to ask you for your best skint meal ideas please? And what to buy at lidl to help this?

[Margaritte]

I did ask for lovely, budget, impressive looking meals last week.

However, the shit hit fan for us, financially, for the next month or two. So now I really need to know what I can buy & cook. Now it just needs to be healthy & dirt cheap and less impressive . Taste buds haven't died in this shit situation, so if its fairly yummy will help too, although I realise that's not the main priority.

I have to figure out breakfasts, lunches and dinners. My dc & dh take packed lunch with them, & dd & I eat at home. I have a bit in already, which I'm so grateful for, as it gives me a 'head start'.

I have got advice from StepChange today and they were great, so that bits sorted.

Just a bit of back ground ( so I'm not drip feeding) I am recovering from PND (mostly good days for a while) However, during having it, cooking / meal planning etc would cause me a lot of distress. I'm starting to get back into cooking now, and sometimes enjoy it. I don't want to slip back into the upset & frustration I used to have around the weeks meals, so as easy as possible would be helpful too.

coop has small ham joints (the half-circle ones) for £2.99 at the moment.
Basing this on a family of 4:
Day 1:Roast. Bake the ham and have a thin slice or two each with mash, veg and parsley or cheese sauce. Have more potatoes and veg than meat. You'll have at least half the joint left.
Add a pint or more of water to the roasting tin and cook until all the scrapings are down from the edges making a dark stock. Freeze this.
Day 2: Carbonara. boil enough spaghetti for all of you. While it's cooking beat one egg per person and season well. Chop up one slice of the ham. Grate 1oz cheese (I buy the least expensive mature cheddar on offer) per person.
Drain the pasta quickly and put back in the pan. There needs to be a little residual water. Throw in the egg stirring constantly and the ham. When the egg has turned into a sauce chuck in the cheese and give it a through mix to combine.
Day 3: Potato and ham soup. Multiply up if feeding more than 4: slice 2 large onions, peel and chop three large carrots and one large (I get them in a sack so a large is very large) potato. Sweat off in a knob of butter and a little oil. When soft add the defrosted ham stock. When all cooked blitz (add more water if too think: it'll be salty enough but do check the seasoning), then add a half slice of the ham chopped finely. Serve with crusty bread, or indeed any bread you have.
Chop the rest of the ham into little cubes and freeze in two portions.
Day 4: Tarka Dhal. chop two onions, sweat off with a few cloves of garlic, pinch of chilli, a tablespoon of cumin and a tablespoon of dried coriander and then add a cupful of red lentils and a half cup of rice. Two cups of water. Boil vigorously for 10 minutes then turn down the heat for another 50 minutes. Serve in bowls with more rice or with bread.
Day 5: Spanish Tortilla. Peel, slice thickly and boil 2 large potatoes. Meanwhile fry off some onions and any veg you have in the fridge: I've done this with peppers, courgettes, tinned sweetcorn, even cabbage. Once the potatoes are done transfer to a non-stick pan with a good glug of olive oil so they take up the flavour. Add the other veg and move around to mix without breaking up the potatoes. Add two seasoned beaten eggs per person with one portion of the chopped ham. Cook until almost solid on top (use a lid if necessary) then add a sprinkle of cheese and finish under the grill. Serve with a salad or simple greens (we like frozen whole green beans with a little garlic salt).
Day 6. Special fried rice: boil and cool rice so it has a chance to steam a bit and lose residual water. Fry up some finely chopped onion, garlic and ginger in vegetable (anything except olive) oil. chuck in anything you have handy: frozen peas or/and sweetcorn, chopped leeks, peppers: anything you have in the fridge. Add the rice and stir fry. If you have any five spice add this at the initial fry, or use a little cinnamon, garlic, ginger and, well whatever you have that isn't too indian/Mediterranean. Chuck in your last portion of cubed ham. When it's all heated through pile onto plates with or without a fried egg on top.

So, 6 dinners from one small ham joint: they'll all taste of ham but won't have much meat in. Use the rest of Porridge or toast for breakfast. Simple sandwiches and fruit for lunch. It isn't sustainable for the long term because everyone gets sick of ham eventually but you can do similar things with chicken the next week: although the flavour isn't so pervading.

Other really cheap meals: French onion soup with bread and cheese (buy strong but cheap cheese and you won't need so much). Veg chilli: chilli powder or flakes fried down with onions. Then add value tinned toms, kidney beans, sweetcorn, chickpeas, peas: whatever you have. Serve in a bowl with a tiny sprinkle of cheese and use the rest another night in wraps. Get the aldi value veg offers when it's courgettes, peppers or aubergine and roast down with onions, tomatoes and herbs: great in a wrap! Onions are your friend. Buy garlic in bulk at the Chinese or Indian grocer.

Lentil bolognese:
Chop an onion and fry ( with some form of garlic and dried rosemary or Italian herbs if you have them).
Add some lentils - I just chuck some in but I think maybe150 g for 4 people.
Add an optional 1/2 glass of red wine ( perhaps not if the budgets really tight)
Can also add carrots and mushrooms if you have them.
Add a couple of tins of tomatoes, perhaps some tomato purée, maybe a splash of Worcestershire sauce, and a stock cube, plus some extra water.
Stick the whole thing in the oven for 1.5 hours. Serve with value pasta.

