If you love cooking but you're on quite a tight budget

[foxessocks]

Have you got any tips? I love to cook but a lot of fresh ingredients are expensive, I've switched to a lot of frozen veg recently as I find it cheaper some times (depends what it is but it also equals less waste). I already cook a lot of vegetarian meals so only cook with meat a few times a week really. But we do love fish and all seafood which is expensive but it is so good for you. I love salmon but it costs us £7 for all of us for one meal. Also fresh herbs are more expensive than dried but taste better.

It got me thinking because I wanted to try a Jamie Oliver recipe next week but it needs so many fresh herbs, vine ripened tomatoes , posh potatoes etc!

I usually shop at Asda and I budget £50 a week including toiletries, cleaning products etc basically everything. And then I do a couple of top up shops usually about £20 in total over the week I suppose (more when school holidays and my dd comes along!!). Top up is just bread milk fruit usually. We are a family of four but my children are young so don't eat huge amounts yet.

Try Miguel Barclay’s One Pound Meals series. His Fast and Fresh one is amazing.

True but it is single serving. (Fie for me though!)

Also Jack Munroe's books are very good also.

This is a good section for ideas too www.mumsnet.com/Talk/credit_crunch

Jamie Oliver's 5 ingredients assumes 5 store cupboard ingredients in addition to the 5 per recipe - olive oil, extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, sea salt and black pepper. Ordinary olive oil for cooking, EVO for dressings.

thanks for the bread making advice - I'm going to look into it more as I've only ever made bread a few times. Might give it a go and see what I think! We've got yeast in the house because dh regularly makes pizzas.

handreared by fairies made me laugh!!! So true. Bloody Jamie Oliver

Today my mum gave me some herbs to grow and some cuttings from her rosemary plus bay leaves from her garden, so glad I asked her - don't know why it didn't occur to me as she is very green-fingered I had just never heard her talk about a herb garden specifically. She already gives me tomatoes, green beans, apples when she has a surplus.

I didn't know that about extra virgin olive oil so thank you for the comments on that - I have changed my food order for this week to include rapeseed oil sintead of extra virgin oil and saved myself about £2 which is great. I heard rapeseed oil is good on the Nadiya cookery programme the other night but hadn't actually looked to see the price, I assumed it would also be very expensive but it's not.

Thanks again everyone for the fab advice, I can't wait to have a go at bread making, growing herbs, bulking up meals, using my leftovers better, and making some nice big puddings to fill everyone up!

probably lots of other things that I've now forgotten I'll have to reread the whole thread I think!

Weirdly just catching up on nadiya family favourites and she is just doing a bit on a woman who bakes all the bread her family eats so I'll watch that with interest!

In my household breadmaking (when it happens) has been a male occupation - so I’ve never developed the patience for it myself. But I suspect that anyone who does might also enjoy turning their excess tomatoes, etc into chutney? It’s really only economical if the vegetable/fruit component comes for free - but it’s extremely satisfying to gaze upon all the newly filled jars on the shelf.

So - home baked bread; homemade chutney - and you have free apples? You need a fruit press - you can make your own cider.

I make Paul Hollywood's foccacia regularly and it's very cheap and easy. It's only in the oven about 25 minutes so not too in the way of fuel.
I also love a roti from the hairy bikers Mum Knows Best book, it's made from self raising flour, salt, water and oil (I use veg/sunflower). We have it with curries but also use it like a flat bread for wraps with various fillings. I like it because it's delicious, easy and you can easily make just one or 20 according to what you need. I used to find we were binning pittas all of the time so now make theses instead.

I often group meals together around one more expensive ingredient. So if I buy a chorizo ring I'll use half in a chorizo and halloumi bake- this has chorizo, sweet potatoes, red onion, peppers and halloumi in it. We'll then have pizza with some of the chorizo, peppers and red onion (with sweet potato wedges) and/or omelette with pepper and chorizo and/or pasta with pepper and chorizo. So the most expensive bits do for 2 or 3 meals.

I love Nadiya's family favourites. Did you see that big pie she made the other week? I so want to try that, it looked amazing.

I just use our yeast for bread. DH makes a really tasty pizza without it that goes straight in the oven cheaptastyandeasy.wordpress.com/friday-night-pizza-for-movie-night/ try it, it's good. He made it a lot when the football was on

If you try growing herbs in water please let me know, I really want to try that.

I did see that pie I want to try that too!!

Thanks for pizza recipe and bread recipes etc lots of stuff to try!!

Re pittas - we keep them in the freezer now and just take out what we need. As we always reheat them in the toaster it works really well.

Do you have an Asian supermarket near OP

Lentils and pulses are so much cheaper as are spices, and they come in big bags.

If you try growing herbs in water please let me know, I really want to try that.

I accidentally found that basil is happy in a glass of water on the window ledge - it grows roots readily so you can pot up new plants if you want. I did this when a plant started to get some stems drooping because they were starting to rot at the base, I just cut them a bit higher up. They perked up and thrived!

Great advice about fresh herbs.

Brilliant, thanks Errol :)