The OS Starter Pack

crawley_girl

nannaC wrote: »

Hi, what a great list. Another sneaky way to save a few more pennies is to use ordinary tinned toms, if you want them chopped just drain the juice thne chop with a knife whilst still in the tin, also I buy own brand frozen white fish Mr A currently has 900gm of pollock for £1.61? this goes a long way.

What is pollock?

zarazara

its a white fish

rachbc

crawley_girl wrote: »

What is pollock?

Its a fish- generally sold as 'white fish'. I too buy these bags from Mr A - great for fishcakes, pies, in curry. 1 pack does about 3/4 meals for us (3 plus toddler)

SunnyGirl

Great list & great idea thanks! I'd add that meal planning can save a fortune in the supermarket too. For my very first meal plan I had a look at what was already in the fridge/freezer & cupboards & what was coming up on offer in the next week at the supermarket (in my case Netto I pick up the sale leaflet when I shop each week). I then wrote out a list of meals based on these two things & added things to the shopping list at the same time. So if I'm putting spaghetti bolognese on the meal plan I'll check what I have already first, then write down the bits I need (i.e.) mince, tom puree, long spaghetti etc even down to mixed herbs. That way I only buy what we'll use which is especially useful if we're having a tight week/month.

If I'm buying a big bag of potatoes I'll make sure that there's a couple of meals on the plan that'll use them up - roast on Sunday, mash on Tuesday & baked on Saturday say. It's saved me a lot of money and means I don't throw any food away now as everything's used. I used to impulse buy things without a real thought as to how I was going to use them, and invariably end up throwing them away at the end of the week I'm embarassed to say!

Hope that this makes sense! This board has helped me so so much it's brilliant with such a lot of helpful people on it who'll gladly share experience & recipes - thanks guys!

tryingtobegood

Great List and Great You for sticking to it :beer:
This list is really what I try to achieve every month and usually fall by the wayside by week 2....:(
However this month we are really struggling for cash and basically my end goal is to have an overdraft of less than £100 at the end of Feb (overdraft at end of Jan -£418) and no spend on credit cards:o
So Feb was christened "Frugal February" . I am trying to keep my food and household shopping to the minimum by only buying what we really need (Spend £74.79 so far) and using up what's in the freezer and storecupboards...my own wee storecupboard challenge really.

But I've had a few disasters this week. Firstly I made macaroni cheese for dinner on Wed night. I used reduced but dated 13/20/09 cheese for the sauce . My flour is dated Oct 08 and I'm trying hard to use it up and the mustard powder I know was dated 2007 as my mum and I split the tin and she still has it..I asked her to check out the date!
So the meal itself was fine, a bit bland but i perked it up with parmesan. 2 hours later there was a rush for the loo. Me, DH and DS all had the gary glitters. DD refused point blank to eat her dinner as she is teething so she was fine.
I'm now wondering was it the out of date flour and mustard that caused the GG's or what. This was the only meal that we all had that was the same on Wednesday.
On Thursday I made a veg soup in the slow cooker using a reduced (40p)bag of carrot, turnip, leek and onion from Morrisons. I added a beef oxo cube and a carton of passata to try and make a tomato based soup. It is horrible. It smells of burnt swede. I can't bring myself to throw it out but I can't think what else to do with it. Any suggestions?

This turned into a bit of an essay....sorry:o

SunnyGirl

Have you tried adding a pinch of sugar to your soup to counteract the acidity of the tomatoes TTBG? This, along with a good dose of salt & pepper (take the LO's out first though!) usually livens things up IMHO. Also how about adding some pasta & a chopped potato for a minestrone style affair? Apart from that I don't know I'm sorry. I had my fair share of soup disasters/other disasters in the beginning & it's always when you really can't afford to waste the ingredients. I once used my last flour, oats & butter in a flapjack affair (Delia's would you believe) and it didn't work! Most unusual for a Delia recipe. HTH.

Beki

Brilliant thread! Thanks!

meanmarie

TTBG...I love swede turnip, but never put it in soup as I don't like the flavour it imparts to the soup...would this be your problem? I am sure that the soup is fine, maybe a bit of sugar as suggested by someone else and a few grinds of black pepper might make it more palatable...mind you black pepper is a cure-all in this house!

Marie

tryingtobegood

I'll take a few laldles out and try to sweeten it up and see what that's like tomorrow. It's probably the turnip that's the culprit as I don't usually put this into soups.
Thanks for the help!

sb44

SunnyGirl wrote: »

I used to impulse buy things without a real thought as to how I was going to use them, and invariably end up throwing them away at the end of the week I'm embarassed to say!

I think a few of us are or have been guilty of that.

:rolleyes: