Eating well for little cost!

Butternut - that was funny!

I love offal and liver and kidneys are about the cheapest meat I can buy in France. I make a sauce with mustard and creme fraiche and have a small amount of rice with it. I also like tripe, not cooked in milk with onions the way my mother used to do it, but just cold with some salad and plenty of vinegar.
I don't find that I can't eat economically and healthily - in fact, when I was splashing out I was more likely to buy red meat and ready meals.
I am now getting quite a kick out of saving money, losing weight and improving my health!

Maybe we should compile a GN guide to frugal food for "Pensioners on a Pittance" - seriously -one recipe each? Shall I start a thread?

Yes, please, gracesmum! I can't pretend to be living on a pittance, but I need all my spare cash for air fares!

Good idea.

I love making soup. It's sooooo easy. I made carrot soup yesterday and bunged in garlic, celery and onions plus a splash of tabasco and worcestershire sauces along with some ground ginger and cinnamon. With homemade bread from the breadmaker it made a very tasty lunch for 2 days for DH and me. I've got a ham in the fridge ready to boil, then roast a la Nigella at the weekend and hopefully we'll have lots of meat left for sandwiches, salads etc. Sometimes it's an effort to cook something from scratch but once I get going I usually enjoy pottering about.

We were very short of money when I gave up work and we moved from Lancashire to Egham, Surrey, with a huge leap in our mortgage payments.
For months, Sunday lunch consisted of pea soup,with dumplings, and slices of pig's hock. It was very salty and had to be soaked overnight, but it cost 6d!
I was able to grow potatoes, peas and mint, so I would get half a pound of sausages off the milk-man and we thought that was a feast!

Greatnan - Egham in Surrey is only a couple of miles up the road from me in Ashford!! Sorry, not related to the Food category, but just had to say.

I love soup making too - makes me feel all domestic. DH is a carnivore, so I do cook meat for him, despite being veggie. But rarely red meat, I have to say.

My favourite soup is butternut squash (there's a joke lurking there Butternut!) and sweet potato, with a dash of chilli. And you'd go a long way to beat good old leek and potato!

Ooh, yes please, leek and potato soup served all thick and lumpy around the bonfire before the fireworks go off on 5th November. I like celery and potato soup too, but it has to be seived to get rid of the stringy bits in the celery. I always keep the liquid from boiling a bacon joint to use as stock for these. That reminds me.

In the days when the young ones were at home I would buy a large gammon joint and have the butcher cut off the knuckle end so that it would all fit in the pan - a preserving pan. Then came the fun of cutting away the meat in suitable portions for freezing after the first serving and having removed as much of the fat as I possibly could. The fat would be slowly, so slowly, rendered down and drained off to use in dumplings or pastry to make meat pies with. The bone of course made ham and pea soup using the water it was boiled in as stock. Not a single part of it wasted as the children ate the remains of the very crisp leavings from the rendering.

Yes I'm a great fan of soup in winter and make lots of different ones. There was a bonus last winter when our lovely local greengrocer introduced his soup bags. All ingredients for 4 portions, plus the recipe. Sold very well and doing equally well this year. Particularly enjoyed one which had a small amount of creamed coconut, ginger and a couple of kaffir lime leaves. Not one I'd have tried without the bag and recipe!

Em love the sound of those soup bags, what a great idea! My favourite soup is butternut squash,onion, stock and a little curry powder cooked and blended together with low fat cream cheese.

The good thing about the bags is that he can include a very small quantity of the more unusual ingredients but, if I like that 'experimental' soup, obviously I can go and buy bigger amounts. He is particularly pleased that his best customers are the local students and also some of the older residents who are pleased to try some new ideas. He welcomes feedback and suggestions and is an enthusiastic young man who seems to have set himself up in a very successful small business.

The omlette I made for tea this week, boiled up the bits of leftover veg - a small carrot, end of a leek , a cauliflower floret and a handful of peas and sweetcorn from the freezer, added it to the eggs with grated cheese sprinkled on top and finished under the grill, served with some baked beans went down a treat with 2 of my grandchildren and myself. Quick, easy and nutritious.

