Moving more to local shopping and more cooking from scratch

thecornflake

Hi, wasn't sure if this fitted better here or in the old style forum.
Last year when we went into lockdown, due to supermarkets being a nightmare and me working from home so just having the time to be able to more we started doing more frequent shopping at more independent local places than the usual weekly large supermarket shop and occasional top-up during the week. Since then we'd ended up going back to the original way we did things although not entirely - I use a local fruit and veg box delivery scheme once a week, visit a local butchers now and then and we go to a local community\farm shop place weekly (although that's mainly for the coffee - they have meat from a local farm which is lovely but quite expensive).
I'd like to move more away from supermarket shopping to using the local places more often but the main issue with this is changing our usual meals over to ones that our reasonably picky kids will be ok with. I'd say our meals are currently about 50\50 between cooked fresh from scratch and easy stuff from the freezer (I love cooking and happily do it daily but there's also the convenience aspect especially with my wife working some odd shifts as a paramedic) .
I think my main challenges are introducing more veg (ideally with every meal) and replacing oven chips with different alternatives to avoid reliance on frozen chips. I plan to try home made oven chips this week and see if I can get something everyone likes. Also the cost of meat in our shopping would increase slightly (the butchers is very reasonable and great quality but sometimes isn't going to be as cheap as supermarket stuff). So this plus just general environmental and health reasons means I want to reduce the proportion of meat in our meals and ideally have at least 1-2 vegetarian meals per week. The kids aren't really bad with food but will generally only eat a small selection of veg (carrots, green beans and brocolli usually). Also my wife is lactose and gluten intolerant.
My plan so far is that this week I followed a usual menu plan and kept the receipt from the weekly shop. Each day I'm keeping a note of the main meal we had and the cost, and then I plan to see if that could have been done better (unless it was already done from scratch) and with items bought from smaller local places.
I think my ultimate goal is to only really have to go to a big supermarket maybe once a month for key store cupboard staples, although we have a very good local place that does dried foods, spices etc and we even have a small Italian food supplier that does pasta, passata etc. We have a local flour mill as well for all types of flour. And a zero packaging refill store. So it would be pretty much only for a few things I really can't get anywhere else, or when I just can't get the time to get to all the different places.

littlegreenparrot

How old are the children? Is it feasible to get them involved in the cooking? Sometimes that helps them feel more like trying things and it's good for them to learn. 
Will they eat other veg if it's all pureed up in soup? If they will that's a winner. Something like butternut squash for example might go down well. You could try roasting other root veg instead of oven chips, sweet potato, parsnips, carrots. Be prepared to offer stuff a few times if they are not on board straight away. 
You could also try introducing different grains, cous cous/bulghar wheat/quinoa if you don't already have it. 
Something like baked potatoes and omelettes is very easy and only takes a few minutes. 

When I first started moving towards a more plant based diet I took all the vegan and vegetarian recipe books out of the library to see what I liked the look of, have fun 

gwynlas

Congratulations on your endeavours. Are you able to grow vegetables at all as this is a good way to get children to try things having seen the process from seed to table? Home made wedges are easier than chips and you can leave the skin on. The German supermarket are generally cheaper for lactose free milk.Hopefully the oldstylers will see this as well as lots of knowledgeable people on there maybe you could post a notice on that forum.

thecornflake

Yes I can and do usually grow some stuff at home - we rent and don't have any actual beds for growing so I do everything in pots. Kids are 13 and 18, so possibly harder to convert to some things e.g. with the novelty of growing from seed although having seen me doing it a lot they do at least have a pretty good concept of where most of our food comes from and how it's grown. Neither of them particularly likes soup unfortunately as that would save me a lot of hassle especially things like weekend lunches.
Baked potatoes is definitely one thing everyone will eat happily. I had pretty good success making sweet potato wedges but the younger one isn't too keen on them. I'll try regular ones soon.

-taff

Well,spaghetti bolognese can hide a mutliude of veg,carrots,celery, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms and you can throw in some lentils to bulk it out.

I recently made a jamie oliver recipe for lentils with a salsa, it's a very old recipe but a good one. I added more oil and vinegar to the lentils and used them as a cold salad the day after.

If they like spices, then an aubergine curry could be good. I made one this week by throwing in anything I fancied along with a tin of tomatoes and some water, had it with homemade coriander and lime rice [ boil rice, chuck in chopped coriander and squeeze lime juice in, it's probably better the day after. But you can make coconut rie the same way, but boil the coconut and rice together. My curry was pretty good and not too hot [ choose your chilli level] but I put in half a teaspoon of tumeric, a teaspoon or more of garam marsala, garlic granules because I didn't have fresh, grated ginger, teaspoon of brown mustard seed and another of light brown ones [ I like the pop they make when you chew them] , teaspoon of ground cumin and the same of ground coriander, a little bit of dreied thyme. I fried the onions first then put in the dried spices, fried them for a bit then chucked in the veg compnents and cooked for a while. I added another teaspoon of garam marsala about five minutes before the end of cooking. {most of these measurements are a guess because I chuck in a bit of this, a bit of that. Don't go crazy with the tumeric and you'll be fine].

