to try and settle the 'which is cheaper, junk or cooked from scratch' debate once and for all

[IceBeing]

I have seen both sides of this recently on MN and on the box.

So. submit your meal plans here.

1. Choose junk or home cooked

1. Give a shopping list plus price for a weeks worth of food for a family of 4, assuming no reliance on a 'store cupboard' and no meal sharing.

1. Give an estimated weekly cooking time plus shopping time.

1. indicate if your plan relies on a local aldi/lidl etc.

Lets sort this the JEFF out please.....

Breakfasts are branflakes, toast and jam, porridge etc I expect to have to buy 8 more pints of milk and two more loaves of bread which will be £3.50 all together.

wow that is pretty jeffing amazing!

I've taken a bit of an interest in budget cooking since working out my weekly budget menu and have been doing a bit of googling on bulk buying.

A lot of the websites that I've come across are American and today a gem said "these are great marinade recipes for freezing chicken when it's on sale for under $2 a lb".

Yep, so apparently in America you can get a full kilo of chicken breast for under £4.50. Has anyone come across anything near that cheap? Even shopping at Aldi doesn't do that...

Yeah, actually, Aldi does a 1kg value bag of frozen breast fillets for £2.99. The premium ones (100% chicken) are £5.41 a kg, though.

You mean the £2.99 frozen breast fillets aren't actually made of chicken?

I'd rather eat quorn than cheap battery chicken anyway.

Really garlic? I think I'm probably still too much of a food snob when I go to Aldi then - I tend not to look in the frozen section much!

I can't make things stretch for days.
People who say they get 4-5 meals out of a chicken(Bluesbaby). Or a 500g pack of mince(LoopyLupo).
I make one meal. There is no mince left over. There is no chicken meat left over.
We must eat like giants, compared to your family.

But when I make bulk, I use 2kg of mince, and make enough to make 3 lasagnes. One lasagne feeds 4 of us.
I have no idea what quantities most of you are eating, but obviously totally different to mine.

According to the NHS you shouldn't eat more than 70g of red meat a day so a 500g pack should make 7 portions. 2kg in your batch cooking should make 28 portions. Which is more than double what you are getting from it. Scary stuff!

Noobie, the value chicken contain water and sugar iirc, though they're not re-formed. I imagine they're injected with sugar solution to give them more body? They cook up OK, anyway, without too much shrinkage.

Pah, Nora, the NHS changes its mind ever couple of months

Yup - they've just changed it from 90g to 70g!

"Give a shopping list plus price for a weeks worth of food for a family of 4, assuming no reliance on a 'store cupboard' and no meal sharing."

That's impossible though and not a fair comparison at all.

When you buy "junk" food, you eat it as you go and very rarely have anything left over.

When you cook from scratch you tend to build up a store cupboard as you go due to the fact you are using a variety of different ingredients to make it from fresh, dried and tinned. So if a recipe requires a certain ingredient, you would buy that, use it in your dish then keep it in the cupboard for the next use. You wouldn't throw it away.

So next time when a recipe needs certain things you go to your cupboard and use some of the things you have built up in there such as sauces, tins, dried goods etc. People who make from scratch don't throw the ingredients out after if they haven't used it all up so it is impossible to give examples of making from scratch but not allowed to go to the cupboard and it's not about spending lots of money on cupboard staples, they are just things you gain over time when you cook certain foods.

Junk is just that, junk. You open it, shove it in the microwave or oven and your done and there is no ingredients to save for next time. Plus when you look at the salt content and nutritional value of some of that stuff, homemade meals are way better for you and your body.

I've worked out the protein in my menu. There is plenty, maybe even too much?

BREAKFASTS
Porridge with whole milk = 14.7g x 5 days
Toast and eggs = 16g x 2 days

LUNCHES
Beans on toast = 23.6g x 2
Soup and toast = 14g x 2
Sardines on toast = 28.4g x 1
Cheese sandwich = 20g x 2

DINNERS
Saussage casserole and pasta = 24.1g
Tuna pasta bake = 43.0g
Spicy egg rice with beans = 30g
Frittata with salad and beans = 29.0
Rice with veggie chill = 27g
Sausages and cheesy mash = 23.5g
Daal and naan bread = 23.6g

Average per day over the week = 64.2g per person per day

Oblomov
You asked about potion sizes, and I do think that's got a lot to do with costs.

I use one 500g pack of mince for one bolognaise or lasagne for six, and I often have one portion to freeze after. I do add cooking bacon, chicken livers, lots of mushroom, onions etc, and sometimes red lentils\handful if oats if I'm feeling healthy or cheap.

