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?

What really bothers me is that hard working people up and down the country are having to use food banks and being told by the wealthy tossers in charge to stop grumbling and eat a 30p meal. It makes me so angry!!
I was brought up to believe that if you work hard you will be rewarded for your efforts. This is simply no longer true.

So some food banks continue to feed families for two years plus. What food do they have to manage on?

@Organictangerine

Organictangerine · 12/05/2022 12:33

Does this mean he only needs 30p in expenses per meal?

Brilliant!!! 👏👏👏

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Realistically you’d be microwaving them to cook them in the first place.

A week of baked potatoes would be a miserable week.

The TV show is a brilliant idea - and we could have Jack Monroe critiquing the recipes (and costing everything down to the last penny.)

Are any Channel 4 commissioning editors on Mumsnet?

A few years ago I was absolutely broke and feeding myself and my daughter on a budget of around £20 per week for breakfast and dinner, she had school lunches and I’d usually make a little extra the night before for lunch the next day. I’ve just put a typical week we had into a Tesco basket and it came to £21.77.

1/ Jacket potatoes, Beans and cheese
2/Cheese and veg omelette (peppers, sweetcorn) broccoli
3/Tuna Kedgeree with broccoli
4/Pasta, veg and sauce
5/Sweet potatoes wedges and meat free sausages
6/Tortilla chips loaded with sliced meat free sausages, peppers, celery, sweetcorn and melted cheese
7/ Fish fingers, sweet & white potato mash and peas.

plus milk, cereal (own brand) porridge, apples, bananas and pears, Angel delight.

I would also use left over puff pastry and stuff with fruit and have with custard.

Possibly cheaper in Aldi/Lidl.

I’m over budget, but that covers between us 14 meals and desserts.

I remember coffee being a real luxury and I’d be so excited when I could afford a jar!

Is he not a person?

Am of an age to remember parents who had been brought up through WWII rationing. My mother was an intelligent woman and a very conscientous cook. But a lot of her poor/rationed but nutritious meals would be totally unacceptable these days: stuffed hearts, anyone? Liver casserole? Breast (ie fat) of lamb? Scrag end/neck of lamb stew as (I believe) mentioned nostalgically by MPs ??
All, in my childhood, were very cheap and undoubtedly very nutritious. But - to me as a child (who soon became a vegetarian) - utterly inedible. On the other had, the fresh veg - grown in back garden and on an allotment - were delicious.

As a previous poster has said, all these kinds of meats (and much, much worse - remember Jamie Oliver's scrotum burgers?) have now been scooped up by the food industry and used to make cheap sausages, burgers etc. So - please NB MPs - forget the nostalgia; they are not an option.

What my mother did teach me was how to cook other things, as well: macaroni cheese, cauliflower cheese, a simple stew, cottage/shepherd's pie, celery/leeks au gratin, lentil soup etc etc. And of course baked potatoes, and bubble and squeak, and veg soup. But even these, if properly made , are not cheap nowadays. The cost of fuel then was trifling compared with today.

I admire Jack Monroe's original ethos (not so sure these days). But just compare her recipes with the government sponsored 'eatwell guide': assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/528193/Eatwell_guide_colour.pdf No way to they match that. Quite apart from anything else, the NHS eatwell guide recommends 'sustainable fish' ( a real luxury these days) and more expensive wholemeal pasta etc.

I really do wish - as others have suggested - that Mumsnet HQ would get MPs on Mumsnet to ask them how they would provide meals cheaply - no, just plain affordably - that fulfil the criteria in that guide.

One other point. "Food poverty" is a real issue - and not just in stereotypically deprived estates. I live in a really rural area. Our nearest supermarket is 40 miles away. So that's 80 miles round trip - an awful lot in petrol. Prices in the one local village shop are probably 100% higher for many items. And the local selection of affordable foods is very, very much smaller.

I'm fortunate; I can afford to buy wholefoods in bulk online. And I grow a lot of our own veg (though that's not cheap - compost has increased in price by over 100%, and seeds are also more expensive; there are also real problems - slugs, deer, rabbits to contend with - and it takes an awful lot of time which busy working parents simply will not have). But of course, of course, not everyone can 'grow their own'. Nor should they be expected to. As others have said, we are a wealthy nation. It's shocking that many of our children - through no fault of their parents - are not being properly fed.

SoggyPaper it really would.
I'm sure some of the posters on here work in Lee Anderson's office. Shocking.

FAQs I'd be really interested to see actual prices and quantities, if it's not too much trouble, please.
Also, a menu like that in NO WAY meets the government's own recommendations for a healthy diet - and that's my main point; I'm not getting at you.
It's the height of hypocrisy for governments to lecture us us on how we should eat, while knowing full well that a sizeable proportion of the population could not hope to do so.

