MNHQ needs your culinary ingenuity (and thrift)

[GeraldineMumsnet]

Please can you share your best ideas/recipes for feeding your family on a budget and generally eating on the cheap?

Eg: Do you cook in bulk and freeze? Do you concentrate on food that's in season? Do you have particular recipes that go a long way, or can easily be converted into another meal from leftovers? Do you work out your food budget for the week or see what's on offer when you get to the shops?

Please share your best bits of advice (and if there are any MN recipes you rate for their cheap and cheerful nature, please tell us which ones).

thank you
MNHQ

Thank TMH - now I just need to get a chicken!

You are welcome.

Just to add that this week we have had a roast chicken for lunch this is my menu plan for the rest of the week (cooked lunches for 3 and main meals for 4)

Roast chicken, all the veg and yorkshire puddings

Monday lunch - leftovers chicken, veg, yorkshires and new potatoes (Jerseys 99p at Tesco)
Monday Dinner - Soup/Stew and dumplings - from the carcas and extra veg + any left over potatoes

Tuesday Lunch - Jackets + Cheese and Beans
Tuesday Dinner - chicken curry (from leftovers) and rice - yohurt added to make it milder for the chidren

Wedensday lunch - Beans and Sausage on Toast
Wendesday dinner - Bolegnease

Thursday lunch - omlette and salad
Thursday Dinner - Lasagne and salad

Friday Lunch - fish fingers, smiles and veg
Friday Dinner - Home pade pizza

Saturday lunch - frankfurters, noodles and sweetcorn
Saturday Dinner - potluck - tends to be from the freezer

So I would have purchsed

1 good chicken (medium)
Frankfurters
Veg - carrott, brochli, leeks, potatoes, cauli, sweetcorn, peppers, spring onions, tomatoes, lettuce and frozen peas
1 pack of mince
Rice (cuboard)
pasta (cuboard)
Tin of beans and sausage
Tin of beans
tin of tomatoes
passata
Eggs
Milk
Cheese
salami for pizza

We always have a full fruit bowl adn make jellys, rice puddings etc for derserts

Nursery puddings like rice pudding and steamed treacle pudding are a hit with my husband and children and they are filling and don't cost much: esp. the rice pud.

If you live in the country get to know your local famers - find out when they are planning to butcher an animal and get your order in. Also the people who shoot game - we can always get rabbit, venison and pheasent for very little or nothing. Sometimes the local dairy farmer has over produced his milk quota. So he will swap it for an occasional pint in the pub. It is really easy to make into butter in an electric mixer, which can be frozen and the butter milk made into soda bread.

Forage in the headrows and woods - loads of places have raspberries, blackberries, walnuts, wild garlic, watercress, bilberries dandylions. Our village has just got grants to plant a village orchard - 1000 fruit trees over the next 2 years. All the fruit is free to pick (apples, pears, walnuts hazelnuts, plums, black currents, redcurrents, and other more unusual / heritage fruits)

Befriend the allotment holders in your area - there are always gluts that need to be given away.

There is no mention of breakfast, maybe we all do the same? . We buy a huge bag of oats and have porridge with whatever fruit available.

For a cheap dessert I make a bread and butter pudding using the slightly stale, left over bread that doesn't always et used up at the end of the week. Here's my recipe:

Butter 6-8 slices of bread (brown or white)

Then cut up each slice into 4 triangles.

Lay half of them out in the base of an oven-proof dish and sprinkle with 3-4tbsp sugar.

Mix an egg into a cup of milk and pour over then lay the rest of the bread on top.

Mix another egg with another cup of milk and sprinkle another 3-4tbsp of sugar over.

Leave to soak up the mixture for about 30 mins then pre-heat the oven to gas 4 and bake for around an hour or until the top has turned a nice golden brown.

To ring the changes you can use jam, spread onto the bread, or chocolate spread or even mix drinking chocolate into the milk to make a chocolate pudding. Lovely.

Are they going to publish this in a book??? (and make money out of our money-saving tips?

Lots of good ideas on here.

We have meat twice and fish once (or vice versa) a week, all other meals veggie.

I did start menu planning, but I still always ended up with way too much food. Now, I plan for 5 meals a week. There is always at least one night of leftovers (esp if we have roast on Sunday), and I quite like having poached eggs on toast or something similar another night. Or we might get a better offer.

Also, I suppose I'm lucky in being able to do this, but I only do the weekly shop on the day I need to - so if we haven't eaten all 5 meals by Sunday, I'll start the next week from Monday instead.

DD (2.5) has always eaten the same as us since she was weaned. If she doesn't like it, she eats less. Double money-saving!

Dont be afraid of different foods. We used to have a great, really cheap shop full of Foreign Food and also things by well-known brands that obviously didn't sell. One shelf was 3 items for £1. DH and I used to play 'who can make the best meal for £1' and we had some fairly decent ones.

Try the Value ranges before you dismiss them. Some stuff is exactly the same as that with more expensive branding, others are far poorer though.

