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?

So how are they eating, if they never cook? I take it, that is what you mean?

Theres cooking and there’s putting freezer food in the oven because that’s all you’ve got left in you after work.

That’s great if parents have the time, energy and resources to cook.Isn’t it pretty likely that the poorest households won’t?

As a statement that implies that the poorest aren’t feeding themselves in any way. But I do agree with you - the onus just shouldn’t be put on schools with stretched budgets, teacher shortages and every other thing that schools are desperately trying to teach students in lieu of parents doing any of it. Community projects could and should be set up. However, our feckless government has just wasted more than £22billion in failed covid projects and protections so once again, there won’t be support from the government. If we’re going to criticise the idiotic notions they come up with, then people should also stop voting for them.

All of that about time, travel, etc but also, why should people have to do that just to survive!? Why should they have to go buy leftovers, which are usually use-by dated for that day, and over which they have no control of the contents? If you send your last £3 on a good to go bag and it turns out to be two bashed up mini-cakes and a cheese toastie dated that day then you're fucked. Then that's not including food intolerances or food preferences. Wage and benefits should be at a high enough level that people can afford to fucking eat and its a scandal that they're not.

@Balderdaah MPs can claim for the cost of a meal but only if they are NOT in London or their constituency, and travelling in parliamentary business. (This does not include claiming whilst travelling to London)

They can also claim for limited hospitality for the constituency office (tea and coffee) for when they have surgeries for constituents.

They don't get a meal allowance and haven't for years.

They (like everyone else in parliament- including builders/cleaners/journalists etc) can use the parliamentary cafes which are cheaper than normal as they're at cost price. They have to pay for that from their wages.

I was given a top tip by my brother that apparently his fiancé is excellent at budgeting and making their money go further and he really couldn’t work out what I was doing wrong. Turns out she uses the scanner thing in Asda and only put 50% of the shopping, genius eh ?

given she’s a social worker hope she doesn’t get caught otherwise they’re gonna have 50% of their income to buy double the amount of shopping with. So there they are on 70 grand a year with one child and that’s what they’re having to resort to.

You're so right. It's not that different to suggesting people take food out of bins really.

The moment you take into account things like fruit and vegetables, the cost rockets. Maybe you can feed people for 30 p per head, but in the long term that kind of diet would lead to serious health issues. But that doesn't matter, because it's only happening to poor people.

Vitamin supplements would not cover the deficit - they are less well absorbed than eating proper food. They also cost money.

I also hate the ‘buy discounted food’ shite.

sounds so simple doesn’t it? But it means you:

1. HAVE to be at the supermarket at 6pm or later every day. What if you’re a single parent? Drag little kids out of the house at that time?


2. have basically zero choice in ingredients - let alone the likelihood of those ingredients going together to make a nutritious meal


3. Cannot cater to allegories, intolerances etc or kids with food aversions


4. cannot buy anything fresh enough to last a couple of days unless it can be frozen

all so depressing

Oh and it means you can’t online shop

Part of the problem in perception is the YouTube challenges where they make x meals for £10 (or $10) a week. Atomic Shrimp has done a few which are interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk5KvJPikK00j3VZri9pSyzd-i5Q7ktRU

The brutal truth is that you need your wits about you, access to equipment, energy and time to even come close to that.

Also, school do not teach 'proper' cooking. Son came home with huge list of ingredients to lug into school and never came home with anything edible. They didn't talk about budgeting or leftovers, just baking and some weird version of spag bol. We had a talk.

This same MP, in the same address to Parliament as his food bank comments (which are available online as a transcript, he was not taken out of context) also said:

when people (asylum seekers) get here, they know how to fill the forms out and they have these lefty lawyers who say, “Put this, this and this.” So they fill the forms out and, hey presto, about 80% get asylum status, and it is wrong. It is a burden on the taxpayer, these people are abusing the system. It is a bit like some benefit cheats—they do it, don’t they? They abuse the system, saying that they are disabled when they are not. [Interruption.] Yes, they do. Come on, let’s be right about it.