Adding protein to the potato and a vegetable to make it balanced is the expensive part, half a tin of tuna, teaspoon mayonnaise, bit of salad.

Also in my experience potatoes keep for about four days after cooking. Maximum.

my kids all did food tech at secondary school.

Food tech is the very definition of not being taught to cook. Have you looked at the syllabus ?

Tuna 'chunks' are not the nicest form of tuna but they are about 60p a can for value-brand.

Completely agree.

There's no way any of these oh so helpful posters are actually poor. They just enjoy feeling superior and telling the poor people to eat lentils and be grateful they're losing weight. It's absolutely grim.

That's a pretty grim thought.

I’d just added it to Tesco online basket, so prices today. Don’t worry at getting at me, no one can get at me when I have been dragged down and back, and it’s not a bad menu for the budget. Lots of veg, dairy, iron, fruit, protein could be higher.

Very few people take the mental energy involved into account too.

There's adapting in the supermarket if they don't have the food you originally planned - they're out of stock of the 22p pasta but they have a 60p one, what could you put back to make up the difference and how would that affect the meal plan? Then the cheap tuna is also out of stock, what could you substitute there? No yellow sticker items today so that's less meat this week. And then the toddler starts sobbing on for a mini Kinder bar and it's either say no or maybe put something else back. Then trying to keep track as you go around, totting it all up as you go, and if you miss something or lose or add up wrong or any of the price tags are incorrect and the total t the checkout is higher than planned you'll have to ask them to take some items off.

There's having £1.50 left on the key meter and knowing that you need to cook the tea, the kids need a bath, and their uniforms need washing and drying but can't be hung outside because it's tipping down. Trying to think what you can cook that'll use the minimum amount of electricity, will a 30 minute fast wash get the clothes clean enough, and if you run the heating for an hour to dry them on the radiator will there still be enough left for the hot water for the bath and to keep the lights on until morning. Don't forget the fridge-freezer too, if that goes off for too long then the food is fucked so got to make sure it stays on as long as possible until you can top up the key.

There's making sure there's enough money in reserve for bus fares to get to work, to school, to sign on, to the supermarket, or wherever because its expensive but you need to be able to get around (£92 for an adult monthly pass here and £44 for a child one). If you can't get to work or to sign on then there's no money at all.

There's the dread of DC announcing "my shoes feel tight" or coming home from school with holes in their trousers knees because "I fell over" or a party invitation coming home or a letter for a school trip and being caught between a rock and a hard place - break the budget or break your kids heart?

There's the worry of getting sick, can't work if you're sick and there's no pay for the first few days before SSP kicks in. Or your kid getting sick and needing to take unpaid time off.

There's the weight of knowing that one unexpected bill or life event could tip you from "struggling but just about managing" into "completely and utterly fucked".

I'm fortunate to have never been in that situation but I have friends who have been and I can empathise with those who are. Its all well and good saying "have you thought about doing this?" <insert suggestion here> but there is a mental load involved in being poor and scrabbling around for bulk lentils or Good To Go bags or trying to come up with exciting ways to serve chickpeas can push someone's mental health to breaking point.

Oh and that includes a brand new packet of rice, white potatoes, pasta, sweet potatoes, so extra for the following week or soup.

@Hospedia absolutely the mental stress shouldn’t be underestimated, 100% agree.

FAQs thanks for replying, and it's impressive but I'm still pretty sure that it in no way meets the government's recommendations. (As you say, rather short on protein, fresh fruit/veg - and I'd add dairy or equivalent - for calcium - and fish (or equivalent)...for the right sort of fatty acids. And maybe total cals.) And that's really my point. HOW DARE the government lecture us on a healthy diet when they know damn well that a significant number of adults and (especially) children have not the faintest hope of affording it.

Even if you could cook a meal for 30p, would it be nutritionally balanced, or just a way to get something in your belly?
Frugal cooking might be ok for a few weeks, but how long is anyone expected to live like this for? Not everyone can better their living situation.

Exactly. Several of the meals posted have been healthy, filling and hearty, but they're still not things that are ideal to live on. I've often had the soup recipe I posted upthread that comes in under 30p for lunch, and enjoyed it... but I almost always have something more expensive for the evening meal. It's about the bigger picture.

You've summed it up really well there.

It’s certainly not short on fruit and veg, the meals were bulked out with veg, and I added items such as sweet potatoes which are quite cheap for their higher vitamin content. 12 eggs in those meals over the week, 6 each for iron, plus lots of broccoli, protein was the shortfall for sure.

Milk everyday and cheese over 3 days. Fruit everyday.