Friday 18 January 2013

Frugal Friday

 I thought I'd write a list of our food menu for the past week and how our £65.00 shop translated in reality.  Our food for the week included a variety of fruit and vegetables, milk, cheeses, eggs and a samll amount of meat, namely 250g minced lamb and a medium sized free range chicken. With judicious portioning the chicken alone constituted four of our meals!

Sunday ~ Root vegetable bake with greens
               Chicken and vegetable korma with rice.

Monday ~ Chicken and vegetable soup.
                Homemade gluten free pizza and salad.

Tuesday ~ Shepherd's Pie made with lamb, vegetables and cannellini beans in a
                 rich tomato sauce.
                 Caramelised onion, apple and camembert tart served with peas:
               



Ready for the oven.
 
 
Cooked and ready to eat.
 
 
Wednesday~ Leftovers ( curry, shepherd's pie and tart) 
 
                    Chicken and leek pies with mixed veg.


Thursday ~ Lunch with our home ed friends, so no cooking for me!

                  Chicken and mixed veg frittata with oven baked spicy wedges.


Today I've made three different soups:  mixed vegetable, celery with potato and courgette with potato.  One we had for lunch and the other two are now in the freezer.  Our tea was a good ol' standby, baked potatoes, houmous and winter slaw salad.

I made our weekly food shop last night as their was a severe weather warning of snow today.  As a result Aldi was out of the question so unfortunately Sainsbury was my next best and nearest bet.  I swear you can add at least twenty pound to your bill the moment you walk through the doors!  I'd estimated the shop to come in at £80.00 and in fact it was £100.00 and there was only one miniscule portion of meat in the basket aswell!  See there's that infamous twenty quid discrepancy and guess what it didn't snow!!  Gah!


I'm still grappling with the whole SOLE model of sustainable, organic, local and ethical in addition to shopping within the constraints of a tight-ish budget.  A friend told me all about her local farmers market and so I'm going to give them a go and see what transpires.
 
 


5 comments:

Eva said...

We've also been trying to save money on food. However, we have basically 4 adults now and 3 children eating. Jonathan and Charlotte eat much more than Peter and I do, they are really growing and eating a lot! It's hard to save then. One chicken gives us two meals: The meat for one meal and the bones for a broth with vegetables the next day. Cheese is really expensive here, meat is often cheaper.

dorinalouise said...

ooohh yes . . we get the same from a chicken. morgana and chanda are the ones eating us out of house and home these days. i agree, it's difficult shopping organic, free range, sustainable, local and ethical!!! so many words for our groceries!

the applegate brand now has a "naturals" line and an "organic" line . . this kind of labeling drives me nutso.

Eva said...

Hm, I think I have only seen the natural Applegate brand so far around here. It's silly with all these names. Just another way to make money, I agree.

Eva said...

Oh, and I have three brothers. When they were growing up, they would eat a whole loaf of bread, that is a German sourdough huge loaf of bread, within one day. It drove my parents crazy.

Sandra Ann said...

Ah, the joys of hungry teenagers!! We have the German rye bread in the UK, I do miss it now that I can't eat gluten!