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frideswide-oneill
21st November 2012

Cheaper than chips

Frideswide O’Neill offers some frugal tips for your shopping, cooking and eating habits
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TLDR

Students like to get money off things: we like discounts in clothes shops, we love the glorious third-off on the railway, and if there’s a deal on beer at Sainsbury’s we’ll be the first to profit. However, our need for thrift often doesn’t seem to translate to food. How often does your milk start to look less like milk and more like yoghurt, or for your butter to take on a florescent yellow hue that definitely wasn’t there before? Nobody realises how difficult it is to manage your food well, to never have to throw anything out and to spend as little as possible. I’m here to suggest ways of doing just that.

My first piece of advice is to cook with other people. Usually, I do so with my five housemates. We do a big shop at the start of the week and we all pitch in £10. Last week, things got slightly out of kilter in the house, so I decided to do my own shopping and I spent £35. Handing over that kind of money to Sainsbury’s is an experience I never want to repeat. Spinning through my head were all the possibilities of what else I could do with £35. EasyJet offer a flight to Milan for £25, meaning I’d still have a tenner left to buy super noodles all week. Clearly something was wrong and I vowed never to eat alone again. After all, when you eat with other people you get more variety of food, as your friends will know how to cook things that you don’t. You also won’t have to cook as often because you can rotate who is on cooking duty.

I can hear the skeptics amongst you  thinking that this idea is definitely an under-exaggeration, but £10 each gets you all the basics like milk, butter, bread, tea, coffee, onions, garlic, as well as six communal suppers. So now you’re thinking that you still have to pay for breakfast and lunch, right? Yes, you do, but you don’t have to buy a £3 meal deal every day. Instead, you can buy some couscous, lentils or any such dried beans, grains or pulses that you often avoid for fear that they are too healthy. You could also just buy a massive bag of carrots and make a soup. As for breakfast, ditch the Kellogg’s at £3.14 for Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, and replace it with 24 Everyday Value wheat biscuits, which cost just 94p. That’s more like it.

Cheap as Chips will be returning with ideas for delicious, easy and most importantly cheap recipes to try out. To whet your appetite, here’s a delicious recipe using everyone’s frugal favourite: the lentil.

The Lentil Lunch

Lentils are dirt-cheap, filling and full of protein. Delicious eaten hot or cold, as a main meal
or a side, this is a great recipe to have up your sleeve.

Basic ingredients:
Dried green lentils
Baby tomatoes
Onions
Garlic
Vegetable or chicken stock cube
Herbs and spices (I recommend coriander and cumin)

Optional add-ins:
Chilli
Bacon
Anchovies
Sweet potato
Peas
Courgette

Method:

First, wash your lentils then put them on to boil with a stock cube in the water.

Chop your onions and gently sweat them on a low heat in olive oil. When they start to soften add the crushed garlic and a teaspoon of coriander and one of cumin. Halve your tomatoes and put them in with the onions as well.

Once the lentils are cooked (about 25 mins) drain them and add your onion mix to the pan. Don’t forget to season it with salt and pepper!

All that’s left now is to add in any extras you like; crispy bacon or anchovies are a great way to give it some more flavor and any kind of vegetable is good for bulking it out. Enjoy!

 


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