One of my faves is to chop and soften an onion, add a tin of chopped tomatoes and some garlic (if liked) and an oxo cube and bring to the boil. Turn off the heat and chuck in a tin of corned beef cut into cubes. Stir well so the corned beef starts to melt into the sauce but leave some of it "lumpy".

You can serve this with rice, pasta, mashed baked or boiled spuds or even chuck a suet pastry crust on top and stick it in the oven for 30 mins. A big side portion of cheap veg makes it go further!

Also check around your neighbours - do any of them keep chickens? We do and we have more eggs than we know what to do with. A couple of my neighbours bring me round their food scraps once or twice a week for my "girls" and I give them eggs in return.

Aldi's fish fingers are lovely and cheap. Serve with Aldi chips (or make wedges from potatoes) and beans. Lovely meal for kids and adults

Sausage casserole - sausages, tin of tomatoes, tin of beans, stock cube, glug of Worcestershire sauce, bit of paprika and serve with rice.

Buy a chicken to roast but don't serve as a roast. Instead use it in a curry (aldi's jars are cheap and lovely if you don't have paste and spices), have chicken fried rice, chicken and pasta in a tomato sauce, chicken pie. It'll go much further than having a roast dinner and using the leftovers.

Bulk out chillies with peppers and chickpeas.

Buy frozen veg if you can afford to and have the space.

If you're bored of chilli, mince with pasta, baked beans, tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, paprika and a bit of Tabasco is lovely and filling.

Baked potato with beans and cheese is so filling yet feels like a treat.

For sandwiches Id do egg mayo, cheese, ham, marmite, jam and just rotate what you have daily so you don't get bored

I usually go without breakfast but if I have it I have marmite on toast as I find it keeps me going quite a while.

Aldi squash is cheap as is Tesco everyday value (42p)

Spaghetti in aldi is 20p a packet, Tesco not much more expensive.

I think the best way to do this is to look through the thread, choose some meals and go onto a supermarket website, shop online (you don't need to check out) and you can see how much it's going to cost you.

Oh and for toiletries - do you have a Savers near you? I find them so cheap.

Morrisons own big 750g jar of bolognese sauce is 99p and is really nice. Add some mince and pasta and it will feed me, dh and four dcs, or just the dcs with enough bolognese left for another meal for the dcs.

Bacon tagliatelle. Chop two or three rashers of bacon into small chunks and fry with a diced onion until cooked. Add a little chilli powder and fry for a few seconds before adding a carton of passatta and simmer for ten minutes or so until it reduces slightly. Mix in some cooked tagliatelle and serve.

Morrisons have packs of meat three for £10. If you get a chicken, gammon joint and a pack of diced beef that would make 6/7 meals.

Roast chicken with mash and veg, leftover chicken can be used to make Chinese curry.

Farmfoods do a box of Chinese curry powder for £1 and it tastes just like curry from the Chinese takeaway. Add an onion, handful of peas and leftover chicken to the curry sauce and serve with rice.

Gammon can be roasted and served with chips and peas. Leftovers can be used for sandwiches or chopped up and added to cooked and cooled rice and fried up with a couple of eggs, onion and peas to make fried rice.

Diced beef can be used to make stew. Fry the beef to seal it and add to a pan of stock. Simmer for a couple of hours with an onion, carrots, any other root veg you like and some potatoes and thicken at the end with bisto powder or cornflour. I usually end up with enough for the six of us plus enough to freeze for at least another meal for all of us if not two.

Farmfoods do lots of offers on frozen food. There's things like chicken dippers, chicken bites, burgers on 4 for £10. There's also frozen peas, sweetcorn etc for £1 a bag. Cereal is a lot cheaper in there too depending on what one you like.

Firstly make the most of lidl offers and try and plan meals around these. Go meatless a few nights a week helps.

Use left overs. After we have had a roast - meat, veg, potatoes, stuffing and gravy I make a bit more - say enough for another person. I put this in the food processor and chop it up. I then use this in pasties I can get about 8 pasties from this. Dh has them in his lunch box and finds them really filling.

Bacon bits from lidl, garlic onions spot of olive oil and some frozen spinach with pasta. Works out very cheap.

Momb

That's really useful, you should write a book

If you need flavour, Tesco do value dried herbs, spices and curry powders which are pretty good.

Also the value rice and jars of curry/sweet and sour sauce are good. Adding veg or "pretend chicken" from the freezer counter is a cheap and easy meal. Value naan good too, if you want to splash out.

B&M home stores usually have really cheap tins of tomatoes and chickpeas and beans and stuff too.

I've got a Lidl opening near me soon, and I've never used them, as none have been nearby, so the recommendations are useful.

OP, I can't add to what others have suggested, as they've been similar to what I've done during a lean time or two.

And although we're not in a lean time right now, I think it would be useful to really take a look at our food spending with a view to replenishing our depleted savings.

Dismal - what's 'pretend chicken' ?

