feed a family of 4, almost vegan, on a rather small budget! Old Style!

missymoo81

upoiupou Thank you for taking the time to post. I'm trying to work out coatings now, and if there is any money left over, I will switch to brown rice and sweet potatoes etc. I'm getting there!

Hey june89, I've watched cheap lazy vegan, she's good!

And thanks again mandm90 I've just trawled the cheap family recipes and have included calzone, gnocchi and Moroccan rice!

missymoo81

Morning,

I have started on my menu plan!!! So far we have banana porridge with garden frozen blackberries for breakfast, apart from OH who doesn't like it, who will have cheapest cereal with blackberries. ^rolls eyes^
A pear as a morning snack for the children
Soup for lunch, with bread for OH and May (my smallest) with carrot, cucumber sticks and hm hummus, with an orange for OH and spinach for me.
Afternoon snack, hm flap jack or cake with a cup of tea.
Dinner I'm still working on but it's getting there. And by dinner time everyone should have had at least 2 pieces of fruit and at least 1 veg portion.... Need to check macros on myfitness for the rest....

jackyann

Just wanted to say how sensibly you are approaching this missymoo and what excellent ideas have been posted.

My take:
Agree that you should track down your nearest Asian food store (depends where you live on both how practical this is and how competitive their prices are) as you will find spices, all sorts of pulses and large bags of rice much cheaper than elsewhere.
As long as you have somewhere dry & safe to store, get in good stocks (beware of buying too much as they go off, but a monthly / 2 monthly shop may be helpful)
Cook your pulses from scratch where you can as this is usually much cheaper than tinned (but do check offers etc.). Bring to the boil (check boiling times for safety) then cook in a slow cooker to save fuel. I usually add some stock-type veges for flavour. Cook up plenty of pulses whilst you are at it: they keep a few days in the fridge and you can batch cook for the freezer, make some hummus, or similar.
Compare prices carefully: for instance I have just started making hummus with butterbeans, much cheaper than chick peas; red lentils seem at the moment to be cheaper than green (which are having a fashionable moment). However, if you are using independent shops, their prices can vary a lot.
Don't forget dried peas - many people do - mushy peas made from scratch can be very satisfying & delicious, and yellow split peas make a fantastic pease pudding. You boil them with vegetables, mush down, then bake in the oven, top with fried onions.
I'd also suggest, whilst bearing in mind being vegan, that you may find those little scraps of bacon off-cuts useful. Keep back a portion of peas / pease pudding for yourself, stir in some tasty fried-up scraps for the others - that may be just the thing on some occasions.
Jacket potatoes will be your friend throughout the winter, one of the cheapest and most satisfying building blocks.
Tuck a few tins of cheapest baked beans at the back of the cupboard for those days when nothing has gone right and you need something quickly.
I'd also suggest looking at baking your own bread which even if it doesn't save you money over cheapest loaves, is so much better value and can help lift a meal.
Good luck

missymoo81

Wow, thank you jackyann. Such a lovely long post. Great ideas. We do have a Chinese supermarket close by, am a bit apprehensive about going in there, not for any reason, it's just different from the norm, need to get brave! Lol. I've looked at the prices of uncooked beans to be cooked, and I worked out it was more or less the same price to buy the ready cooked tinned versions from Aldi. Most beans, including, butter, chick peas and canelinni beans are all 35p a tin. I've swapped butternut squash for sweet potatoes, as more calorie and carb dense. Love jacket potatoes, we have a wood burner so can cook them for free as we use it for heat in the winter. Might see if I can get a big bag of potatoes from one of the farm shops....

I've got a cupboard full of bread flour so will make bread to go with the soup, I have a bread maker, but will try and make it by hand To cook in the wood burner over winter. Definitely going to be making big batches of cheap soup too.

Ok feeling quite pleased, have come up with a sort of meal plan, it's not as exciting as I'd like, but the meals tick all the boxes. I've worked out shopping from Tesco and Aldi...... And I THINK, I can bring our complete grocery shop, including all toiletries, for £130 per month????!!!! What I'll do I'll post a list of what we're going to eat for the month, and my shopping list. I will admit that it doesn't include all of the things that I already have in the cupboard, like spices and soy and sweet chilli sauce, but they wouldn't be monthly bought things anyway...

I've chosen 1 days planned food at random for OH, I've worked out from calorie King and google what OH is supposed to get protein, carb, fat and calorie wise, and I've managed to completely smash all of his macro requirements?! Not sure on the vitamin front, will work that out in a moment. And I'll work out mine and small ones macros too! I can't believe it can be done so cheaply and I hope tastily! I love cooking and am a bit of a foodie so will work hard to make meals taste scrumtious!

ThemeOne

Tinned pulses can usually be bought so cheaply meaning I don't very often use dried ones. Dried pulses enable you to only boil up what you need admittedly, or do more and freeze, but against that is the faff of having to plan ahead with soaking, then having a kitchen full of steam while they're cooking.

[Deleted User]

I know not everyone has one but I cook soaked dry pulses in my pressure cooker which takes around 20 minutes and stops all the steam in the kitchen. They come out perfectly cooked and don't cost the earth in hours of fuel for cooking either.

WantToBeSE

Hi Missy.

I am vegan and my children are about 60% vegan now too.