Basically implying people lie about being disabled to cheat the benefits system, something ehuch is not the slightest bit backed up with facts (quite the opposite, disability benefits are notoriousdiffixult to claim and so many go unclaimed).

Now I'm not saying he's an utter cunt whose moral integrity is so low that, if it was a pole, slugs would struggle to limbo under it but he sure does supply a lot of evidence to the contrary.

Then he should invest in some second hand Tupperware, get up early and make one of these famed 30p meals he can bring to the office. If not why not?

Do you think MPs work 9-5 and then just go home? While parliament is sitting they work around 70 hours a week and are often in the chamber until late at night. From looking at his expenses it doesn’t look like he has a London residence (constituency in Notts so he can hardly commute daily) so he stays in hotels which I imagine don’t have any cooking facilities.

he stays in hotels which I imagine don’t have any cooking facilities

So not unlike a two bed flat elsewhere in the UK where the occupants cannot afford the fuel needed to cook and so also have no cooking facilities...?

Try feeding a family of teenage boys and parents who've been working all day, maybe in a very manual job, on 30p each every day. Ridiculous.

I went out around 5 yesterday and got home around 8

No food allowed on expenses " because the tax system assumes you would have bought food anyway"

He lives in hotels Mon-Fri every week? Like Alan Partridge? I mean that’s just an extravagance all he needs is a tent and a place to pitch it. He should be grateful just to be alive. Nothing in life is free, Chaoslatte…

For 30p a head you could have a 2-egg omelette with a couple of mushrooms or cheese, and a jacket potato. Or pasta with tom sauce and grated cheese. Or cauliflower cheese ( one costs about 80p) add milk, cheese to make the sauce.

Nothing - you might get the ingredients for 30p but not the fuel costs of actually cooking it.

The Commons only sits late one night a week regularly. MPs are away from home all week, and they do often work into the evenings, but they are living in accommodation with cooking facilities, so could quite feasibly bring a packed lunch in with them, or heat up some leftovers, if they genuinely had to think about the costs of food. It's very easy for them to buy all their meals in the canteen, or get food delivered, or go to a restaurant, but it's a more expensive option than cooking for themselves and making the sort of meals mentioned in this thread.

Many years ago, there was a documentary in which Michael Portillo 'survived' on what was then the dole for a week. He managed, but at the end expressed relief he was going back to his own life as 'for someone like me, the life on benefits is quite dull'. It's stuck with me forever because it was so revealing; he saw poor people as different to him, with less need for more in life than the basics.

Cheapest eggs at ASDA are 15p each. Where do you shop?

I agree. Im probably going to end up in a similar situation when I leave my abusive relationship I just didn't know what else to suggest.

Eggs are just under £2 for six.

Are you buying organic large ones?

Even Waitrose own label Essential eggs are £1 for 6 @IncessantNameChanger

I'm the worlds biggest Lee Anderson hater- guys a total nob head in so many ways however he is right about one thing - a great many people just can't cook on a budget, they can get by with a lot of shit , but not cook even when they have the time and reasonable money- I had a friend like this who only worked part time but just couldn't be arsed - she would rather take kids to maccyDs or get pizzas in this really isn't cheap if it's a family.-- and I say this as a non Tory Lee Anderson hater!!

And living in a hotel is a choice he makes, a lifestyle choice that means he can't feed himself cheaply.

I've been putting some recipies together for my student kids some are around 30p but not for 3 meals per day Their food budget is around £4 per day

Porridge & bananna 37p
Lentil & Carrot Soup 32p
Soft Cheese, bread roll, grapes 93p
3 fish fingers, oven chips & frozen peas 54p
3 fish fingers, rice & peas 46p
Pasta, soft cheese & sweetcorn 58p
Pasta with bought tomato & marscapone sauce 91p
Pasta & pesto 35p
Veggie stew 2.50
I havn't priced up things like shepherds pie yet

Adding cooked chicken to a meal would be around an extra £1.50