To ask what you can actually cook for 30p/meal?

[Porcupineintherough]

Following on from the comments by MP Lee Anderson I was wondering what I could actually make for 30p/head. I'm a pretty good thrifty cook but all I could come up with were:

beans on toast (budget brands)
tinned tomatoes on toast (budget brands)
tinned mushrooms on toast (budget brands)
egg on toast
cheese on toast (ditto)
some kind of veggie stew/sauces w red lentils (if cooking for more than one) to eat w pasta
stir fry noodles w a few shreds of veg
bowl of basics cereal

I'm not counting things like baked potatoes where the ingredients are cheap but the energy costs to cook them are high.

So what am I missing? What skills and recipes are this food bank teaching? Wild foraging? Poaching? Shop-lifting 101?

Are you his wife 😂

this whole thing is a joke. Agree he should do a Q&A or better yet a TV show where he shows the nation how we can all eat properly on 30p meals

By the way, I'm not defending the MPs comments, I think it's extremely diffcult to make anything for 30p, or even a lot more than that especially with energy and other living costs included. But I just wanted to add some helpful suggestions if anyone is reading the thread and struggling.

80g pasta cooked is about 300 cals
1.5 hot dogs is 45cals
1/6 of a pack of Passata is about 15calories.

You’re looking at less than 400 calories for your main meal.

Where are people buying these 20-30p packs of spaghetti that can stretch to 6 or 7 meals?

The ones I buy are approx 3 servings at the recommended size. Surely we're not saying that it's acceptable to just eat tiny, tiny portions- where does that end?

A bag of pasta easily serves five adults in my house. Again, I'm not suggesting you can eat for 30p, but a meal doesn't have to have a ton of meat or be hugely complex or require a lot of cooking to be tasty and nutritious.

Arguably, are these meals nutritious? Rich in enough minerals and vitamins so as not to make someone deficient.

Yes, 500g between five is fine…if it’s with something more than just a bit of tomato and a tiny hot dog, especially if you’ve had a tiny lunch and no breakfast.

That’s diet food.

@sjxoxo I like your thinking. I'd watch a tv series of 'cook along with Lee', 'Lee and 30p' or 'How to transform your life with Lee and his wife too'. I'm sure I'd have a lot to learn as I'd struggle to hit 30p a meal. Perhaps there might be interludes where his other life lessons and wisdom might be conveyed to the receptive? Could be a transformation programme given the opportunities the resulting weight loss of the 400kCal main meals might give though might need to be careful as if people are struggling with buying food, they might not be able to afford a new wardrobe?

I can't think of a single well balanced nutritious meal at 30p a portion and I cook really cheap.The closest I can get is

500gm 76p pack of cheap bacon offcuts
1 cheap can tomatoes30p
1 cheap pack potatoes 50p

Make into 5 servings of bacon and tomato sauce served over microwaved jacket potatoes.

I was redundant during lockdown and I was doing well spending £2.50 per person per day - breakfast, lunch, supper.

But I was time-rich, could scrump apples, collect hazel nuts, pick blackberries etc. I happen to live in the country.

The right honourable member lives in cloud cuckoo land.

Most of those are slices of cakes for under 30p.

Here is the recipe for one of her meals, Caribbean style chilli.

Serves 4 at 28p each
1 tbsp (13g) Dunns River Caribbean seasoning, 8p (3 x 100g for £2, Tesco)
200g mushrooms, 42p (85p/400g, Sainsburys Basics)
a handful of frozen peppers, or 1 fresh one of any colour, 15p (£1.50/1kg, Sainsburys)
400g kidney beans, 30p (30p/400g, Sainsburys Basics)
2 tbsp tomato ketchup, 1p (45p/460g, Sainsburys Basics)
100g frozen spinach, 15p (£1.50/1kg, Sainsburys)
a pinch or two of cayenne pepper or chilli flakes, <1p (80p/100g, Natco or KTC brand)

200g of mushrooms is 40 calories.
100g peppers is 40 calories
2 tbs ketchip= 38 calories
Spinach= 23 calories
Kidney beans= 340 calories

Total= 481 calories
which is 120 per portion.

Jack Monroe is doing the tories work for them. It's cheap to feed yourself on cheap kidney beans and a couple of bits of veg, it's a pity that 120 calories a meal will leave you malnourished.

And I do know how to cook!

The poor are so lucky. The rich who want to loss weight have to spend £1000s at spas. The poor just need to have healthly, nutritious Lee the MP-approved meals. The 'Lee Plan' might just need to be trademarked to enable him to make more money and help more people. Jane Plan and Weight Watchers and Labour scallywags beware.

Arguably, is what most people eat, even with a good income, very nutritious? Most people just heat things up and you are lucky if you get a side of frozen peas or baked beans. Takeaways, lunch sandwiches and other prepared food are terrible nutrtionally. Two third of us are overweight or obese. Most people only eat two portions of veg a day and a ton of processed and low-quality meat they don't need.

And a shedload of highly processed carbs to boot.

I'd want to see him eat the whole bloody thing, not just a close up of the food and then a camera fade to credits while he goes out for something more palatable.

Would that 'Caribbean chilli' recipe work or tend towards being warm kidney beans and vegetables with seasoning?

I see the Tory fan girls/boys are out in force, trying to defend the indefensible.

We know he defected from Labour to the Tories, so desperate was he to get into parliament in 2019, showing us all that he's happy to tear up any 'principles' he may have in order to gain power.
The 30p a meal comment is a sick joke, yet there are those on here who choose to defend it. Shame on you.

I suspect not. But that's their choice. They have the means to eat nutritiously if they want to. Being told that people can feed themselves perfectly well, if we go crazy and assume that the government might mean perfectly well meant enough calories to live on, for 30p a head is however obvious nonsense.

It’s a bit different when you have absolutely no choice about it.

Christ. If I fed my teens the 'meals' suggested on here I think they'd play out the hunger games and one would eat the other. Mind you I'd then be able to afford 45p per person (90p/2 people) rather than 30p (90p/3 people) so it might not be all bad.

Jack Monroe is doing the tories work for them. It's cheap to feed yourself on cheap kidney beans and a couple of bits of veg, it's a pity that 120 calories a meal will leave you malnourished

You'd have rice with it of course but don't let that stop you from being deliberately obtuse.

@FourTeaFallOut I suspect an MP with integrity, which we might assume would be all of them, wouldn't resort to such shenanigans and would subsist solely on their 30p banquets. Livestreaming would be the default and an active social media presence. The Daily Mail could sponsor and help line up politically supportive celebs, Prue and Sir Cliff perhaps?

There is shed loads of wild garlic and jack-by-the-hedge around at the moment which can make food very tasty.

You only have 2p of your 30p budget left. Prices have increased too.

And you needed to visit both sainsbury’s and Tesco to get the exact ingredients.

even with rice, it’s not a lot of calories.

You'd have rice with it of course but don't let that stop you from being deliberately obtuse.

To get a main meal appropriate amount of calories you’re looking at eating over 400g of cooked rice. That sounds healthy…