Eating plans for a £1 a day

It's a new school too!

Stodge. Not storage.

I know! Nowhere to sit and eat! I was shocked to hear that.
It can't be healthy to eat a load of storage on the run.

MissAdventure

My grandson gets half an hour for lunch at school.
The younger children go first, so by the time my boy has his turn all that is left is a bacon roll or pizza, and about 10 mins to eat it.

Ditto for DGD and nowhere to sit, either.

When Mr J had his last operation, we made meals to go in the freezer rather than buy ready meals. It meant I did not have to cook from scratch every night and we knew the ingredients we had put in. This is exactly what we are going to do again soon before he has his next op. It really helps me because I will be very busy caring for him for a while post op.

You certainly have a point there growstuff. Very best wishes for a good outcome from your op.?

My grandson gets half an hour for lunch at school.
The younger children go first, so by the time my boy has his turn all that is left is a bacon roll or pizza, and about 10 mins to eat it.

I agree with you Mollygo. Gone are the days when dinner ladies made everybody eat the stuff on their plates. School dinners stop children feeling hungry, but they're not always that well balanced.

MissAdventure

I do love my slow cooker.
I just shove everything in and hope for the best, and it's usually ok.

I like mine too although I need to be a bit more adventurous with it.

Another thought crossed my mind. I'm trying to think ahead and stock up for the time after my op. I don't know how I'm going to feel, but I know I won't be able to drive. I usually live on my own (apart from visits from partner), so I might not feel up to cooking. I've been doing my Tesco order and have ordered individual ready meals (microwave meals) and stuff I know I can prepare easily, but I've gone way over my budget. I have some savings, so I'll be OK, but what about the people who are really living on the breadline and get ill?

My slow cooker is a miracle worker MissA. A much better cook than its owner! Ditto the soup maker.

Callistemon21 I agree with this.

If all children got a good, nutritionally balanced school dinner either free or subsidised then that would solve a lot of problems.
Although our school dinners aren’t junk food, I’m still not convinced about school dinners or that “good” and “nutritionally balanced mean the same.
If the (primary) children ate what they were offered on the menu, I could just about accept ‘nutritionally balanced’. Many don’t. They simply leave bits that they don’t want to eat, often the veg or salad or fruit. Also, some schools declare the week’s meals to be ‘nutritionally balanced’ which means children need to eat a whole week of the meals to get the balance.

I do love my slow cooker.
I just shove everything in and hope for the best, and it's usually ok.

I think to be able to produce a range of tasty but cheap meals you need to already have a cupboard well stocked with lots of basics. Seasonings, oil, vinegar, flour, tomato purée etc cost a bit if you are having to buy them all at once. Also you might not have a toaster or a slow cooker which is wonderful for cooking many things economically including the cheapest cuts of meat. Many people struggling to make ends meet don’t have these things.

Even though someone was advising people to read the book (or write one) in between saying how they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I think her ideas were put into motion when she needed to manage on very little for a limited amount of time, too.
It was never meant as a lifestyle manual.

Some years' ago Jack Monroe used to have a food column in The Guardian - I have to say that her portions were tiny.

From what I can see she is very slight and at the time she was cooking for herself and her young son.

I'm not sure that such advice, as well-meaning as it might be, is helpful to those on a very tight budget. In fact it perpetuates the myth that all you need to do is have 10 ways with lentils and dried beans.

A kind of "put t your money where your mouth is" type thing.
I'd be very interested to hear some good advice on how it's done, too.

I was actually interested in whether the posters who agree that people who need food banks because they can't cook or budget, could give concrete examples of how they could eat for 30p a meal.

She'd be a better bet, I think, because she has tried and tested the recipes over time.

Journalists are just playing at it.

I couldn't eat all the bread the man in the video ate. He found it in the reduced section anyway. If it hadn't been reduced, he couldn't have prepared the meals he did.

I'm due to go into hospital for my cancer op in the next week or so, so I'm reluctant to change my eating habits at the moment, but I'm definitely up for seeing if I could eat for a £1 a day. I'm not that optimistic, but I'll have a look through Jack Monroe's recipes and see if I could manage it.

I would be more likely to buy some basic value peppers or something, instead, on the premise that food needs to be colourful to fulfill our nutritional needs.

Oh, I see.

Because I'm on a tight budget.

Why? I've generally found those the tastiest.