You guys who are excellent at feeding your family on a budget - I need your help

[MascaraOHara]

I need to tighten the purse strings this month after an expensive few months with some unexpected bills. I am terribly overdrawn.

I need your cheapest meals please so I can spend as little as poss on food

I'm already getting my bread, fruit & veg at market etc so just a case of cheap, cheerful, quick & easy meals for me and dd

I have a fair amount in freezer (including yogurts for dd's lunchbox) and cupboards are fairly well stocked with ingredients. hoping to spend less than £50 for the month on food including our packed lunches.

TIA

soremummy - you need to train your children NOT to eat meat every night!

It is too much really.

We have soup, risotto, veggie pasta as an alternative to meat.

I would say we eat chicken, mince and sausages about 2 or 3 nights a week and the rest is veggie.

Makes 6 large or 12 small

100g SR Flour
50g plain or wholemeal (but I only had wholemeal SR and normal plain which was fine)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp mustard powder (I didn't use this)
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
25g butter, softened
100g grated cheddar
1 egg
2-tsp milk

Basically whizz (or use hands to make breadcrumbs) butter, flour, baking powder, mustard powder, salt. Add 75g of the cheese. In a separate bowl mix the egg and 2 tsp milk, mix with flour mix to make a dough, adding a little more milk if too dry. Make scone shapes, brush the top with milk and sprinkle with more cheese.

Yummy!

Oh, bake at 200/400/GM 6 for about 10 mins.

What everyone else has said, plus veggie stir fry - noodles, (dried ones, not the ready to use ones) and a couple of veg eg.a pepper, a carrot and an onion plus garlic, dash of sesame oil and soy sauce. You don't need fresh ginger, bean sprouts, spring onions etc unless they were selling them off cheap.

Spanish omelette - leftover cooked potatoes, plus sliced onion plus whatever else like pepper, tomatoes, courgette. Cook on the hob as usual, sprinkle with grated cheese and pop under grill for a minute, until cheese melts and omelette puffs up.

Egg fried rice or risotto.

Soup - use up older veg, add lentils or beans/chickpeas etc. to bulk it up, or minestrone - chop veg into small cube and add spaghetti broken into short lengths. It is amazing how much filling soup you can make with just a few veggies...

Majeika they dont eat meat every night I forgot about the plaice, salmon fillets and the tuna steaks that are also now in the bin but as I don't like fish thats probably why. When they have fish etc I have omlette or quiche. My dc would think I was starving them to death if I gave them soup for their evening meal it would be ok for lunch and no before anyone jumps on me they are not obese they are all quite skinny really but eldest eats loads

and buy one pack value cooking bacon from supermarket about £1 and will do, spag carbonara, quiche and still some left to add to soup! bargain!!!

Waiting for baby to wake so I can see what m & s are selling off they usually reduce at 4.30 ish and its only across the road will also get some more eggs and think will do an omlette tonight they will eat that. I need to go to farm shop tomorrow to get a sack of potatoes anyway so will see what they are selling

Thanks for the tip re bacon etc. Baby awake now so will hit shops, then have dinner then go again at 6.30 before local Tes closes

Soremummy - if you cook the food that was in the freezer, most (not all) you can re-freeze if it has been cooked after defrosting

thanks ivykaty but unfortunately we hadnt been near it in 2 days and didnt realise it hadnt been closed as its not in the house

when it's really really tight a pack of 8p chicken noodles from tesco/asda does in this house for lunch. i know it's bad. but at that price who can complain. slice of bread for the hungry ones to dip in the sauce.

Sprouted Lentils - you can grow them, and get the vegetable back... lentil is very versitile like that... if you dont want to eat them raw as sprouts you can lightly boil them and make into soup, then you get the lentil bean soup option and the vegetable lentil soup option.

Soak the lentils overnight or for at least 4 hours. Then drain, put them in a glass jar, with muslim, tea towel, or paper towel over the opening, keep out of direct sunlight and rinse one to 2 times a day, 2 days later you have a crop of veges of your bench.

Raw carrots, 2nd grade are cheaper. I get 2nd grade organic juicing carrots which are fine, just more interesting shapes. Good thing in lunchbox. As are the sprouted lentils.

Mouse traps, marmite and cheese melt...

Rice is cheap and lentils and rice combined is very good nutritionally. Though I plea that you dont buy rice from countries that drain their wetlands to plant rice fields.

AnnaVissi, I am curious about sprouted lentils . . . . . .do you mean you grow your own? & if so, how?

lucymum, you buy the green, or brown lentils - then soak and sprout them..

Soak the lentils overnight or for at least 4 hours. bought a cup of lentils.
Then drain away all water,
put them in a glass jar, with muslim, tea towel, or paper towel over the opening,
keep out of direct sunlight and rinse with water, one to 2 times a day, 2 days later you have a crop of lentil sprouts

The problem with our family is that no-one will eat the same stuff. So it's three different meals every day, H does his own. And even then dds menu is limited. I have a form to fill out for a school trip dd1's going on in October - "Does your son/daughter have any special dietary requirements? If so, please specify what these are."

Erm, pancakes, sausages, bacon, yorkshire puddings, some fruit. Oh, and only Lurpak unsalted butter in her sandwiches.

She'll come back like a rake.

Spaghetti with olive oil, garlic and chilli. Tou can also add prawns.I get sainsburys basic frozen ones.
My children like saghetti with butter and parmesan. Parmesan aint cheap but can go a long way.

AnnaVissi, thanks. I will try that this weekend

savoury rice - veg or with chicken/prawns. You can cook the rice in a stock. The kallo stock cubes are quite nice. Or better still, make some stock from a leftover chicken. My friend does this and freezes it as it's a bit fiddly to make.

ditto re majeika and not eating meat every night. I used to beat myself up if they didn't have meat, buy completely unnecessary. Baked potatoes, potato hash, omlettes with left-overs, bread pudding with stale bread, pancakes, good ol' baked beans! - have cut my food blls DRASTICALLY by using up what is in the fridge (and all those tims of tomatoes in the cupboard past their seel by date - not ptomaine poisoning yet.... The DC don't care, they are only re-fuelling from their POV - they are a darn sight better fed that 95% of the world