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.

poaching it makes it come off really easily to plus you get instant stock!

I make one pot.of something a week. This week was chilli.

We've had, chilli and wedges tonight, we had chilli and rice, you could have chilli and jacket potatoes. I also do a big pot of soup to last the week for lunches.

Also, for packed lunches, go to your nearest supermarket every Sunday and stock up on all the yellow labelled bread, I often pop to sainsburys near us and but a pack of buns for 20p when the store is due to close.

I also like aldi coffee and tea, they're dead cheap and really nice. drink water, don't waste money on pop, if needs be, buy asda smartprice dilute juice for about 40p a bottle.

do.without yoghurts etc, maybe buy a large tub of ice-cream as desserts instead of yoghurts, I know it isn't as healthy but it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

try quorn? our shops do 3x mince foe a tenner, or 3x frozen quorn mince for£5. chopped tomatoes, passata, pasta etc is all the same, whether you buy napolina or value!

Im in the same position as you OP so I hope it gets better soon for you.

Meal ideas: go to Lidl and buy their basics pasta, their salad stuff, some cheese, and a sauce. I regularly serve this 3-4 times a week in my household of 3 and it costs me about £8 for that lot and then I just buy a few more bits to cover the rest of the week. I.e. frozen chicken portions, chips and some frozen veg can do another 1-2 nights.

I buy all my meat from the reduced shelf in the supermarket. Can be up to 90% off items depending on when you go and I plan our meals around that. I go to Asda at 6.15pm for the biggest savings. Other branches and stores will be different times so could be worth trying to find out when your nearest Asda/Morrisons/Tesco slash their prices. The best I ever got was a large chicken for 10p!! More recently I got a pork shoulder for 45p and a pack of turkey mince for 22p!

We are in the same boat MARGARITTE my weekly spend is around 50 at aldi. My best trick is to check the aldi specials the day before and always get the meat on special! Also whole chicken in aldi is 3.99 at the moment ( smaller ones 2.99).

Aldi nappies are ace- prefer them to pampers this time around, as are their wipes and baby food. I have been making cheap traybakes for treats ( flapjack, lemon drizzle, blondies etc) great for bunging in packed lunch! for meal plans, if money is really tight try and stick to cooking what you know, just bulk out with the cheaper ingredients

Bolognaise

Tesco do 750g of mince for £3. Three tins of tomatoes about 30p each. Any veg that’s at the end of its shelf life. Garlic, basil and tomato puree. Blitz the tomatoes with the herbs and veg. Fry the mince add the blitzed tomatoes and boil some pasta. Lovely when you get it right.

I buy in bulk where I can. Rice or pasta comes in 5 kilo bags and last forever so won’t go off.

Be careful with bulk buying though - 3kg pasta in Tesco is £3.20. Equivalent in 500g bags of value pasta is £1.80!

If you want to save money on electric /gas, what I do is make a ton of mash which is good for a few days if refrigerated and do a cottage pie one day, fishcakes another and next day grate some cheese and mix in, put in microwave to heat up and serve with sausages and beans. And if you buy enough mince when you are making the cottage pie, fry off the whole lot then split into 3 pans so you can have chilli in one, cottage pie filling in two and bolegnese in third, you can freeze on use later. You could make your own meatballs with mince just by adding some dried herbs and a pinch of salt and pepper. Potato wedges are good too and simple, I just cut up into wedges, boil in pan for 3 minutes, drain then add a glug of olive oil and a dash of vegetable oil(for crispness),then put in oven for about 30-40 minutes 180-200 degrees. You can also make them garlicky or herby by tossing in with the oil before putting in oven or cheese by adding grated cheese just before you take them out of oven. There are alot of cheap sauces etc from aldi if you don't want to make from scratch. You can roast a combination of vegetables like mushrooms, courgettes, peppers and onions and serve with chicken thighs or drumsticks. You can make your own wraps using just water, plain flour and a bit of vegetable oil, a bit sticky but made in minutes. Porridge is also a good cheap breakfast.Hope this helps

Just cut out meat and pre prepared food, ready made pasta sauce ffs, and buy veg in season.