Pancakes - just eggs, milk, flour and a bit butter so a good storecupboard meal. Add some grated grated carrot to the mixture if you have it.

Serve with the normal lemon & sugar, jam, chocolate spread OR whatever savoury things you have around.. ham and grated cheese, sliced tomato or mushroom, warmed through meat and cream mixture, improvise!

Some kids like the savoury pancakes to be presented as a pizza rather than rolled or folded..

Horton has touched on this but you can get big pouches of herbs and spices in any Indian grocer but also in my local Tesco in their "World Foods" aisle or whatever they call it you can get the same stuff for about a quarter of what they charge for it in mimsy little jars 3 aisles down.

Can't believe they get away with it actually. I buy all spices and herns like fennel like this and store in old jam jars and the like.

This may take a little time but is interesting to do as I did it the other month.

Make a list of all the items you usually buy at the supermarket then check the price of each item at each of your local supermarkets.

For eg, I have an Aldi, Somerfield and a Morrissons so i checked those 3.

Once i did that I had a list of the prices and now when I make my shopping list check 'the list' and write a A (for Aldi) M (for morrisons) or an S (for somerfield) next to each item so I know where to get it the cheapest.

This saves us a lot on our shpooing bill as we always pay the cheapest price for each item. Of course we check offers for certain things too.

Another good tip is to stock up on things you're always going to need when they're on offer for eg tinned goods like Tuna, etc.

Making your own soup for lunch is really cheap and healthy.

I make a nice carrot and lentil one (my MIL's recipe)

• 4 onions
• 3 carrots
• a small sieve full of red lentils (1/3 packet)
• 2 - 3 vegetable stock cubes

You chop the onions and grate the carrot in to the pan, add the (washed)lentils and fill the pan with 2ltr of boiling water that has the stock cubes dissolved in it.

Cook for 1/2 an hour and is ready. Even better hte day after reheated mmmm. You can add a can of chopped tomatos for a change too.

I menu plan and this helps me stick to the right amounts of food for the family without buying too much that will go to waste.
Bulk buy things like bread, to freeze, as even little trips to get another loaf of bread can result in more shopping bought when it's not really needed (!).
Punctuate weekday meals with vegetable casseroles which are nutritious, filling (esp when add pulses or beans ) but very cheap for the whole family.
Buy meat from local butcher - lucky to have an excellent but also reasonable one nearby so he will often suggest ways of cooking things but also I can see what's the best deal that week and adapt recipes accordingly.
Fave family meals which are cheap:
fish pie
casseroles
fruit crumbles
rice dishes
bean stews
curries

Dalrymps but aren't you losing svings in fuel to get to all the different shops?

Fabulous, no we live in a small town and all the supermarkets are on the one route iykwim. It's the same journey to go to Aldi as it is to go to all three... I appreciate it might not be the same for everyone though. The only reason we do it like that is that none of our supermarkets are on the online price comparison sites, if they were i'd just check prices via the internet.

Trillian, everyone said what I would have said! I put in my stock for soup: tiny cubes of carrot, shredded leeks, tiny cubes of potato or other root veg like parsnips or celeriac, any leftover chicken and a good helping of pearl barley and/or lentils. It makes a nice chunky warming soup. Fresh herbs nice too if you are growing them. The other thing I do is to fry some onion and a few rashers of bacon, chopped small, add a few chopped skinned tomatoes and cook down for a bit, then add the stock, some pasta and some haricot beans or chickpeas plus veg for a kind of minestrone.

I have started to use my supermarket, the online comparison site for my delivered shop.i still end up ordering from tesco but I always use the feature that shows me cheaper alternatives eg. shows you how much you could save for dried goods for buying a bigger pack, or a BOGOF you may have missed. I go through ipoints so am acumulating points to swap for vouchers. then I use a Tesco code for money off or free delivery.

then to top it off I have loads of clubcard points which I swap for clubcard deals tokens and get 4X the value.

I must admit i'm not great at economising on my food shop, although I don't eat meat so that cuts out a big chunk as we eat veggie most days and I only do meat for dh and dcs maybe twice a week. I get a veggie box from my local organic delivery and plan meals round it.

I used to buy small pots of jelly/custard/rice pud for lunchboxes. What a waste of money! It is so much cheaper to buy big tins/make your own and portion it out.

I forgot to say, dumplings in soup is a fab idea and one I will definitely be trying!

Havent read whole thread so sure I am repeating others advice.

meal plan and ONLY visit the supermarket/shop/market once a week. Bread and milk can be frozen, Meal plan so that your meals at the start of the shopping week use the fruit/veg that will go off soonest.
Meal planning will help you avoid the lure of the takeaway as you will have stuff in that has to be used.

Dont throw anyhting away. the smallest leftover bit of pasta/rice can be thrown into an omelette, soup etc.

Go veggie at least 3 nights a week

Move one brand down on things and see whats still ok. I find many of the Smartprice/Value ffruit and veg tastes exactly the same just not as 'pretty'.

Go shopping after 7pm to see whats reduced-I got a huge bag of leeks the other day for 10p which I used to make soup.