Carol. I have tried and failed to make sour dough. HOW do you do it?

Jeni this is the article that got me interested in making my own sourdough bread. I don't keep a starter hanging around for as long as they recommend here, but tend to make it afresh every two or three weeks. The first few times I made sourdough it didn't taste like I wanted it to, so I just played around with it till it suited me - it comes with practice and everyone has different amounts of airborne yeasts and ambient temperature in their kitchen, so you have to get to know your starter mixture and when it's at its optimum. I no longer see bread-making as one event, but as being at different stages over the course of two or three days. The nicest sourdough loaf I make is very crusty - I remove the inside, bake it for a few minutes, and pour soup like chicken or sweetcorn chowder into it, they way they do in San Francisco - it's delicious.

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/14/make-your-own-sourdough

Forgot to add Jeni, I occasionally use a little dried active yeast in the starter mix if I want things to progress overnight rather than over two or three days - all depends on what I've got made up. Sometimes the starter mix can look a little manky, and I'll discard it and start again, but that happens less now I make it more regularly.

Thanks Carol. I will try next Friday when I'm not working.

German cooking and a lot of central European cooking is all simple healthy food and even today where I live in the SW of Germany thick lentil soup and noodles is a favourite dish of the people here. In the large store restaurants about lunchtime the office workers are all eating it. They love it.

My GDs have it, made by their father once a week, there is nothing more heathy, filling and cheap. I come from Yorkshire and, like Shirley Valentine, prefer bacon, egg and chips. I also make beef stew and Yorkshire pud.
I NEVER throw food away.

I enjoyed an extremely simple and cheap meal tonight that you can dress up in lots of ways to suit the one who will be eating it. If you put it into a suitable dish you could grate a little cheese and slices of tomato on top and brown it off under the grill. For children it can be turned into patties with a light crumb coating and then lightly fried, being careful how you turn them. It's one way of hiding the veg.

The basics is three large potatoes peeled and cut up for boiling, a couple of medium sized onions roughly sliced and tipped into the pot with the potatoes. Cook until soft, strain and mash in about 100g of corned beef. Meanwhile you have cooked the other veggies of your choice - carrot and swede could go in with the potatoes and onion - and can add sweet pickle, brown sauce, or whatever suits. It would serve me for three meals and will freeze if you wish.

Cyril your recipe sounds just like the Surprise Pie I used to make in the early seventies! Potatoes & onions cooked together, a slice of corned beef (4d) a spoonful of tomato ketchup and what ever else was spare. All baked in the oven. The 'surprise' of course being, that you were never sure what was in it. Fed 5 of us at least once a week.

Another one from the same era.....

Make suet crust pastry, roll into an onlong. Remove the skin from 2 chipolata sausages and spread (very thinly!) over the pastry. Sprinkle a tablespoon of Paxo dry stuffing over, then roll up and bake. Really delicious with veg, and very cheap.

(The local butcher wouldn't serve less than 4 chipolatas, so the next day, the remaining 2 would be snipped into tiny bits and cooked in a large tin of batter for Find the Toad in the Hole)

Necessity is the mother and all that.......

I would not be without my pressure cooker (which is about 40 years old). Small amount of meat and loads of veg, I make up a gravy of tomatoes, oxo, worcester sauce, a dash of cheap sherry and anything else which takes my fancy to cook it in. I do not particularly like root vegetables but cooked with the meat etc really enjoy.

I do not know why pressure cookers are not used more, as they are so economical. You can bottle fruit, make jams, soups, sponge pudding etc. and a rice pudding made in a pressure cooker is so easy and is creamy and rich.

I know they used to explode in days of old and have a reputation for being dangerous as the original cookers did not have a safety valve but my 40 year old cooker has a pressure valve (which has only blown once when I forgot the cooker was on) and no damage was done. Just replaced the valve.

l love corned beef hash, or cold corned beef with brown sauce on a sandwich.
Have you noticed that when you are really hungry you long for very simple food, such as a bacon 'buttie'?

Ariande - just caught up with this thread and I think your butternut squash soup recipe just about sums me up!
Love making soup too, and my favourite one of the moment is Minestrone - a great one for using up left overs.