When dishing up youngest dd age 8 gets one ladle of sauce, going up to two for older children 11,13,15 and me, more for DH. One 500g pack of pasta. Grated cheese to put on top on the table. We'd have a salad with that, and a fruit based pudding, eg stewed fruit in crumble, strudel, yoghurt or similar.

We're all normal weight and dh, dd and I do endurance sport, so we do eat well.

Portion sizes - if you can, check out a 1950's or 1960's cook book - portion sizes have roughly doubled in the last 50 years. We simply do not need to eat the amount of food most of us consider 'normal' these days. For our family (2 adults, 2 small children) 250g mince does a spag bol/chilli type meal very happily - grate a whole onion and a whole carrot into the mince and it will stretch to 3-4 adults plus the two kids. 2oz of mince per person is perfectly sufficient if you are serving the meal with decent accompaniments - pasta, rice, salad, bulking out with veg in sauces etc.

Also on puddings if we have them - I simply half the portion sizes again, a large but single serving spoon of pudding is a perfectly nice round off to a meal without being too heavy or stuffing. Rice puddings, bread and butter puddings, crumbles etc, all can be stretched very happily.

Portion size also feeds into the obesity crisis. As a nation we really do need to reassess the sheer volumes of food we eat, and to be a lot more honest with ourselves. I eat far too much (sweets and crap though as opposed to larger portions of proper meals) - that's why I'm overweight. It's very simple.

Okay, have done the lasagne and the bolognese.

Spag Bol was £2.04 for 4 good portions. Would probably use more spaghetti next time as wasn't quite as generous as the sauce - used the 75g recommended on the packet. Served with grated cheese on top. Could probably have stretched it to 6 portions of sauce.

Lasagne was £2.62 for six portions. And they're decent portions.

Tesco ready made value lasagne for four - £2.98, although I used Aldi to buy my ingredients. But anyway, up yours Tesco.

I think portion control/size is an important point: both to the obesity crisis and to our food costs.

I think there are two factors (amongst others) that have contributed to this: one is the whole "low fat" emphasis combined with the increase in carbohydrates which mean that we don't feel satiated and second (which is particularly dangerous combined with the first) is that we no longer as a society, there are obviously exceptions take the time to eat. Sitting down as a family, talking about the day while you eat means that your brain has time to register that you're full.

Good post sparkle That's so true. I'm trying to make our portions smaller - not to save money, but to stop us from over-eating. It's habit, not necessity, but it's also expensive.

Ok, I'm very tired and struggling to take all this in but.... how big are some of your flipping chickens?!!

We buy a medium chicken for Sunday roast, there is 4 of us. We eat it. ALL. In one sitting.

Slopes off feeling glutinous.......

I get a 1.5/1.7kg chicken (the chicken brick is only supposed to take a 3lb chicken but I can squeeze in a slightly bigger one).

That will do three of us generously for one roast meal (including skin) and a cold roast meal. Carcass will then be used for stock, cooled and then stripped and added back into the stock (for, eg, chicken noodle soup) or used in a sandwich.

I am slightly frugal, in that I hate throwing things away.
This weekend I came back from holiday to discover a gammon joint from the sainsburys 3 for £10 deal that I had forgotten about.

It was 2 days out of date but smelt fine so cooked it for about 6 hours on a very low heat to make pulled ham, used the stock with some chana dhal to make a soup, adding some ground cumin and some passata.
I made a salad for my lunch with the ham, and added it to a pasta bake and added the final bit to an omelette.

Out of one gammon joint costing £3.33, I got 3 lunches and 2 main meals for 3 people. The extra costs were 1/4 bag of chana dhal, ground cumin, carton of passatta (29p) for the soup. 6 eggs (£1) for the omelette and half a bag of pasta (50p), sauce (£1) and frozen mixed veg (50p) for the pasta bake.

The salad stuff I grow myself so didn't cost me anything.

Made a sponge fruit cake for pudding tonight, it was delicious, it took about an hour - cost about £1.30. Not that much cheaper than the usual Muller fruit corner.

Made ginger cake for pudding and it made 16 pieces plus 12 fairy cake sized individual ones for packed lunches. Think it must have cost about £1. Not sure though and am too tired to work it out as the recipe is in pounds and ounces and the prices are per kilo. Although am getting a bit obsessive about this so may have to go and check.

£1.60 to make so 6p per portion.

Is there such a thing as one-downmanship?