Has your regular ‘menu’ changed since food prices hike?

[Ilovecleaning]

Mine has. I was never a chicken-nuggets-frozen-pizza mother but a cook-from-scratch cook. This continues into retirement. Now, around 3 meals a week are something like:

• egg, chips, beans
• Heinz Spaghetti on toast with a poached egg on top (I can’t believe it myself 🤣)
• jacket potatoes and whatever I can scrape together from the fridge/freezer

Generally:

• I serve smaller portions of meat, fish, chicken.
• bolognese/chilli bulked out with finely chopped vegetables
• use minced beef to make pies as it is much cheaper than chillis/bolognaise which use a lot more ingredients.
• add diced potatoes to meat pie filling to bulk out even more
• drastically cut down on bought puddings- I make more jellies and rice pudding - far fewer snack food/biscuits/cake in the cupboards.

Has anyone else’s cooking habits changed?

Bulk out bolognese with lentils

Chicken casserole with chickpeas or another white bean.

Value juice.

Porridge oats for breakfast

Buy reduced milk and freeze it.

It's not so much what I cook, but how.
I've had a pressure cooker, air fryer, slow cooker & microwave for many years.
I use them more now, adapting recipes that I used to cook in the oven.

Bulking it out by mostly eating at the Ivy.

I used to do the same with Costco salmon. It’s now £30+ but I’m going to try to budget for the biggest piece of salmon I can afford next time I go, but I will divide it into smaller portions. It’s good value actually, as you eat every scrap: no skin, no bone.

Lo 🤣. I wish!

@Ilovecleaning , it also tastes much better than what I buy in a supermarket even after being frozen and defrosted .

Used to do a home cooked meal every evening and have a takeaway once a week.. that's stopped.
Now we're having three cheap dinners per week.
Beans on Toast
Pasta and sauce
Omelette
Jacket potatoes
Tuna and sweetcorn sandwich with chips
Frozen pizza and salad
I like all of the above so it doesn't bother me.

A sandwich with chips on the side, pub-style - is a new cheap item on the menu for me, too. 😊

Yes. We always used to buy own brand stuff but would always be fresh rather than frozen. Now on basics / just essentials etc and a lot of frozen. Mostly veggie now (more often than not vegan) as it's cheaper and often more filling.

Should help with my weight loss plans

Not really but we shop in lidl anyway. Did try vegetarian night but got complaints!

Our sausage intake has gone up worrying. I'm using them in casseroles or cut up in pasta or sweet & sour, in places of 'real' meat. Have also replaced things we use to buy fresh with frozen, nd our fruit is a repetitive rotation of apples, oranges & bananas, insted of berries & mango.

Much more veggie food that includes beans and pulses now than before. We also try and avoid doing stews and roasts because of the cost of electricity. Husband buys more own brands now, and on Ocado you can get three for £12 on meat & fish. Sometimes there's a bargain in there (had some lovely salmon recently).

We buy less fresh veg because there's only 3 of us and we would find a lot went to waste each week. We still eat salads and fresh fruit though.

Eating out less.

More legumes -, on their own/ad a meat substitue and to bulk out meat

More cooking from scratch and batch cooking

Yes and no.
We used to eat cheaply and then things slipped. We’ve gone back to the cheaper style for the most part.

Less free range/organic 😞
Less putting meat on the side of a veggie meal for the carnivorous ones. (now I put up with the moaning instead)
Less sides eg instead of fajitas where everyone would expect guacamole, sour cream and salsa we do enchiladas where because they have a sauce people don’t miss the sides.
Used to automatically grate a load of cheese for pasta/chilli now I only get it out if people ask
More ready steady cook style what can I make from xyz instead of going to the supermarket to get something for dinner

Oh and like others have said cooking multiple things at once if the oven is on

Yes, things have changed noticeably. During lockdown it was a personal challenge to feed four on €20 a day. But then I had the time to soak pulses, make scones and soda bread and watch over the cooking.
Like PPs I plan my oven use so more dishes go in together. Not even my grandmother did that after the 1960s. Pressure cooker and microwave used more often.
Things we’ve had to cut back on:

1. alcohol, we’ve been dry since June
2. meat, a whole chicken costs €5+ compared to €3.50 now we have a large turkey breast joint for several meals €7.
3. Olive oil has doubled in price since Putin’s War. I use rapeseed oil whenever I can, even for cakes and pastry. I found myself reserving the oil from a tin of tuna instead of using EVO in the dressing!
4. Greengrocer’s. Supermarket fruit is often a disappointment, but who can afford (gorgeous) peaches at €1 each?

