Really cheap meals and snacks

[Redundancyhell]

I'm going through redundancy and need to keep budgets to a minimum until I find another job. Can anyone recommend really cheap meals and snacks.

I'm hoping to stick to around £3 per day for food which will be challenging but I'm happy to not have too much meat and don't need too many snacks or treats each week. It's just me so if I have to occasionally be a bit hungry then I'll survive.

So far I'm thinking:
Homemade veg soup
Plain omelates
Beans on toast
Things from my freezer
Pasta and tuna/tomato veg pasta
Porridge

Ideas very welcome. I'm struggling to think of much, including for snacks. I bought an apple today and it cost 50p which seems nuts for 1 apple but I couldn't afford the £2.30 for 6 and I know I need some fruit to stay healthy 😓

I don't have much in my cupboards but do have a bit of pasta, some tins of kidney beans, oil, herbs, some tins of tuna, sugar, porridge oats and gravy.

Bilk out mince with lentils

It’s harder than it used to be, some things like kidney beans, baked beans, rice, pasta used to be so cheap and have at least doubled in price. I used to live on £28 per week but that was 10 years ago, think I’d struggle now.

I mainly shop in Asda these days, some good buys:

Oats £1.25 a kilo for porridge
A kg of summer fruits is £4 but can use sparingly 50g at a time for 20p

Kilo of frozen veg- 99p
Tin Chick peas- 45p (even cheaper to buy dry and soak and cook)
Curry sauce (tikka masala, madras etc) 99p or if you have a stocked herb cupboard and tomatoes make your own
Rice 2kg for £2.40

Can combine this (won’t need to use all the veg or rice) to make dinner for a few nights.

Pasta sauce- 70p (or again make your own)
Fusili or penne 1kg- £1.29
Green lentils- 49p (or buy dry and soak)

Can make a couple of meals with lots of pasta left over.

Potatoes as others have said are good
Onions are 99p for a big bag, less than 10p each
Kidney Beans 50p
Chilli cooking sauce 99p or make your own
Peppers £1.87 for 6 or 31p each

Again can make a few meals from that or alternate with rice.

For snacks- £1.09 for 340g of peanut butter, a bit of that on bread or a cracker (49p a pack). Also biscuits, 54p will get you 250g of ginger nuts, good for a bit of comfort food with a cup of tea. Carrot sticks also good, you can get a kilo for 70p and have a mix of raw and cooked with your meals.

For fruit, also a good snack, you need to see what is seasonal- decent sized bags of pears right now for 99p, and often good deals on bananas, 7 for 79p at the moment.

There has been a lot of great ideas on This thread

i just wanted to add a little suggestion.

if you are buying potatoes keep the peels if you feel them for mash etc.
clean them as you peel the potatoes and dry them

they can get cooked with a little oil when you have the oven on to do other things and go lovely and crispy then you can add a little salt or you can use them instead of potato slices to make gratin I use a packet cheese sauce which is cheap instead of cream sauce and it’s great as the edges go crispy and it makes a meal or a side to a meal using something you would throw away anyway.

also use the food bank! @Redundancyhell you have worked hard and ended up in a situation you had no control over you deserve a little help so use it!

im wishing you the best of luck @Redundancyhell

A bag of dried red lentils will go a long way and you can use in soups, curry, pastas or chilli.

We also have "veggie rice" as a cheap and easy staple. Any veg, frozen or fresh (cheapest probably onion, frozen sweetcorn or peas, grated carrot or shredded cabbage) stir fried, add cooked rice and herbs & spices and any beans or chickpeas. You could also add noodles instead for a change.

Big bag of cheap white potatoes and carrots can go in most things to add bulk

Cut down on meat, but if you do have it buy frozen. Also tinned fish - not just tuna, tinned sardines or mackerel in tomato sauce are tasty in pasta or on a jacket potato

Placemarking so I can read tomorrow.

Snacks - own brand crumpets, crackers, bananas, Aldi cereal bars. Make a pie and portion it into 8 and freeze? Carrot and lentil soup with french bread.

You don't need to have sweet fruit.

Carrots, onions, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber lentils, tinned tomatoes and frozen veg are all less expensive ways of contributing towards your 5 a day.

Yesterday, I made a chicken casserole in the slow cooker which was delicious, and made 4 generous portions. Are you able to freeze some things? I appreciate it may look high for one meal, but it'd cost £1.12 per portion.

I used (from Aldi):

Chicken thighs - £2.85 for 1kg
Chicken casserole sachet - 34p
1 bag baking potatoes - 65p
1 bag diced onion - 45p
3 carrots - 38p (for the bag, you could use the rest in a soup, or slice and freeze for next time)

£4.67 to buy.

