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?

@Zilla1 I think a lot of the advice is definitely well meaning but horribly naive.

I'm poor.
There is no 2 ways about that.
I'm single, unemployed, parent.

I get universal credit.
Once rent is taken off I'm left with £500 or there abouts.
Gas, electric, council tax etc. Once that's all gone, then I think about food.

I can technically cook a meal that costs 30p a portion, I can cook a meal that costs less.
Unfortunately it costs a lot upfront to do that.
So, let's say for arguments sake someone writes a recipe like:

Sausages 10p each
1/2 tin beans 11p
Cheese 30g 30p
1/8 garlic 5p
Herbs / salt / pepper (free in cupboard)

That's great and looks cheap.
But you can't get a single 10p sausage, it costs £1.20 for 20.
You can't buy 1/2 of a 50p tin of beans.
You can't buy a 30g slice of a £1.79 block of cheese.
You can't buy a garlic clove, a whole one costs 40p

So if you ignore that flaw, and the cost of cooking it..

2 sausages
1/4 sweet potato
1/2 tin of beans.
1/2 cup rice.

Cut up sausages, fry.
Cut up sweet potato, add to sausages, fry.
Sweet potato soft and cooked, pour over beans.
Cook rice.

Serve.
Cheap as you like, but upfront costs would be way more.

Another typical out of touch and over privileged politician who expects the rest of us to live in utter misery

Just a reminder though that he didn't say 30p per portion or 30p per meal. He said 30p per day. For one person eating three meals that's 10p per meal.

You can't even get a bag of Space Raiders for 10p nowadays.

Blimey, that's ridiculous.
I skip breakfast tbh and have toast for lunch so I do only make 1 meal a day for my daughter and me, but I bet total it's more than 30p even with the food plan and budgeting etc. And I can cook, if I couldn't and I had to rely on stuff I can bung in the oven, pierce film lid etc, I'd be screwed beyond compare. I feel wasteful when I buy a pot noodle as a treat for 75p.. 😂

roarfeckingroarr
I don't think they were taken out of context at all. He was on the radio this morning and among other things he was arguing that people who don't need to are using food banks. Which is ridiculous.
Also if he is concerned about people not being taught to cook then he needs to talk to his colleague the Education Secretary.
He has also criticised Jack Monroe who is actually helping people to cook nutritious meals on a very small income by giving them practical ideas.

@SoggyPaper first of all, apologies. I had a parody failure which is unforgiveable. I agree some might be well-meaning though with the super-power of a lack of self-awareness, understanding context, having empathy and intelligence and so on. Such super-powers shouldn't be wasted, rather should follow in the career footsteps of not-always-successful PMs rather than spending time on MN.

@Suedomin I thought an explicit statement or implication of 'chancers' or the equivalent using foodbanks but unfortunately it caused a maelstrom in my head that both broke my listening and recall plus my usual whimsy and parody so didn't hear the end of the piece. Did the report of the visit to the foodbank finish as a complete piece or was it curtailed as I was physically unable to listen to the end? Jane Garvey? seemed polite and willing to give him a platform but Lee and his 30p blew straight into an attack on the BBC and Jane with somewhat injudicious language. I suspect few of the listeners from his constituency would have their pre-existing opinions of him changed by his statements.

The Guardian has, I think, reported Jack Monroe has said she intends to sue.

Well yes. You can go very far in life by being completely unable to consider complexity, context or empathise. It makes it much easier to be certain that your back of a tag packer idea is brilliant.

Given an adult calorific requirement is about 2000 per day, these 30p recipes quoted fall a long way short of providing a third of that.

@SoggyPaper many a word of truth. As I get older I see the career benefits of imperfect positions delivered with certainty to progress the career of someone around which sit demonstrably significantly more intelligent, less 'focused' and less ambitious people. I won't say which Home Secretary always astounds me when they are interviewed in the wild and sometimes even just presenting statements in the House that don't stand up to scrutiny, the 'House' being Parliament, not some nightclub or rave.

I wonder if there will be a particularly strong turn out in Parliament of Conservative male MPs seeking to ask questions when the nearest opportunity presents?

Well if I were in my 50s and had been there between 2002 and 2009 I'd ensure I was at PMQ today.

Indeed, I'd expect passionate views put forward about 9% inflation and cost of living. If someone couldn't put forward their views at PMQs then they might want to make an intervention in an equally important debate later, the latest Road Traffic Regulations being laid perhaps? Those Labour scallywags might try and put a spanner in the works by tying to speak and take up time.

If you live near a farm and can afford petrol or should they just pop it on their shoulder and walk home.

Actually the farm shops round here are more expensive than the supermarkets. Maybe it is because we are a holiday area and the visitors use them.

We eat what is classed as Eastern European peasant food every day.
Such a Borscht-Balandeliai-Bulviniai Blynai-Balta Mišrainė.
It's delicious, we substitute Yorkshire puddings for potatoes in our meals, they cost nothing to make, rice is mixed with frozen veg, etc.

I think what Anderson is trying to get at is Brits in general are horrendous cooks, I would apply that across the financial spectrum. One only has to look at the suggestions on social media and what is served in our chains and 'Gastro pubs'.
British food and mindset are about convenience, not nutrition or cost.

How do Yorkshire puddings cost nothing to make? You need flour, milk, eggs and you need a nice hot oven.

It's a figure of speech.🙄

It is entirely unfair for anyone to say they still don't think they've seen a single nutritionally sound meal able to be cooked for 30p. Anyone who enjoyed listening to Lee and his 30p on Sunday couldn't reasonably believe he appeared rude and tin-eared with Jane Garvey? He must be using hyperbole to illustrate a point about poor people cooking that is now at the top of his list for remedies for desperate people, well except the chancers he implied his foodbanks were serving. He has personally given £1000s to the foodbank apparently and mandatory lessons are an entirely reasonable measure.

@AppleandRhubarbTart I suppose there could be a reverse donut around an MP, if they perhaps have COVID and can't be excluded from the Perliamentary estate?

It's not a sensible figure of speech to use on a thread which is specifically about whether it's possible to make nourishing meals on a very low budget, day after day. If you read the thread, many have made the point that fuel prices are so high now that many people on low incomes can't afford to use the oven more than occasionally.

Not appropriate on a thread about people being expected to feed themselves on 30p a day. Work out how much your "cost nothing" yorkshire puddings cost. I put two eggs in mine so that would probably be my 30p for the day gone before we even start on the milk and flour.

Exactly, if we all start making things that cost nothing we would certainly cure the cost of living crisis wouldn't we. A piece of toast and a cup of tea cost nothing don't they, except I hadn't got any bread this morning and had to raid the change jar to buy some. Fortunately I did have some "free" butter, milk and a tea bag as I didn't find enough change to buy them.

Some people really don't understand what not having money actually means.

Yorkshire puddings used to be used to fill farm workers up before the ‘main meal’ - large and stodgy and filled with gravy so they ate far less of the subsequent more expensive meal with meat in it. So they are an excellent filler, but not particularly nutritionally balanced, and not very cheap unless you have a ready supply of milk and eggs.