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?

Let's hope she doesn't get chosen for a random check at the tills where they scan everything and check you've put it all on. That could be embarrassing for her.

@Chaoslatte most people think that MPs expenses should all be scrapped. Which of course would lead to only very rich people being MPs.
The MPs who claim the least expenses are the richest.

Bag of lentils £1
Tin tomatoes 30p
Bag of spaghetti 20p
seasoning packet 30p
Meals: 20 spagbols

In what universe does that amount of food make TWENTY portions of spag Bol? That’s a 40g portion for spaghetti which is pretty not even much half what an adult would normally eat.

2 egg omelette with mushrooms or cheese and a jacket potato

Asda:
eggs, 16.7p each (cheapest available, £1 for 6)
mushrooms, 10p for 2-3 (50p for 250g)
cheese, 19p for a 30g portion (£1.65 for 250g)
Baking potatoes, 11p (four for 45p)

Total per portion, 54p for the mushroom option or 63p for the cheese. Disclaimer: it costs around 14p in electricity so cook jacket potatoes in an oven for around 45-60 minutes.

Pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese.

Basic range pasta, 5p for an 80g portion (32p for 500g)
Chopped tomatoes, 9p for quarter of a tin (38p a tin)
cheese, 19p for a 30g portion (£1.65 for 250g)

Total per portion, 32p but that doesn't include cooking time and - frankly - plain chopped tomatoes, especially cheap tinned ones, with no salt/pepper, herbs, or garlic aren't particularly nice

Cauliflower cheese

Cauliflower, 22p for a quarter (88p for a whole one)
cheese, 19p for a 30g portion (£1.65 for 250g)
Milk, 17p for a quarter pint (69p a pint, 500ml needed for sauce)
Flour, 2p (55p for a 1.5kg smartprice bag, 50g needed)

Total, 60p but again nit including fuel costs.

Not a single suggestion these is less than 30p and that's before fuel, travel costs, etc. The per portion model also presumes you have enough money to buy the whole items needed to take a portion from and somewhere appropriate to store the unused amounts until needed again.

Bag of lentils £1
Tin tomatoes 30p
Bag of spaghetti 20p
seasoning packet 30p

Meals: 20 spagbols

Rough guide, comes out at 10p/meal.

Add in a veg and some accompaniments like marmite, gravy, stocks, and you have a gourmet meal

putting aside a little scepticism that a tin of tomatoes and 20p of spaghetti can make 20 portions, I think spaghetti bolognaise can be made to taste great though arguably 'gourmet' might be a stretch.

How do you split a 20p packet of spaghetti into 20 meals?

He could rent a bedsit. Plenty do. It's up to him - the rules allow for either.

My point is that staying in a hotel and depending on more expensive food as a result is a choice he's making. He could be making himself nutritious and cheap lentil stews instead.

I don't think he has thought about parents of SN children who will only eat certain branded foods. They can't just say sorry we are eating lentils today. Those children would rather starve.

This too. I have child with ARFID who would starve himself rather than eat an unacceptable food. I ended up going to multiple shops looking for cucumbers and Birds Eye chicken dippers during the first lockdown as they were out of stock on our online shop and he would eat nothing else - his restrictive eating gets worse when he's stressed or anxious.

Actually with adult obesity, 1p of spaghetti per portion might help a lot. If people don't use foodbanks to load on cheap carbohydrates then this compassionate government might be missing a trick. Perhaps they could describe it as a national health-kick, not a cost of living crisis?

@Doubleraspberry maybe he doesn’t want to take up a flat that could be rented by a full time Londoner, since demand is so high.

You're quite right, my apologies.

I think these kind of calculations only work at mass catering level. Economies of scale probably make it possible to produce macaroni and cheese at 30p a portion, etc. That’s much harder to achieve on an family scale.

MPs should live in halls of residence style HMOs. Far more cost effective for the taxpayer and security can be provided.

Perhaps you could just swish your three strands of spaghetti around the plate and suck off the sauce, rinse and repeat?

😂 that must be it

This!

Yes you can have cheap meals, but you cant have them every day of the month as you will get ill! Who wants to eat budget pasta with a small amount of butter every day of their lives. The fact that there is no fruit or veg seems lost on people on this thread.

Until you have lived that life you will never understand it no matter how many cheap meals you cook in your pressure cooker, slow cooker, air fryer etc..... (people can't afford these luxury items!)

Its like the mumsnet fucking chicken all over again. Buy a chicken it will last you a month ffs.

@Hospedia You have too much time on your hands to do all of that AND your prices are all wrong.

You can get cheaper caulis at Tesco. You don't need buy packs of jacket spuds- a 2kgs bag is cheaper and use the bigger spuds for baking. Surely you know that buying potatoes bagged up and sold as 'jackets' are a rip off? Clearly not.

The cheese and mushrooms are optional- eggs alone would be fine.
You don't need 120gms (half a 250 gm block!) for a cauliflower cheese.

A lot of fruit and veg are cheaper in markets or Lidl/Aldi. Not sure why you think Asda is the cheapest.

There are more errors but unlike you I have better ways to spending my time than coming up with inaccurate figures.

I get he probably meant that some people don’t know how to cook and budget and he thinks it’s part of a food banks job to make sure people get help if needed to make money go further but I also agree that to presume all users of food banks need this is very patronising.

his examples of his granny and mum - were they also working full time outside the home where there were no shops for miles? I’d bet not.

it actually takes a reasonable income to eat economically as you need upfront investment.

I’m very lucky I can make a lot of soup and batch cook lasagne, pasta sauces, veg/bean stews etc when I have days off, because I have enough money to buy economy bags of veg and family size packs/ tins of things upfront. I can afford to own a hob, freezer, microwave and oven, and run them. I also have storage space for big bags of rice/potatoes/pasta/herbs/3 for 2 offer tins and I have no damp or rodent problems. I live in a single family home where I can have my own pots/pans/cutlery/Tupperware to easily store batches, I can even grow herbs salad and veg in my garden. So I can spend £50 on varied ingredients that when averaged out over a number of meals are maybe 30p per head, but if I only had £5 and no freezer I couldn’t.

And if somebody doesn’t live near a Lidl? We only have a Tesco in our town, nothing else (bar a small co-op). What then?

Perhaps that's his reason; he certainly sounds like a man with a strong social conscience. It's his choice. All choices have consequences.

Someone will say next that a young MP living for a week on the equivalent of UC won't understand what long term life on benefits is like. Such negativity.

The cheese and mushrooms are optional- eggs alone would be fine.

why suggest them then?

In what universe can you make 20 meals out of one 20p bag of spaghetti?

When I was a student 20 odd years ago I just about scraped by on a food budget of £20 a week.

20 years ago.

And I ate absolutely dreadfully. As soon as you start to try to eat a balanced healthy diet the costs skyrocket, and then you have to consider that you do actually need to spend money on going to the shops and the energy required to actually cook things.

It would cost me more in bus fare to get to and from Aldi/Lidl/the market than it does to get an Asda delivery. Plus I'd have to go more often as I could only buy what I could carry.

Sounds like it's not just the MP who's clueless.