Sausages. Stuffing mix made uo. Wrap in shortcrust pastry. Bake. Cheap and lovely with whatever veg or salad you can muster

Couple of basic carrots onions and celery and you have the basis of pretty much any stew or soup....cheapo
Minced beef and potatoes + the above and some oxo = Irish stew
Stewing beef ditto
Chicken thighs can of tomatoes any spices or herbs
Add potatoes to bulk

God stew soups etc last can be stretched and are v cheap
Look up online

There's still wild garlic around, and can be found nearly everywhere in woodland etc. I pick loads, make a ton of pesto using sunflower seeds, olive oil and whatever cheese I've got. You could get some very cheap meals of value pasta and wild garlic pesto. Also risotto etc.

I find that a ring of chorizo for around £2.00 goes a looong way in flavouring tortillas, risottos, pasta dishes etc. One will stretch to four meals.

Some decent strong flour to make pizza and wraps.

A tin of kidney beans, some fried peppers/onions/whatever, seasoned with cumin, a little dark chocolate and a squeeze of lime is great inside wraps then baked with grated cheese on top.

If you have two months of this, then buy a pack of mixed salad seeds or rocket or something and chuck in them in a pot, the ground, wherever. You can have your own fresh leaves for weeks for the price of the seeds. They'll grow in four weeks and will cost about a quid!

Just a thought, do you have a "social supermarket" near you? Worth a Google, could be cheaper than Aldi. Otherwise, follow good advice here. Our Aldi does a whole chicken for £5 and it's fine. Lentils and porridge oats also good staples and lentils are very filling.

I love something really simple and usually use fish to make it from the fish counter that is reduced and can be really cheap.

Boil little potatoes. Throw in some onions and stock if you like. Steam or roast your piece of fish. Poach an egg and put the fish on the potatoes and the egg on top. Chives really make this if you can find any, chop generously on top. So easy but it goes down so well.

As variations, you could make bubble & squeak cakes (I always bake these instead of frying, squash in any bits and bobs of leftover green veg) instead of the potatoes, and/or you can put your fish pieces into a nice soup and bung it in a dish in the oven to roast. Tomato and chorizo or chilli based soups are my favourite for this.

Barbeques can be cheap if you were to do something like max out on the veg - so get plenty of sweetcorn cobs, boil as usual and finish off on the bbq (DD loves 'em), and make skewers by cutting up sausages, little rolls of bacon, and threading them alongside cherry tomatoes etc.

Things to do with turkey mince: you can mix it with a bit of chopped onion, some stuffing mix, grated apple, and ketchup/brown sauce and a bit of mustard. Add other bits if you like, like sesame seeds or some chopped apricot or finely chopped pepper. Use a bought puff pastry roll and make yourself a big pastry plait, brush with milk and if desired, sprinkle with cheese or more blobs of marmite. Mixing in with the mince makes LOADS of sausage and you'll get at least 2 plaits out of it.

I don't know how I did it - but I posted on the wrong thread! Sorry!

What is a social supermarket? Thanks

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Coop have had some good £5 meal deals on frozen food recently if you buy certain products together. Last week I got a box of 4 portions of battered fish, bag of oven chips, bag of frozen peas, an apple strudel and a big tub of ice cream for £5 !
This weeks is 6 items - a packet of fish fingers, a packet of veggie fingers, a packet of chicken dippers, pkt of potato waffles, pkt frozen peas and an arctic roll for a fiver.
Good for those days when you're wrking and just need a quick tea even ifit's no the healthiest!
I usually find the COOP very expensive but these are good value.

Devilled eggs especially in summer home grown tomatoes blitzed with cayenne. Poach our chicken eggs in tomatoes and serve with home made bread for dipping.

We also grow a lot of our veg in summer. Tasty cheap and so much better for you.

Lentil bolognese is really easy, cheap and nutritious, and it can be used as a base for various meals.

Saute a couple of sliced onions and garlic in some oil. Grate and add 3 peeled carrots and saute for 3-4 minutes. Add 250g green lentils, a tin of tomatoes, half -to whole tube of tomato puree, a good sprinkling of dried mixed herbs and, if you can stretch to it, a chopped-up pack of dried (not in oil) sundried tomatoes (about 125 g). You can also add a tsp vegetable stock powder or a stock cube if you like. The sundried tomatoes may sound like an expensive item but these quantities give me three separate meals for one adult and two children, or two meals for a two adults and two children.

Simmer for 30-40 minutes until lentils are cooked. if you want, blitz with a hand blender (not completely - leave a bit of texture). Season with pepper.

You can use this as a sauce for pasta, maybe adding a little grated cheese on top.

You can also use it as the base for a veggie shepherd's pie - just add a layer of cooked potato mashed with a little milk, knob of butter/margarine and a little grated cheese if you want.

It makes a good base for a veggie lasagne or a filling for baked potatoes, and it is also nice served with rice.

It freezes really well either as a sauce ready to be used or made up as shepherd's pie or lasagne.

You can bulk it out even further/make it even more nutritious by adding in other chopped vegetables (fresh or frozen) after you have part blitzed it.