for 60p, they also have split peas and lentils for 50p per 500g and free range eggs for 99p for six.

[Deleted User]

Well I live alone but am lucky enough to own a fridge freezer.My monthly budget for food alone and nothing else is £60.00. I make a vat of soup at least once a week from veg thats starting to look a bit sad :) this keeps very well in the fridge.I don't eat bread anymore as I prefer crackers Ryvita etc.I use low cal soft cheese as a spread on these as I also don't find the need for butter at all.I spend about a third of my food budget on fruit and veg and buy stuff if I can that's in season.Yellow stickered stuff is very inexpensive and usually pretty good value.I had a pot of low cal spicy chickpea and humous last sunday from the local supermarket that had been reduced to 10p and some I used on crackers with soup for lunch and some went onto a jacket sweet potato which I had with salad and the last of it I just dolloped onto a small salad of tomato's lettuce,beetroot,egg,cucumber and grated cheese.This topped off with a good dash of sweet chilli sauce was a very filling meal on Monday night.I buy little gem lettuce's in a pair and wrap in foil to keep fresh in the fridge.I also wrap celery in foil for the same reason and it keeps very well.A pot of basic natural yoghurt for 45p from the supermarket will often do a variety of things .I add to a bowl of porridge with chopped banana for breakfast or some chopped apple or sliced orange for a pud.Yoghurt also makes a nice accompaniment to a curry to cool it down a bit if I have been a bit too keen with the curry poder :)
I bought some dried coriander leaves chopped in my local g'grocers last week for 50p for 100gms .Some of these will go into a carrot soup which I will make later today for pennies I had a reduced bag of carrots for 20p.This will with the addition of a stock cube make me a good three litres of soup.This soup will make me at least five lunches with crackers over the next few days or as a starter for my main meal in the evening.Far nicer than tinned stuff and a fraction of the price.as another poster said have a look at 'A Girl called Jacks' blog for lots of recipes that are cheap as chips.because I have changed my eating habits in the past 6 months by cutting out bread and spreads I have lost over two stones without feeling in the least bit hungry at all. Smaller portions of meat and lots more veg and pulses work well for both my waistline and my wallet :):)

mcculloch29

The A Girl Called Jack cookbook is out now, available on Am@zon and The Bo0k People at a good price, can thoroughly recommend it and so many of the recipes don't rely on frozen food.
Some don't even need a fridge, using tinned supplies or root veg that can be kept at room temperature without undue harm for a few days.