Cheaper meals, for one or more

I eat my main meal at lunchtime. This is last week's lunch - corned beef with mashed potatoes, salad and homemade relish.

Although I seem to be moving further away from meat meals, I've had a craving for corned beef lately. It's a reminder of my youth because corned beef, mashed potatoes, cabbage and relish/pickles was a popular meal in Australia's suburbia in the 1950s/60/70s. My main problem with it is that the pieces of corned beef on sale at the supermarket are quite big and I don't want to waste what I buy. So when I see a small piece, I grab it, and at home, divide it in two and have a more reasonable size to cook and eat in the following days. I also use corned beef as a cold cut for sandwiches and when I make meatloaf, I divide that in two as well, eat one half for a couple of days and freeze the rest.

These meals are egg-based - above: asparagus quiche with filo pastry, below: tinned red salmon   with boiled eggs and salad.

Another thing I've been thinking about recently is how the increasing cost of living is impacting people all around the world, and how we can respond to it in a common sense way. First of all let me put my hand up and acknowledge that it's been fairly easy for me to keep my food costs to a reasonable level. I don't have to consider other family members who want their steak or leg of lamb meals and don't want to think about balancing the budget. This week at my local Woolworth's supermarket a leg of lamb large enough for a family roast (1.8kg - 2.8kg) is $42. Buying a leg that size will give you leftovers for meals the following day as well as cold cuts for sandwiches in the lunchboxes. Other popular meats include T-bone steak - $30 kg, Scotch fillet steak - $41.50 kg and eye fillet - $52.00 kg. If you buy eye fillet from the butcher, it costs around $70 kg. 😳 Cheap sausages are $5.90 for 550g, Angus beef sausages are $9.00 for six sausages. If you're going to serve your steaks with a salad, one iceberg lettuce is $3.00, 500 grams tomatoes is $5.00, a cucumber is $3.50, red onions are 68 cents each, so two = $1.36. I think you probably have the makings of salad dressing at home (olive oil/vinegar) but if you have to buy the processed dressing, it will cost you $3.00. You'll get 6 bread rolls for $2.85. To buy a steak/sausages and salad for four people for ONE meal will cost around $66!

There are a few delicious meat meals made using the cheaper cuts of beef - skirt steak, gravy beef, blade steak are just some of them. If you slow cook them as a casserole, stew or soup, they'll provide a wonderful meal that your family will enjoy. They're also suitable for freezing, so store your leftovers in the freezer for backup meals in the following days.

Meatballs, cabbage and boiled potatoes.

Beef casserole, using the cheaper cuts of gravy beef or skirt steak, with herb dumplings.

Leftovers - pasta with bolognese sauce.

I wouldn't pay that because I could make something delicious that would be much cheaper and nutritious for less. Everytime someone pays those prices it tells the supermarkets that we're willing to pay those inflated prices. And if you just buy the salad it's still $12.86. Instead of salad, you could do a potato bake - that would cost you $4.50 for 2 kg potatoes, one onions is 68 cents, a small jar of cream is $3.75, pack of pre-grated Parmesan cheese - $2 and your electricity to bake it would be around 50 cents. That option would cost $9.43.  Remember, theoretically, I'm cooking for a 4 person family.

Egg and bacon pie.

Making shortcrust pastry. It's easy but if you need a quicker option, buy a pack of filo pastry and use that instead.

OR you could make a quiche from scratch. That would cost $5.70 for 12 eggs (you'd have 6 leftover for breakfast), small jar of cream $3.75, garlic and onion about 85 cents, 500g bacon $6.75, and cheese $7.70. The homemade pastry would be $1.40 for 1kg of plain flour, $7.00 for 500 g butter (you'd have almost ¾ of the butter left over), the rest is just salt and water. There's a recipe for pie crust on Grandma Donna's blog here. This option would cost around $24.75 to make the quiche and you'd have eggs and butter leftover for another day and probably have quiche left over for lunches the following day. Add the salad at $12.86 and this meal would be $37.61. Both are reasonably healthy options but one meal is almost half the price of the other.