Portions are smaller, which is not a bad thing. Yesterday two schnitzels did three people. Meal planning now includes an eating-up day as my 7-day plan resulted in leftovers or larger servings to use up all the ingredients. I do make special meals but they’re instead of going to celebrate in a restaurant. €50 and a bit of my time instead of €40 each!

Taking packed lunches out rather than eating out.
Stopped making puddings
Eating less meat
Buying less processed food and ready meals

Yes chicken is more expensive. A tray of supermarket chicken legs (£2-2.50) for a roast dinner with plenty of veg zcan feed at least 4. Take most of the meat off the bones and make a rich stock with bones, skin. Use stock to make soup with loads of veg and a tin of butter beans or similar. Chop up a potato or two to bulk it out even more. I will even throw in left over shredded lettuce!

Cut down on salmon and meat a lot
Buy more frozen veg, hardly buy fresh
Make recipes with less ingredients in
Reduced the number of sauces and condiments we buy
Rarely have cakes, biscuits or dessert
Eat more easy teas
Buy less bread and always put straight into the freezer
Generally buy less food and have less waste
Still costs a fortune though!

Changes in energy prices have probably had more effect than food prices for us. I'm generally good at shopping cheaply, there are a few meals that we only ever cook if I'm able to get things at a reduced price e.g lamb mince has shot up to £5 for 500g but it's not used in one of our 'regular' meals anyway, I recently found some reduced so have some in the freezer to use.

I have stopped cooking meals that need extensive use of both the hob and oven, unless we're able to get a second or third portion of that meal. One of our favourites used to be a leek and potato bake with cheese sauce as a side served with sausages and extra veg. It used so many hobs - one for sauce, one for leeks one for parboiling potatoes, one for the veg later and then a lot of oven time I no longer make it.

We were trying to cut down on meat and fish prior to COL crisis for environmental reasons and have continued to do so.

This week we have had the following meals:

Sunday roast chicken dinner
Monday leftover roast chicken with quinoa and salad
Tuesday chickpea shwarma wraps and salad
Wednesday bean salad
Thursday mackerel pasta (one tin of mackerel between 4 of us but lots of veg)
Friday chilli and rice (250g of 5% fat mince, 400g tin of lentils, 400g tin of kidney beans and lots of veg)
Saturday leftover chilli and rice

So we are using a lot less meat and fish, but padding meals out with veg, beans and pulses.

We stopped a usual roast at the start of this year. We've done 2 recently but with a supermarket chicken to feed 6 rather than a lamb or beef joint. Otherwise still eating much as we were. Am still debating another air fryer having sold my last one, the large size is so expensive though I can't decide if we will get our money back on it.

• making more from scratch and not using jars
• bulking out curries with veg (much to husbands disappointment)
• homemade naan breads (so easy and just excellent)
• being careful about only cooking the necessary amount of pasta/rice so no waste
• buying tinned plum tomatoes rather than tins of chopped tomatoes. Whole plum tomatoes are much thicker and a tin goes further.
• homemade pizza dough stretched further by having thin and crispy bases (luckily everyone actually prefers these to a thicker base) and homemade sauce
• sandwiches for supper once a week
• pancakes/omelette for one meal a week
• not buying snacks but baking cookies/muffins/sausage rolls etc
• apples/grapes/bananas the only fresh fruit I buy; only buy blueberries and raspberries frozen
• rarely cook a whole chicken anymore - takes so long and we rarely actually had much leftovers because everyone just ate loads!

I don't understand this, you say your cutting down but then eating meat or fish 5 out of 7 days? Not including lunches?

We've been resurrecting some of the meals and puddings we had as kids. Not really sure why we never made them before, somewhere along the lines they went out of fashion but we enjoyed them enough then to remember them fondly so 🤷‍♀️

Puddings

• meringue nests with tinned mandarins or peaches and a drizzle of condensed milk or cream
• apple and blackberries cobbler/crumble using foraged apples and blackberries that get frozen
• apple or plum sponge - layer of sliced apple or layer of tinned plums with sponge mix poured on top and baked.

Meals

• chicken thighs or drumsticks with veg
• shepherds pie - use pork or turkey mince as it's cheaper
• stuff on toast
• jacket potatoes
• soup and sandwich
• omelette bulked out with plenty of veg. My favourite is peppers, spring onion, chilli, a little cheddar and some paprika.