"Normal" people who cook from scratch everyday - tell me this gets cheaper

[Frequency]

By normal, I mean excluding those who can feed a small African village with one can of chickpeas, an egg, and a tomato. Normal people, who eat normal portions of normal foods.

We've canceled Hello Fresh to save money, so we've started meal planning with a recipe-building app instead, otherwise, we just cycle through the same 5/6 meals all the time.

One child is away this week. The remaining child has picked;

Cheesy broccoli pasta bake, Piri piri chicken wrap “fakeaway”, easy creamy chicken curry, penne arrabbiata with roasted peppers and pancetta, easy chicken jalfrezi curry.

£75 fecking quid.

It's not even a full shop. I'm not eating breakfast or lunch coz the price now just for evening meals is way too much. I've added a couple of yoghurts and crappy pizzas for the kids lunches and breakfasts and we already have cereal in.

I bought cat litter and cat food earlier or that would have been added too.

Admittedly, we had to buy a lot of spices because Hello Fresh used to send them in handy little packets and DD has used most of the ones we did have jazzing up her instant noodles. But, the spices only added around £10ish. That's still £65 without breakfasts or lunches.

Obviously, next week we won't need as many spices and should have some butter and oil left but still...

If this is the best we can do I am going to have to consider rehoming a child.

I'm sure I have eucalyptus oil too. Thank you @Jeezitneverends, I'm going to try this one as well.

Batch cook, less to do and can make meals go further, like a pack of mince sautee with onions, split it in half then add stock veg to pack it out and red lentils to half and Passata, Italian spices and red lentils to the other half … then use the beefy one and top with mash potato, if there is enough do it twice and you have 2 cottage pies or do American style and top with “biscuits” for a cobbler… then the other half construct into lasagnes or cannelloni etc.. or top with mash for a twist on a cottage pie…
chicken marinade cheap drumsticks in shawarma or tikka or any seasoning that goes, 6 drumsticks will feed 3 adults and a baby when you shred it and put I pittas with a load of salad and chips.. can do the same with lamb

get a pork joint and make pulled pork which can do 3-4 meals and freezes well on baked potatoes in wraps in pasty’s

pack out curry’s with lentils and chickpeas to get twice as many meals with the meat you are using

risottos and pasta dishes allow you to stretch ingredients well too …

we bulk buy our meat and prep a load every couple of months and put in the freezer saves time on an evening too

saves time too when you find a spice mix you like to make that in bulk and keep in an empty spice container just label them and you are only measuring occasionally then too and have it ready to go if you get any good yellow sticker deals

We shop with Gousto for the same reason. We did with and without and a really don’t really see a huge difference price wise. We buy extra bit for breakfast from Aldi.

I use Who Gives a Crap too. Although it seems more expensive than the budget toilet paper, it’s WAYY better quality & each roll is so much longer! Like you my DP & I buy a small box & it lasts for months. We did the subscription to save a little bit more, but I have to delay the subscription multiple times.

as an aside, it also looks nice to have sitting out, gets delivered straight to your door & during a pandemic you don’t need to worry about running out of loo roll.

Okay, so I probably fall into that category of able to feed a small African village with a can of chickpeas and a tomato. But honestly, it’s really not that hard.

Trick number one You want to have a packet of frozen sweetcorn and a packet of frozen peas in your freezer at all times. Any meal that you make that really is just one portion and you can’t make it bigger. For example, if you’re using a jar source or something chucking a bunch of peas, sweetcorn or both it will bulk it out enough to make it two meals worth not one meal worth put the second meals worth in the freezer for another day. You can also use frozen sweetcorn and frozen peas to turn leftovers into a full dinner

Trick two never plan single meal cook from scratches. Every meal you make from scratch should be bare minimum two dinners ideally four dinners plus. It’s pretty easy to do once you get used to it. You take the meal as far as the point where you would add a side for example, chicken in a sauce, get it all cooked to the point where you would be adding pasta and split it into meals and only add enough pasta for one meal to one meals worth of the chicken mixture. Put the rest in food bags. One dinner worth per bag and pop in the freezer. About twice twice a year. I will spend a whole day doing a massive massive batch of Bolognese. I use 3 kg of meat as a base about 2 kg of vegetables and then a ton of tomatoes and onions and all the other bits that go into it I turn a lot of it into a ginormous lasagne that I make in a huge roasting chin that lasagne makes about seven or eight dinners after I’ve served dinner for the day, and I get anywhere from 4 to 6 more dinners from what’s left of the Bolognese. You can do vegetable sauce, a couple of kilos of whatever vegetables, you like rough chop, chuck them in a big and I mean big saucepan bit of water boil it down, mash it with a potato masher boil it again add some leaf vegetables, run it through a smoothie maker in batches, add diced carrots, or you can have the carrots in in the beginning. If you don’t like the texture, onions, tin, tomatoes, tomato purée, herbs, seasonings all that jazz and you get a fabulous vegetable sauce I got about 10+ portions. Last time I made it. I put it on meatballs put it on pasta really useful. You can chuck some meat in with it.

