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Food/Recipes

Meal ideas I'm losttttt

15 replies

Fancyachive · 15/06/2014 20:46

I need some ideas for healthy meal ideas please, I am on a tight budget and can't think of anything Blush I want to start to do a big shop instead of lots of little shops! Hoping It will be cheaper

Thankyou

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MisForMumNotMaid · 15/06/2014 20:51

Do you have a freezer?

One of my big bulk freeze basics is a mince/ carrot/ onion/ celery/ tomato mix. It then forms the base for cottage pie, lasagne, spaghetti bolognese.

I tend to buy three or four packs of mince when its on a weekend offer at Lidl, grate a bag of carrots and celery, chop 1 or 2 onions per pack.

Value tins of veg are good to have in and saves waste as do frozen peas/ beans/ broccoli.

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Wait4nothing · 15/06/2014 21:00
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sharond101 · 15/06/2014 22:10

Buy a large chicken and make it last a few meals e.g roast dinner, with salad and potato wedges, chicken curry and rice, in wraps, soup with the carcass, in a pie, with noodles in a stir fry.
Mince is relatively cheap and can be bulked out with veg or lentils. We do bolognese, lasagne, shepherds pie and meatballs.
Turkey mince is great for all sorts of meals. We do enchiladas (our favourite), savoury mice with nachos, sloppy joes and burgers.
Baked potatoes with filling (tuna mayo, beans, coleslaw, cheese...)
Omelettes
Homemade pizza (can cheaply make dough or use pitta breads or wraps).

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Fancyachive · 15/06/2014 22:51

Thankyou so much! These are such great ideas GrinGrin

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SirNoel · 15/06/2014 23:05

This week we've got:-

chicken wraps, salad and wedges

Bean burger pitta things ('burger' is quite flattering, fried mush is more apt but they're tasty) with salad

Roasted butternut squash, pepper, feta and spinach salad

Pasta with chorizo and roasted veg sauce

Turkey chilli and jacket potatoes

Homemade pizzas

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calzone · 15/06/2014 23:08

Can you shop at the end of the day when food is reduced?

Today we had a 99p rotisserie chicken
All the trimmings for a roast.

Reduced food for this week is

Pasta with tomato sauce 49p
Chicken kiev x 2 89p
Steak £1
Chilli cooked last week only cost me £1.50
Bought all my veg for 10p per packet

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Fancyachive · 16/06/2014 07:07

Can I have the recipe for butternut squash please ??

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Fancyachive · 16/06/2014 07:07

Reduced sounds good too ! Thankyou such good ideas why don't I think of these things Thanks

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OpiesOldLady · 16/06/2014 07:12

Have you got a slow cooker? You can batch cook everything and it's cheaper to run then a conventional oven.

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joanofarchitrave · 16/06/2014 07:17

I know you don't want to split the shopping but look around for places where you can get a sack of rice (not a huge sack, we get a 10kg one) e.g. a Chinese supermarket. We spend a tenner and it feels like it lasts forever, well worth going separately for this.

Make sure you've got flour, fat and perhaps UHT milk in small cartons (stores indefinitely) in so that you can make a basic white sauce and flavour it with cheese, mushrooms or just have it plain - very flexible. Delia Smith used to have a quick white sauce method - here it is

Eggs; scrambled egg on toast, omelettes with mushrooms or herbs (grow your own, thyme and chives are the toughest and most flexible) eggs mornay (one or two eggs each, hard boil them and make cheese sauce while they are boiling, peel eggs and cut in half, pour cheese sauce over the top), skint kedgeree (bulk out a tiny bit of fish and a load of rice with hardboiled eggs and a sliced tomato or two).



Buy loose fruit and veg, and maybe loose meat and cheese from the deli counter. Slightly painful having to pick it all out but you really don't have to get the amounts that your supermarket has decided to sell you at maximum profit. Get a little bit of mince and bulk it out with tins of chopped toms and a handful of lentils (I can't put more in as ds will pick lentils out individually if he knows they are there!). Get one slice of bacon per person. Get 100g of something rather than a kilo or whatever. Get the number of carrots you have actually planned to eat, rather than 2kg.

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SirNoel · 16/06/2014 07:37

I'm embarrassed to call it a recipe, it's so easy but basically chop up the butternut squash into small chunks and put into a roasting tin with similar sized chunks of red/orange peppers and red onion.
Drizzle with olive oil and season with cumin, coriander powder etc or just salt and pepper if you prefer. Roast in the oven until squidgy and charred.
Tip the contents of the roasting tin (oil and all) onto a bed of raw spinach. Crumble over chunks of feta cheese and dollop blobs of caramelised onions (or onion chutney). You can also sprinkle it with seeds, or drizzle with yoghurt.

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Fancyachive · 16/06/2014 08:05

Yes I have a slow cooker but have no idea what to put in it now it's getting warmer x

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Fancyachive · 16/06/2014 08:06

Thanks Joan that's one of my problems buying too much and not using it all and then just chucking it away so thankyou for your ideas Grin

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Fancyachive · 16/06/2014 08:06

Sounds good noel thankyou GrinGrinGrin will try this tonight

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JiltedJohnsJulie · 17/06/2014 14:17

Butternut squash risotto is nice too. Have used sausages that I bought when they were reduced to make toad in the hole for 8 people, think it cost me about £2 to feed everyone Smile

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