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.....

Here we go again with the bulk buying. Few poor people live in homes with larders, pantries, or even enough storage space for their belongings.

Its the same when you see good deals in the shop which you know would save you money in the long run but you can't afford to spend that much of your weekly budget on those items.

the only example I can thik of is cake. Today I made ds a birthday cake. The eggs alone were 2 quid for 6 and I used 5. An entire pack of tesco basics butter was £1.20. So thats £3 before you add the flour, sugar, more butter for the butter icing, then icing sugar. I cant be arsed to price all of that but I'm guessing £5 or £6. I could have picked up some cheapo cake in Tesco. But no, ds wanted a home made one.
So a home made cake was way more expensive than some cheapo shop bought round one.

It is possible to be poor, busy AND care about animal welfare.We certainly dont have a lot of money but prioritise good, healthy and ethical food which means planning ahead and batch cooking. It also means accepting that you don't need to eat every meal, or eveN every day which is actually much healthier. Regularly eating ready meals is not good nutritionally and childrens' health absolutely has to be a priority for any parent in my opinion. From scratch wins in this house, always.

That should say eat meat every meal!

And as for bulk buying, we have a small house but make room for storing food in bulk. It IS possible!

LotsOfNettleTea Bulk buying is possible, if you have somewhere to put it, can afford the initial outlay and have a way of dragging it home.

Initial outlay can be the real crippling problem. I bought a massive sack of rice for £6, but if you haven't got that in addition to your budget (which happens) then you can't take advantage. It was also a rare moment when I had DH with me in the car, so I could drag it home. Normally not an option.

btw for crap can I recommend Approved Food which is over run, short date and out of date food but watch the postage and some deals are not as good as some supermarket offers. On the other hand, when they had 300 sandwich bags for 50p I bought a shedload and I will have sandwich bags for years to come. The drawer still will not shut.

one thing is tricky with bulk cooking. No freezer. Just that teeny above fridge thingy.

Here we go again with the bulk buying. Few poor people live in homes with larders, pantries, or even enough storage space for their belongings

What a massive generalisation!

You can't beat a good home made meat/veg soup with all sorts thrown in from the fridge that need using up, with Tesco value stock cubes which are about 10p a packet.

With cooked from scratch food, you know exactly what's in it (no added sugar and salt and MSG to 'add taste' for example).

But stock cubes have got added salt! And why is making a soup with a stock cube classed as cooking from scratch, but a spag bol using a jar of dolmio isn't? I am confused !

How do you manage to buy meat wholesale boozy?

Thanks Chunderella

i live in a tiny 3 bed mid terrace. it has a tiny galley kitchen. it does not have a freezer. what if i can't afford to buy a freezer?

still making excuses?

Care to elaborate on that?

whois I'll give it a whirl.

There is nothing wrong with a vegetarian or vegan diet, but it involves more care, research and effort to get complete protein from it than it does from animal sources.

That's more effort than most people are going to put in.

If you care about what you want to eat for reasons of dietary need or ethics, then that's fine.

And it's great to inform people about good nutrition on a diet that contains no animal products.

But it's very wrong to mislead people into thinking tinned tomatoes and pasta is a good diet because you don't want them to eat animals but don't think they'll follow through if given all the information. Do you agree, or not?

Or do you have beliefs that would lead you to prefer people to eat a nutritionally-unsound diet rather than being informed about the consequences of a diet with incomplete protein and the knowledge of how to overcome that, if they so wish?

I mentioned a diet of tinned tomatoes and pasta, which some people on other threads today to do with poor people, are glibly advocating. That diet doesn't contain any protein, not to mention other nutrients and fibre, and will lead to malnutrition if eaten on a routine basis.

Is that good?

You mentioned adding pulses and vegetables to the tinned tomatoes and pasta. I guess that's because you and I both know that a diet of tinned tomatoes and pasta is recipe for malnutrition.

Whoop-de-do. That's not what I said, and you know it.

Quite often I buy daily rather than a weekly shop, I walk so no transport and I go later in the day to get the offers. Sometimes I buy extra and freeze it.
I find cooking from scratch and buying what we need and not buying junk food and treats to be a lot cheaper.

I hate your attitude towards animals loopy. It really pisses me off that people think like this

Sometimes you are just too hard up to have principles. It really pisses me off that people rely on food banks, but there you go.

Just so you know loopy, there are people reading this who think you're coming off much better than the people moralising at you about animal rights

Hear bloody hear.

There is nothing wrong with a vegetarian or vegan diet

Big of you to say so....

Amber I think that you may find very many poor but principled people in the world when it comes to food production.

You are being very patronising to poor people to suggest otherwise.

squoosh - i suspect the medium chicken may just have been a small turkey!

I consider a medium chicken to be about 1.5kg. If it's a typical freedom food or the oakham chicken that M&S do for their dine in offers (which is the only time I buy non-FR), it's more breast than leg. FR is more leg than breast and has less, but more flavourful meat on it. I typically get a roast for 4 of us, a well stuffed sarnie or three, plus a chicken pasta bake or similar, with a generous amount of chicken in it out of that sized chicken. I may save the carcase for soup or stock, but I've usually stripped off every morsel of meat already.

Ad the price of that size chicken? £3-4 bog standard, £5-7 freedom food, £7-10 free range, depending on how free the range was and £10-13 all singing all dancing slow growing and possibly organic. I happily pay the £13 that the organic, fully free range chickens for Northumberland I buy cost, as they make you realise just how tasty a meat chicken can be, but I'd not judge someone on a very tight budget occasionally buying a bog standard chicken to put some good quality protein in their kids' diet, just so long as they used it well and didn't just eat the breast and turn their nose up at the rest. (Unlike Loopy, I think that you owe it to the animal that's lived and died for your benefit to eat it well.)

I'm going to completely ignore the entire previous thread and point out that I can make a pasta sauce from a tin of tomatoes (32p) a stock cube and a sprinkle of dried herbs which tastes better and is about half the price of a tinned one.

You are being very patronising to poor people to suggest otherwise

No I'm not.

I'm speaking from the experience of having been so poor that I had to forego many of my principles.

Well if respecting the bird is important to you, ouryve then you'll be pleased to know I do use each and every morsel of the bird.

Not that it makes a flaming difference. The bird has still died regardless of my feelings towards it.

I would go so far as to argue that if I respected the bird at all I wouldn't have eaten it in the first place.

Littlemog it is you who is patronising on this thread.