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?

200g pasta for four? I allowed 500g spaghetti for four in my plan above! Leftover spaghetti can be mixed into beans to go on toast the next day.

Tesco prices: tinned tomatoes 28p, kidney beans 30p, onion 5p. If you use 1 onion, 2 tins tomatoes, 1 tin kidney beans, a packet of spaghetti (20p) you get £1.11, so 28p per portion.

Is it not 50g of raw pasta?

Still, that’s a small portion. It appears the guidance is for 75g dry pasta per person as a portion (or 75-100g).

I regularly make a batch of lentil soup that is around six portions, costs about £1 - so about 17p.
The ingredients for my daily porridge with raisins are about 5p per portion.
Lunch & breakfast sorted for 25p.

This is the British nutrition foundation’s portion recommendations. 75g dry pasta or 180g cooked pasta each.

Has he been reading Bootstrap Cook books?

I really think it depends on the dish. The recipe the poster mentioned has kidney beans which adds bulk and more carbohydrates. I have a pasta bake I make which is 200g of pasta for 4 people but it has so much veg, pulses and cheese in that it's very filling and substantial.

He said in an interview that the cooking/budgeting lessons are a condition of getting food. They don't get the parcel until they sign up. That is absolutely deplorable. There should be no strings attached to a food parcel.

He's also the same MP who a couple of years ago advocated forced labour camps - "tent in the middle of a field, get them up at 6am picking potatoes or other seasonal produce, cold shower and back in the tent at 6pm for lights out, then same again the next day".

He's a complete and utter bell-end.

I did read it was mandatory and wondered if that was the case or MP hyperbole. It seemed distant to many of the foodbanks' ethos I've seen unless this is run by an organisation with a particular set of values. I hope the clients have a choice of local foodbanks if so or the donors ask some hard questions.

He is on video saying that it's mandatory - no sign up, no food parcel.

He's also on video as saying that there isn't a massive use for food banks, its all down to lack of budgeting and lack of cooking skills. In other words if people could cook and budget, they would need food banks. Nothing at all to do with poverty level benefits and a minimum wage that is too minimal to live on.

Though soul destroying having the same thing every day.

He said in an interview that the cooking/budgeting lessons are a condition of getting food

And how the hell is anyone with small children and/or working full time find the extra hours and energy for THAT???

I think it should be mandatory for MP's to spend 8 weeks living on NMW and food bank handouts - with the added twist that they pay for the food they receive.

I bet 2 weeks in and they will be dreaming about steak, fine wine and dauphinoise potatoes with a healthy helping of organic veg.

Or people having no choice but to live in accommodation with shit cooking facilities. It's all very well learning how to make cheap, filling dishes that require oven access, but not much use when you only have a kettle and a microwave.

Angielomc - I'm trying to lose weight - the idea is that if I keep to that and vary my evening meal, I'm eating fairly sensibly.
But I agree soul destroying if it's through necessity rather than choice.

There is a weight loss diet researched by Glasgow University that is actually porridge followed by lentil soup for lunch and supper for a 12 week period. I've thought about it, but bit too extreme!

The point made by a PP about having a stock of spices etc is valid too - the cumin, tumeric cinnamon, etc that I use only cost a few pennies, but a big outlay of you're on a tight budget.

Or the 1.2 million UK residents who live in food deserts.

I absolutely agree with @Testina . I too have a yr8 so 12/13yr old who did no practical cookery last year. This year she has made vegetable soup (and it only turned out edible as amended the veg mix) and carrot cake. That's it.

My 12yr old can cook. Because she has cooked with me since she was about 7yrs old. But she is lacking the budget options in terms if meat etc as I am not very good at those. I do cook from scratch and I learnt from my gran (who is long gone). But if the parents can't cook - as many can't now and the grandparents are either no longer with us or equally can't cook where are these kids going to learn from. All the TV chefs produce expensive stuff. Even those that try often think £5 a head is 'good value'.

I follow a Facebook group around feeding your family for a £1 per person per day. And there are folks on there who have been doing this for a long time - and even they are struggling with the budget now.

TBH @Porcupineintherough he didn't say exactly what you think he did.

This entire thread is based on taking a comment out of context.

What he did say was that with a team of chef they produced a meal to feed a huge number of people which worked out at 30p a head.

That is not the same as someone cooking from scratch for 30p

I completely agree that we have had generations of kids leaving school without being taught how to make a meal that is a) cheap and b) nutritious.

All my DCs did in IT was to 'construct' a pizza or whatever with a load of items they had bought.

Compare with me, doing domestic science for O level, when we did 2 years of learning about the science and nutrition of food, culminating in preparing a balanced, 3 course meal for the practical exam.

We now have a generation or more of parents who know very little about the basics of cooking and rely too heavily on processed food and takeaways.

Presumably you get 3x30p per person, per day? So if I can make porridge for 20p, that leaves me an extra 10p to spend on dinner?

@DdraigGoch no criticism of you but well done. a 33% increase just by the kind of budgeting advice an MP could give. Some might be saved to help towards making a patriotic pudding for the Jubilee.

I remember Mrs T back in the day making similar statements about common sense budgeting that only the daughter of a grocer (no not the wife of a millionaire, that's not fair) could make to show how the country would be better off with her in charge. Some of the press were very complimentary at the time.

What an utterly miserable thread. Honestly, it's so sad that in Britain, people have to live like this

He made no mention of chefs or cooking a large meal for a huge number of people. His exact wording was:

When people come for a food parcel now, they have to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course. We show them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget; we can make a meal for about 30p a day, and this is cooking from scratch.

Note that claimants have to register for the course.

It's horseshit and he is a bustard for making vulnerable people jump through patronising hoops in order to be able to eat.

Help should be available if wanted and signposts provided to people to enable them to get help but presuming that because they need a food bank they are somehow too stupid to cook or too feckless to budget is insulting and forcing them onto this course where they can cook nutrionally-substandard meals for an unachieveable sum is disgraceful.

Every word he said is available to read here:

hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2022-05-11/debates/9711762D-D7FB-4A83-B43D-20F89F7A5DC7/PreventingCrimeAndDeliveringJustice#contribution-F613D787-1344-49A6-BEC2-8D2172FB08C2

He makes Dickensian britain look kind and generous to the feckless poor who deserve to live hungry