Foodie Hacks to help the Budget

Foodie Hacks to help the Budget

I’m very lucky to be able to grow things in my garden, have a car to drive to discount stores as well as access to a nice kitchen and oven to cook things in. At the time of writing, I’m also still able to pay my energy bills!  

For many, it’s so much harder than that.  

I still hope it might prove helpful to share some of my foodie hacks that help the budget go just a little bit further.

Cook from scratch

I try and do this as much as I can and have ditched ready-made food items where possible. We rarely have takeaways these days and try and save eating out and/or takeaways for special occasions.

It always takes more time and effort to cook from scratch, so you will need to factor this into your meal plans.

There were some cheats I used to buy, such as bean burgers, as they were relatively inexpensive. I now make these myself too, and it’s much cheaper (and hopefully healthier also) to do so.

Bean Burgers

Bean burger in a seeded bun on a plate on the table

Take a can of mixed beans, drain, rinse and throw these in your mixer (or use a hand-blender or masher), add whatever you like to zing up the mixture. I add things like tomato puree, chilli, lemon, herbs, garlic, onion, spices such as cumin, coriander, and fennel; and blend/mash together. I sometimes blend with an egg, but often just add a little oil and breadcrumbs (see below).

One can usually make three large or four medium bean burgers. Form into a patty shape and chill for at least a couple of hours in the fridge.

Breadcrumbs

If I don’t have any stale bread, I will leave a slice or two of bread out to go stale. A quick whizz-up and hey-presto they are done. If I make too many, I pop the rest in the freezer.

Plan ahead – if you need breadcrumbs for a recipe you need to factor in time to make them.

Pesto

Jar of basil pesto

We love a bit of pesto in our house and always make our own. We use cheaper ingredients but still get great results.

The oil – we use a mixture, usually rapeseed with a little olive oil (keeping the more expensive oil to a minimum).

Use salted peanuts instead of pine nuts. They work well and are much cheaper to buy. You need to keep an eye on the salt content and adjust to taste as you are adding salt with the nuts.

Instead of Parmesan, we buy Grana Padano.

Lentils

Lentils are such a tasty, versatile, and well-priced ingredient, I’ve already written a blog on them.

Leftovers

To be honest, they are rarely much in the way of leftovers in my house, but when there are, I will always try and get creative and turn them into something else or use them as part of another meal.

What do you do with yours? 

Please come and share your top tips with the rest of us.

Store Cupboard supper

In the past, I’ve often thought I don’t have anything in for a meal and will pop to the shops to top up. 

Now I try and avoid that until the next bigger shop and make something from what’s in the store cupboard.

It might be something really simple such as potato or egg-based. I might whip up a sauce for pasta with a tin of tomatoes as a starting point. 

Create something stir-fried to go with rice, or rustle up a curry from what’s left in the veg compartment in the fridge, or use tins/packets of beans and pulses.

BBC Good Food is a great website to add in your main ingredient and see what recipe inspiration comes up.

Time to get creative with that store cupboard stock.  

Own Brand 

Some of the discount supermarkets own brand products I’ve found to be very good:

  • Tomato sauce
  • Marmite
  • Peanut butter (the good stuff that has no added palm oil)
  • Tonic water

These are much cheaper than the branded versions I’ve bought in the past, and in our opinion, taste just as good.

Would you have anything to add to this list? Please share.

Eat more veg

As a family, we try and eat veggie meals around 75% of the time (100% for our veggie members of course!)

A pile of pumpklins

We spend more on the meat we do buy as we prefer to buy it from the farm shop, so we buy it less often.

Soup is often on the menu, sounds a bit sparing as a dinner, so I will often make it extra thick for an evening meal, maybe add coconut milk to make it more decadent then eat it with a lovely loaf.

It’s pumpkin time, don’t just carve them, why not make soups and curries and pies from your pumpkins!

I recently made a veggie stew with cheesy dumplings from the Good Food magazine for a big family gathering – rather than follow exactly the recipe, I used up all the veg I had in my fridge and bulked out with sweet potato and squash. Thankfully, it was a bit hit!

We have to mention Chocolate!

Supermarket own brands again are very good for chocolate for all tastes.

Look out for sales and short-dated stock – chocolate has a good long shelf-like and often if it’s near its sell-by date will still taste just as good!

