THRIFTY MUM COOKS 165 DISHES FOR LESS THAN £1 EACH Lorna is the meal deal
A Paisley mum who runs a successful thrifty cooking website has filled her freezer with tasty family meals for the next six weeks – for less than £1 a portion.
Lorna Cooper cooked up an incredible 165 tasty chicken, mince, beef and pork dishes using a meat hamper and store cupboard essentials.
She set up the successful Feed Your Family For About £20 website and Facebook page six years ago, and it has more than 520,000 followers.
Lorna was forced to tighten her shopping budget after she suffered a slipped disc in her back and had to stop working.
As part of her latest batch cook effort, she spent three days in the kitchen whipping up an incredible 33 different dishes which will comfortably feed up to five adults and one teenager each.
She’s estimated each portion costs her just 72p – or just £4.32 per meal to feed the adults and one teenager who live in her Hunterhill house.
Lorna, 42, said: “Meal planning and batch cooking is great when you want to keep your food spend down and be sure you have healthy, tasty meals in the freezer ready for the family.
“I always start my planning by writing down the meals I plan to cook. Once I have that worked out, I then start to create a list of the veg I need to go with them and foods I can use to bulk them out.
“Pulses like lentils and grains including pearl barley are great for this.
“Buying my meat in bulk from musclefood plays a big part in keeping my costs so low. Meat is an expensive item and I’m not prepared to scrimp on the quality of the cuts I buy. In this hamper I had 5kg of chicken and was able to cook 24 meals from it. Popular dishes like chicken korma, chicken and butternut squash stew and BBQ pulled chicken which my family all love.
“I bulk up with vegetable, pulses and grains. “Cooking in bulk also helps keep the spend to a minimum and takes a lot less time than spending every day in the kitchen cooking up tasty lunches and dinners.
“You just have to remember to have enough freezer space available to store it all and to keep a log of what you use. As your stocks begin to get low, it’s time to head back to the kitchen.”
Lorna’s musclefood hamper cost £49 and she spends another £70 on other ingredients including fresh and frozen vegetables, cheese, eggs, pulses and grains, pasta and rice and some basic cupboard items like tinned tomatoes.
The hamper included chicken breasts, free range steak mince, free range diced beef, low fat bacon medallions, pork medallion steaks and extra lean pork sausages.
She’s filled two freezers and more than 100 plastic containers with her home-cooked meals. On the menu for the next few weeks are chicken korma, BBQ pulled chicken, cottage pie, lasagne, caramelised onion and sausage casserole, beef barley stew and beef goulash.
Go to fyf20quid.co.uk or www.facebook. com/fyf20quid for inspiration and recipes.