I cut the skin off the thighs and cooked it with the bone in, and then stripped the meat down at the end and mixed back in. It was delicious.

You could pick up a pizza for 99p from Aldi which would is a quick and easy meal in an evening and within budget for you.

A pack of baking potatoes (65p for four) and one tin of beans (28p) would do two meals (I'd use two potatoes as they're not huge).

If you've already got some kit for baking, eg baking tray, home made plain or fruit scones are quick, tasty and very cheap for a snack.
You don't need an egg, just milk, you can even make scones with sour milk. You can make cheese scones with cheese past its best, they go very well with soup.

Or scones can be used as a cobbler topping for vegetable or mixed bean casserole.
A rich scone mixture, made with an egg can be used as a home made pizza base, it comes out similar to a deep pan pizza. With some passata, cheese and herbs, it's a very cheap meal.

@Redundancyhell I do hope you change your mind about not using a food bank, your circumstances are exactly what food banks were set up for, people in sudden financial distress. Your GP will be able to give you a referral, or often local churches have food banks with more flexible rules.

https://www.earthandwheat.com/ this a subscription box that usually does the first box for £4 and you get about 7 or 8 bread items - it always has enough pancakes and crumpets for a week, and then a mix of pitta, flatbreads etc. You could get one and freeze the bread. You can cancel straight away.

Thank you so much everyone. You are all amazing.

If you have DC and are out of work, do a benefit check, you'll be entitled to universal credit - are you a single parent? Will you be getting a redundancy payment?

For spices, if you can manage the investment, larger packs will be really worthwhile - if you buy chilli, turmeric, cumin and coriander from the world foods aisle, plus frozen cubes of garlic and ginger that will cost about £5 in total and provide enough spices for about 20 meals that can be veg/pulse based so very cheap.

I know it's difficult like in your apple example, but you've already seen individual items are disproportionately expensive and it will save a huge amount of money overall if you can do it this way.

For fruit, it won't affect your health if you go a few days without fruit but there's loads of ways to reduce the cost, eg buy bananas, frozen berries, or if you see any fresh berries reduced, buy and freeze them - punnets can often be 50 p or less. Plus lots of supermarkets do 'free fruit for kids' so encourage your DC to have something from there while you're at the supermarket.

Baked potatoes with cream cheese baked beans and frozen peas. Yum.

You can bulk out things like mince with finely chopped mushroom to make it last longer. Dried beans which you boil yourself are pretty cheap and nutritious.

supermarket reduced sections can sometimes find decent options and particularly in the fruit/veg sections. Bakery items get marked down at certain point in the evening so you can find a ‘treat’ item for a few pence as it can get monotonous eating the same foods on a budget!

Have a look at too good to go, olio etc

See if you have a community larder / shop. Mine always has bargains towards the end of the week. So yesterday they had a 'roast pack' it was £10, which I know sounds a lot but it had a 900g joint of pork, 1500g potatoes, half a dozen carrots, cauliflower (or you could have cabbage) stuffing mix and gravy granules and 2 onions.

The week before they had a huge bags of fruit and veg for £3.

I realise that is useless if you don't have one local or don't have £10.

If you have milk, eggs and flour you can make Yorkshire puddings or pancakes. Personally I would make a stack of pancakes and freeze them either plain or with stuffings like cheese and mushrooms, cheese and sweetcorn etc. A couple of savoury stuffed pancakes followed by fruit is a decent meal.

If you can get some sausages then a toad in the hole makes a decent meal.

Things that go on toast, baked beans (with or without cheese and/or bacon) sardines / pilchards. Tinned spaghetti, avocado (if you can get a cheap one) banana.

If you have cheap pasta try it with a drop of lemon juice and a knob of butter.

Soup obviously.

Tinned meats are usually quite cheap if you like spam fritters corned beef hash.

Actually you can make a lot of fritters with tinned food, make a batter with flour and milk, add a tin of drained sweetcorn, or peas, or what ever.

Heat some oil in a pan and add a couple of spoonfuls of the mix and fry, turn over and heat until the batter is cooked through.

Buy a Shit ton of mince and tins of chopped tomatoes.
Fry it up and add in the tomatoes.
Portion it out to as many as you can get and freeze.

They're the "bases"

They can be used as:
Bolognese - fry mushrooms, onion, garlic. Defrost a base and pour over.

Chilli - fry peppers, onion, garlic. Defrost and add base. Mix in kidney beans.

Cottageish pie - add base to pie dish, top with mash spuds and cheese, bake till golden. Serve with chips..

With rice - defrost base, add whatever veg etc you can get, serve with rice.

With cheese on toast - literally make cheese on toast, let it cool just a little. heat up a base and pour it on to melt the cheese and it go gooey.

Etc.