I get a lot of recipes online. Example meals that i do on a budget are:

-meatballs (vegan) and spaghetti
-veggie chilli and rice
-leftovers
-burritoes
-Butternut squash risotto
-lentil bolognaise
-pasta & sauce (a great one for everbody, regardless of vegan or not)
-Veggie burgers, rice and salad
-Veggie chilli
-Baked potatoes (a great one for all the family, vegan or not)
-Roast (nut roast for you, meat/something else for the others)
-Lentil Dhal with rice
-Shepherds Pie

-ANY mince based dish, but use lentils instead. you can buy a can of lentils for about 80p and they do a whole meal easily.

Online, look for websites like

-Minimalist Baker
-Vegangela
-Cooking on a bootstrap
-Oh She Glows

Also, if i want a recipe, i often just google it, putting the word vegan first, so 'vegan spag bol' or 'vegan shepherds pie'.

It is by far the cheapest way of eating, with the main expense being fake meats and products aimed specifically at vegans. if you eat plant based whole foods, like fruit, veg, rice, pasta etc, it's a cheap way to eat.

Many vegans advocate a HCLF (high carb, low fat) diet, as it is considered to be incredibly healthy (for research on this, read The China Study, The Starch Solution, and more).
Areas in the world-such as Asia predominantly-eat this way and have one of the lowest forms of cancers and heart disease in the world.

Good luck, i hope some of that helps!

jackyann

Hello, wanted to add:

cheapest way to get herbs is to buy the supermarket pots, then plant them on - they have several small plants in them, each of which can benefit from TLC - you will get your money's worth if you do that, and I think that fresh herbs make all the difference to many meals. Sometimes the intensity of dried herbs is needed though.

Don't worry a bit about going into Asian shops - they're used to all sorts wandering in and asking questions.
My own experience is that Indian / sub-continent grocers are best for pulses, rice etc and chapati flour makes good bread (and do check the pulse prices there, you may find them very different from supermarket)
Chinese are better for tinned stuff and especially sauces. Some also have tofu sold by weight. Look for their soy milk etc as well.
Both good for packets of spices, but as I said, can be very variable.

I used to like, as a treat for the kids, frying up poppadoms or prawn crackers - good fun and helpful if dinner is a bit late for hungry littles.
Which reminds me that home popped popcorn is also great and cheap - gets mentioned a lot on here.

I have found this thread very interesting, thanks for starting.

BrassicWoman

question: if OH is going to be the one with more free time, can you plan to his cooking ability? What is he good at making?

catkins

Hi Missymoo, me and OH are vegetarian. I have thought about becoming vegan but I love eggs too much sadly.

I don't know whereabouts you live so no idea what supermarkets you can get too but I'll just give you an idea of what I do.

Firstly, as others have said, if you have an indian grocer anywhere near they are definitely worth visiting. We actually drive to East London, where there are many, to stock up on items and it is getting on for a hour's drive but it is worth it.

I buy big packs of different colour lentils, chickpeas, kidney beans, blackeyed beans, mung beans and any other beans they have. In the big packs they definitely work out cheaper than tinned. Supermarkets tend to only sell small packs (if they even have any at all).

I soak a big bowl of beans or chickpeas etc overnight then cook them the next morning. I then put what I regard as a portion into plastic bags and put them in the freezer. I can then easily pull one out when I want to use them.

I also buy spices in the indian shop. They sell them just in plastic packs and they work out quite a lot cheaper.

The larger indian supermarkets sell big bags of onions very cheap (often 99p and I am talking big string bag!). Also you can get big packs of rice. Cooking oil is often cheaper. Some of them have a good selection of veg and, again, are often very cheap - even cheaper than my local market.

I usually make my own indian breads but recently bought a pack of 4 frozen parathas for about, I think, £1. One was more than enough for me and OH and we are big eaters. They are just cooked in a dry frying pan and they were delicious. I find making parathas quite fiddly and time consuming so will be buying those again.

Do you have a market near you? Fruit and veg is often cheaper and if you go when they are close to closing they often sell it off for ridiculously low prices. I know you work but if OH does lose his job, hopefully he won't, perhaps he could go to the market once a week? Just thought, we buy big sacks of potatoes as we use a lot and buying them that way is a lot cheaper. I put them in the cupboard under the stairs as it is dark and reasonably cool and they last for quite a long time. If they do start shooting I normally just cut the shoots off and still use them. Otherwise if I think they won't last much longer I make them into chips, wedges, roast or mash and freeze them.

We eat lots of veg and pulses. We both love curry and probably eat it at least twice a week.

You seem to already have a lot of good meal ideas and I think they are all things I already cook but I will put a list of things I do in case there are any different things.

Can I ask what you use for your egg fried rice?

Things I cook:

Shepherds pie - sometimes with with quorn mince and lentils and sometimes just with lentils. I always add lots of veg though and top with sweet potato mash and ordinary potato mash
Chickpea curry - can add things like spinach, cauliflower, potato etc
Spicy chickpea pasties
Felafel
Chilli - can be made with quorn mince or just veg or beans
Veg curry
Vegetable stew
sausage and veg stew
Sausage, beans and onions mixed together topped with mashed potato
Bean burgers
Sweet potato and bean burgers
Lentil fritters
Nut roast
Nut burgers
Chickpea burgers
Mushroom and spinach lasagne - I do use milk for the sauce but I would assume you can use non dairy milks?
Lentil bolognaise
Meatballs made with quorn mince and spaghetti