That's an expensive and unhealthy way to eat.fish fingers and arctic roll

I made lists of things that cook on the same heat, so when I used the oven it was always full. Eg: I made bread from value flour, and baked it at 200o and did scones and jackets spuds at the same time.

youareallbonkers - you may have missed the part where the OP said it needs to be easy. And sorry, but pasta sauce is cheaper than tinned tomatoes. It's easy to prepare food cheaply from scratch if you have a well stocked store cupboard but when you have a few weeks of a really tight budget and run out of stock cubes it may not always be possible to replace them. Add a child with food issues and frankly you're going to want to have fishfingers once a week.

Hi, for help with working out what to make with what you have, I suggest you try an ingredient matching website.

The first one I googled was www.recipekey.com

Oh also, if you try cous cous make it with half a vegetable stock cube added to the water. No extra salt. I find it tastes lovely on it's own then, not just when mixed with something. I'm a recent convert because I got very fed up with pasta bloating me out all the time.

Cheap meals we've had this week are,

Bean and spinach stew - 3 rashers of bacon, chopped, 1.5 cups of beans - recipe says chickpeas but I use white beans - 1.5 cups of water, breadcrumbs from two roll sized pieces/slices, 750-ish grams of chopped spinach plus spices, cumin, chillie powder/flakes and the recipe says coriander seeds but I can't notice any difference with them. This feeds four including a greedy DH.

Brown rice with lentils - feeds hoards and leftovers freeze very well. Original recipe says - 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 red pepper, punnet of mushrooms, red lentils, brown rice, chicken stock, 3 chopped fresh toms, x amount of fresh chopped spinach, freshly squeezed lemon juice and parsley. I over spent this week so tonight I fried the onion, garlic, red lentils - I used 1 coffee mug, the same of brown rice - 4 mugs of water with a veg stock cube, chopped spinach and a can of chopped toms, it was still nice. 5 of us have eaten tonight and I have 3 x 2 portion bags to go in the freezer.

Fish that was on offer, mash, broccoli and cauliflower.

Cauliflower curry and rice with boiled eggs added as your serve.

I'm trying to get 1 lentil based meal and 1 bean meal in each week plus 1 vege meal. When I do chicken I either buy a whole one and dissect it myself or I buy thighs, never breast as it's too expensive just to have it already done.

Last week I did chicken risotto, ordinary long grain rice, 2 chicken thighs and whatever veg, that fed 4.

Pancakes for breakfast are easy to make, 1 mug of flour, 1 of milk and 1 egg a la Jamie Oliver and a cheat I saw Nigella do is melt a small amount of butter and whisk it in. I find I use much less doing this rather than adding it to pan for cooking. They freeze too so if you have enough do a double batch.

Pancakes can be sweet or savory and even eaten cold in a packed lunch, eggs flour and milk so not expensive.

My Lidl always has a lot of fresh veg, at the moment they have 'single clove garlic' at £1 a pot, I like it because you can cut it up but you know how much garlic you have, not like the stuff that might have 4 cloves or might have 22.

Courgette and coriander soup

1 courgette per person
1 veg stock cube
1/2 bunch of coriander (wrap the rest in newspaper and freeze - you can then crumble it frozen in to something else)
cooking oil
boiling water

slice the courgette and put in a pan with the oil and allow to 'sweat' until the courgette middle has changed colour to yellow.

Add the water, coriander and stock cube, bring tot he boil and simmer for 10 mins.

blend and serve, or if it is a hot day chill it. You can add a swirl of creme fresh if the budget allows.

Passata is cheaper than pasta sauce and can be used as a base for lots of things.

1 onion chopped
1 tin of beans - something like pinto rather than baked beans
1 pack of sausages/chicken thighs/ pork ribs - basically which ever is cheaper
if your budget stretches get some chorizo or similar - Lidle do a long thin one sold in a loop - 1/3 of one of those is perfect - chop in to chunks
1 or 2 packs of pasatta - some supermarkets 'hide' it, it should be near the pasta sauces but it's often round the corner
salt and pepper

shove the shove lot in the slow cooker (drain the beans) and leave until you are hungry.

I second Wellwell's caution re bulk buying. Last week it was 65p cheaper to buy 2 x 9 toilet rolls than 1x18. Working out the cheapest option adds ages onto my weekly shop tho. I usually head for the reduced products first & see what we can make. We refer to these as Destiny items ie they're about to be binned as out of date, but cooked & eaten/frozen quickly they're fine, so we've each served a purpose for the other (it sounds better that way). A
That said, I have 2 Destiny Dover sole (50p each) taking up space in my freezer & I've waited a long time for a 3rd one to join us.

