Quick, Cheap Meals!

[Rave]

You can live on £25 a week very easily indeed- my wife and I don't spend that much more than that now. When I lived on my own I tended to only spend £10-15 a week on food, although my tastes are fairly prosaic.

[xavxen]

I read that first as: "My tastes are only Prozac" ROFLMFHAO

Mmmmmmmm some hormonal goodness

[Spud1]

You can easily live on 25quid a week food wise - I managed that and I did 99% of my shopping at sainsburys..you just have to shop at the right times

i would avoid asda 100%, its no cheaper than tesco and any of their own brand stuff is a recepie for food poisoning..seriously its worth the extra 8p more for a tesco ready meal than an asda one - they actually taste ok! same goes for fresh meat etc, look at the water content in most of the asda stuff compared to tesco/sainsburys..theres no contest really.

My second year at uni I pretty much lived on:

Pizza (goodfellas Delica were almost always on BOGOF, or I made my own when i had time - pizza dough mix, add water, roll it, make sauce (peel+chop some tomatoes, add some herbs, onion, tomato puree) add cheese etc and cook for 10mins)

Ready meals - Cumberland pies and cottage pie mainly

Lasangas(sp?) - home made, would get 2 meals from one of these Basic ingredients were pasta sheets, minced beef, an onion, tomato, cheese, cheese sauce..pretty quick to make and tastes great

Meat and Potato pie - one of my fav meals to make; some diced steak cooked with a bit of water, carrot and onion, then when its almost done (normally a couple of hours on 160) add some chopped par-boiled potatoes, and cover with shortcrust pastry. cook till pastry is dry, done

Toad in the hole - normally home made tho you can buy if your lazy simple too, some sausages from the local butcher cooked for about 40mins, then pour yorkshire pudding mix over the top and cook till brown dead easy

roast dinners - stupidly easy to do, Hot chickens come from sainsburys (helped that i worked on the food to go counter for a while so got em cheap!), roast spuds are easy (par boil then stick in the oven covered in flour and fat), sausages, carrots, gravy (bisto ofc), yorkshire puds, stuffing(paxo natch)..about 15mins prep and 1-2hrs cooking..worth the time spent Or alternativly when on offer the birds-eye microwave roast dinners actaully taste ok..even if i'm fairly sure they have no nutritional value they are good hangover food (ready in 5mins)

Beans/cheese/anything on toast doesnt need explaining

BBQs - dead easy even if you dont have a bbq, a few stones or bricks with an oven shelf (bar type) can make one if you dont have one, and then you just stickon some steak/kebabs etc

Sausage and chips/hash browns./waffles..just bung in the oven

Quick tip for potato waffes - you can cook them in your toaster! Literally takes 3/4 mins to do, much faster than the grill or oven - granted after a year or so your toaster will be caked in grease but we just had a 5quid tesco one so it wasnt a problem

take aways ofc..dominos, kfc, kebab shop etc


I probably ate more than that but they were the main things that kept me going, nothing overly complex and all tastey

As long as you avoid ADSA you will have a happy few years at uni can't wait to get back there in 10months...

[scottyman]

i';d stay away from instant meals (pot noodle, supernoodles), you'll end up incredibly unhealhy.

i would suggeststuff which takes 5-10 mins to prepare, then you can leave it to cook for an hour - casseroles,stews and thick winter soups. most of time spent chopping veggies, but cheaper that way too. you can get 3-4 days out of a big irish stew, plus it's always a good way to impress the ladies. i quite often spend a saturday or sunday afternoon cooking up meals for the week given that my g/f and i are working most hours in the day.