Sainsburys and Jamie Olivers Feed your Family for £5 Chat Thread

chelsea.housewife

I am touched and encouraged by your messages. Cooking on a budget is all about being ingenius in the kitchen and making amazing dishes from basic ingredients. Take the potato, for example, one of the most versatile of vegetables and packed with vitamin c and minerals including potassium, magnesium and zinc. It's cheap, filling and nutritious. Here's my recipe for POTATO CHEESECAKE. It's yummy.

POTATO CHEESECAKE
Ingredients:
Pastry Base:
225g/8 oz plain flour
112g/4 oz butter or margarine
3–4 tablespoons cold water
Filling:
112g/4 oz butter or margarine
112g/4 oz sugar
112g/4 oz currants or sultanas
450g/1 1b mashed potato
4 eggs
squirt of lemon juice
Method:
Pastry Base:
Rub the butter into the flour - till bread-crumb like. Sprinkle with a little water to make dough. Knead lightly for a few seconds till smooth.
To roll out - sprinkle a little flour on the surface and onto the rolling pin and roll out the dough evenly, turning occasionally. Use to line a flan tin or smaller tins.
Filling:
For the filling – beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Stir in the eggs and fold in the sultanas, mashed potato and lemon juice.
Spread the mixture onto the pastry base and bake for about 1hour, gas mark 4 (180c) until set and golden brown. Serve hot or cold.

Serves 8-12

D&DD

chelsea.housewife wrote: »

I should have said I am the author of 'How to Feed Your Family for £5 a Day' (Bernadine Lawrence) and have just completed a follow up cook book full of tasty meals for under a fiver.

Oh My Goodness Me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:T :j :T :j

Bernadine just wanted to say my rather stained,tatty and very well used copy of your book is still in pride of place on my groaning bookshelves.
I have the "how to feed your family on £4 a day aka The Benefit Book" version,I bought it new when I was newly married and on a tight budget..(some things never change we're still skint!!) I have used it so much over the years.
As Thriftylady said as soon as I saw your menu I too thought it may be you and I am soooooo pleased to see it is!! You have a rather large fanclub on here
Can't wait for the new book
Dee XX

chelsea.housewife

Bernadine just wanted to say my rather stained,tatty and very well used copy of your book is still in pride of place on my groaning bookshelves.
I have the "how to feed your family on £4 a day aka The Benefit Book" version,I bought it new when I was newly married and on a tight budget..(some things never change we're still skint!!) I have used it so much over the years.

Thankyou D&DD. I can't tell you how encouraging your message is - "stained, tatty and very well used" is great!

culpepper

gosh Ive just seen this and I have to add my thanks Bernadine. My book has been glued back together. I have it hidden in my bedroom ,otherwise my son would have swiped it to take to uni. He loves the whole fruitcake recipe.
The whole book was such a useful reource to me over the years.
I hope you manage to get your next book published and on the shelves because I shall fly out and buy it.

InTheRed

chelsea.housewife wrote: »

I am touched and encouraged by your messages. Cooking on a budget is all about being ingenius in the kitchen and making amazing dishes from basic ingredients. Take the potato, for example, one of the most versatile of vegetables and packed with vitamin c and minerals including potassium, magnesium and zinc. It's cheap, filling and nutritious. Here's my recipe for POTATO CHEESECAKE. It's yummy.

POTATO CHEESECAKE
Ingredients:
Pastry Base:
225g/8 oz plain flour
112g/4 oz butter or margarine
3–4 tablespoons cold water
Filling:
112g/4 oz butter or margarine
112g/4 oz sugar
112g/4 oz currants or sultanas
450g/1 1b mashed potato
4 eggs
squirt of lemon juice
Method:
Pastry Base:
Rub the butter into the flour - till bread-crumb like. Sprinkle with a little water to make dough. Knead lightly for a few seconds till smooth.
To roll out - sprinkle a little flour on the surface and onto the rolling pin and roll out the dough evenly, turning occasionally. Use to line a flan tin or smaller tins.
Filling:
For the filling – beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Stir in the eggs and fold in the sultanas, mashed potato and lemon juice.
Spread the mixture onto the pastry base and bake for about 1hour, gas mark 4 (180c) until set and golden brown. Serve hot or cold.

