How to feed a family on a budget

Pasta bakes are also cheap - I add a ton of cooked pasta to a dish, add a carton of cream, a tin of chopped tomatoes and a cup of grated cheese. Mix it around and bang it in the oven for 20 mins. Easy to re-heat leftovers the following day for lunch.
 
Lidl chorizo is great in a sauce for pasta. Fry it with some garlic and tomato puree and add a tin of tomatoes and some olives and you have a nice sauce.

Anchovies (one or two) in any stew or tomato sauce add great depth. Dried mushrooms (porcini or shiitake) also add a great meat flavour if you are going veggie or nearly veggie.
 
mtk said:
Includes Toiletries washing powder . Paper goods , etc etc( wine bottle a week €12 say) Wife buys a good few organic type products which may inflate number
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You had me worried there if that was just for food!
 

Think we have the recipe (see what I did there?) for an AAM cook off!
 
+1 on the chorizo Purple. Pancakes are another cheap but nutritious meal. A few eggs (and if you have your own hens all the better!), flour, milk, provides a meal for the family for a tiny cost. Drizzle with some honey = happy kids (to steal Gerry Canning syntax!).
 
Firefly said:
Every morning for me. A spoon of blueberries, a chopped banana and drizzle of honey and I'm good until lunchtime. Mon-Fri I make it in the microwave, but on Sat & Sun I go all out and cook it slowly on the hob.
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Not a fan of porridge but I do make home-made muesli using quinoa, honey and dried fruit. Add berries on top, sorted for breakfast.
Eggs scrambled in the microwave, served on bagel is a super quick/cheap breakfast as well.
 
Add a little baking powder and caster sugar to the pancake mix and you have fluffy American style pancakes.
 
username123 said:
Not a fan of porridge but I do make home-made muesli using quinoa, honey and dried fruit. Add berries on top, sorted for breakfast.
Eggs scrambled in the microwave, served on bagel is a super quick/cheap breakfast as well.
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Mrs. Firefly makes homemade granola using Jumbo porridge oats. She adds God-know-what to it (seeds a whole lot of other things) and some maple syrup and it's good too.

I'm always amazed at the junk I regularly witness people put into trolleys and often saddened when I see over-weight kids next to over-weight parents with a trolley full of frozen food and fizzy drinks.
 
Purple said:
Curry:
Chicken Thigh 2
Spices (roast and grind them) 0.5
Tin of tomatoes 0.7
Lentils 0.3
Chickpeas 0.3
Onions 0.1
Frozen Cauliflower 0.5
Rice 0.5
Total 4.9
Cost per person 0.98
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how old are your kids Purple - my son would eat that much food on his own

I still find it hard to believe you can manage on €60 per week - ~€5 per day for dinner leaves you €25 left per week for Breakfast, Lunch, Detergent, Loo Roll, Bread, Milk (2L a day is another tenner a week on it's own), Booze, Shampoo and all the other guff you need to keep the household running...
 
Kids are 18, 14, 13 and 7.
Bulk it up with lentils and give them lots of brown rice.
If your son eats 8 chicken thighs in one go you need to have a word with him ( and it's no wonder you spend so much on bog-roll )
Lentils and pulses can be bought dried in bulk. Very cheap way of doing it and they last forever.
Breakfast; Porridge. It's almost free it's so cheap.
Lunch; sandwiches, soup, that sort of thing. Soup is almost free as well.
Bulk buy loo rolls etc. Own brand shampoo and detergent. Same for bread and milk.
Booze is a luxury; If you can't afford it you can't have it.
If you can afford to smoke you are not poor.
 
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If you really want to save money then make the same curry but leave out the chicken. Add a butternut Squash (cut into cubes and roasted in the over with a little olive oil first) and strips of carrot (use a peeler to cut long thin strips, gives colour and great texture) instead.
 
Great Takeaway replacement for kids/family;
Two or three packets of chicken wings (Lidl or Tesco) cost around €2 to €2.50 each.
Cut off the ends and then cut them in two at the joint. Toss them in seasoned flour and roast in the oven until they are very crispy. When done coat in Franks Hot Sauce. That and home made garlic bread and some home made potato wedges and you have a replacement for pizza type take away for under a tenner.
 
I think its the way the recipe is written Purple, I presume you mean €2 for the chicken thighs but when I looked first I thought you meant 2 chicken thighs for the whole family and I thought that was pretty small portions too!
 
Purple's €60 shop per week for food and toiletries+ detergent. Schoolbooks, clothes, transport, utilities, entertainment etc are in addition. It can be done and he has not hidden his shopping strategy.

But, the groceries bottom line is < €60 per week for a family. Last Saturday, the lady in front of me at the check-out till spent €164.00 on one trip to Aldi. In fairness, she nearly needed the Munster scrum to shove the trolley. The wine absorbed quite an amount of this along with the 3 pack pizzas, the discount burgers, large packs of crisps, bucket load of fizzy white lemonade and not even an angle grinder. Her size spoke volumes (pun intended). But, I wonder how much of her €164.00 found its way to the bin uneaten.

Purple, you're rising in my estimation.
 
Leper said:
Last Saturday, the lady in front of me at the check-out till spent €164.00 on one trip to Aldi.....and not even an angle grinder.
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LOL ! How much junk in my shed is as a result of an impulse buy at Aldi!!
 
One of my best purchases is a slow cooker - cost me about 20 euro. For the past few weekends I've put in a kilo of Housekeeper's Cut (8.99 from Aldi) with a glass of wine, a glass of beef stock and a few crushed cloves of garlic. Lob the whole lot in to the slow cooker and cook it on medium for about 7 hours. It literally falls apart. I make a gravy then from the juice - it's quite fatty so I put the juice into a jug and keep skimming the fat from the top. Then I make a quick roux and pour the juice in through a sieve and simmer for about 15 mins until it thickens. The meat will usually do us for dinner that day and easily lunch or a dinner for the kids the following night. Total cost is about a tenner. (Granted the wine technically would probably cost 2e for a glass, but I have a big stash under the stairs from my last trip to France!).
 
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