Trick three vegetables are your friends. They bulk out the meat in pretty much any dinner you can use large, diced vegetables in a stirfry you can use small, diced vegetables in a meat sauce. You can use very small, diced vegetables if nobody likes vegetables, If I make Bolognese, i start with about 60% as much vegetables as I have meat, then I add onions and tin tomatoes as well. Vegetables are a lot cheaper than meat. If you have a food processor and you’re using minced meat you can grind up most of the vegetables to a similar consistency to the meat and you don’t even notice they’re there. I like to use diced carrots and diced onions, because I like having the texture of those.

trick four slow cookers. You can put a joint of beef brisket in there you can do ribs in there you can do all kinds of stews in there. I have a big one and I can do about 6 to 8 depending on what I’m making making dinners worth of food in one slow cooker.
i’ll do pulled pork or pulled beef or stew and again use one dinner worth stick the rest in the freezer. You can make risotto out of stew you can make stew out of frozen stew. Chuck a bit of pasta with it and that works really well. Slow cookers are fabulous for chuck it all in in the morning. Pull it out in the evening. Serve some 5+ dinners in the freezer.

And of course, there’s the added benefit of batch cooking in that you don’t have to cook from scratch every day. Almost everything we eat is made from scratch, but I only cook from scratch one or two times a week usually not at all in the smaller school holidays.

and there’s also cheap dinners that you can throw together quite quickly baked potatoes, sausages with oven chips burgers with oven chips Those sort of things are the only time that I’ll make a dinner that’s only one dinner. If you look, you can find oven chips that are literally just potatoes and oil. Nothing extra added. I find them in Aldi and Morrisons. You can probably find them in the other supermarkets.

It's made in china and shipped across the world.Then shipped to you, better to buy local (European made) shipped to a supermarket in bulk and save this poor planet. Even if it doesn't look good.

You must have missed me saying about the quality of the product. The fact it looks attractive is just an added extra.

the majority of the carbon footprint made by toilet paper manufacturers related to the production process & raw material sourcing. They have tried to minimise their impact in this area by producing their product where they have ample supplies of recyclable material and bamboo. As well as facilities to create plastic free packaging. Although the product is shipped from China, they have reduced their carbon footprint at all other stages of the production process where their footprint would be greater. They also invest in building toilets & planting trees.

They must have changed WGAC since i tried it, it was the kind of paper that leaves toilet paper crumbs behind when you wipe. Horrible.

EVERY supermarket now stocks a 100% recycled loo roll. Most are produced in Europe, many in UK.
Using paper from the uk.
We have ample supplies here. loo roll from China, which is bulky and expensive to ship across the world, will never be environmentally friendly.
That's before you think about the road shipment to a warehouse and then a delivery van to your house, in a cardboard box. (FYI producing cardboard is very damaging to the planet)
Buy locally produced and donate to charity.
Don't believe the well marketed hype.

Just thought of few more ideas - I make Jamie's 7 veg sauce and freeze in ziploc bags. When I need meal in a hurry I cook some pasta, defrost the sauce and serve it with bits of bacon or chorizo, fried with some herbs like rosemary. I also keep packets of store bought ravioli (ricotta and spinach); today we've had them with pesto, parmesan and few cherry tomatoes. I cooked two packets and there was a small serving left which I am taking to work for my lunch tomorrow. For tomorrow's dinner I am defrosting leftover home made tomato sauce I made for pizza couple of weeks ago, I will use it to make quick tuna pasta bake.
I know you said Aldi or Lidl are difficult to get to - would it be feasible to make a journey there every few weeks even on couple of buses if need be and book taxi back home? I think the savings you'd make in your food bill could be worth taxi fare. I had to do that few times when my partner was ill or away on business trip x

Batch cooking is a little cheaper- but making 4kg of bolognese at once saves a lot more time than money-also unless you are happy to be bolognese based for days on end or have enormous freezer capacity, it cannot be stretched that far. I would also always use at least as much weight of onions as meat, plus lentils carrots and celery chopped small stretches it much further. I will often make two different meals from 500g of mince or 4 from 1kg. Bolognese or lasagne and chilli con carne for example-you won't get tired of it -use 1kg of meat and eat one half of the bolognese/lasagne freeze the other half and freeze 2 portions of chilli or eat one the next day and freeze one-your freezer will also be more likely to have the capacity.
I feel huge bulk cooking is really for people who don't like cooking, not those trying to save money.

Yeah, chest freezers and garages are the way if you really want to save loads of time in the week and a bit of cash too… I unfortunately have neither.

I feel huge bulk cooking is really for people who don't like cooking, not those trying to save money.

Technically yes, though you might get good savings on bulk fresh veg that needs to be cooked ASAP. But it can also save money if you're the kind of person/family who'll reach a point in the week where you just can't be arsed cooking. If there's something ready to go in the freezer, you've saved yourself the cost of a takeaway.

See also: teenage boys, who will clear out your fridge every few hours around the clock if there isn't an easy heat'n'eat option.