Serves 8-12

Hi! Have I missed the point with the potato cheesecake? I can;t see any mention of cheese in the recipe?!!
i look forward to hearing about your new book also, tried on Amazon to find your original book, but out of stock:rolleyes:
InTheRed

chelsea.housewife

InTheRed wrote: »

Hi! Have I missed the point with the potato cheesecake? I can;t see any mention of cheese in the recipe?!!
i look forward to hearing about your new book also, tried on Amazon to find your original book, but out of stock:rolleyes:
InTheRed

Hi InTheRed,

I should have said that it's a dessert. It's a sweet cheesecake made from potatoes. And that's the beauty of it. There's no cheese, just potatoes. So it's cheaper and it tastes damn good too.

It's great, isn't it, what you can do with basic ingredients? We're all gonna have to get more ingenious in the kitchen, now that food prices are rising.

I'll keep you posted if I get anywhere with the new book.

junesong

i'm new to the boards but a long time lurker.
I've been trying to convince the boy to start menu planning for a while now but have been finding it difficult as he is generally the one in charge of buying food as he gets paid a fair bit more than me and I have more debt than him. This month he declared that I was in charge as he didn't get his bonus. Some words were said when I discovered he was relying on his bonus to feed us! However, due to sickness and altered scheduling, this month I was paid approximately £100 less than usual. As we both work full time in retail our days end about seven and off we toddle to tesco both stressed and hungry. But neither of us can decide what we want to eat and generally end up buying almost £20 worth of rubbish as we can't be bothered to cook or a proper meal that we won't end up eating until nine once we've finished making it or store cupboard items that we already have because we can't remember that we have it.
So I'm going to use these meals for a fiver as a way to jump start menu planning. This way we know we'll only buy food that is specific for a meal and won't end up throwing away food that we haven't eaten because we can't be bothered to cook it. I've suggested that we both put in £25 a week for this so we'll have £50, giving us a little leeway to add extra things (the boy was not impressed with the idea of meatless macaroni and cheese so we can add bacon) which seems like a lot but compared to £140 a week isn't. Also there's only two of us so we can use left overs for lunches.
Hopefully this will get him to see that knowing what meals we'll have will make our evenings less stressful and that we don't need to spend much money on wasting food.
How did everyone else go about menu planning?

Pink.

Hi Junesong,

Welcome to MSE :hello:

You'll find lots of information on how others manage with meal planning on the threads in The Complete Menu Plans Collection

Good luck with cutting back.

Pink

Yategirl

chelsea.housewife wrote: »

Thankyou so much thriftlady, I thought I'd be in good company here - lots of like-minded people.

I'm looking for a publisher for my book and am doing the publicity for it myself. Hoping to be on 'It Pays to Watch' on 7th May. We'll see.

I was a bit miffed when I heard of Jamie's campaign as I was the originator of the idea, but you know there are a lot of people out there at their wits end trying to manage on an ever-decreasing income and not eating properly. I'm glad Jamie's showing them how to eat well on a budget.

However, it's not as simple as a few recipes. Folk need to know the basics of healthy eating, they need to know how to shop, how to keep within budget, what to keep in their store cupboard, how to plan meals and how to use leftovers etc.

All of which is in my new, as yet, unpublished book. Maybe we should have a competition on its title.

It's a crime to throw food away. It's bad for everyone, bad for the planet and bad for the purse.

Bernadine Lawrence

I'm another fan with your book on the bookshelf! PLEASE make sure you let us know here when you book is due out - I will be first in the queue (well ok.. fighting with everyone else here to be first :rotfl: )

eve75_2

Hi this seems to be the board for sharing recipes so i thought i'd share mine - well my friend showed me how to make it.
This is enough for myself, my husband, 14yr old daughter, 12yr old daughter and 8yr old son so there's plenty to go around.

It sounds bogging but tastes so nice, i serve it with serve with frozen peas that i always have in the freezer.

5lb bag of red spuds - £1.28
2 tins smart price tuna - 70p
2 tins of campbells condensed chicken soup - 80p
A little grated cheese for on the top

Preheat oven to 190
Boil spuds and mash
Drain tuna and put in oven dish
Add tins of soup to tuna but don't water down with milk as it makes the mixture go too runny.
Mix together whilst cold.
Put the mash on top,scratch with a fork and add the cheese on top.
Ready in about half hour when the top is nicely brown. Serve with some peas and sweetcorn. Mmm