British families that go on these BBC save money shows can't be real

[Rufusgy]

Eat well for less.

A mum sends three children to school with shop bought microwaved pancakes laced with nuttela everyday

They spend 5 mins explaining how to use a bit of left over chicken in a stir fry, basically just chop up eveything and stir fry it. As if stir fry and woks are some newfangled invention

They can't afford a house deposit and have zero savings, but won't even consider not buying a brand

Slicing chease is 'too much work"

Seriously is any British family actually like this? Who the fuck is stupid enough that they need a prime time BBC show to tell them proccessed food is expensive and its cheaper to make it yourself.

I can Rhonda and I am.

Fried in fat, with salt. Yum.

Baby, that place sounds lovely. And is making me hungry.
MsJamie, I think that meal sounds cheap. Would you expect to get a ready meal for less than £1.40? (sorry if that is a thick question, whenever I have looked at them they always seem to be at least £2.00 for a little one usually more, or £££££ for a big family one. Is this not right?)

I think the country is filled with millions of people like this.

It's all summed up by what I call "Pancake Day Madness" that UK seems to succumb to every year.

You can buy pre-made pancakes, pancake mix (just add water), Pancake mix (just add egg, milk and butter - err so flour then?) - shale in the bottle etc. Every fucker goes out of their way to consume pancakes of some description all the while completely missing the point of Lent and that you make your own pancakes using just a few household basics.

No one seems to know how to mix together pancake mix in their own kitchen. Lots of MN threads about how pancake mix/pre made pancakes are the best thing ever. Knowing how to make pancakes is on the "how to cook 101" schedule surely?

It used to puzzle me, but now I just sit back and laugh and enjoy the madness.

(PS Everything I ever cooked in a slow cooker tasted like utter shite - they aren't the answer for all they are touted to be. And as a FT SP believe me I tried very hard to make the SC work)

I mean I don't disagree at all about the wholesomeness and nutrition! Sounds lovely

After the revolution, everyone who wants to will have piano lessons.

LovelyFriend - the pancake thing - maybe it's because if you make one egg's worth of pancake mixture, you have pancakes coming out of your ears? And a mix is a way of getting like 4 pancakes or something, one each?

Oh I see sometimes you add the egg...?

In that case, I don't know

one egg with 1 cup flour & 1 cup milk.

but you can also use one egg for half cup flour, half cup milk.

As I was taught age 11

It always shocks me how cheap Iceland is. Whenever I go in there and do a fairly massive shop of ice cream, fish fingers, pizzas and burgers frozen fish and frozen veg, I'm always shocked at the price £7.84 for 2 bags of stuff. It is MUCH cheaper to eat Iceland stuff every day than to cook from scratch using Sainsbury's or even Tesco's.

These threads always remind me of my grandmother. She judged other women fiercely for what she considered inadequate standards of cleaning and for buying foods that she thought should be homemade. It was pretty mean.

We all still do this, don't we? It is about different things now, like pasta sauce rather than jam tarts. Clothes are cheaper and cars can be paid for in instalments, so food seems to be the great class indicator now.

The whole home made us cheaper than ready meal thing really depends on what you buy ready made, and what you're cooking.

When I cook lamb tagine (for three) for example, I buy a pack of meat, chick peas, tomatoes, sometimes spices, apricots and cous cous...costs about £10. I can buy a decent (Waitrose) ready meal for £4 and quite frankly it's just as good.

Other things, such as a casserole, bolognese, shepherds pie etc is cheaper to make from scratch.

And with regards to slice cheese...in my local co-op it's cheaper to buy grated than non-grated!

A genuine slow cooker tip that does work when there are not enough hours in the day is too prepare 2 meals at once. So when one is cooking I am browning the meat for the next days dinner, frying off the onions etc. And then it gets chucked in first thing in the morning. I find that I waste a lot of time supervising something cooking when I dont need to do anything other than just be there, so I started peeling extra potatoes, preparing extra veg and then its all ready to go in the next day. It does work.

I think today we had magic mince, but its only because I can cook that I was able to put things together in a way that provided a good meal. If I was an inexperienced cook I would probably not want to do it in case I ruined several lots of ingredient.

I got 600g of reduced price mince at tesco, so I made farmers pie (like cottage pie but with a mix of meat!). Used up a few sausages and slices of bacon from the fridge, sliced cooked potatoes instead of mashing them as mashing them uses up more spuds and we only had half a bag, 6 diced carrots, half a bag of peas and head of brocolli in small florets. Fed 8 of us very well, havent made it before but its going in the brain bank for future use.

Thats the sort of thing that experience gives you, and I think thats where a lot of waste come from. You dont know how so you are afraid to try because of the cost, so because you never try, you never know how, it understandable but a vicious circle.

The thing that makes me laugh is sometimes pancake mix States add egg AND milk - so that's essentially flour then !!