I feel huge bulk cooking is really for people who don't like cooking, not those trying to save money.

I do it as I work full time. I like cooking but don't want to be cooking every weeknight. I do find it cheaper too, we will occasionally go with cheese on toast or eggs, but if we are having meat then a one-pot stretches that much further than quicker options. We eat a one-pot for three nights running and only freeze if there is more than that.

I have a regular slimline type fridge freezer, fridge part would fit under the counter, four drawer freezer part, no deep freeze. I cooked in bulk when I had an under counter fridge with an ice compartment and no freezer too.

Only 2 of us now so I don’t batch cook, rather do an omelette if we’ve run out of oomph.

but even when kids were at home I’d be more likely to cook something like spag Bol on a day when not much on and leave in fridge. Did get Dh to embrace leftovers though.

Someone above said batch cooking was for those who don't like cooking, not to save money.

Completely wrong in my case.

I love cooking and can do quite complicated dishes when I have the time.

But I often don't have the time - living solo with a full on job and no microwave for ready meals as an option.

So I cook spaghetti Bol sauce, a range of curries, tagline, etc as well as full meals, like shepherd's pie, chicken and mushroom pie, smoked fish and provolone pie, lasagna etc.

Sometimes it is too much hassle to just make 1. Sometimes it is good to have options to defrost on busy days. It does save a lot of money also.

But it's absolutely not because I don't like cooking! A good fry takes a lot of work and long slow cooking that doesn't happen midweek - but reheating a frozen one while cooking some rice works well.

I agree that bulk cooking works for people who dont like cooking.

I find it a bit of a chore and don’t want to do it after a day at work. I typically cook enough for about 10 portions. We eat it that night and the rest is frozen in portions of 2 or 3 meals, to be defrosted other days according to who is around and needs to eat.

I probably do one or two of these per week. With all the portions in the freezer already, the odd meal where we cook for just that day (stir fry typically) and probably a meal a week of frozen pizza or other convenience food, we eat about 6 dinners a week of cooked-from-scratch food, without too much processed stuff, and with actual proper cooking occurring 2 or 3 times in the week.

Sometimes I make extra portions for elderly family or for friends who could do with a meal.

These meals which are mostly based on beef steak mince or chicken breast, contain lots of veg and I work on the basis that they cost about £1.25 per portion on average. That will include the pasta or rice or potatoes which might need to be added when they are defrosted (or not in the case if something like lasagne or shepherds pie)

Thinking about all these ingredients the OP's buying, every few days I cook something that's essentially a 'using up' dinner. Like tonight I'm going to make a jambalaya-type rice dish because I've got a chicken thigh, two sausages and some butternut squash left over. The only extra thing I've bought for it is a tin of tomatoes.

@Frequency i know this is slightly old now, but I don’t think cooking from scratch is cheaper than Hello Fresh/Gusto etc.

My husband is amazing at looking at ingredients and substituting things we don’t have for others. However, even if we meal plan everything, our weekly shop is still around the £75 mark for two adults and a toddler.

Hello Fresh is £35 (currently using one of their offers) for 4 meals for 4 people. This means we have leftovers for lunch and often a portion goes in the freezer which we use for the toddler at the weekend.

Can you just create new email addresses and claim the new offers between the family? Also, if you leave and go to Gusto, Hello Fresh will probably end up sending you an offer to return.

I used Hello Fresh for a week's experiment a couple of years ago. The portions were so small that my partner (not a big person and not a huge appetite) started having a starter and sometimes a pudding to pad our supper out. How you can feed two people and a toddler and have leftovers I don't know.

The other thing that no one has mentioned is the extraordinary amount of plastic waste and general packaging waste generated. My main memory of our Hello Fresh week was a kitchen littered with little plastic sachets and tiny plastic pots of sauce etc. All of which had to be washed and recycled. Plus the limited amount of veg supplied. I was constantly adding extra from the fridge because the HF portions of veg were so tiny — certainly not a recommended portion size.

It has to be or hello fresh wouldn’t make any money. Obviously they’ll be buying food in bulk but the discounts in doing so wouldn’t be big enough to make them the profit they do if there wasn’t a large premium on top.

Can you just create new email addresses and claim the new offers between the family? Also, if you leave and go to Gusto, Hello Fresh will probably end up sending you an offer to return.

Ahemmm, yes I’ve done it but we live in an apartment block, so I just gave the street address and DH has a different surname…

We have done a month of hello fresh here or there over the last few years when I get a discount code.
We found the portion size hugely depended on the meal- my partner is a big eater and I'm average.
Some meals were really good sized portions, most were ok and a few we felt were small. You must have had bad luck.
However your right about the packaging

@Frequency

Regarding growing herbs.

I grow a lot of herbs. Some are perennials, like rosemary and mint, but I always grow a few from seed every spring.
Anyway, I have finished my planting for this season and have some opened packets with some seeds left, basil, coriander and dill, plus some cayenne chilli seeds.

If you would like them you are more than welcome. Just pm me your address and I will stick them in the post.

🙂