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Breakfasts at home -
Porridge - cheapest oats you can get. Soak over night in milk. Heat up, add sugar.

Home made instant porridge when on the go -
Add 5 table spoons of oats to container with lid. Add 1 table spoons powdered milk.
Add 1 table spoons sugar.
Take to work or wherever.
When want it, add hot water slowly and stir until thickened
(Adjust above mounts to your preference)

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Freeze your bread...
Buy a loaf. Put in freezer near top. Remove slices as required. Especially if you like toast. Toasters have frozen bread setting. For sandwiches, leave in fridge over night to defrost. Loaf lasts AGES 🤪

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Try to avoid 'popping' places for 'bits' and plan as much as you can.

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See 'packs' as 'number of meals' instead.
So, say you buy a pack of sausages, some spuds and a bag of frozen veg. Try to shift your thinking slightly from,
"I've got 8 sausages, a bag of spuds and a bag of veg"
To more like,
"I've got 2 meals worth of sausages if I have four or I've got 3 meals worth if I have 3, 3, and 2. What can I have 3 sausages with? Well I got a bag of spuds, I could split that into 4 meals if I mash some, bake some and the veg is 4 meals if I use a quarter a time. So I've got enough for 3 sausages, mash and veg at least twice. 2 sausages I could defrost some bread and have a sausage sarnies on Sunday morning. If I get a box of 4 pies, I can have pie, mash, veg 3 times and a pie and chips once." (I know it sounds bloody obvious and silly, but once you start splitting packs up in those terms, that handful of veg, 2 sausages and lonely spud becomes a meal instead of ignored leftovers in the bottom of the freezer.)

Some cheap meals I do regularly are..

Toad in the hole

Oven chips, microwave egg fried rice with bisto curry sauce

Jacket potato with cheese

Leftovers from a Sunday roast.. I use the veg to make a veggie pie and I use the meat to make a casserole.

There are actually tons of tips on here for all to make food go a bit further- nice tips ladies!!

Fantastic ideas on this thread, op! I’m sorry to hear of your impending redundancy, and hope you find something else soon 💐

@Redundancyhell , I’m hoping that’s just for you. It’s a very tight budget could you get a referral to a food bank?
Anyway here’s my hopefully helpful advice. I’m nigh on vegan and most of my diet revolves around beans. Tonight I’m making a soupy stew with onions, carrots and various beans flavoured with yeast extract at the end I add some broken up wholewheat pasta. It reheats well and I always make enough for several days. I make chilli and curry with beans too again always enough for several days. There are some veg which are reliably cheap and could be served alongside homemade fish cakes or sausages. Leftover veg mixed with mash and fried makes a good dinner with fried eggs. Porridge of course is a filling and cheap breakfast. I’m sorry you’re experiencing this, I hope you get some good advice and a new job soon. X

In your shoes I would stop thinking of £3 a day and instead think £42 a fortnight. It will always be more expensive to buy fruit and other food if you are buying single portions.

Porridge with frozen fruit for breakfast is cheap and easy,

Big bag of potatoes.
Cooking bacon
Cheap cream cheese.
Eggs
Red lentils
Carrots
Onions
Broccoli
Celery
Leeks
Stock cubes
Beansx3
Whole chicken
Bread
Cheese
Corned beef

Mash some potatoes, add flour to make potato cakes. Top with eggs and beans.

Roast chicken and pull all meat off. Use some for a roast/mash pots, some carrots and half of the broccoli.

Boil the chicken carcass to make stock and bin the bones. Add in some stock cubes and a bit more water to make it go further. Into half of the stock add chopped spuds, leeks, onions and some cooking bacon . Finish with a big spoon of cream cheese to make it creamy. 3-4 portions easily.

Use the other half of the stock and some cooking bacon to make bacon and lentil soup. You will get 3-4 decent portions easily.

Use some eggs, cream cheese and broccoli to make frittata/omelette and portion it up.

French toast/egg sandwich is cheap and cheerful and good for protein and carbs.

Cheese on toast, with/without beans

Corned beef hash and beans.

Bananas , pears and easy peelers are cheap at the moment. That would add £3-4 Lidl/aldi to your budget but well worth it in terms of diversity.



If you look at the Facebook page feed your family for £20 she has an emergency meal
Plan that comes in about £20 but is to feed 4 .

Get the 'Too good to go app' bear ones cab local spar, cook's, supermarkets, for £3 ish you can get a good bag of food, loads of examples on here of brilliant bags 😀

TGTG is very hit and miss though and not great for single person households if you get a lot of short dated stuff, especially if it can't be frozen.

There's also a risk that you need other ingredients to make what you get into meals, you get a load of ready prepared stuff that isn't that cheap even at TGTG prices or it's just not to your taste but you still need to eat it because you spent money on it.