We have £65 to last 2 weeks - what do I do?

[ladybirdladybirdflyawayhome]

I have £65 in cash & 59p in the bank & no more coming in for another 2 weeks!!

I'm stuck on how to feed 2 adults & 3 children.

I have spoken to the school so the children will have free school dinners for a little while.

I've looked in the cupboards, freezer & fridge & I have lots of carrots, potatoes, sausages, eggs burgers but not much else!!!!!

It's all so depressing, after buying school shoes & uniforms & a few extra bills popping up the money has all gone for this month & I honestly don't know how to stretch it to make it last.

I'm quite embarassed by the amont of food in our store cupboard, especially the stuff I didn't even know about

Fridge & freezer are easy though: large bags of frozen veg, bag of sausages & 12 large burgers.
milk, butter, eggs, 1 whole chicken for tomorrow.
Lots of pots, carrots & onions.
salad cream, mustard & mayo.

Here goes with the store cupboard hope I haven't bored you all to death just yet:

chicken & lamb stock cubes.
1/2 pot of gravy granules
tomato soup x 2
spag hoops x 3
baked beans x 1
rogan josh paste
2 creamed coconut sachets
sage & onion stuffing mix
lasagne sheets
corn flour, yeast, bicarb, self & plain flour
brown & red sauce, soy sauce
smoked paprika
vanilla extract, caster sugar, hot choc
packet mixes for - sausage casserole, chilli, carbonara.
fajita kit, 4 large part baked rolls, 6 tortillas.
5 packets of pizza base mix!!!!!!!

Huge amount of food - I really need to do a meal plan for the next 2 weeks.
I don't want to spend it all now though incase something comes up, we will definatly need bread, milk, nappies & washing powder & I can only get to an asda.

Thanks again for all the help

Well it looks like home-made pizza is going to be on the menu a bit
Are you going to use the suffing with the chicken tomorrow? If you have some left cold you could use it in snadwiches with left over chicken. i hink you'll need a couple more tins of beans - they are v handy and filling.

One chicken does us 3 days worth of meat as I buy organic and it costs a bomb. We usually have "slimey" chicken on day one with rice or with roast veg, then the following day have roast with chicken breast, day 3 they like chicken pie best - or a freeze the left over bits and defrost it another day to make the said chicken pie.

I slow roast our chicken and all the meats falls off the bone.

Forgot to say we are 2 adults and 3 primary school children they are just used to ration portions of meat these days

Hi CarGirl - how do I slow cook the chicken? do I add stock & how long on low or high shall I cook it for?
Also, If you don't mind letting me have your pie recipe....

I but a bit of butter or oil - actually I have that spray stuff - on the bottom and the lid, just the minimum. Turn on, leave most of the day .

Recipe books says brown first in butter but never done that. Book says cook on high 6-7 hours.

I can't always get the lid on properly at first so put a huge heavy book on top after having squished down as hard as I can and it soon collapses down a bit more!

chicken pie I use frozen puff pastry. For the filling I use the bits of chicken and al dente cooked sliced carrotts heat in a pan with the chicken stock and a little plain flour to thicken and some parsley and that kind of thing, bit of cream if we have it. Meanwhile oven pre-heating and pastry rolled out. Put filling in pie dish then pastry on top brush with milk and cook for half an hourish.

HTH - may be worth googling some recipies!

there's a section on this on Money saving expert forums..the Old Style board has loads of tips, discussion and recipes including a cupboard only challenge on how to make the money stretch.

Thank you Bela I will have a look now.

I made shepherds pie tonight & bumped it up so much with the extra veg & such that it made 2 instead of the usual 1 - tasted yummy aswell.

Managed to get some veg at a boot sale today. I then gave the meat man £5 & got a joint of pork - don't know what to do with this?
2 lamb chops
1 packet of bacon
And a packet of fresh sausages so I think I did quite well there.

Doing a chicken in the slow cooker like suggested - smells yummy but looks anemic to say the least - hope it tastes as good as it smells

I expect you can slow cook the pork too - maybe ask here for a recipe? Well done you - that all sounds good

Not a recipe thing, but if you phone the child benefit people and tell them that you are skint and have no food in the house (and ask them very nicely because they are only meant to do it for JSA claimants) they will change your payments to weekly instead of monthly. It changes over pretty quickly (I had money in my account within a few days after calling).

CTC will change to weekly for you too but they won?t do it very quickly so you have to keep checking your account.

Oh thank you living, we receive ou cb next monday but a few days earlier would really help - we have £15 left for this week.

We aren't entitled to any other benifits because we sit JUST above the cut off points for wtc & ctc even though when I had to hand my notice in 18 months ago we had to adjust to a drop in household income of just over £500.

Crazy world sometimes.

The school have been so supportive, offered school meals & trips as well s an after school club so the girls have something to do once a week.

Cooked my pork & have loads left over, any ideas?

i work with families on low incomes and you should be getting CTC if you have a joint income of less that £50,000.00 pa (although this will change with the new cuts)

So even if you are at tht top end of this you should get around £43 pm minimum, rising the lower your income goes.

Maybe you should get in contact again and re apply