You can do roasted veg fajitas,and if you wanted to do your own tortillas I recommend getting some masa flour, it's made from corn so your wife will be fine with it. Making their own supper up with bowls of  soured cream for your kids, guacamole and grated cheese might appeal to your kids. I'd also recommend getting some gram flour, it's ground chickpeas, again, good for your wife and you can use it in whatever you use normal flour in, it has a slightly more earthy taste. Lentils, dals and legumes of any kind will bulk out a veg meal and have some substance so you're not immediately hungry afterwards.

Wraithlady

gwynlas said:

 The German supermarket are generally cheaper for lactose free milk.

As a 'lactose-intolerant' person myself, I would just say be cautious with this type of product - whatever it is in cow milk I react to, it isn't actually the lactose (I can't be bothered trying to find out exactly what it is, I just avoid cow milk)

A friend of mine bought some as she thought it would be fine as it was lactose-free - i was throwing up for 4 days, and she was mortified.

goldfinches

I suggest you try signing up for the emailed daily and weekly recipe suggestions from magazines like bbc good food, good housekeeping, olive, delicious, dairy diary, Delia, Nigella, Jamie and anyone else you've found interesting before.

You end up with an overflowing inbox and an enormous list of favourites that you fancy trying some time or other if you're like me but you'll get a lot of inspiration and once you find some sources that are pitched at your level of expertise, equipment and budget that your family like you can then start exploring their site for more recipes.

The other places you can look are your library if it is open and bear in mind that some are offering all sorts of e-book access now, your own and relative's recipe books, charity shops when they reopen for more recipe collections and if you have an e-reader have a look there to see what's free or very cheap.
Then there is the Grocery Challenge thread which is a sticky on Old Style and has a huge recipe collection and the threads like what are you making for dinner and reverse menu planning and so on. 
You will know best how to motivate your own children but you could always try linking expanding the range of foods they have at least tried to something they already care about such as appearing sophisticated at uni because they know how to prepare a range of delicious and cheap snacks etc. I expect that's a totally useless suggestion for your family but you see what I mean.

joedenise

If you take up @golfinches suggestion can I suggest you set up a different email address to your usual one so that you can keep those types of email separate to your main email address. Gmail are good for this type of thing.

-taff

I hink youshould also look at your selection of herbs and spices. Vegetable dishescan be pretty boring if you stuck to the boil or steam [ yes I know some people really like them like that, myself included] but when you're trying to get someone else to enjoy them, you need ot think outside the box a bit for flavour.

Is there a particular meal you're interested in or a paticular substitution you're looking for? What food do you like to eat, what food do your kids like to eat.

maman

If you like chilli then that works really well as a veggie meal. I use the Hairy Biker's recipe Chilli con carne - Recipes - Hairy Bikers and replace the meat with two extra tins of various pulses (chick peas, cannellini, butter beans etc) . As you're not veggie then stick with the beef stock for flavour. I add carrots, peppers and mushrooms to bulk it out. These can be grated/chopped finely if you think they need hiding. It's better eaten the day after cooking to allow flavours to marinate and also freezes well. It's good with rice or for a jacket potato topping. 

Apintplease

A lot of traditional meat based dishes can me turned into veggie with no loss of flavour or texture 

Lets take bolognaise or shepherd pie, chilli for instance. Red lentils are your friend.  Reduce the amount of mince, and add lentils to start with, to get them used to the texture, and believe me, cook low and slow, they won't notice. I use about 50/50 with my staunch meat and two veg on a plate husband. You can either keep it like that or slowly work over toward a veggie recipe. The addition of beans/carrots/mushrooms/ whatever veg you like in whatever dish gives the texture

Same with curry. I cook curry from scratch most of the time, sometimes I use a jar, but both are fine. If Im doing chicken for instance I use thighs - always thighs which I have to skin and bone myself as so much cheaper and it only takes a few minutes to work through a kilo. But cut the chicken portion down and chuck in a tin of chickpeas, through in a block of frozen spinach ( fresh if you have it ) Slowly you can reduce the chicken portion till your curry is vegetables - add squash or potatoes , add peas - do it all slowly enough people get used to it

Buy the better quality meat, but cut the portion size. We all eat way too much meat. Theres three of us in this house and for example I will make a chicken feed the three of us twice at least. Roast chicken dinner, with stuffing ( using up stale bread and herbs from the garden ) cauliflower cheese, carrots and parsnips roasted, roast potatoes and a green veg - theres not a lot of room on the plate for meat, nor room in the belly, so a couple of slices is plenty . Whats left will make a pie - I never call my pies chicken and ? as theres more ? then chicken, but I make a beautiful gravy for the pie and served with a pile of veg, no one realises there is very little chicken

We have a saying in kitchens, we are here to feed them, not fatten them. Its a mantra we should all use I think.