Eat Well For Less Series 3

VfM4meplse

Have now seen yesterday's show. Whatever sympathy I may have had with her deprived childhood evaporated as soon as I realised she knew the cause of her excessive spending, yet still continued. Given that she knows exactly what goes in her cakes, how could she not have realised that her "kindness" was filling her kids up with too much sugar and fat? She must have had a good relationship with her husband, because he agreed that she should give up her job which I would imagine have previously covered the luxury of her excessive food shopping.

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't know what I fancy from moment to moment. I tend to wait until I'm absolutely starving and almost having to crawl to the kitchen, then I cook the nearest/easiest/quickest thing that'll make the hunger go away

I can identify with this post. I'll keep food in, but will always go along the path of least resistance if I'm hungry. For me that often means Weetabix (generic) at the expense of vegetables - but it's an improvement, it used to be confectionary! I too used to enjoy baking, but I've given that pleasure up as its largely incompatible with being sugar-free. I rationalise that as well as being a positive health choice, it leaves me with more time to do other things I really love....

suki1964

PasturesNew wrote: »

An experienced cook will be able to work out if they can do it by hand and/or just put up with the difference in texture + put up with any resulting cr4ppy results .... but somebody who hasn't done stuff before wouldn't have the store of expectations to draw upon to decide whether/not a processor was needed.

As for that agave.... I wouldn't even know how to pronounce it

Not at all

I only knew cos I watched the show and saw the wee lass mash it up with her hands

Although I too will go in with hands for flap jacks or twinks hob nobs. Indeed the grandkids look forward to making those

A also use hands for coleslaw, potato salad, making marinades etc. I do have a fp but sometimes hands are best

PasturesNew

VfM4meplse wrote: »

I can identify with this post. I'll keep food in, but will always go along the path of least resistance if I'm hungry. For me that often means Weetabix (generic) at the expense of vegetables - but it's an improvement, it used to be confectionary!

I have moments of inspiration/motivation, e.g. if I make a slow cooker chilli.

Yesterday my dinner went bad, so I had to go food shopping.... I came home with a pack of 6 crumpets.

Breakfast today was 2 crumpets.
Lunch was 2 crumpets.
Tea was beans on toast.

Then, an hour or so ago, I was suddenly in a mood to open a can of spaghetti hoops and have half of that on toast with grated cheese

Spaghetti hoops were a bargain purchase the other week, 4 large cans for 64p So they had to be bought, just on price.

Total food cost today's therefore about 52p

I'm de-motivated by food in the main. Dislike making it, begrudge the time, dislike the clearing up .... and even the eating of it's not exciting.

JIL

Has anyone else noticed the difference in taste between Yorkshire tea one cup tea bags and the ordinary Yorkshire teabags? I thought it was me but husband mentioned it to me, after I had bought 600 on offer. There is a difference.

It made me wonder if this could be the same in the programme?

VfM4meplse

PasturesNew wrote: »

Then, an hour or so ago, I was suddenly in a mood to open a can of spaghetti hoops and have half of that on toast with grated cheese

Spaghetti hoops were a bargain purchase the other week, 4 large cans for 64p So they had to be bought, just on price.

Thats where we differ - I generally don't buy highly processed food, or things I consider to be synthetic. (OK I do buy crisps regularly now ). I do acknowledge I eat too much fruit and not enough veg, that will change from next month (week!).

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'm de-motivated by food in the main. Dislike making it, begrudge the time, dislike the clearing up .... and even the eating of it's not exciting.

I agree with this. Life is just too short! I realise a balanced healthy diet needs to move higher up my priority list, slow and steady makes sustainable changes.

Pollycat

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'm de-motivated by food in the main. Dislike making it, begrudge the time, dislike the clearing up .... and even the eating of it's not exciting.

VfM4meplse wrote: »

T
I agree with this. Life is just too short! I realise a balanced healthy diet needs to move higher up my priority list, slow and steady makes sustainable changes.

I'm totally in the opposite camp.
I love cooking, planning menus, searching for new recipes to try out.
I particularly like buying large pieces of raw meat - beef or pork - and cutting it up to freeze.
And I buy whole lambs liver and cut it up myself instead of buying those thin slivers they usually sell.
I must have been a butcher in a previous life. :rotfl:

suki1964

When I lived on my own, or when DH was working in England , I was very much like PN and would live on toast, pasta, cheese, crisps

I used to wander about the supermarket looking for inspiration, find none, buy a loaf and leave. I just CBA with the thought of making a mess just for one person

I've posted this before but I'll say again, what turned me around to eating better was making soup. One pot cooking, easy to warm up, lasted at least 4 days, full of the good things I prefer to avoid. Tbh eating hm soup did perk me up some and gave me more of an appitite

It's just so hard to find the motivation to go to the palaver of cooking when it's just you, esp when you are living a very solitary life

Even now that I scratch cook daily, I prefer one pot meals and aim for at least no more then two pots other then weekends when I get help in the kitchen

VfM4meplse

suki1964 wrote: »

I've posted this before but I'll say again, what turned me around to eating better was making soup. One pot cooking, easy to warm up, lasted at least 4 days, full of the good things I prefer to avoid. Tbh eating hm soup did perk me up some and gave me more of an appitite

I do this and freeze it.

I took a box out on Monday in anticipation of running out of food this week (conscious decision in advance of a holiday) and it languished in the fridge until yesterday. I heated it last night because I didn't think it would last much longer, just didn't fancy it whatsoever. Didn't want anything and couldn't be bothered with it for another half hour.

When I ate a half portion with a bit of quinoa, it was delicious! Will try to finish the rest today. (Spicy tomato and chickpea, in case you were wondering).

catkins

PasturesNew wrote: »

These days most of the recipes "thrust at us" require equipment people might not have and/or unusual ingredients they've never had/heard of.

There's little in the way of simple "Delia style 1970s" recipes thrust - you have to go hunting them down.

This programme, Eat Well for Less, I looked at the website and just the oaty bars required a food processor ... and something called aga [STRIKE]r[/STRIKE] ve (runs off to check spelling,..... and corrects it). I had to Google to even start to understand what on earth that might be!

So that'd be one recipe, from a "relevant programme" that'd just be tossed aside as "too hard, too complex, uses WHAT??" by nervous starters.

There are lots of reasonably easy recipes online. It's much easier now with the internet to be able to look up recipes than previously having only a couple of recipe books to look at or having to go to a library to get books.

The BBC website has lots of recipes and I believe they state whether they are easy, more difficult etc. I really like the Sunday Brunch recipes and they do a lot of veggie ones

GwylimT wrote: »

Why would I want to pay more for the cheese, manually grate it and then buy something to put it in to freeze it?

Well I have looked at "mysupermarket.com" and block cheddar cheese is £5 a kilo whereas grated cheese is £7 a kilo for the cheapest.

Obviously if your supermarket has grated cheese cheaper then it makes sense but usually, as stated in the programme, you pay more for grated cheese.

Pollycat

catkins wrote: »

There are lots of reasonably easy recipes online. It's much easier now with the internet to be able to look up recipes than previously having only a couple of recipe books to look at or having to go to a library to get books.

I'm always googling recipes.

Rick Stein cooked kapuska (not very appetisingly titled 'Turkish cabbage stew') on one of his programmes & I based my version on 4 different recipes. I'll never be able to recreate it - but that's part of the fun.