Eating healthy for cheap

VfM4meplse

OP, if your family is fond of pizza I would recommend this from Poundland.



I bought a couple recently, and am very happy with my bases. No soggy bottoms

Butterfly_Brain

ID-8

What is your budget and what sort of foods do you enjoy?

The basic MSE way is:

• Always write a meal plan
• Always write a list
• When you go shopping use cash and not cards, it shows you the value of money and focuses your mind.
• If you spot something in a shop that you want, walk away and think to yourself do I want it or need it? If you want it then don't buy it, if you need it and it is within your budget then buy it.

I rarely use a card when shopping, I work out my budget for the week and draw it out in cash, when the cash is gone, it's gone, no dipping into the cards to top up for the week.

Do you have a garden? How about growing some of your own veggies and fruit, that helps with the budget and this time of year is great for buying cut price seeds (10p a packet in Wilko) I use heritage seeds as a preference, that is the ones that you can save the seeds to regrow next year ad infinitum.

Butterfly_Brain

melanzana wrote: »

It's called Clearspring Organic Soya Mince. UK company.

"Made from 100% European soya beans"

I will try it. If the texture is as good as meaty mince, I just might be converted here!

It cost £2 for a pack that says it will serve 10 -12 portions. Even if I am greedy and halve that, that is fantastic value for such a source of protein!

95% of Soya beans and seeds are genetically modified and I have stopped buying any soya products at all including soy sauce

jackyann

jack_pott wrote: »

You need a lot of water to rehydrate the soya, it soaks it up like blotting paper. I brown the mince and pour off the fat, but none of that is relevant, because the recipe is identical except for having switched from the Schwartz pack to the ingredients in bold.

Ah, OK, I think my brain skipped the 'soya' or I wouldn't have replied, as I don't use soya at all for various reasons.
Sorry if I misled at all.
I bulk out mince with vegetables, and cook a lot of vegetable based dishes, some vegetarian, some with very small amounts of tasty meat.
I do find bacon 'offcuts' or mis-shapes' very useful for adding taste very cheaply.

Slowly57

I think if we were aware of how much of our animal feed contains GM content, we would pretty much stop eating any meat or dairy if we were worried about it - see also http://www.gmfreeze.org/actions/5/ :eek:

moneyistooshorttomention

Slowly57 wrote: »

I think if we were aware of how much of our animal feed contains GM content, we would pretty much stop eating any meat or dairy if we were worried about it - see also http://www.gmfreeze.org/actions/5/ :eek:

Hence why I buy organic dairy products and am investigating making my own vegan "cheeses" - as it's so difficult to buy organic cheese here.

I don't want to get g.m. by the indirect route either.

With everything that's done to plants, animals, chucked in our seas it's no wonder I sit there sometimes and think "Just what do the people responsible for all this (eg non-organic farmers, chemical companies, etc, etc) eat themselves? They want to do all this to us - and yet they still need to eat personally..."

westcoastscot

It is very much a fact of life that if we want affordable, plentiful food to feed our nation we need to manage agriculture. Food has been GM for a very long time - think F1 hybrid seeds for example.
Living in a modern world there is no way to engage with society and remain chemical free, so a realistic approach needs to be taken to preserve sanity. As others have said, a diet high in fruit and veg, pulses and some meat, dairy, grains is a good balanced diet for those of us without food allergies.

moneyistooshorttomention

This has come up before and someone more scientifically-minded than me has explained exactly why F1 hybrid seeds are one thing (ie 2 types of tomato for instance?) and g.m. is something totally different (ie with genes from other species in and/or it's own artifically built-in pesticide I believe in some of these frankinstein creations).

Hopes that scientifically-minded person is reading and will come back and explain in fine detail just why these two concepts are wildly different to each other and it's not a problem to eat F1 hybrid seeds per se - but it definitely is to eat g.m. food.

freyasmum

Pastures, I'm glad you said it!

I don't think that £10 for one meal is cheap and cheerful at all - I think it's REALLY expensive. And we don't skimp!

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

I think it would be useful if you explain your definition of "healthy".

Some people mean "home-cooked" rather than "readymade".

Others of us mean healthy - wholemeal instead of white, no sugar, no g*netically-modified, organic.

So do you mean "healthy" or healthy? Can you clarify and then it will be easier to give advice - rather than everyone speaking according to what their own personal definition of the word "healthy" is.

Well, to be fair, a basic homemade bolognese has got to be a heck of a lot healthier than a pizza for dinner - even served with white pasta.

My bolognese recipe is expensive compared to many, but it's an awful lot cheaper than £2.50 a portion!

I use:
1kg 5% fat mince 5.98
3-4 large onions, diced 79p
pack of peppers, diced 75p
pack of mushrooms, sliced 79p
squeeze of garlic puree, to taste really - I probably squeeze the tube and count to three
1kg of carrots, peeled and grated (I have a food processor) 41p
1 beef stock pot, aldi brand 22p
4 tins chopped tomatoes, £1
2 tbsp tomato ketchup 5p
1 tbsp dried mixed herbs 2p
small glass red wine 65p (optional)
Total £10.66

We would portion that into 10 more than generous platefuls. A 70g portion of essentials spaghetti is less than 3p and is a BIG portion.

Total cost for the meal circa £1.10 at aldi prices.

If you're not bothered about the fat, then you can use 20% fat mince (save £3), and the wine is optional. Omitting both of those would mean a complete meal for less then 75p.

I will be putting lentils in my next batch, re suki's advice, which will obviously give more portions.

I cook mine very, very long and slow - it will cook for most of the day, and be quite happily bubbling away on the hob, so long as you give it a stir every so often. Brown your mince, add your onions and garlic, then the peppers, mushrooms and carrots, cook down, and then add the rest of your ingredients, remembering to rinse your tins with 1/2 canful of boiling water (waste not, want not). Check for seasoning during cooking, remembering that your sauce will cook down and become much more flavoursome as it cooks.

westcoastscot

deleted - Apologies OP
How are you getting along with your changes? Have they been well received by your teens??