Ashley - Home Economics: Eat well and spend less

Disclaimer: The information in this book should not be treated as a substitute for professional medical advice. If you require gluten-free please carefully check the labels of the products you are buying. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible for any claim or damage arising out of the use, or misuse, of the information and suggestions made in this book. This is a book about low-cost eating only. Most of these recipes weve been cooking in our family for years. Some will originally have come from my wide collection of cookbooks and the internet but have been adapted by me to fit our lifestyle and budget.

Raw or semi-cooked eggs should not be consumed by babies, toddlers, pregnant or breastfeeding women, the elderly or those suffering from a chronic illness. The shopping list budgets correspond to supermarket prices in April 2017.

My aim in this book is to show you a way of shopping and cooking that can save you money and still allow you to put delicious food on the table. Im not going to patronise or preach; cooking well on a budget and with minimal waster is nothing new, but its a skill a lot of people, me included, were unaware of or just not taught. Our grandparents, and their parents too, were able to eat and cook frugally, but at some point in the 70s and 80s with the age of convenience foods and both parents going out to work the skill got lost and was never passed on. About 15 years ago I hardly ever cooked meals from scratch.

I never really learnt how to. At school in the 80s all we learnt was how to make pastry and fairy cakes and that was about it. I have never made choux pastry since, although I must say my short-crust is superb! My mother didnt cook much either. she worked full-time six days a week, and on her one day off she liked to play golf with my dad. I dont blame her she didnt need to cook. Most companies back then had canteens and school dinners werent just nuggets and chips; they were proper meals meat and two veg.

In the evening we would have just a sandwich for tea or fish and chips on a Friday. So without any lessons on how to cook, I struck lucky and married a man whose mother is a very good cook. For the first few years of married bliss I let him do most of the cooking. Id watch, pour the wine and keep him company. Maybe even chop a vegetable or stir a sauce. When it was my turn to cook, it would be from the freezer, deposited onto a tray and put in the oven at 190C.

Not exciting, and rather costly. That all changed when we had our daughter. One, we needed to save a bit of money babies can be quite expensive, and two, I wanted my precious baby to eat only natural, healthy food. New parents, eh? This also coincided with Jamie Olivers TV show highlighting the decline of the school dinner. Remember the turkey twizzler? At the time I was working in London and Jamie was doing a book signing nearby for his book Dinners. I didnt want to miss out, so duly bought a copy and got it signed.

For once the recipes inside didnt look like hieroglyphics. The book explained the mysteries of sauting and blending. I remember the day we trotted off to the shops, toddler in tow, to buy these exotic ingredients we hadnt used before: Chinese 5 spice, ginger, coriander. Wow! It was a revelation tasting Jamies noodle stir-fry for the first time. It became a firm favourite and I still cook many of the dishes from that book. So fast-forward to last year when I was talking to a friend who volunteers at a food bank.

Some of her stories of parents trying to feed their families or heat their homes on tiny budgets were heartbreaking. At the same time I became interested in the work of a charity called Below the Breadline which raises awareness about people all over the world living on the equivalent of 1 a day. That got me thinking about my family and how we would manage on such a tight budget. So I challenged us to eat as a family on 3 a day. On our first challenge we ran out of milk and butter and craved sweet things and there were many hiccups in the days that followed. Since then Ive learnt all sorts of new things and managed to add in some treats.

There are some standards I wont let slip; for instance I only use free-range eggs. They cost a little more but can still be fitted within the tight budget. I decided to start a blog (eatnotspend.wordpress.com) about how we got on, mainly to show other people struggling to make ends meet how they could shop on a tiny budget but still eat well. I put all the recipes on the blog so anyone following could recreate the same meals. I also included the shopping lists so they would know exactly what to buy. I persuaded my husband, a photographer, to help; I think the shots prove that with good lighting and a bit of styling you can make even simple meals look as lovely as they taste.

It was a steep learning curve not least because I had barely any social media experience at all. But as a graphic designer I found I got huge pleasure out of trying to present the information in as accessible and helpful a way as possible. After the first week someone requested that I try a vegetarian budget week and, intrigued, I convinced my family to give it a go. This time they were a bit more willing as we had eaten some really nice meals on the challenge. Not knowing much about vegetarian food, I set about working out another menu plan. Since then weve done over a dozen different budget food challenges, including a vegan week and a gluten-free one.

In this book, I allow slightly more than 1 a day each my target is 35 a week to feed a family of four. I provide day-by-day meal plans which are simple to use and all the recipes are easy to follow. Im not a professional chef or a nutritionist, but I have cooked enough meals in my life to know a few tips and tricks. Im a mum who understands that a balanced diet containing enough protein, healthy fats and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables is a recipe for healthiness and wellbeing. Put it this way: if I can do this, most people can.

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Always, ALWAYS have a list. 2. Check what you have run out of or need before you write your list. We plan what we are eating on what days and whos working late or who is going to be out, so that we only buy what we will need for that week. 3. 4. 4.

Check your prices, as supermarkets are always putting prices up and down. If its expensive that week, dont get it. Swap in something else; be flexible. 5. Buy supermarket own brands. Ive taste-tested loads and if you use them well, you cant tell the difference.

Why pay 2 for something that can cost 35p? 6. If you dont trust yourself not to overspend in the supermarket, order online. That way you cant be tempted and you can see how much you are spending as you go along. 7. When shopping online, some of the budget versions wont appear unless you put in the budget brand name first, for example Morrisons is M Savers, Tesco is Everyday Value, ASDA is Smart Price, Sainsburys is Basics, Co-op is Simple Value and Waitrose is Essentials. 8. 8.

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