Have a look at my supermarket.com it will tell you about cheaper options in your chosen shop and compare with others, then you can either have shopping delivered or just print out your shopping list.

Margaritte The credit crunch threads are here.

To meal plan I write down what we fancy for the month and then on another sheet of paper start a shopping list. You will find that end up with 6 chicken carcasses "left over" from your meal plan so I then start thinking what I can do with those eg chicken stock & sticky wings as a starter. I then cross off anything I already have in and look for cheaper substitutes eg if a recipe asks for Worstershire sauce I use balsmic vinegar, sugar and a squirt of anchovy paste because I happen to have all of those in the cupboard already.

I use the super savers at Aldi for the vege as a saving boost - so if I was shopping this week I would be using red onions instead of white, there would be a couple of meals with new potatoes in and green beans.

The other thing we do is make everything we can from basic ingedients - some are really easy. As people have said up thread wraps and naan are all easy to do from scratch - just leave a bit of time. Because we have been frugalling for years, we have loads of things that we do from basics - ketchup, brown sauce, sweet pickle, bacon, sausages, beer, jam, all cakes & biscuits, flavoured vinegars & oils, pickled vege, grilled peppers in oil, pickled lemons, stocks, sourdough bread, wraps, naan, chapati, samosa, quiches. The thing you will notice is that we spend the time doing things that are expensive in the shop or where we can take advantage of seaonal gluts.

I second the grow as much as you can suggestion too - herbs, salad leaves, beans & peas are all really easy to look after (If I can grow them anyone can) and fruit trees if you have the room.

Don't forget my family's favourite meal. They think it's a treat!

Egg and chips (baked beans are extra!).

I can't add anything else, you've had wonderful ideas given on here.

Good luck.

I have a recipe which comes from my MIL who has had to manage on a tight budget for years.

1 onion
2 cans tuna in oil
4-5 largeish potatoes or a sachet of instant mash
a bit of cheap margarine and a splash of milk
salt and pepper to taste

Use the oil from one can of tuna to fry the chopped onion then put in the tuna and cook with the onion for a short while, flaking it up and mixing as you go. Place in bottom of a high sided roaster. The either boil and mash the potatoes or make up the instant mash using the butter and milk adding pepper and salt to taste. Put the mash on top a la shepherds pie and add a beaten egg on top if you want and decorate with olives if you're feeling flush but those are optional. Pop in oven for about 15 mins to brown. Serve with either some cheap frozen veg or salad.

In winter making your own soup is a budget meal, tortilla espanola is a good one as well. Unescorted is right about grow your own, we currently have tomatoes, cucumber, peas, salad leaves, strawberries and courgettes going, all in a tiny paved garden, I just do it in containers. Also grow herbs it makes a huge difference!

Become queen of the reduced pile as well, know when your local shops reduce and be there. Even DH is now addicted to this and is very proud when he gets a bargain!

OP planning is not that difficult: write a list of 7 days meals, write their ingredients, go to morrisons or asda. Do not buy anything that is not on your list.

Some things will last till next time, e.g herbs and spices, so first time may be more expensive but in long term cooking from basics is far cheaper.

(If ingredient not available you may need to adapt recipes. To minimise this stress go to morrisons or asda as they stock everything, unlike aldi.)

I think if you don't plan you will end up spending more, and will stress about how to use a particular item that is 'on offer' that week.

I suggest if you can't plan 7 days, just do 3 or 4 then double it, i.e. repeat same meals, OR just plan for 3 or 4 days and go to morrisons twice a week.

Going twice a week also has the advantage you can get fresher veg.

Hope it goes well.

Ham hocks from the market. Boil, serve with parsley sauce and tons of veg. A sack of spuds is about £5, sometimes less.
Make pea and ham soup with the hock bone and scraps, lovely and filling.

Look out for lidls half price weekend offers.

Chicken soup with suet dumplings is good, cheap and filling dinner. I boil up a carcass with pearl barley, some small pasta shapes, carrots, leeks and any veg cutoffs. Good way to use up stale bread too