Enough people obviously buy the ready meals as they wouldn't keep selling them otherwise! To me they taste like crap, no where near as nice as a fresh cooked meal. On another note I never saw why people bought baby food. Who wants to eat a jar of mashed carrot that's been stuck on a shelf for weeks maybe months when you can boil and mash a fresh one? Kids have always had whatever we were eating (with modifications such as not adding salt until the table, taking kids portions out before adding more spice etc. I used to have a handheld grinder that minced up a few spoonfuls of what we were having.

Nothing wrong with eating processed convienence food occasionally on a busy night or when stuff going on so even though I can make my own pizzas from scratch including the dough I will on occasion buy shop made ones. Son was in hospital last week having emergency surgery so all of us had rubbish all week depending on what we could find/fancy. The other two had macdonalds one night followed by fish finger and oven chips the next but it was an unusual week and because they normally eat home cooked meals full of veg it won't harm them

I don't mind buying stuff like fish fingers and chips etc, I just won't buy the very cheapest Iceland stuff because the fish fingers or nuggets are all grey inside and it's obvious it's blasted off connective tissue or whatever. But I'm not on a particularly tight budget. If I was, I would batch cook for the freezer, because it is cheap the way I do it and its way more tasty and nutritious.

The key to it being cheap is using less meat. I only use mince for batch cooking as I don't particularly like it, but a 400g pack would make 4 or 5 meals for two adults and one toddler. If I make a freezer meal with two chicken breasts, I would make two portions for three of us by stretching the second over a jacket potato and adding lots of veg and sauce. 400g pack of braising steak would make 3 or 4 portions of beef stew. Etc etc. That's how it's cheaper. May not be to everyone's taste though. If I wanted a nice pure steak pie it would take a whole pack for one or two portions which is more of a luxury meal.

I make a bloody good curry (and do most weeks), but Tesco are doing these for £1.65 at the moment, and yesterday (after being at Brownie camp for 2 days) it was just too tempting.

And the recipe list doesn't make me want to cry.

Cooked Pilau Rice, Bombay Potato, Marinated Chicken (19%), Onion, Single Cream (Milk), Tomato Purée, Yogurt (Milk), Rapeseed Oil, Garlic Purée, Ginger Purée, Ground (Cashew Nut), Honey, Butter (Milk), Cashew Nut Paste, Spices, Coriander Leaf, Sugar, Tandoori Masala, Salt, Black Pepper, Bay Leaf, Cooked Pilau Rice contains: Basmati Rice, Water, Rapeseed Oil, Salt, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Cumin Seed, Cardamom Pods, Colour (Curcumin), Cardamom, Bay Leaf, Bombay Potato contains: Potato, Tomato, Onion, Tomato Juice, Yogurt (Milk), Onion Purée, Rapeseed Oil, Tomato Purée, Water, Spices, Garlic Purée, Ginger Purée, Salt, Sugar, Cornflour, Coriander Leaf, Onion Seeds, Green Chilli, Black Pepper, Fenugreek Leaf, Bay Leaf, Marinated Chicken contains: Chicken Breast, Tomato Purée, Yogurt (Milk), Water, Ginger Purée, Garlic Purée, Soya Oil, Palm Oil, Cornflour, Salt, Green Chilli, Spices, Colour (Paprika Extract), Black Pepper, Basil, Sunflower Oil, Cashew Nut Paste contains: Cashew Nut, Rapeseed Oil, Tandoori Masala contains: Paprika, Salt, Coriander Powder, Turmeric Powder, Chilli Powder, Cumin Powder, Cinnamon, Clove Powder, Lemon Oil, Black Pepper, Bay Leaf, Colour (Paprika Extract)

They do exist. I know someone who only eats microwave meals and buys tuna sweetcorn sandwich filling every week, she had a tuna sandwich at my house once and asked if it was asda filling as it tasted different to her usual one and I said no its a tin of tuna mixed with Mayo and sweetcorn! She was surprised I'd made it myself.

The palm oil makes me want to cry but that's a whole different debate.

Well yes, but it's not as full of shit as I thought it would be.

But I have just read about it (vaguely knew it was bad), so will be more vigilant in future.

What's 2 ounces in grams. My mum and grandma only ever served 2oz portions of meat. The rest was bread or potatoes and veg. Sometimes rice.

As I don't cook meat I'm not sure how much or how expensive this would be? I follow the same rule now with pulses.

I'm wondering if 2oz is a big portion, I still sometimes miss my mums goose at Christmas.

2oz is just over 55g

An adult portion of meat is 4oz.

ObiWanCannoli

2oz is about the size of the palm of your hand. And is the amount of meat people should be what we eat, but most people eat at least twice that amount.

no 3-4 oz would be the palm of your hands/deck of cards :)

should be what we eat

According to who? I gravitate more towards the paleo-eat-half-a-cow camp.

according to health sites/information found in abundance :)