Frugal food 1

There was a post on the MSE forum asking for advice on living on £1 a day for food.
I posted about some of the meals I'd served my family when we were skint.
I hadn't costed them out, they were designed to feed six of us as cheaply as possible.
Tessie suggested I do a blog post about the meals so here it is.

Porridge for breakfast, it's the cheapest option served with a sprinkling of sugar.

I was working full time so didn't have much spare time but every autumn I dug a long trench and threw all the tea bags, peelings and the contents of the guinea pig cages into it. I grew runner beans, shedloads of the buggers. They were the mainstay of our vegetable intake.

I'm not claiming this is a perfectly healthy diet, it's what I did to ensure my kids didn't go hungry when money was in short supply.

I usually prepped a weeks worth of meals on Sunday whilst cooking lunch. I cooked a sponge traybake or a batch of biscuits as well. These did for packed lunches for the kids and instead of puddings.

Everlasting chicken, we ate a lot of chicken because it's cheap.
Roast chicken, one slice of chicken each served with Yorkshire pudding, stuffing balls, roast potatoes and assorted veg usually runner beans, carrots because they are cheap and  frozen broccoli/cauliflower in a cheese sauce because most people will eat veg if it's covered in cheese sauce.

Strip the meat from the chicken, don't forget underneath the chicken too.

Put the carcass, skin and gristle in  pan and cover with water, bring to the boil and then simmer until the last scraps of meat fall off the bone. Strain and leave to cool.

Divide the rest of the cooked chicken into three piles.
Use one of these piles to make a chicken pie by adding any leftovers from Sunday lunch including roast potatoes, veg and stuffing, add some thick gravy and top with pastry.

Use the second pile to make a pasta bake. Make a white sauce, stir in the chicken, add sweetcorn, cooked mushrooms,  a chopped up slice of ham, cooked broccoli or leeks. You don't need all of these just what you have. Cook the pasta, drain and stir in the chicken mixture. Sprinkle with a mixture of grated cheese and breadcrumbs. 

The last pile of chicken can be made into special fried rice by adding it to cooked rice. Soften a sliced onion in a tsp of oil, add cooked rice, any other veg chopped small, the chicken, just scraps will do, seasoning of your choice, shove the mix to one side of the pan, crack an egg into the space, beat it as it cooks, break it up and stir it into the rice mix.

Stoup, half way between soup and stew. Using the chicken stock add a large sliced onion, potato and carrot plus any other veg that is looking sad. Add a large handful of red lentils and one of pearl barley. If there was any breakfast porridge left in  the and pan that went into the stoup as well. Add seasonings to your taste. Bring to the boil and then simmer until cooked, I used a pressure cooker so it didn't take long. Sometimes I made home made bread to go with this but white sliced is fine too. If you prefer a smooth soup use a stick blender. We ate ours lumpy.

If you are wondering why money was in short supply with two of us working, well it wasn't but I was only allowed £10 a week housekeeping as this was what my