I buy frozen Australian peas and grow the greens and herbs I eat every week; they're really easy to grow, even in pots. My list includes parsley, chives, basil, cucumbers, radishes, rainbow chard, perpetual spinach, lettuce, chillies and green onions. I grow the lettuce in the shade of the bush house/verandah, the rest grow in the sun in the old sandbox. All of them are easy to grow from seed. I sprinkle seeds on the top of good potting mix in pots and grow in the shade. It requires water every second day and it will grow fast. I let the plants grow for about 4 weeks and while they're still small, I harvest a quarter of the pot with scissors and add them to my salads. The lettuce continues to grow after harvesting so I just give them a drink of Seasol to keep them healthy and they'll be ready to harvest again in 4 weeks. Setting yourself up to grow some of your own food will cost around $40, for seeds, potting mix and Seasol, but that should keep you going for a few months.

If I were to buy fresh parsley, chives, basil - all $3.20 a bunch, and rainbow chard - $4.70, spinach - $3.90, lettuce - $2.50. I woudln't buy all of them every week but most weeks herbs and green would cost me $10 if I didn't grow them myself.  I think this is an excellent chore for one of the kids to take on. They'd learn to produce food and give the family the FRESHEST herbs and vegies every week. But even if you do it yourself like I do, it's well worth it.

Here is a list of some of the many vegetables, legumes and nuts that contain protein.

What I'm getting at here is that there are always options and protein doesn't have to be meat, chicken or fish. You don't have to choose the thing you've always chosen. Be wise and think of what you can do with different ingredients and when this cost of living crisis is over, and it will end, you'll be proud of how you got your family through it by changing what you eat and adjusting what you spend.

Homemade potato and curried mince pies - no pastry.

Vegetable frittata - which is just a fancy way of saying eggs with whatever vegetables are in your fridge.

The main problem moving away from meal, chicken or fish meals is that they all deliver the protein we all need.  However, that doesn't mean there's no substitute for meat, fish or chicken. Egg, milk, cheese, yoghurt, legumes and pulses such as chick peas, split peas and lentils are all high in protein and they're all cheap, healthier than meat and better for the environment.  If you have some tried and true meat-less, or almost meatless, meals, please share them with us. And don't forget tinned fish such as tuna and salmon. Boths are cheaper than meat and very nutritious.

Mostly meat-free egg recipes

45 reasons to have eggs for dinner

Delicious RecipeTin Eats meals

Let's think about unit prices, generic brands and being flexible with our choice of brands. 

Unit prices are generally displayed under the product price on supermarket shelves. Checking the unit price gives us a more accurate understanding of the value for money of each item - even if something is "on special". So make your selections based on the unit prices, not the product price.

Generic brands can help you make ends meet in times like these. Supermarkets are retailers, not manufacturers so the generic brands are made by the same manufacturers that make the branded products you know well. There are no factories set up to make inferior generic brands - so manufacturers making flour, butter, tea, sugar etc. for the supermarkets just change the packaging and produce the generic brands you see on the shelves. And they're all cheaper than the well known brands. 

Being flexible - this is good advice all through life. Flexibility helps us cope with difficult times and situations. We can all switch to generic brands when we need to but we can also substitute ingredients so we don't have to buy something we might use in just one recipe. If a recipe you want to try suggests something you don't have in your pantry, look up one of the websites below to find a substitute for it.

Allrecipes

Food Network

Food52

Baking for the grandkids - cup cakes and sausage rolls.

And finally, use your common sense and go with your instinct. Often your instinct will guide you in cooking. Back yourself in everything you do. You might have to stop and change your mind when it doesn't work but every time you do something new, it will teach you something. Open up your memory bank and store everything you learn for another time when you need it.

If you want the recipe for anything above, please use the search bar on the right hand side.