Sheppard - The Savvy Shoppers Cookbook

If you love delicious food, spending less on your weekly shop and saving time, this cookbook is for you!

This book will show you how to navigate discount supermarkets and shop for fewer ingredients at low prices, without compromising on your favourite meals, flavour or satisfaction!

Open up for mouth-watering dishes including Caramelised Onion and Goats Cheese Tart, Steak and Potato Salad with Creamy Horseradish Dressing, Moroccan Chickpea Curry, and 15-minute Apple and Blackberry Crumbles.

Amy Sheppard is a busy mum of two boys, living in Cornwall. Amy grew up in Cornwall and was taught to cook by her Mum. There was never very much money, so the key was cooking great food on a budget, by shopping smart and using up leftovers. When Amy became a stay-at-home mum, the reduction in income meant that she had to be more frugal and imaginative in the way that she shopped and cooked. Returning to the cooking style she was brought up on, Amy began to develop simple budget recipes for her own family.

This book was written with busy people in mind; enabling them to get everything they need from discount supermarkets, by providing simple, healthy meal ideas that dont cost the earth.

Like everybody else, I had heard about the meteoric rise of discount supermarkets. Friends had tried for ages to convince me of the savings and quality that they were offering; but I didnt want to change I hate change! When I finally ventured into my local discount supermarket, I felt like I was walking into a party I hadnt been invited to. There was an aura of contented smugness to the customers, wandering around as though part of a special secret club. It was confusing at first, but I did what Id come to do. I shopped. I shopped and I saved massively. And then I understood the smugness...

These shops are not the size of aircraft hangars, which require an hour of careful navigation to fill even the smallest of trolleys. They do not sell 18 different types of tomato ketchup (thats right, I counted). You do not have to wade through overcomplicated special offers or have discounted food dangled in front of your trolley. They are simple, direct, and they do what they say on the tins(!). I was fully converted, and have never looked back.

However, there can be a few drawbacks. When I first made the switch, I continued to get at least one bag of shopping from another, more traditional, supermarket each week. I was making the same meals I always had, and I simply couldnt get all of the ingredients I needed. Whats more, neither could my friends. Then, it occurred to me that it was the recipes that I needed to change, not the supermarket. So I went back to the drawing board.

I realised that these discount supermarkets are a cooks heaven. They are ingredient-led and, as a result, ingredient rich. I was even able to come up with recipes using ingredients that I would never have dreamt of using in a midweek meal before, because of the high cost of them when purchased elsewhere.

So there it is: my concept for a cookery book. Soups and Snacks, Sides and Salads, Fish, Vegetarian, Chicken, Beef and Pork and Sweet Treats, all made using simple, discount supermarket ingredients, all of which can be bought from the leading discount supermarkets.

To get the best out of a discount supermarket, you need to think like a discount supermarket!... These recipes arent just about budget cooking; they are about scaling down your food shop and making more from less. You wont find complicated methods or long ingredient lists. Its about simplifying your shopping and your cooking. Thats where the real savings lie, both in time and money.

If youre looking for a cookbook to make impressive dinner party food, this one might not be for you! If, however, youre looking for simple but delicious, cheap and, for the most part, healthy midweek dinner or lunch ideas to match your shopping habits, this might be just what youve been searching for.

I have tried to make the recipes in this book as simple as possible, both in execution and explanation. I am assuming that, as you have bought this book, clearly you have an interest in food, so I dont need to explain in exhaustive detail how to chop an onion. You know how to chop an onion!

I dont include total cooking or preparation time in any of my recipes. This is for two reasons. Firstly, I find that few people ever look at cooking times in recipe books. Secondly, you dont know how long it takes me to chop a carrot, or grate some cheese, and I dont know how long it takes you! I will, of course, tell you how long something needs to be in the oven, on the hob or in the microwave, but the prep time is up to you as you juggle everything else you might be doing that day.

You wont see long lists of ingredients in this book either. I love simplicity in cooking. All of the ingredients I use bring something to the table or they dont go in the dish. You can be sure that if the recipe calls for it, it needs to be included.

Having said this, its really important to make the recipes work for you. So feel free to swap out or add ingredients to suit your family. It makes me really happy to hear how people have adapted my recipes. Not only because it gives me ideas(!) but because, if youve made it work for you, you will probably keep cooking it.

Most of the dishes in this book are created for four people. We are a family of four so it made sense to make the recipes with this quantity in mind. You can obviously scale down all of the recipes to feed two, or even better, stick with what is listed and freeze half for another day!

a note on FISH

I use a mix of fresh and frozen fish depending on where I buy my ingredients and what is on offer that week. As long as they are thoroughly defrosted you can use either. However, I try to use frozen where possible as it tends to be cheaper and you can defrost what you need for that recipe, and save the rest for another time.

I nearly didnt include this section in the book. I was worried that I might sound a bit preachy about shopping on a budget. Especially when I have weeks myself where my food recycling is overflowing and meal planning is thin on the ground! This list is a useful reminder to me.

It is so hard when life is busy to pay attention to your supermarket shop. Lets face it, its boring. But making just a couple of changes will have a big impact on your weekly spend. These are some of the rules I try to live by: