The Cost of Green

Rather sad that our 'green' food week has cost us more than our 'white' one but at least the nettle, tagiltelle dreds suited Fred!

Despite making use of some early Spring foraged ingredients (nettles); this week has been our most expensive. By the time we reached Saturday I ended up having to withdraw the money for next week and then swiftly spent £22.35 on food for the weekend. Except for some leftover roast chicken for tomorrow nights risotto, we have managed to eat everything and I very much doubt we will be able to make it through next week on just £57.65!

The situation has not been helped by the girls taking it upon themselves to generously feed their guinea pig handfuls of the salad that I had kept to one side to accompany tomorrow nights meal. I now wish that I hadn't pointed out, that he would be dead by now, if I hadn't been feeding him!

Seeing our lovely salad leaves strewn across the grass in the run was quite traumatic. Particularly, as Marcus had only agreed to them having him on the assumption that a guinea pigs grass consumption would save him having to mow the lawn!

I can't really blame the guinea pig though as a good two thirds of the over spend was actually spent at the Butchers. The girls had a friend over for a sleepover so I went wild and bought sausages for their tea, a couple of chicken legs for Marcus and myself, to eat later in the evening and a small chicken to roast for Sunday; spending £15.90 in total. Pretty much the amount that we have allocated to meat for an entire week covered just two days and it was ridiculously easy to do as well!

Having now completed four weeks of trying to feed five for £80 (with varying degrees of success!) these are some of my my top tips.

Buy really strong flavoured cheese to use in sauces and for general cooking. You will need to use less!

A surprising number of meal leftovers make fantastic soups when blended with stock and perhaps an extra onion or leek. A word of warning though - unless you are particularly keen on cabbage soup I reccomend not including leftover sprouts or cabbage as their flavour can mask all others. Having said that, finely shredded greens are good in an 'un-blended' soup

Any mince based dishes, such as bolognaise, chilli, shepherds pie, mousaka etc. don't suffer from the addition of lentils. Where I would previously have used 500g of mince I now use 300g with 100g of lentils.

Lamb has a particularly strong flavour and whilst it may be one of the more expensive meats to use as a joint, a small quantity will impart big lamb flavour on a casserole or a curry.  A large shank or some shoulder cooked in a slowcooker with plenty of vegetables, lentils and pulses will stretch the meat to feed 5 or 6 easily. 

Blitz up stale bread into breadcrumbs and freeze. I have a bag in the freezer that I top up continuously. They can be used straight from the freezer to add to meatballs and burgers.
Dipping chunks of chicken or fish into flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs and baking them in the oven bulks them out far more than I expected - it works for Captain Birdseye, it can work for you!. A few chopped herbs, lemon zest or some spices mixed with the breadcrumbs makes it taste more interesting too.

Sour milk is great for making scones.

Check out the over ripe fruit at the market - it will be going cheap and can be whizzed up into fab smoothies, coulis and fruit leather. Bananas are particularly handy as they are great for sweetening cakes and ices. The older they get, the sweeter they taste and the less refined sugar you need.