Buy in bulk – if you trust yourself not to eat it all! Speak to me if you want to order some bulk chocolate and I can add yours to my order (and let you know the price).

Make your own desserts and treats.

Find out more

The Grocer magazine recently covered the best budget food bloggers and influencers to follow right now if you would like a more detailed and comprehensive guide on stretching your food budget.

Love Affair with a Lentil

Love Affair with a Lentil

One of our clan became veggie a while ago and we played along. We cheated quite a bit, using veggie substitutes like bean burgers and veggie sausages a bit too much I feel.

Then lockdown happened. 

A family of five (all grown up and with huge appetites) needed feeding on a drastically reduced budget. Both hubby and I were unable to operate our blacksmithing and chocolate workshops for the foreseeable, and changes to the food shopping were required. 

We decided to eat mostly vegetarian from that moment on.

So started my love affair with a lentil.

Large lentil cottage pie in ceramic oval dish
Lentil Cottage Pie

Proper Veggie

It was time to embrace veggie eating properly. No more substitutes but good proper cooking from scratch.

I learned to think differently about cooking vegetarian food. With meat or fish, you have a star of the show with veggies as the side act. 

Cooking veggie meant that dishes needed to work together, there might be two or three dishes making up the ‘main’ element, working in harmony to create a feast.

Veggie food usually takes longer or a bit more effort to prepare. In my experience, there is more work in creating a tasty dish and making the veggies sing.

One of my veggie foodie heroes is Ottolenghi. Stock the spice cupboard with different ingredients and leave some time for cooking up a feast. You will never be disappointed but be prepared for smoky kitchens and prepping for a couple of days in advance!

Ottolenghi is very generous in sharing his recipes, check out social media, or find him writing for The Guardian.

Batch Cooking

Life is set to get considerably more expensive in the coming months. Eating well doesn’t have to be super expensive, but it will take up a bit of your time. Cooking is my therapy, so I really enjoy a bit of batch cooking and the sense of achievement when all the meals are prepped for a later date.

Lentil and spinach bake in large and small greeen ceramic oval dishes

That’s why I like to cook up a huge batch of green lentils. I boil them in vegetable stock to add a bit more flavour.

In a separate pan, I sauté onions, garlic, carrots, and celery then split this into two. With half the lentils I recently made a cottage pie mix, adding bay leaves, fennel, cumin, tinned toms, and a spoon of magical yeast extract. 

Marmite is so good for adding colour and great flavour to your veggie dishes.

The other half got the spice treatment. Adding chipotle chillies, lots of smoked paprika, passata, and a tin of red kidney beans.

The results: a family-sized cottage pie, two individual cottage pies to pass on to an elderly relative, and a vat of chilli. This was made from about half a pack of green lentils with just a bit of time and effort thrown in.

Once you have your base, you can make spag bol, lasagne, curries – all those family favourites for a fraction of the cost of meat or veggie substitutes. It tastes great and they are good for you.

Posh Lentils

You can go all Puy and go a bit posh with your lentils. I love these in a salad. I usually just have something crunchy like an iceberg, Puy lentils, and some goat’s cheese with a lovely lemony dressing. Great to go a bit posh if you have having people for dinner.

Texture

Split lentils are great for dhals or thickening soups or purees. They will go soft on cooking. If you want more texture, then stick to whole lentils. There is no need to soak lentils you can rinse and cook straight away. They will happily sit in your store cupboard for ages, with a long shelf life until you are ready to release them into something tasty.

Dhal is another family favourite – you can take your base and add lots of other lovely spicey veggies to make it a meal in its own right. Or add in some coconut milk for a lovely creamy twist.

Here’s a dhal recipe from a member of the BBC Good Food community.

Lentil Inspiration

Olive magazine shares their best lentil recipes here, including vegetable slice and an aubergine dhansak as well as some using Puy lentils too.

Jamie Oliver has some lovely lentil inspiration, whether as an accompaniment or a delicious meal in their own right. He shares some great salad ideas too.

How about this one from Delicious magazine, a halloumi-topped lentil stew – yes please!

And if you think I’ve forgotten about chocolate, then fear not. Add some cacao nibs or dark chocolate into your lentil chilli, delicious!

Are you going to start a love affair with a lentil?